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Internet and Video Games

I thank my hon. Friend for that suggestion. I must say that, although targets and similar things are very unpopular, name and shame can sometimes work very well indeed. We also want levels of search to be locked in, so that that is where users go each time—that is the default setting. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), we also want prominently displayed safety information on video games. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme spoke about pre-screening of user-generated internet content. I am very glad to see that MySpace is doing that. It is that kind of responsible action that we are looking for, as it means that people can trust a company. Many people have said that the internet is like the wild west in the gold rush, and that sooner or later it will be regulated. Obviously, what we need is for it to be regulated sooner rather than later. We need the service providers themselves to come forward and show that they are the sort of responsible organisation whose services we can trust our children and vulnerable adults—they should not be left out of this picture—and even some adults who are not so vulnerable, like myself, to use. I myself have been quite shocked to find that I can accidentally put in a search parameter that will produce something that was certainly not what I, a boring MP, was looking for. We must ensure that the search engines have a clear link to child safety information and safe search settings on the front page of their website. I very much like the ““stranger danger”” analogy that my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend used, because we must teach children the dangers of the internet. It is sad to make children more scared than interested, but fortunately, the internet is so interesting that children tend to overcome their fear. We must also work on developing parental control software. As the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), rightly said, the watershed is terribly porous. In fact, it is like a sieve. People can get straight though it, or straight by it. We need that control software to communicate automatically with websites’ age verification systems, to prevent children from signing up to sites with false dates of birth. I know that the question of identity cards is one that divides this House, and not on party lines. However, one can see the value of some form of age verification, some sort of card. It is useful when it comes to alcohol and cigarettes, and it is certainly useful when it comes to buying video games and other material on the internet.