Cairncross Review

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I would like to associate my colleagues and myself with the tributes paid to Gordon Banks. This weekend, we will have the Northern Ireland BetMcLean league cup final, and I am sure the Secretary of State will want to take the opportunity to wish Ballymena United and Linfield Football Club all the best as they compete for that cup—I hope the sky blues win.

We are dealing here with the concentration of enormous economic power with the few, and with a very few platforms and platform owners; the dangerous monopoly of expertise; the power of surveillance; the fact that the much-promised encryption and privacy of personal data does not exist, even in WhatsApp; and the unlimited potential for the abuse of technology and people. Surely the Secretary of State agrees that the commercial strength and share of the advertising market of these new platforms, the personal wealth of those who own them and the monopoly of personal data are, in the words of this important review, each alone a “justification” for regulation. Surely he agrees that much more must be done immediately. Will he join me and the deputy leader of the Labour party in saying from the Dispatch Box that there must immediately be put on these companies a duty of care to all those who use them? That will be the first wake-up call and the first sobering reality that these platforms will face.

Unfortunately, I fear that the Government, once again, have pulled their punches on the BBC. The BBC has huge firepower compared with ITV and UTV, its subsidiary in Northern Ireland. It has the largest news-watching audience, yet the BBC competes deliberately against it to undermine it in Northern Ireland. That disadvantage must stop as soon as possible.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We have a ten-minute rule Bill and important business to move on to, so I ask colleagues to make questions and, correspondingly, answers short.

[Jeremy Wright]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will do my best. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for inviting me to wish both sides in the Northern Ireland cup final well. That is much easier to do, and I am happy to join him in doing that. As for the BBC, there are no Government punches being thrown here, pulled or otherwise; we are talking about the recommendation of an independent review and, as I say, Dame Frances is making a sensible and balanced set of proposals. As for his comments about the online platforms, I agree with him that there are concerns about the concentration of market power in very few hands and about the responsibilities of these companies to keep their users safe online. I can tell him that the Government are conscious about acting on both those things. I shall be giving some of the messages he has just outlined directly to the online platforms when I travel to the United States next week.