My Lords, I speak mainly to support Amendment 220E, to which I have added my name. I am also delighted to support government Amendment 98A and I entirely agree with the statutory consultees listed there. I will make a brief contribution to support the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who introduced Amendment 220E. I thank the chief executive at Ofcom for the discussions that we have had on the designation and the Minister for the reply he sent me on this issue.
I have a slight feeling that we are dancing on the head of a pin a little, as we know that we have an absolutely world-leading organisation in the form of the Internet Watch Foundation. It plays an internationally respected role in tackling child sexual abuse. We should be, and I think we are, very proud to have it in the United Kingdom, and the Government want to enhance and further build on the best practice that we have seen. As we have already heard and all know, this Bill has been a very long time in coming and organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation, which are pretty certain because of their expertise and the good work they have done already, should be designated.
However, without knowing that and without having a strong steer of support from the Minister, it becomes harder for them to operate, as they are in a vacuum.
Things such as funding and partnership working become harder and harder, as well, which is what I mean by dancing on the head of a pin—unless the Minister says something about another organisation.
The IWF was founded in 1996, when 18% of the world’s known child sexual abuse material was hosted in the UK. Today that figure is less than 1% and has been since 2003, thanks to the work of the IWF’s analysts and the partnership approach the IWF takes. We should say thank you to those who are at the front line of the grimmest material imaginable and who do this to keep our internet safe.
I mentioned, in the previous group, the IWF’s research on girls. It says that it has seen more girls appearing in this type of imagery. Girls now appear in 96% of the imagery it removes from the internet, up almost 30 percentage points from a decade ago. That is another good reason why we want the internet and online to be a safe place for women and girls. As I say, any delay in establishing the role and responsibility of an expert organisation such as the IWF in working with Ofcom risks leaving a vacuum in which the risk is to children. That is really the ultimate thing; if there is a vacuum left and the IWF is not certain about its position, then what happens is that the children who are harmed most by this awful material are the ones who are not being protected. I do not think that is what anybody wants to see, however much we might argue about whether an order should be passed by Parliament or by Ofcom.
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The Minister has already mentioned the Internet Watch Foundation tonight. It would be very helpful if he could set out whether he does expect Ofcom to work with the IWF to deliver its obligations under the Bill and whether he will commit to discussing this with both Ofcom and the IWF, due to the impact this uncertainty is having on the IWF. I am sure, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, suggested, that I and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, would be happy to attend any such meeting as well, if that would help, but I do not think that we need necessarily to hold hands with these two extremely grown-up organisations in meeting the Minister. Obviously, the IWF has to have some sort of commitment in relation to its funding, to help it, as we have said, to scale up to offering services to the 24,000 companies that could be attempting to access its services to comply with the Bill.
I think it is fair to say this is a probing amendment. It is an important amendment, and I think that without that confirmation or indication from the Minister, we do leave a vacuum in which this hateful material proliferates, and children become ever more vulnerable.