Child Protection
Tim Loughton Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered child protection in the UK.
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving Members the opportunity to debate this important subject. As a precautionary measure, I declare my related interests as in the register.
As I have said on many occasions, opportunities to debate and air issues of child protection or of children generally are frustratingly rare, as I found in opposition and as Minister with responsibility for these matters, so today’s debate is welcome. It is particularly important because child protection and child abuse, in its different forms, have probably never had a higher profile, and have never triggered such a response and awareness among the public at large, which is probably the one compensation of the whole sordid Jimmy Savile affair. That is why, a year on from Savile, I and other hon. Members requested a debate on child protection.
The extraordinary turn of events started to unravel almost a year ago when the media heralded a modest but game-changing ITV documentary—produced by Mark Williams-Thomas, to whom I pay tribute for what he has set in motion as a result—which first tentatively suggested that Jimmy Savile had abused teenage girls as young as 13. It seemed incredible that the semi-beatified, spangly shell-suited former Bevin boy, “Top of the Pops” doyen, children’s TV icon and multi-charity philanthropist had so successfully hidden his alter ego as a serious sexual predator, and a pretty prolific and grubby one at that. The rest, of course, is history. The initial Guardian headline about some 10 female victims having come forward was one of its more glaring underestimates. The number of victims was then upgraded to some 300, some of them possibly as young as nine years old, and the figure is now in excess of 600. The ramifications for the BBC, for the rest of the establishment and for the public profile of child abuse, however, have been huge. It is worth briefly reviewing what has come to light over the past year.
There has been Operation Yewtree, which concentrated on the Savile case—600 people have come forward as having been abused by Jimmy Savile over a 60-year period. There are records of people who said that they were turned away when they reported abuse suffered at his hands. Six former police officers admitted that they were aware of Savile’s behaviour, with extensive evidence of cover-ups and withholding of information leading to abuse continuing over such a long period, including against children, teenage fans and kids in hospitals and care homes. We have seen the recent conviction of Stuart Hall for assaults spanning some 18 years on at least 13 girls, and a panoply of assorted comedians, publicists, entertainers, soap stars and childhood icons at various stages of arrest, investigation or facing court. Senior heads have rolled at the BBC, and its inquiry is said to have cost the licence fee payer in excess of £10 million already.
Operation Pallial has investigated the original claims of historical abuse at children’s homes in north Wales going back to the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. There has been a review by Mrs Justice Macur of the terms of the Waterhouse inquiry into the abuse of children in care in Gwynedd and Clwyd council areas. Operation Fernbank was established to focus on claims of sexual abuse and the grooming of children involving parties for men at the former Elm guest house in south-west London in the ’70s and ’80s. Operation Fernbridge has been launched as a result of allegations arising from Operation Fernbank. The Independent revealed on 9 June that seven officers are pursuing more than 300 lines of inquiry.
There are a number of inquiries involving children being abused in schools. Operation Flamborough is investigating alleged assaults on girls with learning difficulties at a Hampshire boarding school. At Carlekemp in North Berwick, a feeder primary school to Fort Augustus Abbey Catholic school has been linked to abuse allegations, as has Fort Augustus Abbey itself. There have been abuse allegations in relation to Kesgrave Hall school, near Ipswich. At Chetham’s music school in Manchester, a former director of music and his wife were found guilty of indecently assaulting Frances Andrade, who, tragically, was driven to take her own life after being subjected to harsh cross-examination during the trial, having been labelled a fantasist and attention seeker and advised not to seek counselling during the trial. There have been allegations of sexual abuse in many other music schools, including the Yehudi Menuhin school in Surrey, and schools in Edinburgh and Somerset. But it does not stop there.
In the diocese of Chichester, in my part of the country, retired priests have been charged with sexual offences. The diocese has had four inquiries into child abuse in the past four years, including a formal visitation from the Archbishop of Canterbury and a report written by the noble Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. The General Synod voted on 7 July this year to issue an unreserved historic apology from the Church of England to victims of clerical sex abuse. We have seen countless examples of child sexual exploitation cases: Operation Retriever; the extraordinary case in Rochdale where 47 girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation; the case in Rotherham; Operation Bullfinch in Oxford—there is still more to run on that one; and Operation Chalice, in which seven men were jailed following a police investigation into child sexual exploitation involving young white girls in Telford.
Of course, there were the recent tragic killings of April Jones at the hands of 46-year-old Mark Bridger, and of Tia Sharp at the hands of her grandmother’s boyfriend, Stuart Hazell, which were linked to downloading abuse images of children. The case of Daniel Pelka, who was killed and tortured in an incredibly cruel way, came to court in the last few months: a defenceless four-year-old child was systematically tortured, yet this was on the radar of local authority services. Next week, the Coventry safeguarding children board will undertake a serious case review, during which I think we will hear some familiar stories—a case of déjà vu for those of us who have been around the block so many times with this sort of cruelty. Of course, there was also the serious case review of the Birmingham nursery case.
I make no apology for what is a grim reading list, involving cases that have been instigated, reopened, proceeded with through the courts or investigated in just the last year, since the Jimmy Savile case hit and maintained the headlines for so many months.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman also include for the record a dreadful case that touches all of us in the House: that of baby Peter, which drew our attention to the need for a systematic, cross-services approach to child protection?
Tim Loughton
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and we could have taken up this entire debate with the history of some of these cases. And these are only the high-profile cases that we know about and read about. They are only a small sample of what has actually been going on; many more have not reached the headlines or even the courts.
Away from the high-profile stories that make the media headlines, the wider figures show that our various child protection agencies have never been busier. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reports that referrals to ChildLine about sexual abuse were nearly twice as high in June and July of this year as in the same period last year, pre-Savile. There have been 2.4 million visits to the ChildLine website in the last year—an increase of some 28% on the previous year. The NSPCC estimates that more than 50,000 children in the UK are known to be at risk of abuse. It calculates that last year, a total of 2,900 rapes or attempted rapes of children under the age of 13 were recorded; that is eight per day. Indeed, 32%—almost a third—of all sexual crimes in this country are against children under the age of 16.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I know that the hon. Gentleman feels very deeply about this issue. Do these figures not show that we have to be more aware of the fact that paedophiles will target professions in which they can get access to children, and that the Government therefore need to do more? Instead of relaxing regulations relating to children and Ofsted child protection inspections, the Government need to be much more cognisant of the issue, target areas where such things are likely to happen, and make people aware that paedophiles will be in these professions. Action must be taken to stop them.
Tim Loughton
I agree with the hon. Lady, who knows a great deal about this issue, having been a practitioner in the field; indeed, she and I have worked together through the all-party group on child protection. We need to be wiser to the professions in which paedophiles and potential paedophiles will inveigle themselves. At the same time, however, training and awareness in some of these professions—an issue I shall return to—have improved enormously, although not enough, yet, and the inspection regime has improved. In too many cases, we were inspecting the wrong thing. I hope that joint agency inspections, which we were promised but which have been put on hold, will still happen, so that we have that cross-disciplinary eye: police looking at children’s services, children’s services looking at education, education looking at health services.
Too often, there was a silo approach to inspection, which took up a great deal of the time of professionals who would rather spend it looking after the families, and not enough dissemination of information. The best way to bring that about is better multi-agency training, which we have not been good at. That is beginning to happen, however. For example, we have multi-agency safeguarding hubs, through which different agencies are co-located—sitting next to each other in the same room, looking at the same intelligence, discussing cases and coming up with a much better informed and sharper action plan. All those things are improvements, but the point the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) makes is a valid one.
I know that many Members want to contribute to the debate, but there is a bit more I want to say. With the list I have given goes a looming public apprehension about whether we really have cracked child protection, buffeted by almost weekly revelations of the latest scandal involving abuse at the hands of a bishop, a music teacher, a taxi driver or a soap star. To some extent, it matters not whether the perpetrator is dead or alive, or how long ago his alleged misdemeanours took place. The higher profile given by the media to cases linked to celebrities has, however, been deeply unhelpful, as it detracts from the reality that the main perpetrators are common criminals in ordinary jobs.
Of course, the fact that so many cases are now coming to court, however belatedly, is a sign of some success, in that offenders are now being pursued better by police. Victims are being heeded more loudly and sympathetically, prosecutions are sticking and the perpetrators are being made to pay.
However, are our children safer now than they were 50 years ago, when Savile and others started to ply their trade? Have we just replaced celebrity abuse of star-struck teenagers while the establishment turned a blind eye with systematic abuse to order by organised gangs, be they Pakistani-British—high-profile cases of which we have seen—or of whatever culture? Are internet groomers and the recent Oxford and Rochdale abusers just a modern-day version of Savile, armed with mobile phone technology but without shell suits and the lure of the “green room”? In that sense, given the reach of technology as a key tool of the abusers, do they not pose a much more widespread threat now than ever before?
I think that those of us in the know here today can say that children are safer now than back in the 1960s, but that is a tough sell to the public at large. But if that is the case, when did things actually get better? When did child protection come of age and society at large recognise its significance? When did we equip our agencies sufficiently to question the “It’s just Jimmy” mentality and start turning over some rather grubby stones? Was the landmark Children Act 1989 the turning point? Was it the shocking revelations concerning the north Wales care homes, which have of course come full circle, as we now know that the whole story was not properly revealed? It is to answer these questions that I and others have been calling for some time for an overarching inquiry into the whole sordid history of child abuse in this country, going back to the 1960s and traversing the Children Act, into what I call the legitimate legislation tsunami post-Victoria Climbié. Such an inquiry must involve a commission, led by respected figures from the law, lawmakers, social services and children’s charities. It must set out to provide the holistic assurance that has been so sapped by the plethora of at one time weekly inquiries and reviews set up by the Home Office, the BBC, the Department of Health and numerous others, and it must go everywhere.
Such an inquiry must address four main issues. What exactly happened, and why, over all those years? When did things start getting better, and how? Have all practical steps been taken to give victims the confidence to come forward, and for the police to pursue vigorously any remaining offenders? Perhaps most important of all, have all our major institutions that have significant dealings with children and young people instituted child protection policies and practices that are fit for purpose in 2013 to deal with modern-day technology and savvy perpetrators?
Mr Sheerman
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. May I just put in a caveat? There was a time when a kind of press feeding frenzy went on. Something went very wrong with some of the investigations, a lot of innocent people who had worked with children were falsely accused—for whatever reason—and many good professionals’ lives were destroyed. Please can we make sure that, whatever we do now, we do not start that sort of thing again?
Tim Loughton
The hon. Gentleman is right, which is why I referred to what happened with celebrities, which was a sort of feeding frenzy and succeeded in masking the multitude of real crimes—not that the former were not real crimes—that were going on among ordinary people. That is why we need an overarching inquiry to look holistically at what went wrong, what appeared to go wrong, what was a symptom of media frenzy, and who the victims were and are. Most important, we need to give some satisfaction and confidence to the public at large that somebody is looking at this issue properly, and that there is evidence that their children are safer now—despite everything that has come out—than 10, 20 or 30 years ago. I do not think that an unreasonable ask. The former Prime Minister of Australia established a similar royal commission into historic child abuse in November 2012, to look into institutional responses to allegations of sexual abuse in Australia, particularly linked with the Catholic Church. IT has been done it there, and there is a good case for doing it here.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case for a public inquiry, which I support. He is right to say that we need to restore confidence not just among the public at large but among victims. It seems that there is confusion in government about which Department is providing the drive and lead to ensure that these issues are tackled. When he was the Minister responsible for child protection, it was inconceivable that he would not lead on these issues in the House. This is the second time is less than a year that we have had a debate on child protection, and the other Department with responsibility has not been represented. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern about that?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before the hon. Gentleman replies to the intervention, may I gently remind him that the recommendation is that the mover of the motion speaks for 10 to 15 minutes? He has been on his feet for 18 minutes or more. He has been generous in taking interventions, but that time is supposed to include interventions. It means that there will be a time limit on the rest of the speeches. Therefore, I hope that he will be less generous and draw his remarks to a conclusion. This is not coming out of your time, Mr Loughton.
Tim Loughton
I am gently reminded, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am happy to give up some time—I think I have a right to reply at the end of the debate—so that as many Members as possible can get in. Perhaps if I do not take any more interventions and speak very quickly, it will help. In response to the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), I will gently come on to that point in the few minutes remaining to me, but I think that the answer is that I could not possibly comment.
I fear that in the UK the public have become increasingly confused and sceptical about what progress has been made over recent years to ensure that our children are safe. That is not surprising given the tsunami of media reports that I have already listed and the tangled tidal wave of reviews announced by Ministers, the BBC, the NHS, the Church and everyone else. Therefore, the public are confused and parents are understandably worried. They need high-profile, high-octane, high-impact leadership from central Government, working with all the relevant agencies, to convince a sceptical public that we are on top of the situation.
I know that much is going on. Indeed, I instigated quite a lot of what is going on. I know what a champion the Minister from the Home Office is on the issue and welcome his leadership of the National Group on Sexual Violence against Children and Vulnerable People instituted in April. However, to take on the point made by the hon. Member for Wigan, I am concerned about the move to the Home Office, because child abuse is not just about detection and prosecution. It is first and foremost about education, awareness, early intervention and prevention, and I think that that is best co-ordinated in the Department for Education, which retains the lead for children’s social care and for Ofsted inspection, I think. It is particularly concerning, therefore, that, at a time when child abuse has never been more in our consciousness, the assurances and leadership from the DFE have been rather muted over the past year.
I do not understand why, because we have much to be proud of. The Munro reforms provided a fundamental overhaul of child protection and the way in which that is done in this country. They are widely respected and starting to be instituted. Hopefully, the appointment of the chief social worker is raising the profession’s morale and the launch of the Frontline scheme is raising its confidence. The full publication of serious case reviews has cast light on the problems that are going on. There has been a proliferation of multi-agency safeguarding hubs, progress on child sexual exploitation and the action plan. The Children’s Society toolkit was launched just this week and it has also launched its “Say something if you see something” campaign. The Lord Chancellor’s Department has made important announcements about the way in which we treat the 23,000 child witnesses in deeply traumatic cases in our courts. There are sermons in mosques about the exploitation of children. In July 2012, children started to be placed far away in residential homes. There will be a report on that later this year. There is also the national action plan to tackle child abuse linked to faith or belief.
A lot has happened in the past few years to make our children safer. I think the Government need to shout out much more loudly about it. I hope that the Prime Minister, who has rejected calls for an overarching inquiry, will think again in the light of the tsunami of cases in the past year.
Therefore, in conclusion, child abuse takes many different forms: the harm, neglect and ultimately killing of a vulnerable child by family members; child sexual exploitation and systematic abuse by gangs; internet abuse; opportunistic grooming over the web; cyber-bullying and trolling, on which a campaign was launched in Parliament just this morning. All these things are part of the same problem and we need to show the public how we are protecting our children better. As such, it is a child protection and education and prevention issue, which should be, as it always was, led by the DFE, notwithstanding the talents and dedication of the Minister in his role in the Home Office. Without doing that, we risk giving rise to a new generation of Jimmy Saviles, perhaps without the shell suits and bling but armed with much more powerful—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Mr Loughton, you said “In conclusion”. I would like you to conclude your remarks. Even allowing for my 30-second intervention, you are way over the 15 minutes. Please conclude your remarks.
Tim Loughton
My final sentence is that this is the challenge that faces us all in the post-Savile world: child protection has potentially never been so important to so many, and all of us have a duty to be vigilant.
Protecting Children Online
Tim Loughton Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
I do not profess any specific expertise, but if I have any, it is in relation to the work done on hate crime on the internet. I congratulate the Minister on his work with us. I also congratulate his predecessors, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), and Barbara Follett, who is no longer a Member of the House, on their initiatives. All have been effective, and are appreciated.
I initiated a working group in the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism two years ago. We have managed to get senior executives for content from most of the world’s biggest internet companies to sit on the group, including executives from Apple, Google, Facebook, PayPal, Microsoft and Twitter. We also have one of the key interlocutors in the US on free speech, Professor Jeffrey Rosen, and, from the Ministry of Justice, the seconded Association of Chief Police Officers lead on hate crime, Paul Giannasi.
A report has been produced—it has not yet been circulated, but will be in the next week in this country and throughout the world—that the Minister and the Government will find useful. The report is on the problem of hate crime, but the problem is the same as online protection of children in respect of the grey areas that need to be tightened, the technical solutions and approaches, and the mindset in the industry.
Part of the problem the group has identified is the shadow internet. It is fine setting up solutions, but if that happens in separate countries, people will break them if they want to—they have relatively easy ways to do so. The debate so far has concentrated on websites and search engines, but, in fact, even when it comes to child abuse, gaming is as big a problem and a vastly growing one. Texting, smartphones and social networking are equally significant, growing and changing problems—the modality is changing.
The group makes six recommendations in the report on hate crime—they are relevant to the debate. The first recommendation is to create clear policies and include them within the terms of the service of the internet company. That would be a significant change. The working group has the key players and the decision makers—they are not the sub-decision makers, but the actual decision makers. That recommendation is achievable, and it would be significant.
The second recommendation is for mechanisms to enforce those policies. How do intermediaries, including national Governments, enforce them? For international industries, the role of intermediaries, whether they are specialist groups or national Governments, is a second key principle in the approach that should be taken.
The third and vital recommendation, which resonates with this debate, is to establish clear, user-friendly processes to allow users to report abuse. Those processes are not currently there, but they are achievable. If mechanisms are in place, progress ought to be relatively straightforward—far more straightforward in relation to child abuse than hate speech, where issues of illegality are far more complex—where there is criminality. Clearly, there are technical solutions—I will not go so far as to suggest the software that the CIA has recently, allegedly, used—if the processes are in place.
The fourth recommendation is to increase transparency about terms of service enforcement decisions: case studies. For example, if an individual is prosecuted because someone has reported something that their child has stumbled across, the Government and other third parties have a critical role in how it will be reported and made public.
The fifth recommendation, which is probably specific to hate speech, is to encourage counter-speech. It is the same concept as the splash concept.
The sixth recommendation is to unite the industry. The industry will not always be American—with its concepts of free speech—so it is critical to achieve agreement within the industry while it still is.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
If I can bring the hon. Gentleman back to the third recommendation, he makes a good point about reporting and taking down material. The IWF does a good job in that area. Apparently, last year 1.5 million adults came across abusive content on the internet, but only 40,000 reports were made to IWF, which has the powers to do something about it. There needs to be much greater publicity on how to report to ensure that action can take place.
John Mann
Publicity on how to do so and technical ease of use in doing so, so that the democratic internet world can hit back effectively and the industry can be monitored, are key. The key members of the working group who really know what they are talking about would be more than happy to meet the Minister, if he would find that useful. We could bring them over from the US.
To get access to the right people, I went to meet industry leaders in their headquarters in California, and I made the point that their brands were in danger. If the users and third parties, albeit national Governments, can show successes in prosecutions, the industry will throw far more resources at the issue. The industry does throw at lot of resources at it. A third of all Facebook employees are dealing with it, because the dangers to its brand are so fundamental, but at the moment it is less of an issue for other companies. They do see the dangers to their brand, however, which is why senior people from PayPal now turn up to meetings.
I intervened on the Minister—it was not a hostile intervention—on agreements in other countries. One danger is that different countries will do different things. Of course, that is not an excuse for any Government to hold back, but the French Government are taking various legal actions against some of the key internet giants, as are the Italians, and there is a danger that the approach will become too bitty. May I suggest to the Minister that he try to up the stakes and achieve European Union consensus from Britain’s lead? If Britain is ahead of the rest of the European Union, that is a good opportunity to set the standards that others can push up to and take forward. That would be pragmatic and significant. We attack the industry—I am happy to attack the industry in various ways—but it does not want terrorists using its platforms to kill people and it does not want paedophiles using their products to abuse children. That is obvious to me and it is also obvious to the industry.
Mr Streeter
I do not know what the certificate was, but may I just get on with my speech?
My point is that we trust the BBFC’s classifications. When the Video Recordings Act 1984 was passed, more than 25 years ago, certain video works—I will come to online content in a second—were made exempt from classification because they were considered unlikely to be harmful. However, the content of exempt works has changed beyond recognition since 1984, which means that inappropriate and potentially harmful content can be legally supplied to children. On 24 May 2013, the Government announced that it planned to lower the exemptions threshold in order to prevent children from accessing potentially harmful material, so well done to the Government. This is a most welcome decision, for which the BBFC—along with the home entertainment industry, the recorded music industry, retailers and law enforcement bodies—had argued for some time.
Once implemented, the decision will improve the protection that children enjoy from potentially harmful media content by ensuring that video content such as drug misuse, strong violence, racist language and certain sexual content can no longer legally be freely supplied to children. Instead, the BBFC will classify such content to keep it away from vulnerable and impressionable children. The Government have said that they hope to have the new regime in place by April 2014, and I very much hope—I know that the Minister is listening carefully—that the Government will keep to that timetable, which requires secondary legislation. However, the legislation has never covered online content, and there is now particular concern about the content of online music videos.
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend is making a good point about the Government’s welcome announcement. There is still a problem though, because although there is some classification of adult content and 18 video ratings in gaming now, Auntie Mabel who buys a video for her grandchild at Christmas needs to be made absolutely aware of the severity of some of the content to which she might inadvertently be exposing her grandchildren. We need better information in the shops and on the part of retailers at the point of sale, so that she can ask whether she really wants her grandchildren to see that sort of content.
Mr Streeter
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. I am sure that those on the Front Bench have taken it on board, and no doubt the Minister will deal with it explicitly in winding up.
The issue of online music videos, to which the Bailey report also referred, must be seriously considered. My attention was recently drawn to an online video made by a well known pop singer—I had not heard of her before, but never mind—which showed explicit shots of a young teenage girl, concerned about her body image, slitting her wrists in the bath. It is the video to a well known song—I remember hearing it in my house. Although it has a happy ending, I would argue that the graphic scenes in that video—which I am sure parents would allow their children to watch in a very relaxed way—are far too explicit and dangerous for young teenage children to watch. We all know that many of the children who follow these pop stars are very young and impressionable. At the very least, online videos should contain some kind of classification.
The Government are rightly pressing the music industry voluntarily to adopt age-appropriate ratings for online music videos. In response to a parliamentary question from the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) said:
“The Government will now take action to: make sure that online music videos carry labels that show their age suitability, in order to protect children from harmful material; and make it even easier for parents to keep their children safe online, wherever they are and in whatever way they might access the internet.”—[Official Report, 6 June 2013; Vol. 563, c. 1263W.]
The onus has therefore been placed on the music industry to come forward with a system that will work.
The BBFC hopes to work with the recorded music industry towards the goal of achieving well understood and trusted age ratings and content advice for online music videos, as it has done successfully with the home entertainment industry in relation to other online videos. The BBFC has now rated more than 200,000 videos for online distribution by such companies as Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Universal and Sony. BBFC ratings are used by platforms such as iTunes, Netflix, blinkbox, BT Vision and TalkTalk—some of which I had heard of.
Mr Streeter
No, I have not used any of them.
One obvious solution that the music industry could consider in response to the Government’s demands for age-appropriate ratings for online music videos would be to adopt BBFC classifications voluntarily online. Does the Minister agree that that would be a constructive way forward?
My final point relates to user-generated content—UGC. Independent research from June 2011 shows that while the public believe that the internet brings greater choice, freedom and flexibility, the majority of viewers still consider it important to be able to check the suitability of the audio-visual content that they download, with 85% of the public considering it important to have consistent BBFC classifications available for video-on-demand content. The figure rises to 90% for parents of children under 16.
However, it is amateur user-generated content such as that seen on YouTube that makes up the majority of video content online. This might feature content that is potentially harmful to children—I accessed the video to which I referred earlier through YouTube this morning—and it is presently unregulated. The BBFC and the Dutch regulator NICAM have together developed a tool for ordinary people to age-rate UGC across different countries and platforms. I hope that my technological friend to my right, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan, will consider that a good thing.
The tool is designed to enable those with responsibility for children to make fully informed viewing choices about non-professional content online. Through a single, simple, free-to-complete questionnaire, the tool instantaneously produces an age rating that can be shown on screen. The ratings can differ from country to country to reflect different national sensitivities and concerns over content. The tool is simple. It contains six questions about the content of the UGC, on behaviour, drugs, horror, language, sex and violence. Completing the questionnaire takes less than a couple of minutes. It also includes a facility for viewers to report content that, in their view, might be illegal. In the UK, such a report would go direct to the Internet Watch Foundation, about which much has been said this afternoon.
The tool is also flexible. For instance, the questionnaire may be completed by those uploading content. Alternatively, it may be completed by those viewing the content online. The ratings can be linked to online filters. This new initiative will shortly be trialled by Mediaset in Italy, and the BBFC and NICAM are looking for trial partners elsewhere, including in the United Kingdom. This is an example of the kind of initiative that can make the online world safer for children, and it has been welcomed by the EU Commission’s Safer Internet Coalition. I very much hope that our Government will get behind this initiative to help parents and children to make better informed choices about user-generated content. As we have heard this afternoon, there is no silver bullet on this issue, but with such incremental advances, our children will be better protected.
Dr Huppert
The hon. Lady is right, which is exactly why we need simpler filters. The work done by Talk Talk and others provides precisely that. There should be simple clear filters with simple clear questions so that parents can have a look and make a simple clear decision. I do not want to force parents to abdicate that responsibility because there are other consequences of these filters.
Any filtering system will have large errors. There will be errors that mean it does not filter out some things that we might want it to filter out because it cannot be sorted out perfectly. There is no way of indentifying automatically what counts as pornography and what does not; what is appropriate and what is inappropriate. That is simply impossible to achieve, so stuff will get through that we are not expecting to get through. There is also the problem of filtering some useful things out. There are already many cases—when it comes to advice for lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues, for example—where mobile phone providers automatically filter out the content, which can cause serious harm to young people trying to get advice. Trying to get advice about abortion services is another problem. There are a whole range of such issues that are automatically filtered out by many mobile phone providers. If we are telling children that we do not want to let them have appropriate information, that can be damaging.
Tim Loughton
I should declare an interest as a champion of the Internet Watch Foundation. I am slightly disappointed at the rather defeatist attitude taken by the hon. Gentleman. The solution is not a silver bullet. It is not any one of the individual things that have been mentioned; it is a jigsaw. Empowering and giving resilience and confidence to our children—and confidence, resilience and expertise to their parents to be able to filter what they believe to be right and wrong—is an important part of that jigsaw. Filters have their flaws, but they are part of that jigsaw as well. Will the hon. Gentleman admit that some of the things mentioned during the debate are part of the solution and that we should not dismiss them simply because they are not absolutely perfect?
Dr Huppert
I agreed with almost everything the hon. Gentleman said, until the end. Yes, I think we should empower parents to make the correct decisions, and I believe we should educate children so that they can think for themselves and be empowered. I absolutely agree with all of that, but that is not what the motion says and it is not what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland emphasised. The hon. Gentleman and I would agree that there are some important measures for empowerment: the problem is, if we provide an illusion of protection, which gives people a false sense of security, that can make people less safe. It can leave children more exposed than doing things that actually work. It also downgrades the role of parents and parenting.
Moreover, we must accept that any filter can be bypassed. It is easy for those who know what they are doing to carry out a quick Google search and find out how to bypass any filter that they encounter, and there is no way in which we could prevent that from happening. We must therefore try to engage with people rather than introducing state control in the form of legislation to force search engines to run in a particular way, because that does not work. [Interruption.] The motion calls for legislation. If the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland does not believe that it should, that is her problem. Perhaps it suggests that motions should be tabled rather earlier than a few hours before the deadline for any changes.
Yes, we must do something, but what we do must work, must be proportionate, and must make things better for the people about whom we are concerned. That, rather than what was suggested by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, is the way forward. I commend the Minister—it is good to see him back in the Chamber—for his work on the issue, for his commitment to trying to deal with the problems in a way that will make a difference, and for the position that he has taken today.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones). I declare myself a dinosaur where online issues are concerned. I was going to say the same thing about my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), but she is much more modern than I am. Although she, I and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, were elected 26 years ago yesterday, she is thoroughly modern in her approach. She was able to name the Pokémons as one of the groups that children look at online, though Pokémons are perfectly fine as creatures and they probably need protection from the children.
In the short time available to us to speak, let me say that I normally go to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who is a member of the Home Affairs Committee, for advice on these matters, and I listened carefully to what he said about filters. However, I think the real responsibility is on the internet companies and the service providers. They have got away with murder—literally, in some cases—because people have been able to use the internet to groom young girls and children and to behave in an irresponsible way. The internet companies throw up their hands and say that is freedom of speech.
We recently had some of those companies before the Home Affairs Committee during our last inquiry and also during a previous inquiry, so we have questioned them about both the roots of radicalism and e-crime. We will invite them again when we look at this matter again. They are very reluctant to intervene, and a tiny proportion of their profits—a tiny proportion—goes to the Internet Watch Foundation. It is not enough. They cannot sit back complacently and allow these things to go on without intervening and cleaning up the internet.
The Home Secretary has made positive statements, after what happened in Woolwich, about her desire to get things done. I am glad that there is a summit next week. I hope that she will be invited and that this is not just being seen as an issue for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, because when dealing with crime it is important to ensure that the police are fully involved.
Tim Loughton
The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the search engines, most of which are based in America, pleading freedom of speech. Does he agree that every search engine could have a simple sign on its home page alerting users to how they can report material they are concerned about, which would cost nothing? That way, there would be no excuse for not knowing what to do. They could also put money into having moderators to ensure a rapid response to unacceptable material.
Keith Vaz
Yes, and I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for all the work he did in that area as Children’s Minister and since then. The internet companies must be proactive. They have to go in and clean up the internet. They cannot just sit back and allow others to do it for them. It is so difficult to get internet companies to appear before Select Committees. It takes an age to find them, and then they always respond by saying that they are based in California or New York and therefore do not come over to the UK. They send us their public relations officers, but they, very nice people though they are, are not the decision makers.
I am full of praise for the work CEOP does. I have visited it, along with members of the Home Affairs Committee, and encourage other right hon. and hon. Members to go—it is just across the Vauxhall Bridge road—and see the fantastic work being done. I pay tribute to Jim Gamble for his work in setting it up in the first place and to Peter Davies, who leads it ably. I say to the Policing Minister—he is now in conversation with the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who has done a great deal of work in these matters, for which we are grateful—that it is very important that we protect CEOP’s budget. The Home Affairs Committee expressed concern that CEOP was being put into the National Crime Agency. We accept what the Government have done and understand the need to rationalise the policing landscape, but it is important to maintain CEOP’s budget and focus. I understand that its budget will be cut by 10% over the next four years. Perhaps the Minister can reassure me that that is not the case and that CEOP, even though it is in the NCA—the Committee thinks that is fine for the moment, but we will revisit the subject—will still retain its focus. Ultimately, it provides terrific expertise that could benefit police forces across the country.
Finally, I recently visited Europol and Interpol. I urge the Policing Minister to visit those organisations, because I gather that no Home Office Minister has visited Europol in recent years. They are doing some fantastic work internationally. I know that the Cabinet Office has funded a project in Interpol specifically dealing with online child exploitation. I think that we can take credit for the work we are doing internationally. To return to my first point, the internet is a marvellous invention and a power for good, but as we have seen, and as we have heard today, it can be used in a different, darker way to exploit children. I hope that internet service providers and others involved in this whole area will understand their responsibilities and act accordingly.
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill
Tim Loughton Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Sir Tony Baldry
First, the only point that I am confused about is whether this is a wrecking amendment. Secondly, in this House I speak for the Church of England, not the Bishop of Chester, and as the hon. Gentleman knows, with 44 diocesan Bishops, it is usually possible to find at least one Bishop who will have a view contrary to the other 43. Let me put it on record, lest there is any scintilla of doubt, that the Church of England is strongly opposed to the new clause, not because we do not love or like humanists, but simply because it would unpick the locks in the Bill, which, when we started, were important to ensuring the protections of faith groups in the context of this legislation.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Notwithstanding the Bishop of Chester, does my hon. Friend agree that some very clear problems arise from the new clause, which could indeed turn out to be a wrecking amendment? Is it not therefore inconsistent for the Labour Front-Bench spokesmen yesterday to have promoted a review on extending civil partnerships, but on an apparently similarly problematic amendment such as the new clause before us not to mention such a review? Surely on that score it is a wrecking amendment.
Sir Tony Baldry
I want to conclude by making a further and serious point.
Those of us who were opponents of the Bill and who voted against it on Second Reading have taken on good faith—and it has been delivered in good faith by the Government and the proponents of the Bill—that there would be protections for faith groups and that they would not be compelled to carry out same-sex marriages if they did not wish to do so. My understanding was that that approach was supported by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen as well. With legislation of this kind it is important that people feel confident that it will not in some way be unpicked in the future, and that the protections for faith groups will endure, irrespective of any change of Government.
The Opposition Front Bench’s approach this afternoon causes me concern. I point out that the Church of England has been wholly approachable to the Opposition—of course it would be—throughout the Bill’s passage. It is a matter of some concern that at no time have the official Opposition, who have adopted the new clause—it has not been moved by a Back Bencher; it has been proposed by a member of the shadow Front-Bench team—sought to consult the Church of England or other faith groups, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston has acknowledged and admitted, on the import or impact of the new clause.
In every way, this is a bad new clause. It is bad because it has not been properly consulted on; it is bad because it will unpick the protections—
Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]
Tim Loughton Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)
I rise fleetingly to speak in support of my amendment 1, which relates to the payment of fines. It was moved in the other place by my noble friend Lord Touhig and its purpose is to introduced safeguards to ensure that the new financial penalties imposed on people who make late or incomplete fine payments do not plunge them into poverty when they have to pay that second fine. In no way is it a wrecking amendment, but the new system should not jeopardise housing security, the well-being of children or basic household outgoings.
The magistrates court sentencing guidelines say that fines should have
“an equal impact on offenders with different financial circumstances. . .but should not force the offender below a reasonable ‘subsistence’ level.”
I do not want people to be forced to go to payday lenders—I do not believe that that is necessary—and I hope that the companies that the Government propose to engage in this matter take these things into account. Above all else, we have to understand that the reason why some people do not always pay fines is not that they are persistent non-payers, but for other very important reasons, such as debt, a family crisis or illness.
I hope that in the seconds available to the Minister, he will accept my argument and avoid a vote later this evening.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I rise briefly in support of new clauses 12 and 14, which were put forward so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and are supported by the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey).
A key part of the four-point action plan “Tackling child sexual exploitation”, which was launched in November 2011, was a better court procedure for vulnerable young witnesses. Too many girls, having been abused, have effectively been re-traumatised in the courtroom by a phalanx of defence barristers. For many of them, it has meant that they have not given credible evidence or that the case has not come to court and has collapsed. In many cases, the witnesses run away rather than go through the procedure and appear in court.
The two new clauses, which I hope the Minister will take away and look at favourably, are about ensuring that we get justice in our courts and, in particular, that vulnerable witnesses and victims appear to get the justice they have been denied for so many years. The cases that are coming to court now are a sign of success. They are at least beginning to be taken seriously. We want to ensure that more people come forward and that more perpetrators are nailed. The new clauses will help to achieve that.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
I will speak to new clause 12, which I tabled along with the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and other hon. Members. I agree totally with the comments that she made in arguing for specialist courts.
Under new clause 12, registered intermediaries, which were first introduced in 2004, would be assigned to support all very vulnerable witnesses. Children are very vulnerable witnesses because they do not communicate in the same way as adults. Recent NSPCC research showed that more than 90% of children under 10 do not understand the questions that they are asked in court. It also showed that more than half of young witnesses experience stress symptoms ranging from sleeping and eating problems to self-harming. Children under stress become confused in the witness box.
Registered intermediaries are communication specialists, such as child psychologists, who are trained to help child witnesses to communicate their evidence effectively, both at the police interview and the trial. However, NSPCC figures show that only 2% of young witnesses were assigned a registered intermediary. That has to change.
In view of the tremendous cross-party support for new clauses 12 and 14 today, and in the wake of the Rochdale and Jimmy Savile scandals, I hope that the Minister will feel able to give a positive response to the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon and me that call for specialist courts and registered intermediaries to give the victims of sexual abuse the confidence to come forward so that justice can be done.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
It is not for me specifically to instruct the judiciary on how they handle cases—the independence of the judiciary is a feature of our system. However, I am sure the hon. Lady’s comments will have been heard by those who lead the family division. It is very much a matter for judges to decide how best to ensure that they have the right mix of experience.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Topically, Liz Calderbank, the chief inspector of probation, has today produced a report into what she calls the depressing and flawed care system, in which too many young people in care end up in the youth justice system. What part are Justice Ministers playing in the Department for Education review of vulnerable children placed a long way from home, often in inappropriate children’s homes and other accommodation?
Chris Grayling
We are doing two things. First, we are undertaking a complete review of how we detain young people. I am uneasy—to say the least—about a system that costs a substantial amount of money and yet has a high reoffending rate. I do not believe we are getting it right, and we are looking to introduce a process in the new year to address how we detain young people. Secondly, I am in regular contact with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education. I believe we are due to meet to discuss those issues in the next few days.