Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Halfon and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Lady’s question raises the much wider issue of the work that the Government are having to do to clean up the chaos and mess left by the Labour Government and balance the books. It is highly hypocritical—that is, it is very odd to hear her mention this matter, given that Labour Members trooped through the Lobby with us to secure the cuts that were necessary to balance the budget in the next three years.

We cannot put up with the chaos that is emanating from the Labour Benches. Last week they were tweeting that they supported cuts in the arts, boasting about them, while at the same time pretending that they opposed them.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that Harlow is the cultural oasis of the east of England? We have the Gibberd gallery, the beautiful Parndon mill, the Harlow museum and much more besides, and we are also a sculpture town. Will he consider what he can do to support our beautiful town and culture and arts in Harlow?

[Mr Vaizey]

The first thing we need to do is designate my hon. Friend as a national treasure, and the second thing I am going to do is send the Secretary of State to Harlow. He will be visiting shortly.

Local Newspapers

Debate between Robert Halfon and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Vaizey]

I make it clear that I will happily accept as many interventions as hon. Members wish to make.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the Minister for his kind comments about my suit. The Harlow Star is delivered to almost every home throughout Harlow free of charge, and it and many other local newspapers depend on traffic notices. Many old people—we have 11,500 pensioners —do not use the internet and depend on traffic notices from their local newspaper. Will he lobby the Department for Transport to ensure that traffic notices are kept in local newspapers?

[Mr Vaizey]

I hear what my hon. Friend says. Obviously, I was going to cover the consultation on traffic regulation orders conducted by the Department for Transport. The consultation opened in January and this is the second time we have debated it in the House, which is a reflection of the importance that hon. Members attach to this subject. When we debated the matter previously, I urged all hon. Members to make their own submissions on behalf of their local newspapers.

The consultation closed last Monday. I understand that last week, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), met representatives of newspaper groups. The Department for Transport is taking this seriously. I would not like to pre-empt the conclusions of that consultation. I made the frank points in the previous debate that there is a balance to be struck between saving the taxpayer money, effectively, by not having a statutory requirement and by deregulating, and recognising that local newspapers in particular depend on statutory notices for part of their revenue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Halfon and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Edinburgh festival, which reminds me that I should have said how pleased all the festival organisers were with the extensive coverage that the BBC gave them. They were full of praise for it. May I also take this opportunity to praise BBC Radio Oxford, which I praised last night in the House and which incorporated my remarks in its breakfast programme jingle this morning?

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

On public service broadcasting, will my hon. Friend condemn the decision by the BBC to stop broadcasting the Israel Philharmonic orchestra at the Proms? Will he also take this opportunity to condemn those extremists who disrupted the Proms and attacked the orchestra?

[Mr Vaizey]

I was present at the Israel Philharmonic orchestra’s performance at the Proms. It was an occasion when one realised how wonderful the Proms and the promenaders are. It is salutary to remember that even in 1968, when the orchestra from the USSR was playing at the Proms and the USSR had invaded Czechoslovakia, the music was not disrupted. There should be a separation between art and politics, particularly in this case given the astonishing history of the Israel Philharmonic orchestra, which saved so many Jews from death at the hands of their Nazi oppressors.

BBC Funding (CSR)

Debate between Robert Halfon and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

As I say, the BBC will have to find savings; I shall come to that in a moment. It is important for Labour Members to make their position clear. If they think that the BBC licence fee should be increased, they should say so, and they should state the level at which they think it should be set.

The current licence fee settlement remains at £145.50. It is important to remember that for the first year this was volunteered by the BBC and the BBC Trust, and it was likely to be volunteered for the second year, and then we negotiated a freeze for the four years after that until March 2017. Within that settlement, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh South pointed out, the BBC has agreed to play an active role in supporting new local television services through a partnership fund providing capital costs of up to a total of £25 million in 2013-14 for up to 20 local TV services—city TV stations to provide truly local content rather than the regional content people have at the moment. The BBC will also commit to ongoing funding of up to £5 million per year from 2014-15 to acquire content for use on its own services from these new services. Should capital costs be required earlier, this will be facilitated by access to the existing digital switchover underspend by mutual agreement.

[Robert Halfon]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not just about the level of the licence fee but the fact that licence fee payers have no real say over what goes on in the BBC, whether it is salaries, the make-up of the BBC Trust, or the number of stations? The answer, surely, is to democratise the licence fee by giving licence fee payers a vote.

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend is a pioneer in this House. He is already proposing and taking forward an internet bill of rights, which has enlivened the blogosphere, and he has radical proposals for the democratisation of the BBC. Given his campaigning record, I will leave him to take those forward.

The BBC World Service will now become part of the licence fee-funded BBC from 2014-15, but the BBC will remain independent in all matters concerning the content of World Service output as regards times and the manner in which it is supplied and the management of its affairs. The BBC’s editorial guidelines, values and standards will be set by the BBC Trust and will continue to apply to the BBC World Service. The BBC will continue, as now, to set the objectives, priorities and targets for the BBC World Service with the Foreign Secretary, and will obtain written approval from the Foreign Secretary for the opening or closure of any language service. The BBC will also assume responsibility for funding BBC Monitoring from 2013-14.

The hon. Gentleman asked about S4C. The BBC has undertaken to provide the majority of funding to the Welsh language service, S4C, from April 2013. We in the Government remain absolutely committed to a strong and independent Welsh language TV service, which was of course set up under the last Conservative Government.

The Internet and Privacy

Debate between Robert Halfon and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Thursday 28th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Weir. I was going to begin by saying that today’s debate was no time for clichés but that I felt the hand of history on my shoulder, because I was under the impression that this was the first Backbench Business Committee debate. In fact, it is the first such debate in Westminster Hall—there have, of course, been three previous Backbench Business Committee debates in the Chamber.

However, I will stick with the cliché that the hand of history is on my shoulder as I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on initiating this important debate, because I think it is one of the few times that Parliament has debated properly this important aspect of the internet—that is, how it affects people’s privacy. I suspect that the issue was raised when the Digital Economy Bill was debated at length in the other place—it was debated only briefly in the House of Commons. There have been few, if any, debates on this important issue, which touches almost everyone’s life, or at least those who go online.

Let me begin by setting out a few principles and general thoughts and approaches, before I talk specifically about the Government’s approach to privacy on the internet. On the spectrum of opinion within the coalition, I should say that I am firmly on the civil libertarian wing of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat party. I believe that one of Government’s watchwords should be “Protect individuals’ freedoms.” I campaigned strongly against identity cards, and I believe that the state should not intrude in people’s lives, and should protect the freedoms of individuals when others seek to do so.

I also remain personally concerned about the very serious breaches of people’s privacy on the internet. Many such breaches are unintentional and very few are brokered by internet-based organisations and companies. They are mostly down to the bad behaviour of individuals who would, no doubt, behave badly whether the internet existed or not. A story in The Sun today refers to a lady, Carolyn Owlett, who had her Facebook identity stolen and the serious consequences that had for her. The story is effectively about an unpleasant individual—not Ms Owlett, I hasten to add, but the woman who stole her identity—who used the internet as a tool with which to make someone else’s life a misery. However, that story does not necessarily reflect badly on Facebook. I will come back to the possible remedies for such a situation.

It is important to put the debate in context. We are right to be concerned about the effect of the internet on privacy, but we should also remember that one of the reasons it is having such an impact is that so many of us voluntarily use it. There was a vigorous debate about Facebook’s privacy settings, and that was perfectly legitimate. However, we should remember that the reason Facebook is a big company that knows a lot about many of its users is that almost half the population of this country are members of Facebook, as are more than 500 million people worldwide.

Picking up on the useful intervention of the hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce) and the illuminating marketing seminar given by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), we should remember that, when it comes to data harvesting, personal data have always been collected by commercial companies to enable them to sell products. I do not have a Tesco clubcard, but those who do are in effect given that card so that Tesco can monitor their spending habits and sell them more products.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank my hon. Friend for his opening remarks. Picking up on the credit card issue, when people get credit cards, they receive a clear letter inviting them to tick boxes to say whether they want their data to be passed on to other people. The point of my debate has been to say that, first, the scale of what is happening on the internet is much greater and, secondly, the individual is given no option to tick such a box.

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend has raised two very important points that encapsulate the two principles behind the debate, which is unsurprising, given that he secured it. First, the internet is an enormous step change in the collection of personal data. What are the implications of that? Secondly, given that enormous step change, what rights—I use the word advisedly—should consumers have to protect their personal data when they interact with organisations on the internet?

Another general point about internet regulation is that a consistent approach to it is rarely adopted. It is always interesting to see those who want the internet to be regulated and those who do not. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who made a useful speech attacking the Digital Economy Act 2010, does not want the internet to be regulated when it comes to combating illegal file sharing, but he does want it regulated when it comes to protecting personal data. He kindly let me know that he would have to leave the debate at 4 o’clock to attend an event that he is hosting. He is very knowledgeable on the subject, and I hope that he will be prepared to share with me—an erstwhile colleague—the findings of the Liberal Democrat policy group on that issue, which will be an extremely useful contribution to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon]

What my hon. Friend is missing is that it is not just basic things that are being scraped. People’s passwords, user names and e-mail addresses are being passed on to companies without permission, but when people go on to such sites, they are not made aware that that will be done.

[Mr Vaizey]

That is a separate point. The point I am making is that if companies decide to search the web to see what people are saying about them online, that is a perfectly legitimate exercise, although there may be a different point in respect of their reputation. What my hon. Friend says about the use of people’s data without their knowledge is important, and I will come on to it, but although I now have an hour left to speak, I have been passed a note by my official which says that I need to speak for only 20 minutes. That gives a flavour of how well this speech is being received, at least in official terms.

[Robert Halfon]

This is totally different from searching online in case anyone said anything. Companies are going into people’s private accounts. It is exactly the same as someone going into another person’s house without permission to check whether they are doing something. They are going into people’s private accounts, which is different from just a general search.

[Mr Vaizey]

If my hon. Friend gives me some evidence, I will look at it and have no hesitation in passing it on to the Information Commissioner, because that behaviour is clearly a breach of data protection.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Halfon and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

We are looking carefully at this issue, holding regular discussions with the mobile phone operators and involving other Departments and regulators. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. Getting the issue sorted is an absolute priority for us, and we hope to make an announcement before the end of the summer recess.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

T2. Following the excellent plans for apprenticeships, is my hon. Friend the Minister aware that the local apprenticeship scheme run by Essex county council and Harlow college has agreed to place an Essex apprentice in my office from October? Will he also look into boosting apprentices in Whitehall and Westminster, and through Government contracts?