Pornographic Websites: Age Verification

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I completely understand where the noble Lord is coming from but what he said is not quite right. The Digital Economy Act included a power that the Government could bring enforcement with financial penalties through a regulator. However, they decided—and this House decided—not to use that for the time being. For the moment, the regulator will act in a different way. But later on, if necessary, the Secretary of State could exercise that power. On timing and FOBTs, we thought carefully—as noble Lords can imagine—before we said that we expect the date will be early in the new year,

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that good health and sex education might be a way to counter some of the damaging effects? Can the Government make sure that is in place as soon as possible, so that this strange fantasy world is made slightly more real?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord is of course right that age verification itself is not the only answer. It does not cover every possibility of getting on to a pornography site. However, it is the first attempt of its kind in the world, which is why not only we but many other countries are looking at it. I agree that sex education in schools is very important and I believe it is being brought into the national curriculum already.

Online Anonymity

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am grateful for that positive suggestion, which we will certainly consider. I do not know what our position on that is; I am not completely clear about what the role of an internet ombudsman would be. Normally where questions about how to regulate the internet are concerned, they become much more complicated than they first appear.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Will the Minister take this chance to confirm that the liberal principle, that you can do what you like until it affects somebody else, will be written into any further legislation? Will the Government make sure that that is a key consideration? If they do, much of the concern will go away and reassurance will be given.

Sport: Performance-Enhancing Drugs

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will give assistance to the governing bodies of individual sports to take steps to identify and prevent the use of performance-enhancing drugs in junior and amateur sport.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the vital importance of protecting the integrity of sport, and that includes keeping sport free from the scourge of doping. UK Anti-Doping—UKAD—an arm’s-length body of DCMS, supports sports’ governing bodies with a wide range of measures. These include the development of athlete education programmes, public information campaigns on emerging threats to clean sport, and an active deterrent programme which includes anti-doping testing and individual athlete intervention tactics.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. However, given that much of the information I have gathered on the subject shows that many part-time sportsmen are taking image as well as performance-enhancing drugs, will the Government consider putting pressure on certain TV programmes such as the all-pervading “Love Island”, in which many honed, buffed young bodies are shown to the general public, to make sure that these are all down to hard work and diet and not drugs?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I do not think “Love Island” has been officially classified as a sport yet. However, this is not the first time I have had to answer questions on “Love Island” and I take the noble Lord’s point. Image and performance-enhancing drugs, IPEDs, are a problem. UK Anti-Doping, the Government, educational authorities and sports’ governing bodies have to educate young people from an early age on the effects of these drugs and explain and inculcate a values-based system so that healthy nutrition, exercise, sleep and so on—healthy training, if you like—is the most important thing, not drugs.

Youth Services

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those important debates when we have to look at ourselves and see what we have inherited over recent times. The consequence of an action taken—probably understandably at the time—has come back to sink its teeth firmly into our rear ends. If we cut services for the groups that have the least support and money in the home, and the least ability to access them outside it, there will be consequences. These people will not reach their economic potential and will be a social nuisance. There is an entrepreneurial group out there that will use them as a resource, whether for knife crime or drug crime—you name it.

In terms of support, we have cut away the fat and a fair bit of the muscle and we are now in danger of going straight into the bone. We have to stop doing that and we also have to look at what is out there to rebuild. The oval ball has done terribly well—the 13-a-side game got in there first with a mention from the noble Baroness. Rugby union has done this as well. We could go through the projects for all sports but it is a long list, so let us look at the School of Hard Knocks project in English rugby union. There are other projects out there. All sports seem to have the ability to reach those groups in ways that most other projects cannot. As my noble friend said, the youth club—with its ping-pong and high-minded things and the little disco at the end—was probably out of date even when it was created. It is just one of those things that does not really appeal. It may have come at a pertinent moment, when there was nothing else out there, but now it is dated.

Sport seems to have the ability to engage people in a way that other structures do not. Probably the most successful of all these sports in engaging people is not, I am afraid, rugby union, rugby league or any of the others, but boxing. Boxing is wonderful because the idea is that it is a tougher sport. It is, let us remember, the martial art reinvented. It is a martial art. There are rules, regulations, training and discipline. Okay, there is no Buddhist chant or somebody in pyjamas—which seems to be loved by the West and taken as read by the East. It requires a degree of discipline and focus, and it seems socially acceptable for those groups to get involved in it. However, you can overplay this. At the APPG for Boxing, we had someone saying, “Wait a minute, we can’t solve everything but we can engage”. You find what is culturally acceptable. I am sure it was the same for Warrington with its sport. Rugby league is very much based on strength and weakness. If you find what is culturally acceptable, you can get into people and engage with them. All these activities and sports seem to improve schoolwork, improve interaction and cut down on violence. Boxing cuts down on violence—now there is a thought to carry away with us.

If we can get in and get people involved, we are achieving something. This is all motherhood and apple pie so far. The question for the Government is: how are they going to make sure it is easier for these outside groups to get access to this? If local government is struggling financially, as it clearly is, how can national government come in and help, at least in structural terms? How can local government make sure that the facilities for these activities are readily available? You will not always have the right club in the right place to make the interaction. Often you will, but not always. If you want to introduce something new, remember, sports actually like going into new places. It improves their base and their interaction. They have some interest in this as well.

How can you do it? First, try to make sure that all of the school system is available to sports because it has space, time, halls and playing fields—you name it, it is there. It may not be perfect, but it is there and it is something. Making sure that we are not running our schools predominantly through local authorities—that academies and free schools take on part of the burden—really has to come from central government. I cannot see anyone else who can do it. Even if it is only encouraging the sponsors of those institutions to take sport on as a relevant social activity, it is something that should be done.

Now we can go on for far too long about the wonders of sport. I know there are projects where music and dance achieve the same things, as will other activities. I am not sure croquet will cut it in most of these fields. As an entrance point, I am sure that string quartets will not either. Where you go after that, who knows? However, we have to make sure that these groups that have a tried-and-tested model that is achieving success are encouraged to go on. When the Minister answers, will he tell us what the Government will do to encourage this to take place? If we do not utilise this, we will be missing an opportunity—an opportunity that is provided for somebody else more or less for free. It really would be stupid not to.

General Data Protection Regulation

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Of course, the noble Lord is entitled to his opinion but I do not agree with him. In this case, as I tried to explain, it does not matter whether it is a large or small organisation, or even an individual data controller, that misuses information. Individuals’ personal data is very important and has grown enormously since the previous Data Protection Act 20 years ago. My noble friend will of course realise that there was a Data Protection Act 20 years ago.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that small clubs perform a useful function for society generally, as do small charities? If a problem becomes apparent, will the Minister give an assurance that the Government will review it and see if there is anything there? I agree with him that data should be guarded but we do not want to damage these clubs unduly.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am sure the noble Lord is aware that the situation for data controllers has not changed since the Data Protection Act 1998. This is not a question of problems but of protecting the data rights of everyone in this Chamber. Therefore, it applies to all organisations and to individual people, but only if they deal in personal data and are controllers of that information.

First World War: Empire and Commonwealth Troops

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when you have listened to the stories in a debate like this and you are this far down the list of speakers, two things will have happened. The first is that anything original you had to say will have been referred to at least once, and the second is that you wonder how long you can spend agreeing with everyone else who has spoken. I will resist that temptation, other than to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that once again he has done us proud by making us remember these events and making the rest of the Chamber put on the record the suffering and the historic change that took place in the name of the Commonwealth and, mainly in this case, the British Empire, and how far it touched something outside us.

When we first had a debate on this subject, I commented to the noble Lord that we tend to look at what happened to us and to our people—a little prism of the fashion of a few years ago. Tonight we have certainly broken out of that habit because we have addressed the fact that it was not just us who were affected. Decisions made by our predecessors in this place affected the entire globe and we brought in many people who would never have considered it worth fighting in that conflict.

The one statistic that I was expecting to give but which the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, beat me to concerned the east African campaign. I had heard the anecdote of the Colonial Office saying, “About 90,000 bearers”—the noble Baroness described them as porters—“have died, but there again we don’t worry about bearers, do we?” That probably says it all. It was a group of people who were important to us in a campaign that we do not know much about. Why were there so many deaths? It was because we were consistently outfought by a much smaller German force.

We always like to forget our disasters, do we not, unless we build them up to be something dramatic and heroic? The east African campaign was not that. That we would dismiss the unit that kept those troops in the field, and the fact of them dying, says a lot about the nation we were. I hope it is one that we will never be again. When we are discussing this issue, and the vast commitments that were made, for instance, by the Indian army plugging gaps in our resources, we must remember that we were an empire. Empires traditionally use bits of their empire for their own ends. Possibly, this was what you would expect us to do with a large army from India. If you look at the way we acted towards those troops, you will see the ingrained racism of the time, which is something we should also remember because we do not want to go back to it.

The noble Lord, Lord Elton, said that sacrifice and slaughter do not solve anything. The attitude that we could use other people in that way is something we should remember, along with the huge sacrifices made by other nations. I believe that New Zealand has the rather sad trophy of the highest proportion of casualties to volunteers. I think the ANZAC cause managed to get to 60%, with New Zealand doing slightly worse—or better, depending on which way you call it—than Australia. We must try to remember these statistics and facts and to put them into the whole, because if we just have a list of facts, we will forget that there were people behind every statistic.

Historic Cathedrals

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree that cathedrals can be used for wider civic events and for things that are not directly concerned with the religion that they deal with. That is yet another reason to support them—and, clearly, the Government have spent many tens of millions of pounds doing just that. I do not think that there is any need for me to reinforce the desire of the Government to support these buildings. We accept that, for aesthetic and many other reasons, they are worthy of support.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, to return to the long term, does the Minister agree that the supply of skilled workers is essential if we are to maintain these buildings? Bearing that in mind, will the Government have a quick look at what is being done on apprenticeships at the moment? Many dyslexics, for instance, have found skills in areas such as stonemasonry, but, currently, only those with an education and healthcare plan—around one-quarter of those identified—are getting help to take these qualifications. Surely we can help dyslexics and historic buildings at the same time.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree with the noble Lord. When I visited Hereford a couple of weeks ago, I went to see the stonemasons’ workshop, which was taking on apprentices who were doing exactly that. It was a very good thing.

Brexit: Digital Single Market

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I think it would be mad to spell them out before we even start the negotiations.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, to go from the macro to the micro, if we leave the EU, might we not be susceptible, as individuals, to roaming charges when we go to Europe? Is not the addition of, say, up to several hundred pounds on the phone bill of everyone who visits Europe something that might lead us to put on the line some compromise of our position regarding our new independence?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord is right that roaming charges are one of the main areas that we have to look at as part of the negotiations that particularly affect DCMS. That is absolutely on our radar and we understand the implications both ways. We understand that it is a fairly recent innovation not to have roaming charges within the EU: we completely understand that and it will form part of the negotiations.

UK Sport: Elite Sport Funding

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to reviewing the guidance given to UK Sport about which sports are to receive funding for elite programmes, to take into account the potential growth of grassroots participation.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have decided at the end of this busy week to give me an hour of their time to discuss these matters. This debate was inspired in my mind by the fact that we are at a point of celebration and worry in sport, in equal measure. We have transformed our sporting environment from the top. Of the statistics that I have acquired from various sources, as one does at the start of a debate, the one that stuck out for me was that our improvement from 1996, the Atlanta Games, to the Rio Games was a 347% increase in medals. But that figure probably tells you where one of the problems comes from—the Olympic Games. At elite level, one of the problems has been that, if you are in that select club, getting this wonderful funding that is provided by the lottery, or at least inspired by it, and giving central government the incentive to get in on this wonderful success story and guarantee it, which it has done, you are actually excluding other sports, or making the barrier to get in there that little bit higher. Team sports seem to struggle slightly, and are more vulnerable.

I asked the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, beforehand whether he could give an example of exactly what the criteria for success is, because it is perceived as being medals at the Olympics. I know it is broader and more complicated than that, and I have probably made that mistake in conversation and in communication with people—but if we can actually see what the criteria for funding elite sport is, that would help this debate and, I hope, get it beyond here and out. If we can make sure that we are encouraging sport to expand its base, we may well get to the bit that has not been so successful. The participation rate at a moderate level of about 30 minutes a week has improved over the same period by 6%. Clearly, a 6% improvement for the entire population may be a massive increase, but the perception is, in our current environment, that funding is concentrated on a few sports that are encouraged to win all the medals. With certain sports—for instance, when you have lots of medals available—of course, we have the potential of getting much more bang for our buck.

A sport such as artistic gymnastics has lots of different events and lots of opportunities to acquire champions and people who succeed at that level, compared to one of the team sports. Hockey has done reasonably well, but one centre forward down and a goalkeeper having a bad day and that medal goes. That is the fact of the matter in all team sports. If you have lots of different options, to a degree you have a buffer zone, and if you have a good structure in place, you do not have to worry about that off day to the same extent, because you will have other bites at the cherry. How are we going to structure this in future? The question of how we bring other sports up that will penetrate into other bits of society is very important. If we cannot address that, we are not following on from that initial success. We are not saying, “We will do more”.

There is a cohesive social value in amateur sport, when people join together to do something that they get a buzz out of or enjoy, or whatever the correct term is in psychology. It is about the mates who give up their time on a regular basis to get involved in sport. Indeed, there are direct health benefits of casual sport. At Question Time today, we were discussing how exercise helps you in old age. If you have a sporting habit, exercise is a lot easier to do. Your muscles might have decayed, but if you have some muscle memory then, to put it bluntly, you stand a chance of getting them back without killing yourself. As all the old sportsmen in the Room will know, and I see there are a few, you find yourself going back.

The relationship between the elite and grass-roots sports is changing, in a good way. As I get older—and I still occasionally put myself through “golden oldies” rugby—I am beginning to wonder when rugby is going to get a walking version of its game. It has been said of me that I am going that way quite rapidly anyway; indeed, some people have said I was never far off it in the first place. In the context of the development of grass-roots sports, how do you make that relationship between the two, and how can it be perceived as more equal? What thinking is going on about that?

There is an elephant in the room that is going to plant its feet on our toes very rapidly: the lottery does not seem to be delivering funds with anything like the efficiency that it did. I do not know whether that is a management problem or the result of competition or if it is just the case that the world has slightly moved on. I have had exchanges with the Minister before about this, but if we are going to rely on the lottery, we must look at what we can do to ensure that it can at least guarantee the level of funding that we have at the moment. A decline in funding from the lottery, particularly for grass-roots sports, is unwelcome. It is one thing to get a Minister to say, “Yes, we’ll guarantee your Olympic programme or your elite-level programme”, but it is rather more difficult politically to argue for the upgrading of sports pitches, village halls and so on, particularly as there will always be someone making an excellent case for other uses of that money. How are we going to address that? I would be interested to hear the discussion that is going on, because we are coming to the end of this cycle of funding. For the next Olympic Games, it is all to play for. We must start to address this thoroughly.

We have to go beyond the idea that everything will be fine because, if lots of people watch it on television, they will go out, join in and take it up themselves. Although that may work a little, it patently does not work well enough. We have to do something else. If we want to cheer people on TV, we have to make sure that our recruitment base is wide, or we can contract in on ourselves and concentrate on a few sports. For instance, if we want to have an internationally recognisable basketball team—I have a little knowledge of some of the people in the Room—with a cultural base and activity, what level of investment by the state would be required to do that? That would drag in other aspects as well, and other sports would have other angles.

What do we need to maintain sports? Are we prepared to get slightly more involved in planning ahead and developing how these things go? I do not say that this is easy; we found out from the London Olympics that you cannot create a team overnight and expect it to be maintained. Handball is a wonderful game to watch; if I were a few years younger, I think I would have enjoyed playing it. But it would appear that we have no cultural base for it, and will not have one unless we do a lot more work.

We have an expansion here; we have a series of turns we can take. What are we doing to link the two aspects? If we are to build on success, it appears that we have to look to what is culturally embedded and enhance it. In boxing, for instance, we produce literally dozens of world-class amateur boxers now, and that is socially acceptable—it goes on to have good social results. If we can build upon that, we will do something good for society. If we do not, we will lose every social benefit that goes with it. All I am looking for today is to get some response from the Government and to hear from others about how we take this on. We have a good story; we are at the point where we can make it a great one or go backwards. I look forward to hearing what others say in this debate.

Battle of Passchendaele

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Black, on bringing this debate to the House. When I looked at it, I thought, “Where will I speak in it? Probably fairly low down, for all the normal reasons”. I thought, “Should I look at the stories of suffering?”. The answer was no because I know this House well and know that my colleagues would do that, and have done it extremely well. I could not add to any of these because I do not have enough special connections of my own.

However, I want to draw attention to the image that this brings up in the mind. I am just about old enough to remember parades of World War I veterans on Armistice Day. The passing of time tells me that now World War II veterans are much older than those men when they stopped doing it. We must look at the image of time and how it presents itself to us. The images coming out of Passchendaele are slightly different from those we get from the other episodes in the Great War. The initial period of “We will be home by Christmas” in bright uniforms with the French, then the terrible slaughter of the first day in the Somme, to Passchendaele, which becomes another image—of tiny men struggling in a sea of mud, making virtually no gain and dying in incredible numbers, almost for the most trivial of reasons and gains possible. That is the image that comes up.

Why did this happen? The attack—if attack is too strong, let us say criticism—of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, on those in command at the time tells us exactly how anybody involved in any form of government or authority must always remember their responsibility to do the right thing at the right time. Taking that image back, and saying, “Do not commit these errors of judgment, and do not run away from them” is something we should also remember.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord West, about the naval contingent in the battle in which he fought and how it brought it all together. That struck me. Passchendaele was when we were almost at total war. We did not want to get there; we resisted it and resisted rationing. We were co-ordinating and changing our lives and pretending that the war was not going on. That was something we did not do in the Second World War; we went straight in. Passchendaele brought us towards that situation. The volunteer army disappears and we are down to conscription—something we had never done before. The fact that there was a conscript national army meant that we had to reorganise our economy to fund and support the war. We had to throw everything into it.

This is what a big war costs. You have to change everything you do. You have to change your social order. Many of those changes would be applauded by many of us—women’s status was enhanced by this process. At that cost? Sometimes that is what it takes. Everything changed as a result of having a situation where men are reduced to statistics.

There is still doubt about the actual casualty figures. Although they were early 20th-century armies with mass literature and pay-books, we still do not know exactly how many died. It may be about half a million; we are not totally sure. It just goes to show how big and catastrophic this conflict was. What we take from this is that the whole nation is brought together to fund these types of activity. Everyone in power must take responsibility for the whole thing. They cannot stand back. They cannot ignore what is going on; it is not somebody else’s job. That is about the only thing I can say we can fully take forward from here. The individual suffering was catastrophic. The fact that it touched everyone is what we come back to and how the whole of society changed.

There is no way that we can remember this and try to get the full message without pointing out that the whole nation was drawn in, in a way that had never happened to us before. It was a new and traumatising moment in our history. Some people would take it as an example of what the state can do when it puts its mind to it. Half a million dead people in countries that are now our allies is quite a high price to pay for the control of the state. But let us please try to remember this when we go forward—remember exactly what was required to do this, and remember that, if we had tried really hard, we could at least have mitigated it, if not stopped it.

There are lessons to be taken here; some will be forgotten, some will be remembered properly, but we should at least challenge everybody when they talk about this and point out the fact that somebody, somewhere had to make those decisions.