Online Harms Consultation

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand the concerns raised by the noble Baroness and by the mother to whom she has spoken. There are not many parents in the land who have not had some of her concerns. We are focusing on user-generated content because we believe that will capture the vast majority of pornographic and inappropriate behaviour that children witness. However, as I said in response to an earlier question, we will keep it under review. Our ambition is to keep children safe. Ofcom has business disruption and ISP blocking within its powers, which would prevent children in this country seeing international content.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I too welcome the Government’s White Paper. However, I have two concerns. The first is that the proposed regime of duty of care puts the onus of responsibility for dealing with legal but harmful content on the platforms alone. There seem to be few sanctions on the individual user who creates the harmful content. Surely the new legislation should contain a requirement for the platform’s terms and conditions to contain a regime for it to suspend serial creators of harmful content. My other concern is that, once the platforms have deleted material, it disappears for ever. As a result, information from posts which are found to be criminal, once deleted, is subsequently unavailable for investigators and police who need to access crucial evidence to prosecute crimes. Will the Minister ensure that the legislation includes a requirement for a safe, secure, digital area to be created by platforms where illegal, deleted material can be stored for future legal use?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In response to the noble Viscount’s second point, I will definitely take back to the department his suggestion about the retention of illegal content. He made a valid point about the duty of care, but companies will need to set out in their terms and conditions what the categories of content are and what acceptable behaviour is on their site. The regulator will expect them to take action against just the sort of people to whom the noble Viscount refers.

Covid-19: Arts Sector

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, talked about the 100,000 freelancers in the creative industry who fall outside the SEISS. I am especially concerned about new graduates who have been recruited into these industries. Those in last year’s intake to the industries were not covered and they have now been joined by another year’s intake who are similarly not covered. Do the Government have any specific plans to help these people?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I can reassure the noble Viscount that we are looking in detail, with HMRC and the Treasury, at a range of reasons why self-employed people may be ineligible. That work is under way and I am assuming that graduates form part of it.

Public Service Broadcasting Online

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think that the Government are concerned, and my colleagues in the department are working closely with the industry to understand what a sustainable funding model looks like.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

The Ofcom report on prominence recommends that there may need to be new obligations to ensure the continued availability of PSB on-demand content to viewers equivalent to the existing “must offer” and “must carry” rules for PSBs’ traditional channels. What plans are there for the PSBs to be available on a wide range of platforms?

Covid-19: Creative Industries

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am very happy to take back the noble Lord’s point and ensure that this is looked at carefully, as he suggests.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB) [V]]

Diverse talent going into the creative industry depends so much on educational support. Can the Minister inform the House what percentage of schools have restarted their dance, drama and music classes since they went back earlier this month?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think I will have to write to the noble Viscount on that point.

Covid-19: Television Licences

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

I have the great honour of being the Minister for Loneliness—the only one, I think, in the world. We have recently launched a new campaign trying to address stigma around talking about loneliness. We have announced dedicated funding to combat loneliness both for smaller organisations and for those with a national reach. We have created a new Tackling Loneliness Network, which we hope will bring a real energy to this important issue; we will shortly meet its stakeholders across business, the voluntary sector and the public sector.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

The inexorable rise of the streaming giants and the sharp reduction in the payment of licence fees means that the new funding arrangement for the BBC needs to be publicly discussed. Will the Government reconsider their rejection of the Communications and Digital Select Committee’s recommendation of setting up a BBC funding commission, which would allow this to happen and make the whole process of the future funding of the BBC more transparent?

[Baroness Barran]

The noble Viscount raises an important point about the transparency and suitability of both the funding arrangement and the regulatory framework. The Government are open to considering all these points and look forward to doing so in more detail when we receive Ofcom’s upcoming report, but there is currently no plan to set up a funding commission, as he suggests.

BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a series producer at Raw TV making content for CNN.

PSBs in the UK are under threat as never before.

“The power of British television has essentially moved”


to Los Angeles. Those were the words of Andy Harries, CEO of the makers of “The Crown”, when he gave evidence to the Communications and Digital Committee, of which I am proud to be a member. It is a series made by Netflix, one of the winners in the new world of subscription giants. American broadcasting channels and platforms are pouring money into UK-made content. It is a boom time for the creative industry in this country, but if we want public service broadcasters that reflect the UK back to itself and concentrate on UK news and current affairs, and defy the labour market by moving creative jobs from London to the regions and nations, we have to fight hard to protect them.

They have all been under attack—especially the BBC—from all sides of the political divide for biased programming and reporting. The Culture Secretary said today that the BBC has a “narrow urban outlook” and is “slow to pick up” on recent trends, implicitly questioning its impartiality. Public service broadcasters are empowered by their impartiality. In a digital world in which almost everything is editorialised and social media creates filter bubbles of content to reinforce users’ political view of the world, we need to emphasise the value of mandated impartiality. It means that public service broadcasters are regulated to be transparent and accountable, a powerful bulwark against the continued polarisation subsuming our political discourse.

I too was very glad that Mr Dowden today said that

“the BBC is an institution to be cherished”.

Yet it has been lambasted by the Government. Its financial security is questioned by significant sources threatening to turn it, or at least parts of it, into a subscription service. PSBs have the new BritBox as a small subscription service for archive and there is even talk in the press of them coming together to create a non-subscription UK PSB platform as a one-stop shop for digital audiences, which would be a very good idea. However, for the PSBs to launch themselves against what will soon be 12 US subscription services in the UK at least will be financial and cultural folly. These US-based giants are global, mostly supported by either massive deficit funding or very generous parent companies that can outspend any home-grown rival.

However, the Government are right to question the BBC’s universal licence fee. It has served the corporation well, but it is decreasingly able to fund the organisation properly. Some 37,000 fewer licences were purchased last year and the forecast is for the reduction to continue. As we approach the licence fee interim settlement talks in 2022, it is a good time to start discussing alternative funding models. I am in favour of a progressive household tax, as there is in Germany. It reflects the differing wealth of households and maintains the universality of the BBC’s funding, which is so crucial in allowing it to commission programmes for underserved audiences. Will this model be considered by the Government in their funding talks with the BBC?

The Government are right to recognise that the future of PSBs is online, but it is becoming ever more difficult for online viewers to discover PSB content on digital platforms. Ofcom, in its recent report on PSB prominence, said that changing viewer behaviour in this new era means that without new regulatory safeguards to maintain the prominence of these channels online, audiences will be lost. This will happen quickly and will be costly to reverse. The Government have said they are committed to these recommendations. The fast- changing market means that it is a matter of urgency that this new legislation is brought before Parliament soon, so when might this happen?

I ask the Minister to fully support UK PSBs. Without them, our world-class broadcasting services will be subsumed by the inexorable growth and world march of US streaming giants.