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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

I shall speak about amendment No. 242, which is in my name and that of seven other hon. Members, most of whom sponsored my ten-minute Bill on licensing child location services. The amendment would add to the list of activities relating to children that the Bill regulates the providing of information on the whereabouts of a legal minor that is derived from any electronic communications network. I set out the arguments in detail in my speech in March on my ten-minute Bill. I shall not, therefore, go into them all again but set out the background briefly. Twenty years ago, the internet was perceived as a plaything for boffins, not as something that would mushroom so amazingly. We regard it now as a force for good but we also understand that it can be a force for evil through the mushrooming of distribution, for massive profits, of, for example, child pornography and abuse and the distribution of criminal funds. We are running to catch up with ourselves to keep control of it. Mass surveillance of people through electronic means, sometimes without their knowledge, and potential electronic surveillance of children without the necessary controls to ensure that information does not get into the hands of people who would harm them, is another aspect of technology that is escalating. It is important to get to grips with the matter now and I hope that the Bill can be amended to do that, or that we can find some other mechanism for starting to license that development.