Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who has spoken in this brief debate. The introduction of a new law requiring appropriate age verification measures for online pornography will help protect young people and children from potential harms from online pornography. It will also rightly hold commercial providers of online pornography responsible for the material they provide and profit from The Government of course take the protection of children and young people very seriously. To provide effective protection it is important that we have a robust regulatory system in place. These amendments seek to limit the scope of the regulatory functions that may be fulfilled by the BBFC by seeking the requirement that the same regulator must not be responsible for both identifying a non-compliant site and taking enforcement action against it. I shall first explain why, in identifying the BBFC as the preferred regulator, we think we have made the right choice The Government’s intention is that, subject to parliamentary approval, the BBFC will be the regulator responsible for identifying websites that do not have adequate age verification or are hosting extreme pornography, and then to give notice to the appropriate persons, be they payment service providers, ancillary service providers or ISPs. It is not intended that the BBFC will be designated as the regulator responsible for issuing financial penalties. That will be a role for a separate body, yet to be determined, but which will be approved by Parliament We are pleased to be working with the British Board of Film Classification as the intended age verification regulator, again subject to parliamentary approval. To respond to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on structure, the BBFC is an independent, not-for-profit company that has a proven track record of interpreting and implementing legislation as the statutory authority for age rating videos under the Video Recordings Act. It has unparalleled expertise in classifying content and it is committed to delivering the aims of age verification. It is the expert on editorial judgments over pornographic and other content The BBFC has been classifying cinema films since it was set up in 1912 and videos and DVDs since the Video Recordings Act was passed in 1984. It continuously has to make judgments on classification, openly and transparently. These decisions relate to a multimillion-pound industry and are subject to challenge. The BBFC’s work with mobile network operators on the self-regulatory regime for mobile content is a good example of where it successfully sets content standards, implements them and adjudicates transparently and accountably The BBFC will not operate without oversight. It must have regard to the statutory guidance from the Secretary of State to the regulator. This will provide a further opportunity to ensure that the regulator fulfils its duties in the way Parliament sees fit. As I said earlier, we are seeking views on this guidance before a final version is laid. Ultimately, the regulator’s decision-making process will be subject to oversight by the courts as there is the possibility of challenge by way of judicial review. This prevents it acting arbitrarily In our view, these amendments are unnecessary for the following reasons. First, Clause 17 already enables the Government to designate a person, or any two persons or more jointly, as age verification regulators. The importance of getting this measure right means that the Government remain open-minded and retain flexibility as to how best to respond to changing circumstances. If the BBFC is proven to be unable to deliver certain regulatory functions the legislation has the flexibility to overcome these problems Secondly, splitting the regulatory functions in the Bill so that the same regulator cannot identify non-compliant sites and enforce against them unnecessarily creates a middleman in the process. The BBFC will have to give notice to a second regulator, which will then pass that notice on to an ISP or other appropriate body. This is just red tape for no benefit. It makes sense that the body that makes the original determination should also be responsible for notifying relevant parties affected by that determination and for ensuring that that notification action is effective in achieving compliance Thirdly, our ambition is to have the age verification regime in place by spring 2018. We are determined to stick to that timetable. The NSPCC has set out the scale of the problem we face and we need to get on with protecting children as quickly as we can. If we need to invent an additional regulator that can only delay the result.