Draft Data Protection (Fundamental Rights and Freedoms) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 General Committees

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great delight to sit under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. You and I have many things in common, not least our determination to see that fewer people suffer from melanoma and that more get the proper treatment that they deserve. I know that has been a long-standing campaign of yours.

First, I will just correct the Minister. He mentioned these regulations being subject to the agreement of the Committee today. There is no such thing as the agreement of the Committee today, because even if every single member of the Committee voted that we disagreed with the motion, it would go through none the less as all it does is ask whether the Committee has “considered” the regulations. On a minor point, this is one of my arguments regarding the problems with Henry VIII powers and the extensive use of secondary legislation, all of which is unamendable.

To get back to the bit where I agree with the Minister, these regulations do indeed amend the existing UK data protection regime so that references in relation to data controllers and Ministers, and to “fundamental rights and freedoms”, pertain to the European convention on human rights—enshrined by the Human Rights Act 1988—as opposed to the charter of fundamental rights of the European Union. This may of course feel like a great deal of dancing upon the head of a pin, in that we are changing one European Court for another—I am sure that has been a very useful waste of British legislative time over these years. As the Minister says, the Government are making this change under section 14 of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, which allows the Government to revoke secondary retained EU law and replace it with such provisions as they consider appropriate.

I do have a few questions. Paragraph 2.2 of the explanatory memorandum refers to

“an alternative source of fundamental rights and freedoms, namely those under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which have been enshrined in the UK’s domestic law under the Human Rights Act 1998.”

The regulations themselves, however, refer directly only to the Human Rights Act, thereby making me worry as to the true intentions of the Government in relation to the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights. Why is there a difference between what is in the memorandum and what is in the regulations?

Secondly, can we presume from this that the Government—as the Minister’s helpful, mischievous friend at the back, the hon. Member for Amber Valley, pointed out earlier—have no plans to leave the European convention on human rights? I know the Minister has been a very outspoken critic of Russia and of Belarus. I am sure he would personally hate for the UK to be joining a small group of Belarus and Russia as the countries that have left the European convention. Or should we presume that the Government do intend to resile from the convention? That seems to be the implication of the difference between the memorandum and the regulations.

What further amendment to the data protection regime would be necessary if we were to leave the European convention on human rights? The Minister said that we would have to convene again. Is that right, or would we simply be able to rely on the Human Rights Act 1998 as it stands?

The next set of questions relate to the fact that we are changing essentially from one Court to another. The ECHR has often taken a much more permissive approach than the European Court of Justice to mass surveillance by Governments and other organisations. Is this an attempt from the Government to move to a situation where they are intending to extend mass surveillance of, for instance, bank accounts, including the bank accounts of people with state pensions in the UK, as was agreed to by hon. Members last week in the debate on the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill? Have the Government made an assessment of the difference between the approaches of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice towards such mass surveillance issues?

Under the Human Rights Act, UK courts will obviously be adhering to their understanding of what the European Court of Human Rights has held on these views, particularly in relation to the two key human rights of privacy and freedom of expression—articles 8 and 10. The truth, however, is that the UK courts will only effectively keep pace with the European Court of Human Rights. They will not recognise rights in contexts where the case law has not yet been developed. What analysis have the Government done of the case law, which might therefore be applied by UK courts in interpreting the Human Rights Act?

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend referred a moment ago to the enormous new power that the Government put into their legislation last week that will allow them to look into the bank accounts of anyone claiming a state pension. In last week’s debate, he said that the House of Commons Library had confirmed that that is indeed the implication of the amendment that was agreed, and the Library has also confirmed that to me today. However, journalists speaking to the Department for Work and Pensions were told that that is not what that amendment does. Does my hon. Friend have an update on whether the Government are in fact taking that power for themselves?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I am afraid I am unable to update my right hon. Friend—he is updating me—but perhaps the Minister will be able to update us. I know that he is not a Department for Work and Pensions Minister but none the less it is his Bill that is going off to the House of Lords now. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham knows, we have significant concerns about the extent of the power the Government are taking and the set of circumstances in which they would want to use it. I have a sneaking worry that these regulations are aimed at helping them to take more substantive power and a bigger step, but perhaps the Minister will relieve my anguished breast on these matters.

My final question concerns the UK’s data adequacy, because it is obviously in the interests of UK businesses to have stability and certainty about where data protection law is going and that we have full data adequacy not only with the United States of America, which has been arranged through the new bridge agreement that we supported, but with the EU. I think the Minister agrees, notwithstanding the points he made about Brexit freedoms and all that stuff.

The EU made the decision to grant UK data adequacy in June 2021 for a period of four years, after which it will be renewed only if the European Commission considers that the UK continues to ensure an adequate level of data protection. What assessment have the Government made of how the regulations will impact on a future decision by the European Commission on data adequacy? For instance, if the Human Rights Act embraced the kinds of decisions previously made by the European Court of Human Rights and allowed a much more permissive approach than the European Court of Justice towards mass surveillance, that could thrust us into a situation where UK courts effectively allowed far more generous mass surveillance by Government and other organisations than the EU would allow. Would that not threaten the UK’s data adequacy arrangements? Nevertheless, despite those points, we are broadly happy to support the measure and I am sure that the Minister will want to reassure me.

Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I understand the concerns of the hon. Lady. We want to do all that we can to support the bereaved parents of children who have lost their lives. As it stands, the amendment will require Ofcom, following notification from a coroner, to issue information notices to specified providers of online services, requiring them to hold data they may have relating to a deceased child’s use of online services, in circumstances where the coroner suspects the child has taken their own life, which could later be required by a coroner as relevant to an inquest.

We will continue to work with bereaved families and Members of the other place who have raised concerns. During the passage of the Online Safety Act, my noble colleague Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay made it clear that we are aware of the importance of data preservation to bereaved parents, coroners and others involved in investigations. It is very important that we get this right. I hear what the hon. Lady says and give her an assurance that we will continue to work across Government, with the Ministry of Justice and others, in ensuring that we do so.

The hon. Member for Rhondda made reference to proposed new schedule 1, relating to improving our ability to identify and tackle fraud in the welfare system. I am grateful for the support of the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). In 2022-23, the Department for Work and Pensions overpaid £8.3 billion in fraud and error. A major area of loss is the under-declaration of financial assets, which we cannot currently tackle through existing powers. Given the need to address the scale of fraud and error in the welfare system, we need to modernise and strengthen the legal framework, to allow the Department for Work and Pensions to keep pace with change and stand up to future fraud challenges.

As I indicated earlier, the fraud plan, published in 2022, contains a provision outlining the DWP’s intention to bring forward new powers that would boost access to data held by third parties. The amendment will enable the DWP to access data held by third parties at scale where the information signals potential fraud or error. That will allow the DWP to detect fraud and error more proactively and protect taxpayers’ money from falling into the hands of fraudsters.

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My reading of the proposed new schedule is that it gives the Department the power to look into the bank accounts of people claiming the state pension. Am I right about that?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

The purpose of the proposed new schedule is narrowly focused. It will ensure that where benefit claimants may also have considerable financial assets, that is flagged with the DWP for further examination, but it does not allow people to go through the contents of people’s bank accounts. It is an alarm system where financial institutions that hold accounts of benefit claimants can match those against financial assets, so where it appears fraud might be taking place, they can refer that to the Department.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his contribution, and I share his principled concern that the powers of the state should be limited to those that are absolutely necessary. Those who are in receipt of benefits funded by the taxpayer have an obligation to meet the terms of those benefits, and this provision is one way of ensuring that they do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Corby has already said that he would be very happy to discuss this matter with my right hon. Friend further, and I am happy to do the same if that is helpful to him.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

Can the Minister give us an example of the circumstances in which the Department would need to look into the bank accounts of people claiming state pensions in order to tackle the fraud problem? Why is the state pension within the scope of this amendment?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

All I can say to the right hon. Gentleman is that the Government have made it clear that there is no intention to focus on claimants of the state pension. That is an undertaking that has been given. I am sure that Ministers from the DWP would be happy to give further evidence to the right hon. Gentleman, who may well wish to look at this further in his Committee.

Finally, I wish to touch on the framework around smart data, which is contained in part 3 of the Bill. The smart data powers will extend the Government’s ability to introduce smart data schemes, building on the success of open banking, which is the UK’s most developed data sharing scheme, with more than 7 million active users. The amendments will support the Government’s ability to meet their commitment, first, to provide open banking with a long-term regulatory framework, and, secondly, to establish an open data scheme for road fuel prices. It will also more generally strengthen the toolkit available to Government to deliver future smart data schemes.

The amendments ensure that the range of data and activities essential to smart data schemes are better captured and more accurately defined. That includes types of financial data and payment activities that are integral to open banking. The amendments, as I say, are complicated and technical and therefore I will not go into further detail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred Division on the Draft Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: NHS Ambulance Services and the NHS Patient Transport Service) Regulations 2023. The Ayes were 297 and the Noes were 166, so the Ayes have it.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I rise to speak specifically to Government new clause 34 and connected Government amendments which, as we have been reminded, give Ministers power to inspect the bank accounts of anyone claiming a social security benefit. I think it has been confirmed that that includes child benefit and the state pension, as well as universal credit and all the others. Extremely wide powers are being given to Ministers.

The Minister told us that the measure is expected to save some half a billion pounds over the next five years. I was pleased that the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work was present at the start of the debate, although he is not now in his place and the Department for Work and Pensions is not hearing the concerns expressed about this measure. The Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure told us that the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work will not be not speaking in the debate, so we will not hear what the DWP thinks about these concerns.

We have also been told—I had not seen this assurance—that these powers will not be used for a few years. If that is correct, I am completely mystified by why this is being done in such a way. If we had a few years to get these powers in place, why did the Government not wait until there was some appropriate draft legislation that could be properly scrutinised, rather than bringing such measures forward now with zero Commons scrutiny and no opportunity for that to occur? There will no doubt be scrutiny in the other place, but surely a measure of this kind ought to undergo scrutiny in this House.

I chair the Work and Pensions Committee and we have received substantial concerns about this measure, including from Citizens Advice. The Child Poverty Action Group said that

“it shouldn’t be that people have fewer rights, including to privacy, than everyone else in the UK simply because they are on benefits.”

I think that sums up what a lot of people feel, although it appears to be the position that the Government are now taking. It is surprising that the Conservative party is bringing forward such a major expansion of state powers to pry into the affairs of private citizens, and particularly doing so in such a way that we are not able to scrutinise what it is planning. As we have been reminded, the state has long had powers where there were grounds for suspecting that benefit fraud had been committed. The proposal in the Bill is for surveillance where there is absolutely no suspicion at all, which is a substantial expansion of the state’s powers to intrude.

Annabel Denham, deputy comment editor at The Daily Telegraph warned in The Spectator of such a measure handing

“authorities the power to snoop on people’s bank accounts.”

I suspect that the views expressed there are more likely to find support on the Conservative Benches than on the Labour Benches, so I am increasingly puzzled by why the Government think this is an appropriate way to act. I wonder whether the fact that there have been such warnings prompted Ministers into rushing through the measure in this deeply unsatisfactory way, without an opportunity for proper scrutiny, because they thought that if there had been parliamentary scrutiny there would be substantial opposition from the Conservative Benches as well as from the Labour Benches. It is difficult to understand otherwise why it is being done in this way.

As we have been reminded, new clause 34 will give the Government the right to inspect the bank account of anyone who claims a state pension, which is all of us. It will give the Government the right to look into the bank account of every single one of us at some point during our lives, without suspecting that we have ever done anything wrong, and without telling us that they are doing it. The Minister said earlier that the powers of the state should be limited to those absolutely necessary, and I have always understood that to be a principle of the Conservative party. Yet on the power in the new clause to look into the bank account of everybody claiming a state pension, he was unable to give us any reason why the Government should do such a thing, or why they would ever need to look into the bank accounts of people—everybody—claiming a state pension. What on earth would the Government need to do that for? The entitlement to the state pension is not based on income, savings or anything like that, so why would the Government ever wish to do that?

If we cannot think of a reason why the Government would want to do that, why are they now taking the power to enable them to do so? I think that all of us would agree, whatever party we are in, that the powers of the state should be limited to those absolutely necessary. The power in the new clause is definitely not absolutely necessary. Indeed, no one has been able to come up with any reason for why it would ever be used.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

There is something called a production order. If somebody was under investigation for benefit fraud, an application could be made before a court for the production of bank accounts. If it was a matter of suspected fraud, there is already a mechanism available.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

Yes, there is a clear and long-established right in law for the DWP to look into people’s bank accounts if there is a suspicion of fraud. This power is giving the Department the ability to look into the bank accounts of people where there is no suspicion at all. All of us at some point in our lives claim a social security benefit, and we are giving the Government the power to look into our bank accounts with this measure.

--- Later in debate ---

On the specific point of whether the powers should be targeted on individual benefits rather than more generally, I should say that at the moment fraud and error in state pensions, for instance, is near zero. The Government intend to target the benefits power where there is clear evidence of fraudulent activity. We are including all benefits to make sure that state pensions stay that way.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

My understanding was that the level of fraud among state pension claims was indeed extremely small. The Minister said earlier that the Government should take powers only where they are absolutely necessary; I think he is now saying that they are not necessary in the case of people claiming a state pension. Is he confident that that bit of this power—to look into the bank account of anybody claiming a state pension—is absolutely necessary?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

What I am saying is that the Government’s intention is to use the power only when there is clear evidence or suggestion that fraud is taking place on a significant scale. The Government simply want to retain the option to amend that should future evidence emerge; that is why the issue has been left open.

Draft Online Safety Bill Report

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) and the members of his Committee on bringing forward an incredibly thorough and very good report. I know Ministers have been consulting well with all Back Benchers, and I hope they do not pay lip service to the report’s conclusions, but really take on its important recommendations. What is interesting about this whole debate is that there is a broad consensus on the Back Benches. None of us are bound by ideology on these issues; our approach is based on our experience, the data and the wide body of research.

I will also say at the beginning that the business model of the platforms means that they will never tackle this themselves. They make their money by encouraging traffic on their platforms, and they encourage traffic by allowing abusive content to exist there. Their algorithms are there almost to control and encourage more abusive content. The idea that there can be any self-regulation in the legislation to be proposed by the Government is false.

I will draw attention to three sets of issues in the short time available to me. The first, the recommendations on paid-for scams and frauds, has already been discussed. It is ridiculous that user-generated content can be subject to regulation but that paid-for scams and frauds cannot be. Everybody who gave evidence to the Committee, including the Financial Conduct Authority, pleaded for its inclusion. The figure I have is from Action Fraud: 85% of the £1.7 billion lost in fraudulent scams in the past year resulted from cyber-enabled frauds. During the pandemic, this figure of course exploded. Again, there is no incentive for the platforms to do anything about this. They get paid for by the advertisements so they wish to encourage them. Indeed, there is a double benefit in this particular space for them, because the FCA also pays for them to prioritise the legitimate websites over the scam adds, so again self-regulation will not work. I know that Ministers support the proposal, and I hope that they are not swayed by advice that it is not legally possible, as I just do not accept that. I hope that they do not miss this opportunity by way of promises of legislation down the line.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I very much agree with the point my right hon. Friend is making and with the recommendation in the report. I wonder whether she noticed that the Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee in July that

“one of the key objectives of the Online Safety Bill is to tackle online fraud.”

Does she agree that it cannot possibly do that if it misses out scam adverts?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend on that, and I hope that the Minister will confirm that he will include this in the legislation.

The second issue I wish to raise relates to anonymity. No one wants to undermine anonymity—we all recognise that it is crucial for whistleblowers, for victims of domestic violence or child abuse, and for others—but we do want to tackle anonymous abuse. Sadly, most of the vile abuse that appears online is anonymous, as we have seen in the spreading of disinformation, particularly in relation to the pandemic. I have seen it in my experience, and it really undermines my right to participate in democratic debate. If people paint someone online as being a terrible person, as a hypocrite or as a hateful, wicked woman, which is what they do with me, that person is then not trusted on anything and therefore their voice is shut down in the democratic debate.

What we are all after is not tackling anonymity but ensuring third party verification of the identity of people so that they can be traced if and when they put abusive content online. The proposals that came from the Law Commission, and which one of the four ex-Culture Secretaries who has worked on this issue has diligently pursued, to introduce a new offence to tackle serious online harms more effectively is very important. It is about shifting from content to the effects of the online harm.

My third point relates to director liability. All my experience in working in the field of tackling illicit finance and economic crime demonstrates to me that if we do not introduce director liability for when wrongdoing occurs in the actions of individuals associated with a company, we do not change the behaviour of those companies. Even fines of £50 million are not significant against Facebook’s gross revenue of more than £29 billion. I do not understand why we have to wait for two years to implement director liability, as it could be done immediately. I would be grateful to the Minister if he said that he will implement that.

The last thing I should say, in my final seconds, is on anonymity. I would like the Minister simply to confirm this afternoon whether he will tackle anonymous abuse and put in place the Law Commission’s proposals. When is the timeframe for that? I very much welcome the report and commend all those who worked so hard to put it together, and I hope we can make progress swiftly on a problem that is growing in British society and that is undermining, not supporting, democracy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) and his colleagues on the Committee on their work. In particular, as he knows, I warmly welcome the recommendation that paid-for advertising should no longer be excluded from the scope of the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) put me in touch with one of her constituents who had some experience of online scamming. He explained that he is an experienced fund manager who used to run his own investment management firm. Last February, he clicked on a link that offered suspiciously high returns because he wanted to see what the scam was. Over the following months, despite repeatedly telling every caller that he was not interested, he was subjected to a daily barrage of calls, which petered out only in October. He said:

“When I started challenging them after a couple of months, they started becoming abusive… threatening to sue me for slander when I pointed out what they were doing was illegal…It actually became very stressful…Having warned Google many times, it fails to take action.”

We now have a well-established organised crime industry staffed by a large number of accomplished thugs, sustained by cheap and easy access to victims on Google and on Facebook. My interest arises, as the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe mentioned, from the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry on pension scams.

In a letter to the Work and Pensions Committee last May, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority told us that

“fraud now accounts for one-in-three crimes in the UK, costing up to £190 billion a year. An estimated 86% of fraud is committed online…Action Fraud has told us that victims of pensions-related scams who had worked their whole lives to build a retirement fund had lost £82,000 on average…Online platforms, such as search engines and social media platforms, are playing an increasingly significant role in putting consumers at risk of harm by exposing them to adverts for financial products…Fraudsters have unprecedentedly cheap access to an online population of consumers who find it difficult to differentiate genuine offers from the fraudulent…There are ads online for firms that don’t exist, for firms that claim to be regulated but aren’t, for firms that claim to be based in the UK but aren’t and for clones of legitimate authorised firms.”

That is why I applaud so warmly the Joint Committee’s recommendation that the Bill should be broadened, as the Governor of the Bank of England said, to cover online fraud. I welcome the support for that move expressed in the debate.

I referred earlier to the Prime Minister’s statement to the Liaison Committee last July that

“one of the key objectives of the Online Safety Bill is to tackle online fraud.”

However, the current draft of the Bill excludes most of the online fraud problem, so I urge the Minister to tackle it head on in the Bill. The public certainly want that; Aviva has published research concluding that 87% of the public want the Government to legislate to stop search engines and social media platforms promoting financial scams through advertising.

Until now, Ministers have said that the problem will be addressed by separate work on online advertising. That really is not enough. That work is proceeding at a snail’s pace. In February 2019, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced that it was considering the regulation of online advertising, but three years on, there has been no progress at all. We now understand that there will be another consultation later this year. It will be years before that work delivers, and in the meantime thousands will have lost their life savings and UK financial services will have suffered further damage. The Government must not surrender to organised crime. I urge the Minister to accept the Joint Committee’s recommendation.

Tackling the Digital Divide

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Rushanara Ali (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking in the debate. This is in line with the Government’s guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I also remind Members that they are asked by the House to have covid lateral flow tests twice a week—I am sure you all have. You can do that at home or on the parliamentary estate, and you can pick up tests here to take home. Please also give each other enough space when seated and when entering and leaving the Chamber.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of tackling the digital divide.

I am delighted to be serving under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Ali. It strikes me, and I am pleased to see, that with you, me and the Minister, we have strong east London representation in the Chamber today. I am also pleased that the Work and Pensions Committee is strongly represented in the debate. I think there is a significant crossover between the digital divide and the concerns the Committee has been engaged with.

Let me begin with a tribute to the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), who is chair of the all-party parliamentary group for broadband and digital communication—I am the vice-chair of that group. Before her recent well-deserved promotion, she was the sponsor—the initiator—of this debate. She is not able to lead on it, given her current position, but I am pleased to have the opportunity to do so as a rather poor substitute.

As we all know, there has been dramatic progress in getting people online since March of last year. Lloyds Bank’s UK consumer digital index, published in May, reported:

“In the last 12 months, 1.5 million more people have started using the Internet, resulting in 95% now being online… We have made five years’ worth of progress in one”.

It has been a pretty dramatic change. The report makes the point that it is

“well evidenced that people using digital tools and services have a real advantage”.

It also points out that digital skills have moved from being an advantage to being a necessity during the pandemic.

The fact that so many have come newly online is an opportunity for us to build on. But 2.6 million people still are not online. Ofcom reported in July that 2 million households struggle with the cost of broadband or smartphone services, with some staying offline as a result of those cost barriers. Ten million people also lack basic digital skills.

I am sorry to say that the Government’s digital inclusion strategy has not been updated since 2014. It is high time that it was. The topic has not had the priority in Government that I hope it will have in the period ahead. I warmly welcome the Minister to her post, which she took up relatively recently. I hope that in winding up the debate she will be able to hold out the prospect of new priority being given to digital inclusion and of policies enabling real progress on it in the period ahead.

The Good Things Foundation focuses its impressive range of programmes on the digital divide. Its document “A blueprint to fix the digital divide”, published in September, identifies three requirements. No.1 is digital skills, No. 2 is community support and No. 3 is affordable internet, and I will use those three headings in my remarks.

First, on digital skills, progress is very important for levelling up. The Lloyds Bank report pointed out that people using digital services are

“more likely to build their savings reserves, find new ways to save money and can more easily find and access new information, plus manage their well-being”.

We might add that they can also more readily look for a job, apply for universal credit and manage their universal credit account online.

There is a real levelling-up challenge here. Whereas, according to Ofcom, fewer than 21% of people in London are limited internet users, that proportion is almost twice as high—38%—in the north-east, the region represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who is the shadow Front Bencher for this afternoon’s debate. The other nations and regions fall between those two figures, and within regions levels of engagement are much lower among benefit claimants than among other people. I hope that digital inclusion and the development of digital skills will be supported by the UK shared prosperity fund, and that the Government will support local initiatives to tackle the problem, such as Andy Street’s digital catch-up programme in the west midlands to help those who cannot use the internet to learn digital skills, and Andy Burnham’s ambition for Greater Manchester, which is to help all people who are 25 and under, over 75 or disabled to get online.

The Government’s entitlement for people to get full funding for essential digital skills qualifications is welcome, but we need to go further. Level 1 qualifications are not meeting the needs of local employers, while those who stand to gain the most are least likely to engage if they do not first get informal, community-based help. Age is the biggest determinant, with older people less likely to have digital skills. Age UK reports that in the first quarter of this calendar year 40% of over-75s and 12% of 65 to 74-year-olds had not used the internet in the previous three months. However, there is also a big group of younger people who need help. Ofcom’s 2021 technology tracker research found that among school-aged children—those aged between four and 18—eight in 10 had access to an appropriate device at home all of the time, enabling them to connect to the internet for online schoolwork or learning as needed. Of the remainder, 13% had access some of the time, but 2% rarely had access and 2% never had access, meaning that a significant group of school-age children are fully excluded.

Over a fifth of the respondents to a survey quoted in a Vodafone report on the UK’s digital divide last month did not have the software in their household to complete their work, education or leisure pursuits. We also need to reflect on the digital skills that more and more people in work are going to have to acquire, and the Government’s lifetime skills guarantee needs to address that issue directly. techUK has highlighted the gap between, on the one hand, the upsurge in demand for digitally skilled workers in areas such as coding and, on the other, the limited opportunities to retrain in those fields, with a need for immediate action to close that growing digital skills gap. By 2030, it is estimated that nine out of 10 workers are going to need to learn new skills to do their job, at a cost of well over £1 billion a year.

That brings us to the second area, community support. Helen Milner, the chief executive of the Good Things Foundation, has called for support to develop

“a national network of at least 10,000 trusted places where people can get community help with digital inclusion—reaching into villages, towns and cities, and supporting COVID-19 recovery.”

A very good example of such a place is Skills Enterprise, a charity based in Bonny Downs Baptist Church in my constituency and founded in 2006 by the energetic social entrepreneur Malathy Muthu. It is a small but very effective training provider, which quickly reorganised for the pandemic to stop people who were already digitally excluded being further isolated. The Good Things Foundation helped by providing devices that Skills Enterprise could distribute through its DevicesDotNow partnership with FutureDotNow, which raised over £1.5 million nationally to supply devices and data. Skills Enterprise used those devices to ensure that people who would not otherwise have been able to get online could do so during the pandemic.

The number of service users Skills Enterprise supported increased by 50% during the pandemic, and it is now supporting 160 people. I presented certificates to a number of them on a visit last month. It has helped people who were setting up businesses, who were home-schooling, or who were simply having to self-isolate—showing them how to download and use things such as Zoom. Skills Enterprise has helped people with online shopping and banking, and it has helped a large number of people to apply for universal credit, as applications became online-only during the pandemic. It found that virtual form-filling sessions typically lasted around three hours over the telephone for applicants who were not digitally confident and who needed to be talked through the process of applying for universal credit. I am pleased to say that Skills Enterprise has worked with Jobcentre Plus as well. Two people were able to save £300 a year after Skills Enterprise helped them to switch energy providers online, and 23 people it has worked with have found jobs during the pandemic thanks to the acquisition of new digital skills.

Skills Enterprise is an example of exactly the kind of place that the Good Things Foundation rightly says we need across the country. It is having a positive local impact, but there are not enough centres like that around. Funding from central Government is needed urgently to deploy digital champions around the country and to support grassroots organisations to address the divide.

The third area is affordable internet. The scaling back of the Government’s ambitions for connectivity has been a big disappointment. The Government started with a target of 100% fibre by 2025. That was downgraded to 100% gigabit by 2025, and then down again to 85% gigabit by 2025. We are now falling further behind the rest of Europe, and we really should be doing better. Some £5 billion has been provided, but I understand that only a fraction of that will now be invested by 2025; the rest will not be invested until later.

Openreach has estimated that a nationwide full-fibre deployment could add £59 billion to the UK economy by 2025. With growth so elusive in the economy and the Chancellor forecasting that it will be down to 1.3% by the end of his forecast period, that sort of growth is a prize that we cannot afford to forgo.

The Government’s shared rural network scheme aims to provide 4G coverage to 95% of the UK by 2025. I think Vodafone has announced coverage of two Welsh villages under the scheme, but I do not know of any other announcements on increasing coverage that have been made by UK mobile operators as part of this initiative. Will the Minister update us on its progress and on whether there are prospects for more such projects in the near future?

The universal service obligation, launched by the Government in March, which I welcome, allows rural households to demand connectivity from BT, but some of that connectivity might have a very high price indeed, with reports of 60,000 households being charged up to £100,000 each in order to gain the access being provided. Will the Minister give us some reassurance that the access that the USO ensures will be affordable, and will she give an indication of the extent to which the USO has been effective in extending access in the first six months or so of its operation? I commend the work of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, which has set out a range of ideas for steps that the Government can take to increase access in the hardest-to-reach areas, and I hope Ministers will take those ideas forward.

The price to users is a major issue. Households with the lowest incomes spend nearly four times more as a proportion of their disposable income on fixed broadband than the average. Ofcom reports that at least 100,000 households, and possibly many more, are unlikely to gain internet access in the next year because of the price they would have to pay to get it. Ofcom research also found that 4% of families with school-age children relied solely on mobile devices during the pandemic.

I welcome the efforts of telcos and others with innovative partnerships and new social tariffs. TalkTalk’s partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions provides eligible jobseekers with an uncapped broadband service for six months to help them search for jobs, with the DWP paying the fixed cost of the connection and TalkTalk offering the service on a not-for-profit basis. I welcome that imaginative approach and the partnership that has been established.

Vodafone has a buy one, give one scheme in partnership with the Trussell Trust, which I also welcome. BT, Community Fibre, Hyperoptic, KCOM, Virgin Media and VOXI each offer at least one targeted tariff with unlimited internet access, priced with varying degrees of affordability. Some are priced at £10 per month, which is very good, and some at rather more than that. Is the Minister keeping under consideration the possibility of imposing a requirement for social tariffs on all providers?

There is clearly a great deal more to be done on this front. After the pandemic, there can be little dispute about the central place of digital inclusion in any programme for levelling up. The pandemic has rapidly accelerated take-up, but it has also deepened the disadvantage experienced by those who do not yet have digital access. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that the Government recognise the crucial importance of this issue and that she will prioritise making progress on it in the spending review period ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ali. I hope that my voice holds up today. I have done my test and thankfully I do not have covid. However, I have a very tickly throat, so I hope that I do not have a conference whatever-it-was—2018?—moment. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing this incredibly important debate, and I am grateful to other hon. Members for their useful and heartfelt contributions.

Improving digital connectivity for everybody across the UK is a priority for our Government, for all the reasons that have been cited. If we knew before the pandemic that digital services, infrastructure and skills were important, our experience during covid has really deepened that understanding, in ways that I do not think any of us could have imagined. The moving of so much economic activity online, as well as so much of our social lives, and even schooling and healthcare services, in the past 18 months to two years means that the challenges arising from any existing digital divide have been amplified. And just as our eyes are open to the huge opportunities presented by a more digital world, as set out by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), we have to be aware of the risk that people who do not have the confidence, the capability or the tools to access that world could be excluded from those opportunities. So, I am very grateful to hon. Members here in Westminster Hall today for highlighting that risk. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) really brought the issue to life in his contribution; I must say it was an excellent first contribution by him in Westminster Hall.

In my previous role, in the Cabinet Office, I looked closely at how we could improve online Government services for the citizen and tried to put accessibility, inclusion, trust and good customer services at the heart of the system that we are designing for a new Government app. A lot of work has also been going on about how easy it is to fill out forms online and how to streamline things on gov.uk, so I hope that reassures the right hon. Member for East Ham that I will want to apply similar principles to my new role as the Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure. I want to know how our interventions are working on the ground for people. Are we getting people the connectivity they need? Are we equipping them with the right digital skills? Are we creating the right environment for companies to deliver? Are we putting resources in the right places?

There is a lot of work to do here and we are ambitious in what we want to achieve. But as we have discovered here today, there will be challenges along the way, which is why debates like this one are helpful to me as a Minister, because they give me intelligence about what is really going on on the ground, rather than just the official view.

On the pandemic, of course there were challenges, but the superfast infrastructure that was already there has held up pretty well. Huge amounts of work were done between telecom providers and Government on social tariffs and I want to try to build on some of that progress, because there was excellent working between some of the providers—thousands of laptops were provided.

In terms of isolation, when I spoke to some of the charities in my constituency, particularly those for disabled people, I found that they were able to innovate and introduce new ways of connecting with the people whom they were serving with quiz nights, meetings and different kinds of outreach which, for some people, was a new and beneficial addition to their life—notwithstanding all the other problems of isolation that, obviously, the pandemic brought.

Addressing the digital divide means that we make sure that everybody in the UK can access and use digital communication services. That means getting the right infrastructure in place to deliver connectivity for everybody. It means making digital skills training available to everybody who needs it. I will set out what we are doing in each of those areas. Some of those issues are covered by other ministerial colleagues, so I will take away the things that I am unable to cover in this debate. I also assure hon. Members that meetings are taking place between DCMS Ministers and ministerial colleagues in DFE and DWP, because we think there is a lot of overlap here and we need to get this policy right.

On connectivity and infrastructure, we are in the midst of the biggest digital build in UK history in the form of Project Gigabit, which aims for nationwide gigabit coverage. One of my concerns in this area is whether people understand why they should want gigabit speeds over superfast speeds—a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon. It is important to say that Project Gigabit is as much about future-proofing against the needs of tomorrow as it is about giving constituents lightning-fast speeds today. As we start to understand and anticipate a world where more and more applications depend on having reliable digital infrastructure, it is important that we have the highest quality infrastructure in place.

The best way to achieve gigabit coverage and eliminate the digital divide is to create a competition-friendly environment where deployment is commercially viable, and then to focus Government funds on that 20% of the country where we think commercial deployment is unlikely. This approach is working. In January 2019, 6% of premises had access to gigabit-capable networks. That figure is now 58% thanks to our thriving market of 80 providers. We think that will reach 60% by the end of this year, but we are targeting a minimum of 85% gigabit coverage by 2025.

To address the right hon. Member for East Ham on our targets, we have been transparent that delivering nationwide gigabit coverage by 2025 will be challenging. There are various different issues, including skills, where some of the commercial roll-out means that there is a challenge in trying to incentivise providers to want to provide for the very difficult, hard-to-reach areas. Our manifesto explicitly acknowledged how difficult it will be, but 85% coverage would still be a huge jump on 2019, when the coverage was 6%. That is not the limit of our ambitions and we want to keep going so that we get as close to 100% as possible by 2025. The Prime Minister is extremely passionate about that target and we want to make sure that he is not disappointed.

By listening to industry and working closely with Ofcom, we have made a number of policy and regulatory changes to stimulate the market, including instructing Ofcom to create a pro-investment, pro-competition regulatory system for telecoms. We are introducing a 130% super deduction on qualifying plants and machinery investments, which means that millions more homes are expected to receive coverage without any Government subsidy.

We want to change the law to make it easier to connect premises and blocks of flats. We are piloting innovative new approaches to streetworks, which we think will speed up build by 10% to 40%. We are working with industry to set up a gigabit take-up advisory group with the Confederation of British Industry and the Federation of Small Businesses, so that we can increase consumer demand for gigabit and incentivise further investment from the private sector.

[Stephen Timms]

I am listening with great interest to what the Minister is saying. She has explained a little about why the target was downgraded from, I think, initially 100% fibre by 2025 to 85% now. Surely it would be possible to do better if more of the funding was available earlier, rather than much of the £5 billion being postponed until after 2025. Could it not be brought forward again?

[Julia Lopez]

It is all part of the Treasury gating process. The money is available, but there needs to be confidence of success. We will have to iron out some difficulties in the way that we procure contracts, and learn some of the lessons that my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon referred to in relation to the superfast roll-out and other parts of the gigabit coverage. There will be a bit of testing to see what works best before the Treasury is confident to release the next funds. However, the funds are available. I am happy to explore that further with the right hon. Gentleman if he would like more details.

Since 2018, we have provided gigabit coverage to more than 600,000 rural premises, so that the same commercial and other opportunities reliant on connectivity can be provided for those living in the countryside as those living in towns.

[Julia Lopez]

That is one of the issues that we are talking to the DWP about. We are also working very closely with the likes of Openreach and others to try and get that skills pipeline going, because it will be critical to the success of the roll-out.

Those 600,000 rural premises are just the start. In Devon and Somerset, 66,000 further premises now have gigabit coverage through the gigabit-capable delivery as part of the superfast broadband programme. I have been pressing officials on some of the previous challenges of that programme further to discussions that I have had in the Lobby with my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon.

We have a number of interventions to address the part of the build that we think the market will not cover, including broadband vouchers. We are funding full-fibre networks at 1,084 schools that were previously stuck in the digital slow lane, and we want to connect 6,800 public buildings by the end of the year, including hospitals, GP surgeries and fire stations. That was another important point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon.

We are also bringing forward procurements to provide coverage to as many of the remaining premises as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West raised some incredibly important points about some of the issues that the Public Accounts Committee looked at in relation to procurement, which are very much on my mind. I want to make sure we get this right, but there will be challenges.

The first procurement for Cumbria got under way last month, and further procurements will begin shortly for areas including Cambridgeshire, Durham, Northumberland and parts of Dorset. We will then continue with the pipeline of procurements to cover the rest of the UK as quickly as possible. I note the points raised by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) about Scotland. I am exploring BDUK’s relationship with the Scottish Government and what more we can do to help people in the devolved nations. I am talking to my officials about that.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. I want to make sure I have understood the point she is making. Is she saying that the constraint is the industry’s capacity to deliver the infrastructure?

[Julia Lopez]

I think there are challenges with that; yes. As I say, it is something that I am discussing closely with industry. There are some questions about where we want to target resource because, looking at the final percentages, those will be the hardest to reach. It will require a different kind of manpower and skill, and it will require much more resource and time. We have to decide whether to go for the hardest-to-reach areas or to focus resource on getting as many people covered as possible. Those are some of the tricky choices that have to be made. I am fairly new to this brief, so I am trying to work my way through all these questions with officials.

[Stephen Timms]

If the industry comes forward with proposals with capacity to deliver this more quickly than achieving 85% coverage by 2025—and the funding could be brought forward, as the Minister said—would she be open to looking at possibilities along those lines?

[Julia Lopez]

Yes, we certainly would. I appreciate the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making.

Since the launch of the broadband universal service obligation, which has been raised by a number of Members, BT has already delivered USO connections covering more than 3,700 homes, and it is in the process of building more than 2,500 more. Ofcom now estimates that just 134,000 premises—or 0.4%—do not have access to a decent broadband service and they may therefore be eligible for a USO connection. However, to address the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns, we know that some premises have received very high quotes and may therefore be very hard to reach, potentially requiring a different approach to deliver cost-effective upgrades. That is why, in March, we published a call for evidence on delivering improved broadband to very hard-to-reach premises.

In addition, Ofcom announced in July that as a result of its investigation, BT has provided assurances that it would use Ofcom’s approach to calculating excess cost quotes. I therefore encourage anybody who had previously been given a universal service obligation quote to speak to BT, if they have not already been contacted.

The progress that we are making with gigabit builds on the earlier success of our superfast broadband programme. The final independent evaluation of superfast by Ipsos MORI concluded that the programme met its objectives to reduce the digital divide and have significant local economic impact, including through the creation of 17,000 jobs and an increase in the annual turnover of local businesses by approximately £1.9 billion, which underlines the importance of connectivity.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon mentioned the telecom industry’s plans to look at a landline upgrade by 2025. I appreciate the importance of landlines, particularly to older people. I want to be clear that nobody is having their landline taken away or removed. The way that landlines work in the UK is changing. Providers are moving from the old public switched telephone network to the new voice over internet protocol technology.

The PSTN is a privately-owned telecoms network and the decision to upgrade it was taken by the telecoms industry. What people often miss about the issue is that the industry’s decision to upgrade the PSTN is due to necessity, because that network is increasingly unreliable and prone to failure, with some telecoms companies finding it very hard to source certain replacements or spare parts to maintain or repair connections. That makes it very unreliable for consumers long into the future.

The VOIP technology is expected to offer consumers clearer and better-quality phone calls, but I assure hon. Members that we are working extensively with Ofcom, the emergency services and others to ensure that all consumers and sectors are fully prepared for the migration in 2025.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

Thank you for the opportunity to say a few remarks by way of concluding, Ms Ali. I am grateful to the Minister and to all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate.

I particularly welcome the Minister’s offer that if the industry proposed to extend the fibre and gigabit infrastructure at a faster rate than is projected to meet the current target of 85% by 2025, it would be possible for some of the £5 billion that has been earmarked for that to be brought forward before 2025, and hopefully to get a higher level of penetration than the current 85% target. If that is possible—and I want to pass on a message to the industry to look at what they could achieve if additional funding was available—I would hope that that would really help in Orkney and Shetland, North Devon and elsewhere around the UK.

I hope as well that the Minister will be updating the digital inclusion strategy, which we last saw in 2014. I welcome a number of the points that she made towards the end of her speech about that, and I particularly welcome the work that she described the Department undertaking with the Good Things Foundation. However, if that was all set out as a strategy, that would be encouraging and would help achieve the goals that we have all agreed are so important.

I am very grateful for the opportunity we have had to air the matter of tackling the digital divide this afternoon. I hope that we shall be able to review it regularly over the months ahead, given its importance to the inclusion of all our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of tackling the digital divide.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

Absolutely, Mr Speaker.

The fact remains that this is a £5 billion commitment to getting as close to 100% broadband across this country as fast as we possibly can. The only barrier to doing that is the speed with which we can dig up the roads and lay the cables. This Government will do every single thing we can to make sure that every single barrier is removed in order to spend every penny of that £5 billion as quickly as we possibly can.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

3. What plans she has to tackle fraudulent online advertisements.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)]

The Government are committed to tackling online fraud. That is why, later this year, we will be consulting on the online advertising programme, which is considering all options, including legislation, to tackle paid-for advertising online. Meanwhile, the draft online safety Bill, which is currently in prelegislative scrutiny, will address fraudulent user-generated content.

[Stephen Timms]

Paid-for scam adverts are rife online, and it is not unusual for people to lose their entire life savings to them. The Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee in July that

“one of the key objectives of the Online Safety Bill is to tackle online fraud,”

but the Bill as drafted does not cover paid-for scam adverts at all. I am pleased that the prelegislative scrutiny Committee is going to take a look at this, but will the Minister review the Department’s currently indefensible position? We cannot wait years for the other process that he referred to to work its way through the system.

[Matt Warman]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise a hugely important issue. I and this Government share his impatience to tackle it, but that is why we are talking, through the online advertising programme, about looking at every single option, whether it is to tackle user-generated content through one mechanism or, potentially, advertising through another. It is about getting that combination of measures right so that we can achieve the maximum possible effect.

Online Harms Consultation

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I hear my hon. Friend’s points about anonymity, and, as he said, they were made very powerfully by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). We are seeking to get the balance right so that we protect victims of domestic violence and others who rely on anonymity; of course, there are the law enforcement powers, but we genuinely keep an open mind, and if we can find a way of doing this that is proportionate, we will continue to consider whether there are measures we can take as we go through pre-legislative scrutiny. We are grappling with that challenge.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The Work and Pensions Committee is inquiring into pension scams. Much of that problem is online, boosting the profits of tech firms and causing immense hardship. Martin Lewis, Which?, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) on the Front Bench and others have called for such scams to be in scope here. The right hon. Gentleman says they will be if they are “user-generated”, so can he explain how these measures will address the very serious problem of financial online harms?

[Oliver Dowden]

Through secondary legislation, we will set out priority harms. I will not go into every last harm, because that will be a process for scrutiny. On the broader point about financial fraud and so on, the right hon. Gentleman raises very important points, and of course we will seek to address that as a Government; I am just not convinced that this is the appropriate legislative vehicle for doing so.

Online Harms

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I want to raise just two points: first, the current epidemic of online frauds; and, secondly, the online sale of the illegal weapons used on our streets in gang violence.

First, the Pension Scams Industry Group has told the current Work and Pensions Committee inquiry that 40,000 people have suffered the devastation of being scammed out of their pension in five years. Much of that is online. Mark Taber told us he has reported to the Financial Conduct Authority this year 380 scam adverts on Google. It is a crime, but after weeks or months the FCA just issues a warning. The Transparency Task Force told us of

“high-profile, known crooks…running rings around the regulators”,

and-:

“Paid keyword search is a highly efficient means for pensions & savings scammers to target their victims.”

Another witness told us that there is

“a big increase in social media scams”.

Which? said that

“we need to look at what sort of responsibilities should be given to those online platforms to protect their users from scams.”

A director at Aviva told us that it

“had to take down 27 fake domains linked to our brand... It is very difficult and it takes a very long time to engage the web domain providers to get it down.”

He called big technology companies “key enablers of fraud”, and he made a call

“to extend the Online Harms Bill to include the advertising of fraudulent investments”.

I think that should be done, and I want to ask the Minister if it will be in the legislation.

Secondly, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 bans the sale and import of a list of weapons: disguised knives, butterfly knives, flick knives, gravity knives, stealth knives, zombie knives, sword sticks, push daggers, blowpipes, telescopic truncheons and batons. But all of them are available online for delivery in the post. That is how most weapons used on the streets in London are obtained. As we debated in the Offensive Weapons Bill Committee in 2018, companies should not sell in the UK products that it is illegal to purchase here.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), said in Committee that the Home Office was working with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on these online harms, and looking at

“what more we can do to ensure…companies act responsibly and do not facilitate sales of ‘articles with a blade or point’ or ‘corrosive products’ in their platforms.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 11 September 2018; c. 280.]

What I want to ask the Minister is: will that promise be fulfilled in the coming legislation?

UK Telecommunications

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Obviously, the most blunt way of doing that is to ban the flow from the beginning of the year and then address the stock to 2027. In advance of that, we will also be imposing much tougher conditions on all of the mobile network operators through the telecoms security Bill. Essentially, that will shift the balance from the Communications Act 2003, whereby it was up to the mobile network operators to determine how best to ensure security, to this legislation that will involve the Government setting out those requirements, and they will address those sort of issues.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that the problem is not with Huawei’s hardware, but with its software? As part of his open RAN solution, might an alternative be to mandate the use of open-source software rather than proprietary software in the 5G network?

[Oliver Dowden]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make the point about open-source software, and we will certainly encourage that to happen. That greater transparency will help as we roll out the open RAN networks. It is the case that the Huawei evaluation centre in GCHQ does look at both hardware and software issues.

Online Harms Legislation

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

I pay tribute to the work that my right hon. and learned Friend did as Secretary of State in leading this agenda. He is absolutely right. Ofcom needs the powers and resources to get this job done properly, but it also needs to make sure that we seize every possible opportunity that comes from the digital economy. Getting that balance right, alongside freedom of expression, is the priority that he set as Secretary of State. We will continue to do that, and we will not go any slower than we absolutely need to.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Two years ago, in debating the Bill that became the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, we discussed the problem that weapons that cannot be lawfully purchased in the UK are nevertheless freely available to buy online. Will the changes the Minister envisages address that specific problem?

[Matt Warman]

Obviously, the duty of care is wide-ranging. I am conscious that we would expect economic harms, for instance, to be picked up through other legislation. Similarly, the Offensive Weapons Act itself picks up some other areas. This is one of the issues that we have to look at to make sure that there are none of the loopholes that the right hon. Gentleman describes. It is a valuable point.

Shared Rural Network

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about maps. That is really important. Now that the mobile network operators are working together, it will hopefully be easier to get that information so that our constituents will be able to see the progress that is being made. He talks encouragingly about the two masts and the changes already happening in his constituency. In relation to local authorities, we are working with the Cabinet Office and having conversations to make sure that local authority infrastructure such as hospitals and schools can also be used to increase and improve connectivity in these communities.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State straightforwardly confirm that the deadline set out in her party’s 2017 manifesto will not now be achieved? Competition between mobile providers has been very fruitful for consumers over the past 20 years, particularly in reducing call charges. How will Ministers make sure that future fruitful competition will not be blunted by this collaboration?

[Nicky Morgan]

We are not nationalising the mobile network operators—they have come forward with a plan to work together, which is a very good sign. One of the key elements we will need to get this right and to follow the legal processes is to be compliant with competition law. The right hon. Gentleman invites me to say that earlier targets are not necessarily going to be met. Of course, we have not yet reached the end of this Parliament. Actually, I think that his constituents, like mine, are interested in what we are going to do rather than necessarily always looking at the numbers.