BBC: Funding

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords—

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

Tina!

BBC: Royal Charter

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

It is important to begin with the fact that the BBC will benefit from more than £3.8 billion of licence fee income per year; that is a considerable amount of money. We froze the licence fee to help people with the cost of living but it is now rising in line with inflation. It is for the BBC to decide how it spends the money that it gets from the licence fee payer within the expectations that are clearly set out in the royal charter, in which its first public purpose is:

“To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them”.


It is important that the BBC does this.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, those of us who care passionately about the BBC are very worried about the direction of travel for BBC News. There have been decimating cuts to local radio, with long-standing presenters being made redundant in the most brutal of ways, the botched merger of world news and domestic news, and the cuts to flagship programmes. As the Minister said, is it not the BBC’s duty as a publicly funded broadcaster—particularly in an age of disinformation being so widespread—to invest heavily in a news service that we all rely on?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Although it is up to the BBC to decide how to deliver its services, the Government are clear that it must make sure that it continues to deliver its remit as set out in the royal charter and the agreement. The Government expect Ofcom, as the BBC’s regulator, to ensure that the BBC is held to account in the way it does so. We recognise the strength of feeling on the importance of news coverage, both nationally and locally. We have raised the concerns expressed in your Lordships’ House and another place about cuts to local news reporting services, but it is up to the BBC to decide how it delivers these services with the money that it gets.

Loot Boxes in Video Games

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Research has provided evidence that loot box purchases may be linked to a variety of harms. In particular, there is robust evidence of an association with problem gambling, as the noble Lord mentions, but research has not established whether a causal relationship exists. There are a range of plausible explanations. We have developed and published the video games research framework to support high-quality, independent research into video games, including into loot boxes. If new evidence becomes available, we will consider it.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I heap praise on the noble Lord, Lord Foster, who has been a great supporter of the video games industry, although I do not agree with him on loot boxes. I am sure that he and the Minister will have seen the recent report from the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment, the trade body for video games, showing how this industry, which is bigger than film, television and music put together, has huge benefits for our wider economy, including the automotive and health sectors. Does the Minister agree with me that it is important not to overregulate such a successful industry? I refer to my entry in the register.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My noble friend is right to point to the huge success of the UK consumer games market. It is currently valued at more than £7 billion, which is more than double its size in 2013—during my noble friend’s heyday as the Minister responsible for it. The industry employs 27,000 people across the country, with nearly 80% of those people based outside London; there are video games clusters in Dundee, Sheffield, Manchester, Guildford and Royal Leamington Spa. The growth has of course been accelerated by generous tax reliefs, including those on which my noble friend worked in government. We are very proud of the impact that it has on our wider creative industries.

BBC Funding

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I have indeed pointed to the extra freedom that the Government have given the BBC to pursue its commercial income, so that it can continue to do its excellent work and be funded in a sustainable way that is fair to licence fee payers, viewers, listeners and indeed bakers.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, given that a full-scale rebellion is under way against my noble friend Lord Harlech’s—

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, the time allowed for the Statement has elapsed.

Classical Music

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I congratulate OperaUpClose, which is one of the new operatic organisations that have joined the Arts Council national portfolio. I met another, Pegasus Opera, which is doing great work as well in encouraging new audiences and new compositions so that opera can continue to be a rich art form that people of all backgrounds get to enjoy. The noble Baroness is right that private philanthropy as well as public subsidy plays an important part. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I have had meetings with arts organisations and funding bodies to look at ways in which we might be able to create further incentives for giving. But I hope that people will be able to leverage their part in the national portfolio through the Arts Council—not just to spend the public subsidy that is given but also to be part of that network, which they now are.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, leaving aside the extreme concern that the Chancellor is favouring EU composers over British composers—I hope that nobody tells the Prime Minister that—may I ask my noble friend what he is doing to increase diversity in classical music? Will he join me in congratulating the Chineke! Orchestra on its success and all it has done to increase diversity in our orchestras, and perhaps illuminate us regarding the discussions he has had with the Arts Council to continue this impressive progress?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Arts Council did a very valuable study on diversity in classical music—diversity in every form. As I say, companies such as Pegasus Opera are doing important work in bringing people from diverse backgrounds into art forms that we can all enjoy, as are the Chineke! Orchestra and many others. Through its new national portfolio, the Arts Council is investing in more companies and organisations in more parts of the country than ever before, including those led by a more diverse range of people.

Creative Industries (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Friday 7th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this important debate. I refer to my register of interests, where I have numerous creative jobs, including being the president of Marlow Film Studios; that is probably the most specific one. I just want to say how grateful I am to follow such incredible and eminent speakers, all of whom have genuine and real experience of working in the creative industries. My former chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—I say “former” because I was kicked off the committee—gave an incredible outline of the report, setting out all the key details; of course, she has worked at a senior level in the media. We have also heard from the world’s greatest publisher, the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck; the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, who has had a glittering career in the media; and the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, one of our foremost arts educators and practitioners—and we still have the world’s greatest Methodist preacher to come.

I welcome the Government’s vision for the creative sector industries. It was clearly provoked by our hard-hitting report; through the recommendations that we made, we managed to force some importance concessions from the Government and get a comprehensive strategy from them for the creative industries. It is a bit depressing, when the Government represent the creative industries, that they cannot come up with a more poetic title than Creative Industries Sector Vision; it does not exactly make for light or enjoyable reading, but we know that the spirit is willing and the Government are working to support our creative industries.

As noble Lords can probably tell, I want to provide a bit of a corrective because I do not think that the Government tell their own story well enough. For example, they deserve an enormous amount of praise for the way in which they handled the cultural recovery fund during the pandemic; it really made an enormous difference. There is also their recent announcement of the cultural education advisory council to implement the cultural education plan and the new music education plan. That is to be ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull; there are one or two glaring omissions in the people appointed to that commission, but we will skate over them.

One thing I always think when we talk about the arts is that it is important for Ministers—this is just a word of sage advice for my noble friend Lord Parkinson, who is without question the best arts Minister we have had since 2016—always to keep hold of the outputs, not the inputs. There is always a tendency for those of us who care passionately about the arts to talk constantly about the inputs, such as better budgets and so on, and not look at what is happening around us.

Let us look around us. The recent reopening of the National Portrait Gallery was a complete triumph. In my role as a Tate trustee, I am looking forward to the complete refurbishment of Tate Liverpool. There are new storage facility sites for places such as the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. There is the reopening of the children’s museum via the V&A and V&A East. Factory International in Manchester reopened recently, reassuringly over budget. Of course, the Manchester Art Gallery has also been a triumph. In Birmingham, there are the Steven Knight-led film studios; there are also new proposals for studios in the north-east. Look at the kind of leadership that we still enjoy in the creative industries; for example, with David Chipperfield recently winning the Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize for architecture.

These are all great stories. Only today, if you read the excellent newsletter the Vaizey View, written by Alex Pleasants, you will see a reference to music exports having increased by 20% in the last year alone. No doubt many of us here will celebrate that tomorrow night in Hyde Park when we pop along to watch Bruce Springsteen. When the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, mentioned Melvyn Bragg, I was wondering whether to refer to his interview in his absence. In it, he bemoaned 12 years of Tory philistinism. Nothing could be further from the truth, as there have been huge success stories along the way. I noted that he compared a successful arts policy with the success of Athens. I do think that the one glaring omission in the Government’s arts policy is the return of the Parthenon sculptures to Athens, which will unleash a huge and thriving cultural partnership between Greece and the UK.

These are all great success stories. It sounds facetious, but the most important thing that the creative industries and the arts sector need from any Government is proper, committed and passionate leadership. It is important that we have Ministers who are there for a significant length of time and it is good to see that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, looks like he will never leave his post. That is very important. It is important that we celebrate, for example, David Chipperfield receiving the Pritzker Prize. I do not know whether the Prime Minister wrote to him, but these are the kinds of success stories that the Government should be talking about, even if they are not directly responsible for them.

To put it another way, the relentless and pointless attacks on the BBC just undermine some of the great jewels in the crown of our creative industry sector. Any sensible Government would stop them and celebrate these incredible success stories, because the UK’s creative industries are, without doubt, a massive success story. There are lots of intangible reasons why that might be the case—the English language, our ability to grow and export to the US, and so on. British individualism—the fact that we have been able to be rude about our politicians for the last 400 years—may be a factor that allows us to follow our creative nose, but there are other things that the Government could do.

At the core of what makes a successful creative industry ecosystem, to use a rather crude and inept word, is tax policy. Here again the Government deserve an enormous amount of credit for: maintaining the film tax credit and even improving it over the last couple of years; the video games tax credit; the television tax credit; and the museum and theatre tax credits, which, again, they extended. Those are very good things. Noble Lords have referred to the R&D tax credit. I know of one video games company that has taken a year to get its R&D tax credit, which may not even come through. I would be interested to know the Minister’s view on whether there is perhaps a silent agenda to make it tougher for the creative industries to access the R&D tax credit. It remains a very important piece of fiscal support for the creative industries.

The other important role is having a proper intellectual property regime. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, pointed out, the Government have climbed down, thankfully, on their proposals to weaken that regime. Again, this is about constancy and certainty. People do not want to hear bright ideas about messing about with an IP regime that, broadly speaking, works, is robust and which people rely on. One of the points that is referred to in the report is the need to scale up funding for our creative businesses and the fact that many are sold too early. This is a conundrum that is very difficult for the Government to solve. They have world-class incentives for start-ups. The same kinds of incentives do not necessarily exist for scale-ups but at the same time, there is nothing that one can do about the fact that in the US there is a huge wall of capital that can be deployed, which is not deployed in the same way in Britain.

I will pause and talk a bit about education and skills, since that seems to be the main topic that is emerging in the debate. This took up a lot of my time as a Minister. I referred earlier to the Government’s cultural education plan, which is a good thing. Again, one has to be robust to a certain extent. It is often down to head teachers to put in place a strong creative curriculum for their pupils. There is nothing stopping visionary secondary heads doing it but, of course, government can help. Things such as the EBacc did not help particularly. We talked in the culture White Paper about a proper school engagement plan in the arts, twinning arts institutions with schools and allowing children to have work placements—not just front of house or on stage but working across the whole range of different jobs that exist in any arts or creative industry organisation.

Sorting out creative industries apprenticeships is long overdue. The apprenticeship levy itself is a terrible policy to which for some reason the Government remain committed. Sorting out creative industries apprenticeships and the freelance nature of work in many creative industries should certainly be a priority.

The Government also need to get their hands around our conservatoires and specialist arts education institutions. They really are world class. We talk about the Ivy League and Oxbridge, but no country in the world has such an incredible infrastructure of these colleges. You visit them and see some of them being held together with sticky tape. They do not have a strong relationship with government and are not celebrated as a collective force. As far as I can see, there is no real, coherent strategy to support them going forward. We have things such as the Music and Dance Scheme, but these are random and bitty. It needs some coherence. This is a free hit for the Minister, because it need not cost much money and engagement at a senior government level would be so welcomed by these institutions.

I praise the Labour Party for its announcement on education yesterday. It was wonderful to see a commitment from the party opposite to put cultural education at the heart of schools until the age of 16. I learned a new word: oracy. That is really important in terms of the class ceiling and giving kids at state school the opportunity to debate and argue, with the self-confidence that it gives. That goes to the heart of why arts education is so important; it is not just about skills and creative skills but about self-confidence. Things such as the music education plan are not about creating the next generation of world-class violinists, although that would be a welcome development, but about giving a lot of children who would not have that opportunity incredible self-confidence in their achievements.

I will not dwell on Brexit, but it has obviously been a massive and comprehensive disaster for the creative industries in the UK. Even one small win, such as allowing our musicians and artists to tour freely in Europe, would be welcome. I know the Minister will redouble his efforts to sort out this unholy mess. He is not immature enough to keep blaming our European partners for being unable to solve that problem.

In summing up, I started with leadership and I will end by saying that we need joined-up government for the arts and creative industries. I have always thought that. The excellent suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, about putting the Education Secretary on the Creative Industries Council goes to the heart of that. At the heart of education, health, levelling up, and soft power and diplomacy lie our creative industries. They are world class, world beating and something of which we should all be immensely proud.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour, once again, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, in this Committee. I am going to speak in detail to the amendments that seek to change the way the codes of practice are implemented. Before I do, however, I will very briefly add my voice to the general comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, have just taken us through. Every parent in the country knows that both the benefit and the harm that online platforms can bring our children is not just about the content. It is about the functionality: the way these platforms work; the way they suck us in. They do give us joy but they also drive addiction. It is hugely important that this Bill reflects the functionality that online platforms bring, and not just content in the normal sense of the word “content”.

I will now speak in a bit more detail about the following amendments: Amendments 65, 65ZA, 65AA, 89, 90, 90B, 96A, 106A, 106B, 107A, 114A—I will finish soon, I promise—112, 122ZA, 122ZB and 122ZC.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My noble friend may have left one out.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

I am afraid I may well have done.

That list shows your Lordships some of the challenges we all have with the Bill. All these amendments seek to ensure that the codes of practice relating to child safety are binding. Such codes should be principles-based and flexible to allow companies to take the most appropriate route of compliance, but implementing these codes should be mandatory, rather than, as the Bill currently sets out, platforms being allowed to use “alternative measures”. That is what all these amendments do—they do exactly the same thing. That was a clear and firm recommendation from the joint scrutiny committee. The government’s response to that joint scrutiny committee report was really quite weak. Rather than rehearse the joint scrutiny committee’s views, I will rehearse the Government’s response and why it is not good enough to keep the Bill as it stands.

The first argument the Government make in their response to the joint scrutiny report is that there is no precedent for mandatory codes of conduct. But actually there are. There is clear precedent in child protection. In the physical world, the SEND code for how we protect some of our most vulnerable children is mandatory. Likewise, in the digital world, the age-appropriate design code, which we have mentioned many a time, is also mandatory. So there is plenty of precedent.

The second concern—this is quite funny—was that stakeholders were concerned about having multiple codes of conduct because it could be quite burdensome on them. Well, forgive me for not crying too much for these enormous tech companies relative to protecting our children. The burden I am worried about is the one on Ofcom. This is an enormous Bill, which places huge amounts of work on a regulator that already has a very wide scope. If you make codes of conduct non-mandatory, you are in fact making the work of the regulator even harder. The Government themselves in their response say that Ofcom has to determine what the minimum standards should be in these non-binding codes of practice. Surely it is much simpler and more straightforward to make these codes mandatory and, yes, to add potentially a small additional burden to these enormous tech companies to ensure that we protect our children.

The third challenge is that non-statutory guidance already looks as if it is causing problems in this space. On the video-sharing platform regime, which is non-mandatory, Ofcom has already said that in its first year of operation it has

“seen a large variation in platforms’ readiness to engage with Ofcom”.

All that will simply make it harder and harder, so the burden will lie on this regulator—which I think all of us in this House are already worried is being asked to do an awful lot—if we do not make it very clear what is mandatory and what is not. The Secretary of State said of the Bill that she is

“determined to put these vital protections for … children … into law as quickly as possible”.

A law that puts in place a non-mandatory code of conduct is not what parents across the country would expect from that statement from the Secretary of State. People out there—parents and grandparents across the land—would expect Ofcom to be setting some rules and companies to be required to follow them. That is exactly what we do in the physical world, and I do not understand why we would not want to do it in the digital world.

Finally—I apologise for having gone on for quite a long time—I will very briefly talk specifically to Amendment 32A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, which is also in this group. It is a probing amendment which looks at how the Bill will address and require Ofcom and participants to take due regard of VPNs: the ability for our savvy children—I am the mother of two teenage girls—to get round all this by using a VPN to access the content they want. This is an important amendment and I am keen to hear what my noble friend Minister will say in response. Last week, I spoke about my attempts to find out how easy it would be for my 17 year-old daughter to access pornography on her iPhone. I spoke about how I searched in the App Store on her phone and found that immediately a whole series of 17-plus-rated apps came up that were pornography sites. What I did not mention then is that with that—in fact, at the top of the list—came a whole series of VPN apps. Just in case my daughter was naive enough to think that she could just click through and watch it, and Apple was right that 17 year-olds were allowed to watch pornography, which obviously they are not, the App Store was also offering her an easy route to access it through a VPN. That is not about content but functionality, and we need to properly understand why this bundle of amendments is so important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, if the internet were a toy, aimed at children and used only by children, those remarks would of course be very relevant, but we are dealing with something of huge value and importance to adults as well. It is the lack of consideration of the role of adults, the access for adults and the effects on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, implicit in these amendments, that cause me so much concern.

I seem to have upset everybody. I will now take issue with and upset the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, with whom I have not engaged on this topic so far. At Second Reading and earlier in Committee, she used the phrase, “childhood lasts a lifetime”. There are many people for whom this is a very chilling phrase. We have an amendment in this group—a probing amendment, granted—tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, which seeks to block access to VPNs as well. We are in danger of putting ourselves in the same position as China, with a hermetically sealed national internet, attempting to put borders around it so that nobody can breach it. I am assured that even in China this does not work and that clever and savvy people simply get around the barriers that the state has erected for them.

Before I sit down, I will redeem myself a little, if I can, by giving some encouragement to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on Amendments 28 and 32 —although I think the amendments are in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. These amendments, if we are to assess the danger posed by the internet to children, seek to substitute an assessment of the riskiness of the provider for the Government’s emphasis on the size of the provider. As I said earlier in Committee, I do not regard size as being a source of danger. When it comes to many other services— I mentioned that I buy my sandwich from Marks & Spencer as opposed to a corner shop—it is very often the bigger provider I feel is going to be safer, because I feel I can rely on its processes more. So I would certainly like to hear how my noble friend the Minister responds on that point in relation to Amendments 28 and 32, and why the Government continue to put such emphasis on size.

More broadly, in these understandable attempts to protect children, we are in danger of using language that is far too loose and of having an effect on adult access to the internet which is not being considered in the debate—or at least has not been until I have, however unwelcomely, raised it.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I assure your Lordships that I rise to speak very briefly. I begin by reassuring my noble friend Lord Moylan that he is loved in this Chamber and outside. I was going to say that he is the grit in the oyster that ensures that a consensus does not establish itself and that we think hard about these amendments, but I will revise that and say he is now the bungee jumper in our ravine. I think he often makes excellent and worthwhile points about the scope and reach of the Bill and the unintended consequences. Indeed, we debated those when we debated the amendments relating to Wikipedia, for example.

Obviously, I support these amendments in principle. The other reason I wanted to speak was to wish the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—Beeban—a happy birthday, because I know that these speeches will be recorded on parchment bound in vellum and presented to her, but also to thank her for all the work that she has done for many years now on the protection of children’s rights on the internet. It occurred to me, as my noble friend Lady Harding was speaking, that there were a number of points I wanted to seek clarity on, either from the Minister or from the proponents of the amendments.

First, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, mentioned the age-appropriate design code, which was a victory for the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. It has, I think, already had an impact on the way that some sites that are frequented by children are designed. I know, for instance, that TikTok—the noble Baroness will correct me—prides itself on having made some changes as a result of the design code; for example, its algorithms are able, to a certain extent, to detect whether a child is under 13. I know anecdotally that children under 13 sometimes do have their accounts taken away; I think that is a direct result of the amendments made by the age-appropriate design code.

I would like to understand how these amendments, and the issue of children’s rights in this Bill, will interact with the age-appropriate design code, because none of us wants the confetti of regulations that either overlap or, worse, contradict themselves.

Secondly, I support the principle of functionality. I think it is a very important point that these amendments make: the Bill should not be focused solely on content but should take into account that functionality leads to dangerous content. That is an important principle on which platforms should be held to account.

Thirdly, going back to the point about the age-appropriate design code, the design of websites is extremely important and should be part of the regulatory system. Those are the points I wanted to make.

BBC: Appointment and Resignation of Chair

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

It is important that there is a thorough and swift investigation in cases such as this, and that is what has happened here; Adam Heppinstall has produced a thorough report. He has looked into this carefully and brought forward his conclusions. Richard Sharp has resigned, and we understand and respect his reasons for doing so.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is very nice to have a Tory voice in this debate. I declare my interest as a presenter on Times Radio. Richard Sharp was an excellent chair of the BBC, and he has been extremely harshly treated—not least by that terrible cartoon in the Guardian over the weekend. However, I echo the noble Lord, Lord Birt: one of things that is clear from this report, and something we all knew at the time, is who the Government’s favoured candidate for the position was. This does a disservice to the Government because it prevents excellent candidates putting themselves forward and giving them a genuine choice. I know the Minister will simply play a completely straight bat as he answers this Question, but he must know that the Government should have a much more open process for the appointment of the next chair of the BBC.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I completely agree with what my noble friend says about the brilliant work done by Richard Sharp during his time as chairman of the BBC and with the comments he made about the deplorable cartoon in the Guardian, which I am glad was pulled. The Adam Heppinstall report rightly points to the impact that the publication of candidates’ names in the media can have on the public appointments process, and we echo the concerns he raised there. The process to appoint a new permanent chairman will be run in a robust, fair and open manner, in accordance with the governance code.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathcarron (Con)]

I will speak in support of my noble friend Lord Moylan and Amendment 9. I declare an interest as an author and publisher.

Last week, we had the London Book Fair, and proposed new paragraph 10A could read almost like an executive summary of the main talking point, which was how AI will influence all aspects of the media but particularly publishing. For the sake of future-proofing, paragraph 10A would be a particularly useful step to adopt. Proposed new paragraph 10B would be in the interest of fairness because publishing, and a lot of media, is made up of micro-businesses, often one-man or one-woman companies. This is certain to happen with AI as well, as the intermediary roles are taken up by these. In the interest of future-proofing and fairness, I recommend this amendment.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, as my name is on Amendment 9, I speak to support these amendments and say that they are worthy of debate. As your Lordships know, I am extremely supportive of the Bill and hope that it will be passed in short order. It is much needed and overdue that we have the opportunity for legislation to provide us with a regulator that is able to hold platforms to account, protect users where it can and enhance child safety online. I can think of no better regulator for that role than Ofcom.

I have listened to the debate with great interest. Although I support the intentions of my noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendment, I am not sure I agree with him that there are two cultures in this House, as far as the Bill is concerned; I think everybody is concerned about child safety. However, these amendments are right to draw attention to the huge regulatory burden that this legislation can potentially bring, and to the inadvertent bad consequences it will bring for many of the sites that we all depend upon and use.

I have not signed many amendments that have been tabled in this Committee because I have grown increasingly concerned, as has been said by many others, that the Bill has become a bit like the proverbial Christmas tree where everyone hangs their own specific concern on to the legislation, turning it into something increasingly unwieldy and difficult to navigate. I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, put it extremely well when she effectively brought to life what it would be like to run a small website and have to comply with this legislation. That is not to say that certain elements of micro-tweaking are not welcome—for example, the amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on giving coroners access to data—but we should be concerned about the scope of the Bill and the burden that it may well put on individual websites.

This is in effect the Wikipedia amendment, put forward and written in a sort of wiki way by this House—a probing amendment in Committee to explore how we can find the right balance between giving Ofcom the powers it needs to hold platforms to account and not unduly burdening websites that all of us agree present a very low risk and whose provenance, if you like, does not fit easily within the scope of the Bill.

I keep saying that I disagree with my noble friend Lord Moylan. I do not—I think he is one of the finest Members of this House—but, while it is our job to provide legislation to set the framework for how Ofcom regulates, we in this House should also recognise that in the real world, as I have also said before, this legislation is simply going to be the end of the beginning. Ofcom will have to find its way forward in how it exercises the powers that Parliament gives it, and I suspect it will have its own list of priorities in how it approaches these issues, who it decides to hold to account and who it decides to enforce against. A lot of its powers will rest not simply on the legislation that we give it but on the relationship that it builds with the platforms it is seeking to regulate.

For example, I have hosted a number of lunches for Google in this House with interested Peers, and it has been interesting to get that company’s insight into its working relationship with Ofcom. By the way, I am by no means suggesting that that is a cosy relationship, but it is at least a relationship where the two sides are talking to each other, and that is how the effectiveness of these powers will be explored.

I urge noble Lords to take these amendments seriously and take what the spirit of the amendments is seeking to put forward, which is to be mindful of the regulatory burden that the Bill imposes; to be aware that the Bill will not, simply by being passed, solve the kinds of issues that we are seeking to tackle in terms of the most egregious content that we find on the internet; and that, effectively, Ofcom’s task once this legislation is passed will be the language of priorities.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, this is not the first time in this Committee, and I suspect it will not be the last, when I rise to stand somewhere between my noble friend Lord Vaizey and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I am very taken by her focus on risk assessments and by the passionate defences of Wikipedia that we have heard, which really are grounded in a sort of commoner’s risk assessment that we can all understand.

Although I have sympathy with the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about small and medium-sized businesses being overburdened by regulation, I am less taken with the amendments on that subject precisely because small tech businesses become big tech businesses extremely quickly. It is worth pointing out that TikTok did not even exist when Parliament began debating this Bill. I wonder what our social media landscape would have been like if the Bill had existed in law before social media started. We as a country should want global tech companies to be born in the UK, but we want their founders—who, sadly, even today, are predominantly young white men who do not yet have children—to think carefully about the risks inherent in the services they are creating, and we know we need to do that at the beginning of those tech companies’ journeys, not once they have reached 1 million users a month.

While I have sympathy with the desire of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, not to overburden, just as my noble friend Lord Vaizey has said, we should take our lead from the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron: we need a risk assessment even for small and medium-sized businesses. It just needs to be a risk assessment that is fit for their size.

Online Safety Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my registered interests, in particular my work with Common Sense Media, a US not-for-profit that is focused on internet safety for children. What a pleasure it is to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford—my local bishop, no less. I always find it a great thing that it is our Bishops who read their speeches from iPads; we have iBishops in this Chamber who are far more technologically advanced than the rest of us. What a pleasure it is to see our national treasure the Arts Minister on the Front Bench; yesterday he launched the 2021 report of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which displays ancient treasures dug up from many centuries ago. I thought he might be presented with the first consultation paper on the Online Safety Bill, because it has taken so long to get to the stage where we are today.

A dozen years ago, when we talked about the impact of the internet, we were actually focused on copyright infringement; that was the big issue of the day. It is quite instructive to think about what happened there; it was a combination of technology, but also business solutions, licensing and the creation of companies such as Spotify that had an impact. But piracy remains with us, and will continue to remain with us because of the internet.

I like to think that the Jurassic journey of the Online Safety Bill began with an Adjournment debate by the then Member for Devizes, Claire Perry, who began a debate about protecting children from adult content on the internet, which is one of the most important issues. That led to her being commissioned to do a review by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, and that began the ball rolling. But Prime Minister David Cameron’s biggest intervention, which I remember well, was to tackle Google on the issue of child sex abuse. At the time the prevailing mood, which still prevails, was that politicians do not understand technology—you cannot regulate the internet, “Get your tanks off our lawn”. But Cameron said, “We will legislate unless you do something”, and Google, which said it was impossible, eventually came up with something like 150,000 search terms which would give a non-search return and refer the searcher to get some help, frankly—that is what the page would come up with.

That was instructive because it was a combination of government action, but in tackling child sexual abuse we had relied on not-for-profits, such as the Internet Watch Foundation. As we debate a piece of legislation and call on the Government to do this or that, it is important to remember that the internet has always had many governors, if you like—civic society, business, not-for-profits and charities—all of which must continue to play an important role in internet policing, as must the platforms themselves, where technology has improved in leaps and bounds. We have heard some of the criticisms of the technology they use and the impact it has on the people who are relied on by some of these technology companies to police content. Nevertheless, they have made progress. We must also remember that the platforms are not publishers or broadcasters; they are still new technology.

I unequivocally support the Bill—frankly, in whatever form it takes once your Lordships have fully considered it. It must be passed because it is time to regulate the internet. Ofcom is absolutely the right regulator to do this. I have been hugely impressed by the amount of work it has put into preparing for this role. The overall approach taken in the Bill is the right one: to police not every piece of content but the terms and conditions. This week, Ofcom published a very important document pointing out that transparency, holding the platforms to account and exposing how they regulate their content will make a massive difference.

The Government have made the right compromise on legal but harmful. I counsel against the Christmas tree effect of wanting to hang every single different concern on to the Bill; let us keep our eye on the prize. Having said that, I will fully support my noble friend Lord Bethell in his points on age verification and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, with her amendment.

This is the end of the beginning. The Bill will not eradicate all the nasty things we see on the internet but, for the first time, the platforms will be accountable. It is very important to support this legislation. The Minister did not mention the European Union’s important legislation on this issue, but we are beginning to make progress across the world.