My Lords, I had better start by declaring an interest. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, because my interest is directly related to the ombudsman she has just been praising. I am chairman of the board of the Trust Alliance Group, which runs the Energy Ombudsman and the telecoms ombudsman. The former was set up under the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007 and the latter under the Communications Act 2003.
Having got that off my chest, I do not have to boast about the efficacy of ombudsmen; they are an important institution, they take the load off the regulator to a considerable degree and they work closely with the participating companies in the schemes they run. On balance, I would prefer the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act scheme because it involves a single ombudsman, but both those ombudsmen demonstrate the benefit in their sectors.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, pretty much expressed the surprise that we felt when we read the Government’s response to what we thought was a pretty sensible suggestion in the Joint Committee’s report. He quoted it, and I am going to quote it again because it is such an extraordinary statement:
“An independent resolution mechanism such as an Ombudsman is relatively untested in areas of non-financial harm”.
If you look at the ones for which I happen to have some responsibility, and at the other ombudsmen— there is a whole list we could go through: the Legal Ombudsman, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman—there are a number who are absolutely able to take a view on non-financial matters. It is a bit flabbergasting, if that is a parliamentary expression, to come across that kind of statement in a government response.
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There has been distilled wisdom during the course of this debate. Although there may be differences of view about whether we have half a loaf or a full loaf, what is clear is that we are all trying to head in the same direction, which is to have an ombudsman for complaints in this sector. We need to keep reminding everybody that this is not a direct complaints system: it is a secondary complaints system, and you have to have exhausted the complaints within the social media platform. My noble friend described some of the complexity of that extremely well, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for setting out some of the complexities and the views of the expert group.
I mentioned the Government’s response to the Joint Committee, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said, we already have an independent appeals system in the video-sharing platform legislation. Why are we going backwards in this Bill? We should be being more comprehensive as a result of this. This Bill is set to dismantle an essential obligation that supports victims of online harm on video-sharing platforms. We have to be more comprehensive, not less. The South West Grid for Learning’s independent appeals process, which has been mentioned already today, highlights that a significant number of responses received by victims of harmful content from industry platforms were initially incorrect, and RHC was able to resolve them.
Some of these misunderstandings are not necessarily complaints that need adjudication; sometimes it is actually miscommunication. We have heard during the debate that other countries are already doing this; several noble Lords have mentioned Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. We need that ability also, and this is where I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, although there was a nuance in her argument. It was a probing amendment—how about that? The fact that representative organisations can defend users’ rights for largescale breaches of the law is very important, and I was rather surprised by her criticism of the fact that lobby groups can bring action. Orchestrating complaints is the nature of group or class actions in litigation, so the question is begging to be tested. Those complaints need to be tested, and it is perfectly legitimate for a group to bring those complaints.
The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, mentioned the research published by the Children’s Commissioner which showed that 40% of children did not report harmful content because they felt there was no point in doing so. That is pretty damning of the current situation. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my noble friend made the very strong point that we do not want to bog down the regulator. We see what happens under the data protection legislation. The ICO has an enormous number of complaints to deal with directly, without the benefit of an ombudsman. This scheme could alleviate the burden on the regulator and be highly effective. I do not think we have heard an argument in Committee against this; it must be the way forward. I very much hope that the Minister will take this forward after today and install an ombudsman for the Bill.