Protecting Children Online

Debate between Claire Perry and David Burrowes

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I am grateful, as always, for the chance to speak in and listen to a debate in the House on this incredibly important topic, and I will not focus on the unfortunate partisan tone of some of the proposals. I would love to support the motion, and if it had been better worded or perhaps more accurate it would have been easier to do so.

I want to respond specifically to some of the criticisms raised in the motion and refute them absolutely. Criticism has been made of the implementation of the Bailey review recommendations, and those of the parliamentary inquiry in which I was joined by more than 60 Members from across this House and from the other place including—as I have said—two hon. Ladies from the Labour Benches and several of my colleagues from the Government Benches. The inquiry came up with a series of recommendations. In 2011, the Bailey review recommended active choice in which parents have to choose whether they want filters, as well as more help for parents. The four main fixed-line internet service providers control 80% of the home internet market—this relates to a point raised earlier. They signed a code of practice to offer such a filter, and said they would roll it out within a year by October 2012. That deadline was met, but as many Members will remember, a cross-party group of MPs and peers did not feel that it was adequate or went far enough.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I pay great tribute to my hon. Friend who has championed this cause in the House, including in an Adjournment debate back in November 2010, which also coincided with the Safermedia conference. She has been raising the issue of harm related to pornography, and making the point that it is not just a fringe issue for one campaign organisation but a concern shared across the House. That momentum has helped to drive these changes, which will continue, and we do not need to resort to partisanship.

[Claire Perry]

I came to this agenda as a mother, a feminist and someone who is deeply concerned about the long-term social experiment we are conducting with our young children. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said it was good that we had an atheist leftie on the panel as that helped balance out some of the others, and it truly was a coalition of many minds coming together—I hope that will not be depicted in Hansard as an accurate description.

Another recommendation of the cross-party inquiry was for internet service providers to introduce account filters that protect all devices in the home with one click. Only four out of 10 parents in the country have installed device-level protection of any sort on their home computers. That is completely unacceptable, but the situation is complicated. We all have multiple internet-enabled devices and it is simply not good enough to say that consumers are stupid. We called on internet service providers to introduce one-click filtering on the home network, but as the Minister said, we were told by more than one ISP that that was technically impossible. Guess what? They are all going to implement it by the end of the year—a testament to the ongoing campaigning of this House.