Digital Economy Bill

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I suggest that Members speak for up to 10 minutes, including interventions. We should then be able to get everybody in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great delight to follow the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). She has shown from what she has said this afternoon and from when she was in office the level of expertise, interest and commitment that she has in this area of work. It is always a delight to hear from the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who, unusually, was a round peg in a round hole when he was appointed to the job, and he got a little bit rounder as the year went on. Seriously, though, it is a delight to hear from him.

We all know as Members of Parliament that we live in a digital economy, because we have so many emails from constituents and others. This email is not from a constituent, but I thought that I would share it with the House. It says:

“Dear RhonddaYfronts,

Just watched you and that other dull dishcloth of an MP on Daily Politics. You both sum up clearly why Labour will never win an election anytime soon. Uninspiring, pathetic career politicians with no substance or gravitas.

Finally, are you still on Gaydar, Grindr, or Scruff? If so, what’s your profile as I quite fancy you.”

Self-praise is no praise.

As the two former Secretaries of State have already acknowledged, the creative industries are absolutely essential to this country. They were worth £87.4 billion to the UK economy in 2015. Creativity lies at the heart of it all, which is why I welcome all the measures that relate to strengthening the intellectual property law. Some 355 million music tracks and 24 million films were illegally downloaded between March and May of this year. We do need to tackle that if we are to protect those who create that value—those who are at the imaginative heart of this country. My only question about clause 26 is whether the definition is strong enough, but that is a matter for us to deal with in Committee.

We also need a strong and independent BBC. This is one of my biggest disappointments with the Bill and everything that has happened since 2015. The BBC is funded by the licence fee in the main. Last year, that amounted to £3.6 billion. That sounds like a lot of money, but it is worth bearing in mind that Sky in that same year had a revenue of nearly £12 billion, three times as much, and £2 billion of profit. I do have one anxiety. I do not expect the former Secretary of State to respond to this, but I think that in his heart he agrees that it was entirely wrong and wholly inappropriate to put the payment of the over-75s’ licence fees on to the BBC. Even more importantly, a part of the Bill breaches the BBC’s fundamental independence, because it turns the BBC into an arm of the Department for Work and Pensions, and that is wholly to be deprecated. In time, I think that the Government will regret that. There is an element of cowardice in that, because if the Government want to get rid of the free television licences, they should do it themselves; it should be a manifesto commitment in a general election, and then they should proceed. To make the BBC carry out the decision-making process on who gets a concessionary licence is wholly wrong. Incidentally, the whole deal happened after a meeting between the former Chancellor and Rupert Murdoch. It just shows that nothing ever changes in this country.

May I just ask the Minister—I hope that he will be able to respond later—when will we get the draft charter? Lord Ashton of Hyde said in the House of Lords that its publication would be in September. I hope that the Government are not intending to publish it when the House is not sitting, but they therefore have only two more days, and then we are meant to have a debate in October. [Interruption.] The former Secretary of State will doubtless tell us. [Interruption.] Perhaps the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) will tell us later when he gets the chance.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Mr Vaizey, I was thinking of calling you next. If you want to go down the list, carry on and I will ensure that it happens.

[Chris Bryant]

It is always good—is it not, Mr Deputy Speaker?—to see the right hon. Gentleman doing abject.

The digital economy is important beyond just the creative industries. We have the highest rate of contribution to our GDP of any country in Europe. Some 11% of jobs in the UK are now related to the digital economy, and that part of the economy has grown two and a half times faster than any other part. The digital economy also plays to our national strength in terms of the English language, music, drama, sport and gaming. Nevertheless, I worry that the present Government—maybe we did it when we were in government as well—are always wanting to pat themselves on the back, when actually it will be difficult, despite constant striving, to ensure that everyone can participate. There are still lots of people who have just 2 megabits per second. There are people who, when they have 10 megabits per second, will have contention rates that make it very difficult indeed for them even to use iPlayer effectively. I hope that the ministerial team will not want to keep congratulating themselves.

As I said, in many rural areas, including in my constituency, 70% of people have no access to 4G. The former Prime Minister has now left the House, but his obsession with Polzeath was never matched by success, because Polzeath still has terrible mobile coverage. As far as I can see, unless someone wants to correct me, the mobile infrastructure project was a complete waste of money—£150 million spent on 75 masts. That is £2 million per mast, by my rough arithmetic, and that is if all of them were built. It would be nice to know what has happened there.

I support the measures on pornography, to protect young people from images that would be inappropriate for them, but I, like the right hon. Member for Maldon, think that it is too unclear how that will be achieved. If you just ask, “Are you over 18?” it is a bit like going to the United States of America and being asked, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Nazi party of Germany between 1933 and 1945?” I suspect that not many people say yes.

The right hon. Member for Basingstoke is absolutely right about online abuse. I commend her for the work that she and others have done through her Committee and elsewhere. It is very important because many people, especially women, are finding that the internet is not a safe and happy place to be. It is far from happy. She is right that there is no clear definition of online abuse. The Crown Prosecution Service guidelines are inadequate and are preventing police from investigating in many instances where they should be taking action.

A Demos study earlier this year showed that in just three weeks, 6,500 women were called “slut” or “whore” in the UK on Twitter alone. Half of teachers now report that they receive online abuse either from parents—which is scandalous enough—or from their own pupils, and very little action is taken.

Many Jewish colleagues in the House have had absolutely hideous abuse—the kind of abuse that one would have thought ended in 1945, yet it now seems to be around as part of a supposedly acceptable political discourse.

There are real jurisdictional problems. I reported an instance relating to someone who was making death threats to me into my office and, more importantly, wanted to put antifreeze in halal meat in Sainsbury’s. When an attempt was made to prosecute, because the person was based in Germany, the German police refused to act, on the basis that it was just a British politician being attacked by a British national who happened to be in Berlin. I hope that the Government will examine some of these jurisdictional issues. Facebook, Apple and many others are far too slow in co-operating with the police, and I believe that what counts as evidence of ownership of a site is far too indistinct.

The internet can be an echo chamber, turning mild annoyance into a claustrophobic fury, and under the cloak of anonymity, people think they can get away with anything. We need to put a stop to that.