My Lords, I will speak chiefly to Amendment 262 in my name, although in speaking after the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who suggested that the grown-ups should control anti-social behaviour by young people online, I note that there is a great deal of anti-social behaviour online from people of all ages. This is relevant to my Amendment 262.
It is a very simple amendment and would require the Secretary of State to consult with young people by means of an advisory board consisting of people aged 25 and under when reviewing the effectiveness and proportionality of this legislation. This amendment is a practical delivery of some of the discussion we had earlier in this Committee when we were talking about including the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Bill. There is a commonly repeated phrase, “Nothing about us without us”. It was popularised by disability activists in the 1990s, although in doing a little research for this I found that it originates in Latin in Poland in the 15th century. So it is an idea that has been around for a long while and is seen as a democratic standard. It is perhaps a variation of the old “No taxation without representation”.
This suggestion of an advisory board for the Secretary of State is because we know from the discussion earlier on the children’s rights amendments that globally one in three people online is a child under the age of 18. This comes to the point of the construction of your Lordships’ House. Most of us are a very long way removed in experiences and age—some of us further than others. The people in this Committee thinking about a 12 year-old online now are parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. I venture to say that it is very likely that the Secretary of State is at least a generation older than many of the people who will be affected by its provisions.
This reflects something that I also did on the Health and Care Bill. To introduce an advisory panel of young people reporting directly to the Secretary of State would ensure a direct voice for legislation that particularly affects young people. We know that under-18s across the UK do not have any role in elections to the other place, although 16 and 17 year-olds have a role in other elections in Wales and Scotland now. This is really a simple, clear, democratic step. I suspect the Minister might be inclined to say, “We are going to talk to charities and adults who represent children”. I suggest that what we really need here is a direct voice being fed in.
I want to reflect on a recent comment piece in the Guardian that made a very interesting argument: that there cannot be, now or in the future, any such thing as a digital native. Think of the experience of someone 15 or 20 years ago; yes, they already had the internet but it was a very different beast to what we have now. If we refer back to some of the earlier groups, we were starting to ask what an internet with widespread so-called generative artificial intelligence would look like. That is an internet which is very different from even the one that a 20 year-old is experiencing now.
It is absolutely crucial that we have that direct voice coming in from young people with experience of what it is like. They are an expert on what it is like to be a 12 year-old, a 15 year-old or a 20 year-old now, in a way that no one else can possibly be, so that is my amendment.
5.45 pm
I will briefly comment on a couple of other amendments in this group. I am really hoping that the Minister is going to say that the Government will agree with the amendments that replace the gendered term “chairman” with chair. I cannot imagine why we are still writing legislation in 2023 with such gendered terms.
I also want to comment on the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, whom we have not heard from yet. They are Amendments 202ZA and 210A, both of which refer to “journalistic material” and sources. What I want to put on record relates to the Minister’s response to my comments on journalistic sources and encryption on day 3 in Committee. He said then that
“there is no intention or expectation that the tools required to be used under this power would result in a compromising of those sources”.—[Official Report, 27/4/23; col. 1325.]
He was referring to journalistic sources. I have had a great number of journalists and their representatives reaching out to me, pointing to the terms used by the Minister. They have said that if those algorithms, searches or de-encryption tools are let loose, there is no way of being able to say, “That’s a bit of journalism, so the tool’s not going to apply to it”. That simply does not add up. The amendments in this group are getting into that much broader issue, so I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on them.