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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the amendment standing in the name of my noble friend and I commend to the House the very measured way in which she has moved it today. Amendment 149 has a light touch and a very sensible approach. It does not just rely on the voluntarism that is implicit in the Minister’s remarks in Committee, remarks which I have carefully read. I was sorry not to be able to be present to hear them at the time. I do not believe that the only factor that shapes a young person is exposure to gratuitous violence, as the Minister implied earlier on, any more than I think that exposure to information on the internet is necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, the internet can be the most extraordinary tool for good and it can be used in an education setting in the most wonderful ways. Parents want to have some control over what their children see, though, and we should encourage them to want to have some say over what their children are exposed to. That is why we need a more robust approach towards child protection, and merely relying on the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, wonderful though that body is and good work though it undoubtedly does, is not sufficient. The difficulty with depending on a body that in turn is forced to depend on a voluntary approach is eloquently illustrated by examination of one of the council’s current initiatives: the proposal of a BSI kite mark for filtering software, to which my noble friend referred. I shall mention two things in that regard. First, while a kite mark is helpful, if parents are already aware of filtering options, there is a more urgent need to make them aware of filtering options at the point of sale and for the duration of the contract, hence the importance of this amendment. Secondly, an e-mail from the council that I have seen states: ""This is still very much work in progress"." This reminds me of the problem relating to the timetable for voluntary agreements on signing up to the Internet Watch Foundation’s list of blocked websites. The comparison pertains directly to time proofing; it shows why legislation is needed and how it can complement the council’s work. Voluntary arrangements by themselves are simply not enough. In 2004 British Telecom started using technology to block illegal child abuse images at ISP level. These measures stop customers accessing these images, deliberately or by accident. Early in 2006 the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Home Office, Vernon Coaker, said that the Government wanted all ISPs to use similar technology to block content found on the Internet Watch Foundation’s list of child abuse websites. Mr Coaker said that 90 per cent of ISPs had either already implemented or pledged to implement the blocks by the end of 2006. It beggars belief that there are companies that still do not block this content. To put things into perspective, Twitter has been around since 2006, YouTube since 2005 and Facebook since 2004. The internet moves very quickly and the Government need to move along with it at the same speed. Given that a UK council survey has shown that only 15 per cent of parents have provided filtering for their children’s phones, it is clear that making parents aware of filtering options is an urgent priority. We should not wait for ineffective and slow voluntary arrangements to work when more effective and simple legal alternatives such as my noble friend’s amendment are on the table—that is, unless we are prepared to give the impression that child protection issues are of only minor importance. I strongly support the amendment.