My Lords, I assure your Lordships that I rise to speak very briefly. I begin by reassuring my noble friend Lord Moylan that he is loved in this Chamber and outside. I was going to say that he is the grit in the oyster that ensures that a consensus does not establish itself and that we think hard about these amendments, but I will revise that and say he is now the bungee jumper in our ravine. I think he often makes excellent and worthwhile points about the scope and reach of the Bill and the unintended consequences. Indeed, we debated those when we debated the amendments relating to Wikipedia, for example.
Obviously, I support these amendments in principle. The other reason I wanted to speak was to wish the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—Beeban—a happy birthday, because I know that these speeches will be recorded on parchment bound in vellum and presented to her, but also to thank her for all the work that she has done for many years now on the protection of children’s rights on the internet. It occurred to me, as my noble friend Lady Harding was speaking, that there were a number of points I wanted to seek clarity on, either from the Minister or from the proponents of the amendments.
First, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, mentioned the age-appropriate design code, which was a victory for the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. It has, I think, already had an impact on the way that some sites that are frequented by children are designed. I know, for
instance, that TikTok—the noble Baroness will correct me—prides itself on having made some changes as a result of the design code; for example, its algorithms are able, to a certain extent, to detect whether a child is under 13. I know anecdotally that children under 13 sometimes do have their accounts taken away; I think that is a direct result of the amendments made by the age-appropriate design code.
I would like to understand how these amendments, and the issue of children’s rights in this Bill, will interact with the age-appropriate design code, because none of us wants the confetti of regulations that either overlap or, worse, contradict themselves.
Secondly, I support the principle of functionality. I think it is a very important point that these amendments make: the Bill should not be focused solely on content but should take into account that functionality leads to dangerous content. That is an important principle on which platforms should be held to account.
Thirdly, going back to the point about the age-appropriate design code, the design of websites is extremely important and should be part of the regulatory system. Those are the points I wanted to make.
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In relation to how my noble friend Lord Moylan is approaching the Bill, I would say this: having been a Minister when the British Government—and, indeed, other Governments—had no power at all, it was very telling when the then Prime Minister threatened Google with legislation on the issue of child abuse images, saying, “If you do not do something, I will legislate”.
At that time, I was on the tech side of the argument. Google went from saying, “It is impossible to do anything” to identifying 130,000 phrases that people might type into search engines when searching for child abuse images, which, in theory—I have not tried this myself, I hasten to add—would come up with no return and, indeed, a warning that the person in question was searching for those images.
Again, I say to my noble friend Lord Moylan—who I encourage to keep going with his scepticism about the Bill; it is important—that it is a bit of a dead end at any point in his argument to compare us with China. That is genuinely comparing apples with oranges. When people were resisting regulation in this sphere, they would always say, “That’s what the Chinese want”. We have broadcasting regulation and other forms of health and safety regulation. It is not the mark of an autocratic or totalitarian state to have regulation; platforms need to be held to account. I simply ask the proponents of the amendments to make it clear as they proceed how this fits in with existing regulations, such as the age-appropriate design code.