Digital Economy Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I shall speak on part 3 of the Bill, but I should like to put on record my support for the recommendations made by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). We need to use the Bill as an opportunity to examine all online abuse, because although the Government say that the police have powers under existing legislation, they are not using them. To have that on the face of the Bill would be a powerful statement. Online abuse is eroding the lives of many people.

A key role of this House must be to prevent harm and tackle the threats faced by children, both online and offline. The scale of online abuse and exploitation, and the proliferation of pornography and violent sexualised imagery among children, has reached endemic levels. This Bill presents us with an opportunity to offer protection to all children, and I urge this House to do so. Children are at risk every day from predatory abusers who seek to exploit and manipulate their vulnerability. According to the Internet Watch Foundation, in 2015 over 68,000 URLs were confirmed as containing child sexual abuse imagery. That figure is up 118% since 2014. We have to recognise, however, that child abuse and exploitation perpetrated by adults is only one aspect of the many threats faced by children online.

Children make up a third of internet users, and they have never had better access to the internet, with 65% of 12 to 15-year-olds owning smartphones. Their access is often unfettered and unrestricted. A study from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Children’s Commissioner for England found that, of the 1,000 children aged 11 to 18 questioned, over half had accessed pornography, with 94% doing that by the age of 14. Those children were not necessarily seeking out pornography online. Their access was often inadvertent, through a pop-up or while searching for other content.

The growing body of evidence proves to us what we already know. Pornography impacts on the development of children, particularly their understanding of what constitutes healthy relationships, consent and sex. The NSPCC and Children’s Commissioner study found that more than half of the boys questioned believed that the porn that they had seen was realistic. In a Girlguiding attitudinal survey, 71% of girls aged 17 to 21 agreed that online pornography makes aggressive and violent behaviour towards women seem normal.

The consequences of this online material is reflected back as a reality offline. Violence against girls starts at an early age. The Home Office’s 2010 “This is Abuse” campaign found that sexual violence happened to one in three girls and one in six boys.

Through exposure to online pornography from an increasingly young age, and messages conveyed in the media, children are growing up believing that violence and non-consensual sex is not just normal, but to be expected.

The proposals laid out in part 3 to limit children’s access to commercial pornographic websites are welcome, but they do not go far enough. The Government are to be commended for recognising that the internet needs regulation to protect children. Just as children are protected offline—through restrictions on access to sex shops, for example—the provisions in this Bill are an important first step in creating a world in which children are also protected online. They are, however, only a first step. Parity of protection for children between the online and offline world can be better achieved if the Government strengthen these provisions in Committee.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the key element that is missing is that companies should be responsible for the content that they host, and that that is the route to protecting children and others from online abuse?

[Sarah Champion]

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I do not believe that the Bill goes far enough, but it has the potential to do so.

As currently set out in the Bill, the age regulator covers only commercial pornographic sites. This is not typical of the way in which children access or share sexualised, pornographic and other age-inappropriate content. Will the Minister commit to extending the role of the regulator so that it also covers user-generated sites and peer-to-peer services, such as live streaming and video chat sites, and avoids any unnecessary loopholes that could lead to the legislation being deemed invalid?

The powers of the regulator as set out in the Bill are extremely limited. They provide legal cover only for payment service providers that break their contract with non-compliant commercial pornographic sites. Will the Minister expand the role of the age regulator, to ensure that it has the power to issue fines and enforcement notices, and to enforce the withdrawal of payment services? Online abuse is a problem the world over, and the internet does not respect international borders. Will he therefore give the regulator powers to block sites outside the UK’s legal jurisdiction which do not comply with UK regulations?

Part of the solution must be to support parents to feel confident in understanding the dangers posed by the internet. According to Barnardo’s, half of young people living at home report that their parents know only some of what they are doing online. Will the Minister consider including provisions to provide up-to-date information for parents about parental controls and other ways of restricting children’s access to potentially harmful content, and supporting parents to recognise the dangers faced by their children online?

Finally, preventing access to pornography and indecent material is vital, but it is also necessary to give children the resilience to challenge and contextualise what they see online. It is my view and that of all the major children’s charities that the best way to do this is by providing all children with age-appropriate resilience and relationship lessons as soon as a child reaches school age. This would allow children to see pornography for what it is—a fantasy that predominately subjugates and abuses women.

Girls and boys must not grow up believing that violence and non-consensual sex are normal or to be expected. Sadly, though, that is exactly what the young people I speak to believe. That is echoed in the Women and Equalities Committee’s report on sexual harassment in schools, which was released today. My final request is for the Minister to add provisions to strengthen the content of the e-curriculum taught in schools at all key stages. This should include recognising abuse and exploitation online, mitigating risks and using the internet safely and responsibly. Giving children the knowledge and tools to contextualise pornographic content and to challenge abusive behaviour is the best way to empower and protect them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am getting nods from the Secretary of State, so I am glad that I have got that right.

The Bill could and should be a vehicle to boost the UK’s creative industries and the legal economy, and reduce the proliferation of illegal content online. I would like the Government to consider adding two things to the Bill. First, I ask the Secretary of State to consider making online providers who make music available on their sites legally liable to ensure that that music is legally available. This would mean that they would need either to obtain relevant licences or take active steps to prevent infringement, and could not take any advantage of the safe harbours provision in the e-commerce directive, which was written many years ago and no longer covers what we need today.

Secondly, I would like the Secretary of State to consider imposing a code of practice between online intermediaries and those who hold the rights to music in order to deal with piracy if voluntary talks fail. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, this is not just about music, and he mentioned films. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) referred to e-books. There are many art forms to which this could apply. I am taking music as an example, but it could do the lot.

Estimating the loss to the legal trade in music through piracy is difficult, but using data from Ofcom, there is evidence to suggest that the losses could be anything between £150 million and £300 million a year. Whatever the true scale of the figure, this is a significant loss to the UK economy, to music producers, and above all to the musicians and the artists who make the music.

Online copyright infringement is as serious as physical, off-line copyright infringement, as others have said in relation to online pornography or other aspects of the internet and the digital economy. It is as serious as that. One would not expect to walk into a shop and remove a CD without paying, walk into a club or a local live venue and not pay your door fee, or walk into an orchestral concert without a ticket. The two things are exactly the same.

I have often heard it said that the online world is impossible to regulate—that it is a sort of modern-day wild west. Well, as anyone who loves western movies as much as I do knows, the wild west was eventually tamed—sort of. The good guys do eventually win, usually, and the bad guys usually get taken out—they do in Morricone films, anyway. [Interruption.] Yes, with great music. It is not always the sheriff who is successful in asserting good over evil, and in the online world it does not necessarily have to be the law that intervenes and pursues prosecutions to make it work. Nevertheless, we do need that regulation. Music lovers themselves want to make sure their loved bands and artists are paid properly, and they know that they can be if they pay through legal download sites or through ad content. Musicians and the industry have done well out of an increase in digital music, some of it free to download or available on a subscription service.

[Steve McCabe]

My hon. Friend is making a very clear argument about fairness that will have support across the House. Does she agree that a very simple move by the Government would be to extend the public lending right to off-site e-book lending, as that would correct an error that was never intended?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I completely agree. As I said, the arguments I am making about music can equally be applied to books, to films, and to other art forms.

When music lovers see ads in front of streams of music, they expect that what they are hearing will be legal and that the ads are helping to pay for this. When they use a well-known search engine, which I will not name, to find a piece of music they like, they expect that the links will take them to legal sites where the music industry is properly paid for their work. However, that is not always the case. This is where we have to intervene, as lawmakers, to provide a proper framework for the online wild west.

In some parts of the online world, co-operation is working. For instance, internet service providers are co-operating on the “Get It Right From A Genuine Site” campaign, which helps to educate consumers about the importance of legal sources. However, there is still no clear agreement with the search engines. This is despite a Government-chaired round table process that has been discussing the problem for several years. The search engines need to do their part, now, because the UK Music report published yesterday showed that music contributed £4.1 billion to the British economy last year. We need it to do more, and it can through an online presence.

A thriving digital economy requires each part of the value chain in music production and consumption to get its fair share. Huge global companies that are not paying their fair share for the use of the UK’s music on their platforms should be made to do so. This needs to be resolved to ensure a fair digital economy in the UK, with fair rewards for musicians. I could make plenty of detailed suggestions, and I look forward to the opportunity to do so in Committee. I hope that the Secretary of State will consider what I have said about the need for proper remuneration for musicians and those involved in other art forms online.