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Internet and Video Games

Life is too short. We interviewed many people, and Dr. Tanya Byron was certainly one of the most impressive witnesses to have given evidence in my three years on the Committee. She certainly disarmed me when she said, following a particularly hard and robust session of questioning representatives of YouTube and Google, that she found me scary. I have rarely been silenced so effectively and comprehensively. I did not know what to say. Like you, Mr. Bercow, I have three young children. They are aged nine and a half, seven and two and a half. When we started our inquiry, like many parents I was rather wary of displaying my ignorance about the internet, social networking and gaming. When it comes to video games and consoles, my wife is tantamount to being the Taliban—they are banned, because of the time that she fears they will take away from reading, learning music and other activities. I am very much one of those parents who, as Dr. Byron put it, do not necessarily"““feel equipped to help their children””" in that respect. Over the summer, I became aware of certain things following our report. The growth of video-sharing sites such as YouTube spans video and what we traditionally call the internet. I was watching the funny series of excerpts along the lines of the German film ““Downfall”” on that site. They picture a number of characters, from Alex Ferguson complaining about the impending loss of Ronaldo, to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister trying to find voters in Glasgow, East. Frankly, it is the really bad language that makes them funny to adults, but I do not necessarily want my children to be exposed to that. That is a real issue in terms of classification for the safety council to take on as it proceeds. My ignorance was reinforced last night after a discussion about the very innocent children’s Christmas party that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) is organising again this year. In the course of my children’s strict rations of ““Club Penguins””, ““Super Mario””, ““RuneScape”” or ““Yu-Gi-Oh!”” online, and their sourcing of endless cheat engines for video games such as ““Age of Empires””, my laptop screen at home had become clogged with all sorts of icons and programmes that had appeared from the internet. Most pernicious was a purported anti-virus programme called ““Virus Recovery 2008””—I hope that the authorities take note of that name—which was paralysing the computer. It is a particularly stubborn piece of what is technically termed ““adware””, which tries to sell a programme. It is probably a complete con. It implied that my laptop was stuffed full of trojans, worms, viruses—all fictitious, no doubt. Until last night I had never deleted a programme in my life, so after lecturing my son I was run through the process by a castigated nine-year-old: toolbar, settings, control panel, Add/Remove—and we could not find it. I then got a lecture that it was probably a ghost programme hiding somewhere else, and so it was. It was duly deleted and my son was out of the dog house, and I certainly learned much more than he did. My awareness of my ignorance was deepened. That experience and this inquiry have made me only too aware of the importance of knowing what our children are doing on the internet, particularly when we are much less computer savvy than they are. I want to focus on a few main issues that are outstanding with regard to the inquiry report and the Government’s response. As the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford has stated, we were all shocked at the complacency of Google and YouTube in particular. They pleaded that pre-screening was simply uneconomic and impractical, and that it did not work to pre-screen content that was uploaded, or to screen it in any way for harmful content before responding to complaints by users who flagged up that content. We did not find that persuasive because other firms, including MySpace, which has been mentioned, certainly do that. It was discouraging to find companies such as Google and YouTube hiding behind the e-commerce directive as an excuse for not undertaking that activity. I am sure that it is more a question of profitability than it is of being unviable. We were impressed by many of the companies that gave evidence, but certainly not by the company that recently showed a video, which the hon. Gentleman outlined, that purported to be a gang rape. We also had the experience of the company that showed the young child on Merseyside who was shot dead, and the sites that glorify gang violence. There is also the issue of that small tail of internet service providers that are failing to co-operate in blocking illegal content from the internet, which the Government and the new council will make it a priority to address. We were certainly impressed by the facility that Microsoft had afforded UK users, of having one clear button to report harmful content and problems. We hope that the council and the Government will urge the industry to come to an agreement to follow that model in the UK, which has been adopted by the local management of Microsoft in this country. I welcome the Government’s response that the issues relating to the e-commerce directive need to be clarified so that it does not have the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for internet-based companies to remove content or to edit their sites, for fear of being complicit and of being held to account. That would be a nonsense. Like other colleagues, during the investigation I was impressed by the work and dedication of the CEOP Centre, headed by Jim Gamble. The Government have accepted its importance as a body with expertise from the voluntary sector, as well as from the industry and regulators, and that it is making great strides towards getting to those people who would harm our children and vulnerable people. It appeared that some questions about funding and the way in which CEOP can push its agenda compared with other countries were outstanding. Australia was a notable example where television advertising is funded and regularly seen. I hope that questions about CEOP’s funding are addressed urgently. With respect to video games, which are banned in my household, except when they are streamed over the internet in the hour that my children are allowed, I would like the Government and the council to resolve the issue of dual classification, as it is confusing. We went for classification by the British Board of Film Classification because we felt it was more familiar, although that is perhaps a reflection of our age and of having gone to the Wrexham Rio when we were growing up. It is important that any confusion is resolved as soon as possible.