My Lords, this has been a good debate. I am glad that a number of noble Lords mentioned Lord Puttnam and the committee that he chaired for your Lordships’ House on democracy and digital technologies. I responded to the debate that we had on that; sadly, it was after he had already retired from your Lordships’ House, but he participated from the steps of the Throne. I am mindful of that report and the lessons learned in it in the context of the debate that we have had today.
We recognise the intent behind the amendments in this group to strengthen the UK’s approach to media literacy in so far as it relates to services that will be regulated by the Bill. Ofcom has a broad duty to
promote media literacy under the Communications Act 2003. That is an important responsibility for Ofcom, and it is right that the regulator is able to adapt its approach to support people in meeting the evolving challenges of the digital age.
Amendments 52A and 91 from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and Amendment 91A from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, seek to introduce duties on in-scope services, requiring them to put in place measures that promote users’ media literacy, while Amendment 98 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, would require Ofcom to issue a code of practice in relation to the new duty proposed in his Amendment 91. While we agree that the industry has a role to play in promoting media literacy, the Government believe that these amendments could lead to unintended, negative consequences.
I shall address the role of the industry and media literacy, which the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, dwelt on in her remarks. We welcome the programmes that it runs in partnership with online safety experts such as Parent Zone and Internet Matters and hope they continue to thrive, with the added benefit of Ofcom’s recently published evaluation toolkit. However, we believe that platforms can go further to empower and educate their users. That is why media literacy has been included in the Bill’s risk assessment duties, meaning that regulated services will have to consider measures to promote media literacy to their users as part of the risk assessment process. Additionally, through work delivered under its existing media literacy duty, Ofcom is developing a set of best-practice design principles for platform-based media literacy measures. That work will build an evidence base of the most effective measures that platforms can take to build their users’ media literacy.
In response to the noble Baroness’s question, I say: no, platforms will not be able to avoid putting in place protections for children by using media literacy campaigns. Ofcom would be able to use its enforcement powers if a platform was not achieving appropriate safety outcomes. There are a range of ways in which platforms can mitigate risks, of which media literacy is but one, and Ofcom would expect platforms to consider them all in their risk assessments.
Let me say a bit about the unintended consequences we fear might arise from these amendments. First, the resource demands to create a code of practice and then to regulate firms’ compliance with this type of broad duty will place an undue burden on the regulator. It is also unclear how the proposed duties in Amendments 52A, 91 and 91A would interact with Ofcom’s existing media literacy duty. There is a risk, we fear, that these parallel duties could be discharged in conflicting ways. Amendment 91A is exposed to broad interpretation by platforms and could enable them to fulfil the duty in a way that lacked real impact on users’ media literacy.
The amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes proposes a duty to promote awareness of financial deception and fraud. The Government are already taking significant action to protect people from online fraud, including through their new fraud strategy and other provisions in this Bill. I know that my noble friends Lord Camrose, Lord Sharpe of Epsom
and Lady Penn met noble Lords to talk about that earlier this week. We believe that measures such as prompts for users before they complete financial transactions sit more logically with financial service providers than with services in scope of this Bill.
Amendment 52A proposes a duty on carriers of journalistic content to promote media literacy to their users. We do not want to risk requiring platforms to act as de facto press regulators, assessing the quality of news publishers’ content. That would not be compatible with our commitment to press freedom. Under its existing media literacy duty, Ofcom is delivering positive work to support people to discern high-quality information online. It is also collaborating with the biggest platforms to design best practice principles for platform-based media literacy measures. It intends to publish these principles this year and will encourage platforms to adopt them.
It is right that Ofcom is given time to understand the benefits of these approaches. The Secretary of State’s post-implementation review will allow the Government and Parliament to establish the effectiveness of Ofcom’s current approach and to reconsider the role of platforms in enhancing users’ media literacy, if appropriate. In the meantime, the Bill introduces new transparency-reporting and information-gathering powers to enhance Ofcom’s visibility of platforms delivery and evaluation of media literacy activities. We would not want to see amendments that would inadvertently dissuade platforms from delivering these activities in favour of less costly and less effective measures.
My noble friend Lord Holmes asked about the Online Media Literacy Strategy, published in July 2021, which set out the Government’s vision for improving media literacy in the country. Alongside the strategy, we have committed to publishing annual action plans each financial year until 2024-25, setting out how we meet the ambition of the strategy. In April 2022 we published the Year 2 Action Plan, which included extending the reach of media literacy education to those who are currently disengaged, in consultation with the media literacy task force—a body of 17 cross-sector experts—expanding our grant funding programme to provide nearly £2.5 million across two years for organisations delivering innovative media literacy activities, and commissioning research to improve our understanding of the challenges faced by the sector. We intend to publish the research later this year, for the benefit of civil society organisations, technology platforms and policymakers.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, in his Amendment 186, would stipulate that Ofcom must levy fees on regulated firms sufficient to fund the work of third parties involved in supporting it to meet its existing media literacy duties. The Bill already allows Ofcom to levy fees sufficient to fund the annual costs of exercising its online safety functions. This includes its existing media literacy duty as far as it relates to services regulated by this Bill. As such, the Bill already ensures that these media literacy activities, including those that Ofcom chooses to deliver through third parties, can be funded through fees levied on industry.
I turn to Amendments 188, 235, 236, 237 and 238. The Government recognise the intent behind these amendments, which is to help improve the media
literacy of the general public. Ofcom already has a statutory duty to promote media literacy with regard to the publication of anything by means of electronic media, including services in scope of the Bill. These amendments propose rather prescriptive objectives, either as part of a new duty for Ofcom or through updating its existing duty. They reflect current challenges in the sector but run the risk of becoming obsolete over time, preventing Ofcom from adapting its work in response to emerging issues.
Ofcom has demonstrated flexibility in its existing duty through its renewed Approach to Online Media Literacy, launched in 2021. This presented an expanded media literacy programme, enabling it to achieve almost all the objectives specified in this group. The Government note the progress that Ofcom has already achieved under its renewed approach in the annual plan it produced last month. The Online Safety Bill strengthens Ofcom’s functions relating to media literacy, which is included in Ofcom’s new transparency-reporting and information-gathering powers, which will give it enhanced oversight of industry activity by enabling it to require regulated services to share or publish information about the work that that they are doing on media literacy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, asked about the view expressed by the Joint Committee on minimum standards for media literacy training. We agree with the intention behind that, but, because of the broad and varied nature of media literacy, we do not believe that introducing minimum standards is the most effective way of achieving that outcome. Instead, we are focusing efforts on improving the evaluation practices of media literacy initiatives to identify which ones are most effective and to encourage their delivery. Ofcom has undertaken extensive work to produce a comprehensive toolkit to support practitioners to deliver robust evaluations of their programmes. This was published in February this year and has been met with praise from practitioners, including those who received grant funding from the Government’s non-legislative media literacy work programme. The post-implementation review of Ofcom’s online safety regime, which covers its existing media literacy duty in so far as it relates to regulated services, will provide a reasonable point at which to establish the effectiveness of Ofcom’s new work programme, after giving it time to take effect.
Noble Lords talked about the national curriculum and media literacy in schools. Media literacy is indeed a crucial skill for everyone in the digital age. Key media literacy skills are already taught through a number of compulsory subjects in the national curriculum. Digital literacy is included in the computing national curriculum in England, which equips pupils with the knowledge, understanding and skills to use information and communication technology creatively and purposefully. I can reassure noble Lords that people such as Monica are being taught not about historic things like floppy disks but about emerging and present challenges; the computing curriculum ensures that pupils are taught how to design program systems and accomplish goals such as collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data.