Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful for those contributions. They address some very important issues, some of which we will deal with now and some of which we will deal with later during the progress of the Bill. To start at the end, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, made some interesting points regarding the statement that I made. We absolutely acknowledge some of them. I have listened to his suggestions. Our focus here is to protect children. That is what this Bill is for. That is what our manifesto commitment was. When he sees our suggestions, I hope that he will be able to contribute to the debate on Report—but I have noted everything he said The introduction of a new law requiring appropriate age verification measures for online pornography is a bold new step. It represents the first stage of ensuring that commercial providers of online pornographic material are rightly held responsible for what they provide and profit from Amendment 54B would require the regulator to publish guidance about the overarching duty of care on internet service providers and ancillary service providers, and their responsibility to ensure that all reasonable steps are taken to ensure the safety of a child or young person involved in activities or interaction for which the service provider is responsible. The purpose of our measures is to protect children from pornographic material. Seeking to stretch the framework further to regulate companies on a different basis risks the delivery of our aim. However, that is not to say that we want to ignore the issue. We take the issue of child safety online seriously and engage intensively with the industry through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety to ensure that robust protections are in place The Government expect industry to play a leading role in internet safety provisions, as it is best placed to offer safety and protection to children and young people. We know that it is already doing this and has default protections for under-18s, including the use of parental controls and tools to allow users to flag content, protect user privacy as well as educate users on staying safe with information and advice. We will have further opportunities to discuss the role of the industry, including social media and internet service provider filters, later in Committee Amendment 54D seeks to introduce a new clause with the requirement that the Secretary of State must consult on the role of the age verification regulator. The clause further seeks that the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report on the results of the consultation and the Secretary of State’s conclusions, with any appointments to be subject to approval in each House. The introduction of the measures requiring appropriate age verification for online pornography follows public consultation. We asked about the powers that a regulator should have and there was strong support for a number of responsibilities that we have introduced. The passage of this Bill has provided an important opportunity for debate on this and we have seen the introduction of an important new blocking power for the regulator, which we shall discuss later We are grateful to the DPRRC and the Constitution Committee for their reports, which a number of noble Lords mentioned. They made a number of recommendations about the designation of the regulator and how the regulator should fulfil its role. We are carefully considering those and will publish our response before Report Amendment 55, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, would specify that the Secretary of State is to designate the British Board of Film Classification as the age verification regulator. As the Committee will know, Clauses 17 and 18 provide for the designation of the regulator and we intend to designate the BBFC to carry out most—as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, reminded us—of the functions of the regulator. Indeed, some noble Lords may have seen the BBFC’s recent presentation to the Children’s Media and the Arts APPG.