Leaving the EU: Mobile Roaming Charges Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Chi Onwurah
Main Page: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)Department Debates - View all Chi Onwurah's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Leaving the EU: Mobile Roaming Charges
Chi Onwurah Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Jeremy Wright
As far as I can tell, we are discussing an urgent question about whether mobile roaming charges will apply after our departure from the EU. I will repeat what I have said already: we should all want, when we have the opportunity, to exercise our democratic rights to prevent no deal and vote for a deal instead. If that does not happen for any reason and no deal occurs, the Government intend to be ready for it. We intend to give consumers the protection that we still can and look forward to the Opposition’s support in doing so.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The abolition of roaming charges was just one of the ways in which the European Union stood up to the tech giants in the interests of ordinary consumers. Given the Government’s absolute reluctance to do the same—they are only now looking to address online harm and are still completely ignoring algorithmic control and data exploitation—will the Secretary of State commit to matching evolving European Union tech regulation, or explain why not?
Jeremy Wright
I am afraid I do not accept the hon. Lady’s premise. It is not true that the Government have only now started to talk about online harms: we produced a Green Paper on internet safety some considerable time ago and we have talked about it repeatedly. The hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson) and I have discussed exactly the tone of the Government’s likely response and the hon. Lady will see a White Paper shortly. I am sure she would expect that we approach this subject in the proper way, so that when we produce the actions that we intend to take they stick, have effect, are robust and achieve what she and I both want to see.