My Lords, I indicate my support in principle for what these amendments are trying to achieve.
I speak with a background that goes back nearly 40 years, being involved in health education initiatives, particularly in primary schools. For 24 years—not very good corporate governance—I was the chair of what is now the largest supplier of health education into primary schools in the United Kingdom, reaching about 500,000 children every year.
The principle of preventive health is not a million miles away from what we are talking about today. I take the point that was well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that piling more and more duties on Ofcom in a well-intentioned way may not have the effect that we want. What we are really looking for and talking about is a joined-up strategy—a challenge for any Government—between the Department for Education, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and probably the Department of Health and Social Care, because health education, as it has developed over the last 40 or 50 years, has a lot to teach us about how we think about creating effective preventive education.
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It is not just about children; it is about adults. In the readers’ problem page of any newspaper, whether from the left or the right of the political spectrum, the number of people, including those whom most of us would regard as intellectual peers or cleverer than us, who have been scammed in different ways, particularly through online intrusion, shows that it is very prevalent. These are clever, university-educated people who are being taken for a ride.
Yesterday I cleaned out the spam folder in one of my email accounts, which I do fairly quickly. As of about five minutes ago, I have three spam emails. In two of them, a major retailer seems to be telling me that I am the fortunate winner of a Ninja air fryer—not an offer that I propose to take up. The third purports to be from the Post Office, telling me that I have an exciting parcel to open. I am sure that if I clicked on it, something quite unpleasant would happen.
We need to do something about this. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about children saying that we would love this to be less addictive, is a very moot point because the companies know exactly what they are doing. Clearly, we want to encourage children to understand how those tools operate and how one can try to control, mitigate or avoid them, or point them out to others who may not be as savvy. As for the one that was most desirable, parents putting down their telephones, I confess that occasionally, when sitting as a Deputy Speaker in your Lordships’ House, I wish the Government Whips would spend slightly less time looking at their telephones, although I am sure that whatever they are doing is very important government business.
I do not expect the Minister to stand up and say that we have a solution. The tech companies need to be involved. We need to look at good or best practice around the world, which probably has a lot to teach us, but we can do this only if we do it together in a
joined-up way. If we try to do it in a fragmented way, we will put all the onus on Ofcom and it ain’t going to work.