Shared Rural Network

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

I think I will need to write to my noble friend with some of the detail on her questions. I understand that the areas that will miss out are genuinely those which are both extremely sparsely populated and look more like the top of a mountain—that is, from a physical engineering point of view, the challenge of building the infrastructure is great. However, I am happy to write to my noble friend to clarify if I have misled her in any way.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Cumbrian local enterprise organisation, which probably contains a lot of tops of mountains. The area will probably be, according to independent analysis, the most affected by Brexit of any part of Britain. One of the themes of our efforts to reinvigorate the economy, after what will on any measure be a setback, is proper digital connectivity. Therefore, while I welcome the announcement, perhaps I might press the noble Baroness to commit to the House that there will be a target to cover the entire county of Cumbria with appropriate digital and mobile coverage, so that people there can fulfil their full potential commercially.

[Baroness Barran]

I hear the noble Lord’s extremely valid concerns about the county of Cumbria. I cannot confirm 100% coverage from the Dispatch Box today, but I am happy to confirm that in writing. However, I stress that those areas of the country which historically have had much poorer coverage, in particular Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, will be the greatest beneficiaries of this investment.

Regulating in a Digital World (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, like other speakers, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, and his committee on this useful report. I say at the outset that I am a director and trustee of Full Fact. It has been a great pleasure to discuss Communications Committee matters with many Members of your Lordships’ House, as I had the great privilege of doing that years ago when I was fortunate enough to chair the committee; those were some of the happiest times of my life in this House.

To make this report manageable, it was really sensible to set on one side many of the technical aspects of the internet—not least because I for my part cannot understand them—and a number of the aspects and implications of the phenomenon of large-scale data transfer in the context of areas such as the internet of things. Rather, we have a report that seems to concentrate on the relationship of the internet with individual human beings essentially in a personal capacity.

In this context, the internet is a complicated and potentially complicating intermediary between two separate things—a source of information and its consumer—which in turn may well involve commercial transactions and/or marketing of products or services in a way which, until recently, was unthinkable. I say as an aside that this may be one of the most abstract House of Lords reports I have read. This is not a criticism; it is a symptom of the difficulty of the problem we are looking at, which, in its domestic form, is merely part of a wider global problem which is embedded here in the United Kingdom—this is picking up on a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Maxton. We are talking about a fast-moving and ever-changing technology, and the techniques used to apply it, set in a global system.

I think this is the right starting point, because the report rightly comments that a “principles-based approach” is probably the only way to put in place a remotely relevant framework in such a fast-changing environment. From this starting analysis, it is important that the relationship between government—not only our Government—and those who effectively have the greatest influence and control over the net, the FAANGs of the moment, amounts to a reasonably amicable modus vivendi, each understanding the role of the other. The latter, who can organise much of their activity beyond the reach of any traditional Government, must retain consumer and public confidence, while Governments must try to ensure the benefits of this new technology are maximised for their citizens’ benefit.

It follows that Governments in the western world, many outside it—excluding certain authoritarian regimes—and the big tech companies, taking a longer view, have a mutuality of interest in working together. As Tim Berners-Lee, who was quoted at the beginning of the report, has said, the internet is potentially a great force for good. One should add to that proposition that it is one that is not going to go away. On the one hand, Governments need to enlist internet players to assist in dealing with human, financial, political and reputational harm, as well as bettering the human condition more generally. At the same time, internet businesses, by being involved in that, can expect a regime in which they will get a reasonable return—on which appropriate tax should be paid.

An important point contained in the report is that there should be as seamless a join as possible between online and offline rules of behaviour and conduct, although clearly there are some attributes unique to the internet, such as algorithms, which may require their own rules. Rules must be not only enforceable; where appropriate, they must be enforced.

As I have mentioned, while some of the problems which arise are essentially domestic, many are not. Sometimes those which are not are less obvious; for example, some of the corruption we have seen in domestic UK elections of late. Natural boundaries and traditional jurisdictions are in many cases irrelevant. Our country, like every other, must accept that.

A shortcoming of the report, which may be deliberate—for reasons I have touched on already—is the almost complete silence about the cross-border, cross-jurisdictional aspect of the internet’s workings. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, pointed this out, and allusion is made to it in the text. As the report points out, leaving the EU presents some real difficulties in this regard. They can, and no doubt will, be negotiated and dealt with in another way in a post-Brexit world, but the problem has always gone much further than the European Union. Collectively, Governments of the world must somehow evolve a universal and consistent framework for the modus operandi of the internet, as viewed from the perspective of consumers and enforcers, although exactly how that might be done is beyond my pay grade at the moment.

I think there are two parallel problems. First, jurisdictional difficulties need to be set aside to try to achieve some kind of workable international transactional homogeneity. As part of this, those who influence the way in which the internet works need to be brought into the rule-making process. This is not the traditional approach to lawmaking within the nation state, but there is a need for a system which brings about an agreed and accepted outcome into which there is general buy-in, subject in the last analysis to effective enforcement. If there is not, it will not work. Secondly, however that may be brought into being, the arrangements must be living, or they will rapidly become outdated, as has already been said.

Currently, in the midst of the Brexit crisis—if I may describe it that way—much of the focus of the debate has been on the legislative structure of the European single market. The system that emerges may make that look positively simple. If so, so be it, because unless we grasp this particular nettle, the likely outcome is an anarchic muddle.

At the start of my remarks, I commented on the somewhat abstract character of the report, only to then make a generalised and somewhat abstract speech myself. However, it seems to me that if a requirement of a regulated, working internet is to achieve its full potential in the wider public interest, it must be brought into being as a result of some quite radical actions, and radical thinking is required to do that. This is not simply a domestic issue which relates to domestic activities. It goes much further than that. International problems require international solutions.

Brexit: Movement of People in the Cultural Sector (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this report, the Government’s response to it and the eloquent introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, all focus on a significant aspect of the debate about Brexit which has not had sufficient attention paid to it.

Before continuing, I declare my interests in the register, pointing in particular to the fact that I am the chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership. One of the themes I have introduced into our activities is that we must focus on and promote culture. We should see it in a loose, modern sense as much as traditional, 19th-century “Kultur”—spelled with a capital “K”. In Cumbria, which is my home county, the most exciting cultural thing I have experienced was a performance—I use that word deliberately—on Derwentwater, where cars and bicycles went across the surface of the lake, and it was French.

It seems to me that the impact of Brexit on culture in this country falls into four distinct bits: first, the commercial impact on those who do it; secondly, its contribution to the UK economy and the Exchequer; thirdly, the cultural offering which is available for people in this country; and, fourthly, as part of the United Kingdom’s soft power.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Black, who explained to us how musicians so frequently spend a great deal of their life travelling abroad. Some years ago, I spent a couple of terms as a Member of the European Parliament. That was in the age of travel agents, and I recall talking to my travel agent and saying, “Of all your customers, am I the one who travels abroad the most?” She responded, “No, I’ve a customer who is a musician”. I thought that made the point vividly. Now, people can move backwards and forwards as easily as any of us can go from Scotland to England to carry on their business. The Government want all this to be changed.

An interesting aspect of all this came to me recently, because I am involved in a small ceramics festival. One of its themes is to try to bring in a number of continental potters. In practice, they load their cars up, normally somewhere in the northern part of the continent, come over to this country, go to a couple of fairs and sell a few pots, and that pays for their trip and covers the cost of their holiday. The paperwork that Brexit will entail probably means that they will no longer come, and in turn—who knows—that may even prejudice the festival itself.

It is important to realise the impacts of all this on the economy and the Exchequer, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has mentioned. It is worth recalling for a moment a point that has been made by the Commercial Broadcasters Association about how a large number of commercial broadcasters who took advantage of the European licence in this country are moving to Amsterdam—I was there the other day, and I must say that I can see why you would move there. It seems that one of the great reasons behind the vote for Brexit was that we objected to paying money to foreigners, but the effect of this will be to hand out wads of tenners to the Dutch Government.

Then there is the question of the cultural experience for those of us here in this country, if I may put it that way. As the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said, our culture is not ring-fenced by Britishness; it is linked to the other side of the channel. After all, we esteem van Dyck as one of the great painters and part of our cultural patrimony but, inconveniently for some, he was born in Antwerp. Some of the greatest images of the building we are in now were painted by Monet, who was not, as far as I know, an Englishman—although, since I gather that he stayed in the Savoy Hotel, he might have met the £30,000 threshold. There is an exhibition on in the Tate of van Gogh in London, and there is not the slightest doubt that had the rules now being proposed been in place, he would not have come and it would not be taking place. Several noble Lords have mentioned the appointment of Simon Armitage as the poet Laureate—a good poet, and I like his work. It is worth recalling that WB Yeats spent quite a number of years in London, and I do not think that he, as an Irishman, could do that any more. We will find that our cultural experiences in this country are degraded.

Finally—I do not think there is any need to elaborate on it—it will impact seriously on our soft diplomacy. Behind the situation now lies, as the report says, the four freedoms, which are at the heart of the concept of the European Union. I suppose that, as a supporter of the European Union, I am now very much out of fashion, but what we have been talking about has been an enormous benefit to our country and the people who live in it. As someone pointed out, the Government’s response to our changing circumstances seems to assume that everyone who comes here is a potential immigrant. In the case of cultural events, that is simply not true, because you cannot replace one person with another. No amount of training in the world would enable me to play a violin in a way that anyone else would wish to hear. It is as simple as that.

In the Government’s response is a picture of how they would like to see post-single market Britain relating to its neighbours. It indicates clearly how much damage may ensue. It echoes the mantra that the Government must deliver on Brexit but, after all, how do you deliver Brexit? There is only one way to do it, and that is to serve Article 50. We have done that. Once the Government have served Article 50, they are freed from the shackles of European law about how they conceive the future. It never was and is not now a vote for a no-deal Brexit; it was a vote for a future where the Government can exercise their discretion in a slightly different way from the past, which does not mean that we throw overboard everything that has gone before. In that, we have complete sovereignty, complete freedom to try—if we can succeed in negotiating it and getting others to agree—to do what we want. That should be pursued in the national interest.

If we look forward to the next chapter, that seems to me to be the role, prerogative and duty of the Government. They should cast aside,

“all private interest, prejudice and partial affections”,

in trying to bring that about. My noble friend the Minister got it right earlier in Question Time when he mentioned reciprocity. Is it not strange that reciprocity is being chucked out of the window?

Social Media: News

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on bringing forward this debate. I declare my interests as set out in the register.

It is my firm view that it is almost invariably technology, not politicians—not us—which determines the character of the world in which we live. That is nowhere better illustrated than in the transmission of information, particularly through the development of digital technology. Looking back, let us consider how information has been transmitted. First, it was by word of mouth. Then writing was developed, which led to messages being moved backwards and forwards. Then there was printing, which made the messages much more widely available. That, in turn, was distributed ever more effectively, not least by the development of the railways. Then, in the 19th century, we saw the possibilities of transmitting voice messages through telegraph and radio. In the last century, moving images were transmitted through television and so on. We have seen the development of engineering, enabling reverse path messages to be easily available, payment systems, all kinds of point-to-multipoint messaging and the creation of a whole spider’s web of relationships. We have seen in all that the privatisation and democratisation of the process of transmitting information. Now we are in a world where it is relatively easy to create complicated images and then transmit them cheaply all around the globe. No doubt there is an awful lot that none of us can imagine which will happen in the near future. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the topography of this landscape changes and, a decade on, I dare say that it will be very different from what we see now.

As has been mentioned, the key player for the last 400 years or so has been the concept of the publisher, because it is he who draws together all that has been going on. He inevitably, then, becomes the focus of the relationship between the information and the law, because, after all, authors are frequently men of straw. Of course, our current concern hinges around platforms: are they publishers or are they distributors? In our country, historically we have taken a very pragmatic and sensible view about distribution: the distributor is a mere conduit necessary for the dissemination of information to take place, particularly if he does not know what he is transmitting. What are platforms? Are they simply distributors or are they publishers? After all, they generate huge amounts of advertising and make all kinds of selection via algorithms. As my noble friend Lady Harding said, the old distinctions just do not seem to work anymore.

Many of the ills that have been pointed to in this debate could be dealt with in a domestic context if they fall within domestic jurisdiction. However, the internet and the big players do not; that is, after all, the point of the internet. They are more or less effectively footloose and fancy free across the net if they wish to be so, so the old-style general legal-based approach to general regulation is completely impractical. Unless we have a single global jurisdiction, it will not work. Rather, Governments must get together with these companies, which after all need Governments and the consumers as citizens to work out a responsible way of developing codes of conduct and modus operandi. This will not necessarily be straightforward, and I think means that Governments will have to treat these companies analogously to those other countries they deal with in intergovernmental negotiations. I do not suppose they will like that but it seems to me that is how it is. This has implications for democracy and all other kinds of parliamentary and legal behaviour.

At the end of the day, we must not forget the most important aspect of all, the principle of freedom of expression, for that is one of the fundamental attributes of liberty.