Queen’s Speech

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to point out the essential contradiction in the Government’s media and digital legislation.

I welcome the Online Safety Bill and look forward to its arrival in this Chamber in the autumn. I am a great supporter of its emphasis on the duty of care to be placed on digital platforms to ensure that they dramatically reduce the dissemination of hate and disinformation online. This will help combat the polarisation and fracturing across our society that has been facilitated, and even generated, for a decade and a half by the platforms’ “attention economy” business model, which is designed to engage and enrage users.

However, the Government need to complement this legislation with massive support for the great institutions that not only combat polarisation with their universality of content but refute disinformation with a mandate to tell the truth: British public service broadcasters. Much of the media Bill and the Government’s Up Next broadcasting White Paper, however, will weaken these bulwarks of the battle for an open society in the digital age.

Like the authors of the Online Safety Bill, I hope it will be a world-beating piece of legislation—a model for other countries to follow. The Government’s acceptance of so many recommendations from the Joint Committee has improved it yet further. However, I fear it still holds a threat to free speech with the vague terms of the clause on

“priority content that … presents a material risk of significant harm to an appreciable number of adults”.

It allows the Secretary of State, in consultation with Ofcom, to use regulations to update the definition of harmful content. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, this gives the Minister enormous power to control content that many people would see as offensive but may be part of the debate in a lively democracy. In the aggressive culture wars that divide the western world, it is important not to close down content just because it is offensive. Likewise, the carve-out for journalism is welcome, but it includes content

“generated for the purposes of journalism”.

This might need to be refined or it will allow all users to claim exemption as journalists. Perhaps a public interest defence could be included, as in the Defamation Act.

This legislation needs to go hand in hand with the rapid granting of statutory powers to the new Digital Markets Unit, so I am glad to read the Government’s response to A New Pro-Competition Regime for Digital Markets and the draft digital markets, competition and consumer Bill. The DMU was set up over a year ago after an excoriating report by the Digital Markets Taskforce, which found that the dominance of the big platforms had led to an appalling lack of competition in many digital markets.

The new draft legislation has excellent proposals to enforce binding codes of conduct on large platforms to prevent them crowding out competition. This will be crucial in breaking open the shocking monopolies in the digital advertising market, uncovered by the Digital Markets Taskforce, and will allow news publishers to be paid for their content, giving a much-needed boost to our national and regional legacy media. However, it is only draft legislation. The DMU needs to be empowered to fight for competition online as soon as possible. Every week delayed means that another digital start-up is stifled. Can the Minister tell the House when the Government intend to go beyond the draft Bill and introduce legislation?

These two pieces of legislation on the digital economy will go far in controlling polarisation and disinformation on the internet, but I fear that they are not reinforced by the Government’s media agenda. The Government claim that the reforms suggested for the BBC and Channel 4 in the Up Next White Paper and the media Bill will help make them fit for the digital age. Many of the reforms are welcome. The new prominence regime will ensure that PSB content is easy to find on designated platforms; it has long been called for by the industry. Equally welcome is the regulatory level playing field set out in the Bill for video-on-demand platforms. I look forward to supporting the Government in these important updates to the media regime.

However, I fear that many of the other reforms will damage the power and importance of publicly owned PSBs. The media Bill’s prime purpose is to privatise Channel 4. The central issue is its remit for programming content. The Minister for Digital Infrastructure, Julia Lopez, has promised that the channel’s programming under private owners will remain experimental and innovative and provide news and current affairs, which are central to the role of PSBs in the internet age.

Investigative journalism, however, is risky and expensive to produce. Programmes such as Channel 4’s “Dispatches” and “Unreported World”, as well as the hour-long news in prime time, must be preserved by the new owners. Noble Lords have only to look at the schedules of the commercial PSBs to see that shareholders’ demands mean that content is safe and guaranteed to reach a big audience. In the interest of universality, it is important that the core programming remit includes news and current affairs, shown on the main channel. I worry that, in offering

“our public service broadcasters more flexibility in terms of how they deliver their obligations”,

the White Paper will allow them to hive off public service programmes to obscure digital channels.

The Up Next White Paper will require the new owners to commission a minimal volume of programming from independent producers, especially in the regions and nations. As pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, there is a big danger that that remit will be reduced to make the channel more attractive to new buyers. As the noble Baroness also said, there has to be a remit for spending on training in the industry, which is crying out for skilled workers. How does this fit in with the Government’s levelling-up agenda?

Likewise, the Government say they are supporting the BBC, the essential mission of which is to provide universal, available and reliable information; yet, after 30% cuts over the last 10 years and a 2% freeze in the licence fee, this measure can only further damage the corporation’s core mission. The BBC is at a tipping point, where it just does not have the money to provide an eclectic enough range of content to be universal. I urge the Government to ensure that the BBC is put on the firmest financial footing, so that it remains a British beacon of reliable content in the rough seas of the internet. This country deserves an internet bound by a duty of care to its users and complemented by the PSB sector, which should be dedicated to giving reliable information and education to all the people of Britain and of the world.