Age Verification — House of Lords, 2019-06-20
Topic: Technology
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House I will repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for DCMS in the other place earlier today. The Statement is as follows: "Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement in relation to the implementation of age verification for online pornography. As the House knows, the Government announced that age verification for online pornography, under the Digital Economy Act, would come into force on 15 July 2019. It has come to my attention in recent days that an important notification process was not undertaken for an element of this policy, and I regret to say that this will delay the commencement date. I wanted to take the opportunity to come to the House as soon as possible to apologise for the mistake that has been made and explain its implications In autumn 2018, we laid three instruments before the House for approval. One of those instruments, the Guidance on Age Verification Arrangements, sets out standards that companies need to comply with. This should have been notified to the EU Commission in line with the technical standards and regulations directive, and it was not. Upon learning of this administrative oversight, I have instructed my department to notify this guidance to the EU and re-lay the guidance in Parliament as soon as possible. However, I expect that this will result in a delay in the region of six months As the House would expect, I want to understand how this occurred. I have therefore instructed my department’s Permanent Secretary to conduct a thorough investigation. That investigation will have external elements to ensure that all the necessary lessons are learned. Mechanisms will also be put in place to make sure that this cannot happen again. In the meantime, there is nothing to stop responsible providers of online pornography implementing age-verification mechanisms on a voluntary basis, and I hope and expect that many will do so The House will also know that there are a number of other ways in which the Government are pushing our objective of keeping young people safer online. The Online Harms White Paper sets out our plans for world-leading legislation to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. Alongside the White Paper, we also published the social media code of practice under the 2017 Digital Economy Act, which gives guidance to providers of social media platforms on appropriate actions they should take to prevent bullying, and insulting, intimidating and humiliating behaviours on their sites. We will also publish interim codes of practice detailing steps that we expect companies to take to tackle terrorist content and online child sexual abuse and exploitation. These will pave the way for the new regulatory requirements We set out in the White Paper our expectations that companies should protect children from inappropriate content. We will produce a draft code of practice on child online safety to set clear standards for companies to keep children safe online, ahead of the new regulatory framework. During the consultation on the White Paper, we heard about the technical challenges associated with identifying the specific ages of users, and so I have commissioned new guidance, to be published in the autumn, about the use of technology to ensure that children are protected from inappropriate content online The new regulatory framework for online harms announced in the White Paper will be introduced as soon as possible, because it will make a significant difference to action taken by companies to keep children safe online. I intend to publish the Government response to the consultation by the end of the year, and to introduce legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows after that, but I recognise that many Members of this House and people beyond it have campaigned passionately for age verification to come into force as soon as possible to ensure that children are protected from pornographic material they should not see. I apologise to them all for the fact that a mistake has been made which means that these measures will not be brought as soon as they and I would like But there are also those who do not want these measures to be brought in at all, so I make it clear that, although my Statement is an apology for delay, it is not a change of policy or a lessening of the Government’s determination to bring these changes about. Age verification for online pornography needs to happen, and I believe that it is the clear will of the House and those we represent that it should and that, in the clear interests of our children, it must".