My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for tabling this amendment and for noble Lords’ cogent argument. I am aware that the amendment is drawn from the noble Baroness’s Private Member’s Bill, which received its Second Reading on 6 December. I thank her for the tributes that she paid to the Government for the progress that has been made.
I have read the proceedings of that Second Reading debate and, out of interest, I read the debate about the internet in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on 16 January. It is interesting to contrast them. Those two debates show both the downside and
the upside of the internet, but they both show how utterly astonishing is the speed of change. That is a point we need to bear clearly in mind.
The debate on the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, was passionate, committed and informed. We all agree, as my noble friend Lord Gardiner, made clear, on our huge concern for the issues that we are discussing. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and my noble friend Lady Benjamin have made very clear the dangerous implications of exposure to inappropriate online material. We share the common objective to make sure that children and young people are as safe as possible when they are operating online. To answer the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, we support the principles of the amendment, rather than its measures, as she put it.
I read with great interest the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, to the debate on that Bill on 6 December. Responding for the Labour Front Bench, he showed great sympathy, as one would expect, for what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, was arguing, but he noted,
“it needs more thinking”,
and especially,
“to make it fit for purpose and to guard against unintended consequences”.—[Official Report, 6/12/13, col. 532.]
He rightly put his finger on our shared desire to counter the risks of the internet, and the difficulty of ensuring that we do so effectively.
My noble friend Lord Lucas has pointed out some of the technological changes which already pose challenges to the way the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, has drawn up her proposals. This field is moving fast, and new social media emerge all the time. It is for that reason that we believe that the best way forward is to challenge the industry, which knows this field best, to engage and to take responsibility. I emphasise strongly that we do not rule out legislation, but right now we believe that the approach that we are taking is likely to be the most effective. An industry-led, self-regulatory approach will have most impact, allow greatest flexibility for innovation and is likely to be faster than any regulatory measures. Legislation can rarely adapt and change quickly enough to respond to the constantly evolving online environment.
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We also need to bear in mind the global nature of this industry. That is why it is vital that the industry engages. Self-regulation allows a broad range of interested parties to participate and, due to the global nature of the internet, is the best way for organisations to secure agreement. We remain committed to this. It is already working well, with good progress being made to develop internet safety measures, as noble Lords have referred to.
Others are looking at what we are doing here in the UK. According to the Family Online Safety Institute, the UK is a global net exporter of internet safety best practice. Ernie Allen, the president and CEO of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children in the United States, a leading global movement to protect children from sexual exploitation, said that, when it comes to protecting children online,
“There is no question that the UK is well ahead of the rest of the world on this complex, difficult issue”.
To develop effective measures to keep children safe online, to which we are all committed, the Government continue to work closely with the industry through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. This brings together representatives from industry, manufacturers, charities, academia, social media, parents’ groups and Government. It is through the council and its partnership-working model that voluntary and self-regulatory measures have been developed to ensure children are safer online. It is essential to engage industry so that the solutions developed are fleet, flexible and fully responsive to the rapid rate of technological change. Technological solutions are one aspect of a wider remedy which includes education and awareness for parents and children, and building children’s resilience, as we heard in our earlier debates.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, calls for default filtering of adult content, requiring users to opt in with internet service providers and mobile operators to receive this content. We understand the intention behind this provision. I assure the noble Baroness that this is being secured. The vast majority of mobile customers are already covered by default-on filters, as she noted. The Government are working with the mobile sector to ensure that all customers are protected in this way. Between them, the four largest operators cover in the region of 85% of the UK’s 82 million or so mobile connections. Three of the four operators already provide filters. The fourth, which we understand has about 9 million mobile connections, has committed to change to default-on in 2014.
In December, my noble friend Lord Gardiner spoke about the four largest internet service providers, which together cover just under 90% of the home broadband market, and the commitment they had given in relation to the implementation of family-friendly network-level parental control filters. This commitment means that all new customers will be prompted to make a choice about the application of filters. Importantly, filters will be pre-selected so that, in those homes where parents do not engage, they would be applied. I am pleased to update noble Lords that three of the four ISPs have now met these commitments and Virgin Media will be doing so shortly. Additionally, through this year, they will have contacted all of their existing customers to invite them to set the filters too.
Importantly, these filters will be easy to use and will give parents the choice about the content coming into their home. For example, parents in a household with younger children may wish to place greater restrictions on content than parents in households with teenagers. This is important because we believe, in line with the advice from experts, that engaging parents is also critical in ensuring that children are kept safe. Tanya Byron said in her 2008 report Safer Children in a Digital World that:
“At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim”.
That surely remains true today. We certainly would not want default filters to allow parents to disengage. We want to make sure that parents are provided with the tools to keep their children safe.
To ensure that parents are engaged and aware of the risks that their children face when online, and are confident in dealing with them, we have asked the four major ISPs to use their marketing expertise to reach customers to raise awareness. The ISPs have committed to running a three-year, large-scale awareness campaign, with a budget of £20 million for the first year, to inform parents about internet safety. This campaign will be launched in the coming months. Of course, we are also taking action on educating children and young people on the risks that they face online. As was mentioned in the earlier debates, as part of our reforms to the national curriculum, e-safety will be taught from September this year as part of the computing curriculum to all four key stages—that is, pupils from the age of five to 16.
We have just had in-depth debates on PSHE and SRE, and I shall not repeat all the arguments that were made. However, there were actions there on internet safety and many other areas, and I thank noble Lords for their tributes on the actions being taken. We also welcome the new supplementary guidance which is being developed by the PSHE Association, the Sex Education Forum and Brook. This guidance will address changes in technology and legislation since 2000, in particular by seeking to equip teachers to help protect children and young people from inappropriate online content and from online bullying, harassment and exploitation. In addition, the Sex Education Forum has produced guidance on the best way for teachers to tackle the dangers associated with online pornography.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, also calls for an enhanced role for Ofcom to regulate the standards of filtering. She and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, are right to emphasise the importance of Ofcom. The noble and learned Lord made a clear case for Ofcom’s ability to address this area. In his speech on internet safety last July, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister asked Ofcom to report on parental awareness and their take-up and confidence in the tools available to them to keep their children safe. I am pleased to say that the first of these reports was published on 15 January and will be used as a baseline against which to measure the impact of the internet safety measures being rolled out this year, so we will see what progress is being made. One of the most illuminating findings was about those parents who did not have parental controls installed. One in eight said that it was because they were not aware that they existed or did not know how to install them. Clearly, we need to see an improvement on that in the next report.
I hope that noble Lords will agree that the Government, in working with the industry, are seeking very hard to make the internet a safer place for children and young people and that encouraging progress has been made in this arena. Again, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for her comments on that. Indeed, since the Second Reading of her Bill, three of the four major ISPs are now offering filtering tools to new customers and the final one will do so imminently, Ofcom has produced the first of its reports and will be producing the next in the spring and work continues to ensure that all mobile networks
are offering filters. In addition, the major ISPs are making great progress on their parental awareness campaign.
We are far from complacent and will continue to push forward to make further progress. I know that this is an area about which we are all extremely concerned. I reiterate: we have always said that, if the industry does not go far enough or move quickly enough on this important issue, we would not hesitate to look at legislative options. But the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, highlighted the complexity of this. The most effective way to do this is to make sure that the industry engages, and I am sure that the industry will hear what noble Lords have said. For the reasons that I have given, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.