I completely support the right hon. Member’s point—I would love to see this happening on an annual basis. I am sure that the Ministers who have shepherded the Bill through would be terrified of that, and that the Government team sitting over there are probably quaking in their boots at the suggestion, but given how fast this moves, I think that this would be incredibly important.
The Government’s record on post-implementation reviews of legislation is pretty shoddy. If you ask Government Departments what percentage of legislation they have put through a post-implementation review in the timeline they were supposed to, they will say that it is very small. Some Departments are a bit better than others, but given the number of reshuffles there have been, some do not even know which pieces of legislation they are supposed to be post-implementation reviewing. I am concerned that this legislation will get lost, and that there is no legislative back-up to any of the mechanisms for reviewing it. The Minister has said that it will be kept under review, but can we have some sort of governmental commitment that an actual review will take place, and that legislation will be forthcoming if necessary, to ensure that the implementation of this Bill is carried out as intended? We are not necessarily asking the Government to change it; we are just asking them to cover all the things that they intend it to cover.
On end-to-end encryption, on child sexual exploitation and abuse materials, and on the last resort provider—I have been consistent with every Minister I have spoken to across the Dispatch Box and every time I have spoken to hon. Members about this—when there is any use of child sexual exploitation material or child sexual abuse material, we should be able to require the provider to find it. That absolutely trumps privacy. The largest
increase in child sexual abuse material is in self-generated content. That is horrific. We are seeing a massive increase in that number. We need providers to be able to search—using the hash numbers that they can categorise images with, or however they want to do it—for people who are sharing this material in order to allow the authorities to arrest them and put them behind bars so that they cannot cause any more harm to children. That is more important than any privacy concerns. Although Ministers have not put it in the Bill until this point, they have, to their credit, been clear that that is more important than any privacy concerns, and that protecting children trumps those concerns when it comes to abuse materials and exploitation. I am glad to see that that is now written into the Bill; it is important that it was not just stated at the Dispatch Box, even though it was mentioned by a number of Members.
3.15 pm
I have spoken about the huge number of online harms, the huge number of issues with accessing the internet and the huge number of concerns we have for the future, but I also need to say that the internet is a wonderful place. It is absolutely great to be able to go and play online games. It is great to be able to have a community of people that I can speak to online and have a conversation with. It is good that the Government have included in some of the risks the issues about platforms where adults can contact children, for example. That was another thing I addressed during the course of the amendments. It is great that people can find their tribe online in a way that they perhaps cannot do in real life. It is brilliant that people can have a try-out at being someone else online. That is not about trying to confuse or upset people or about catfishing. Sometimes we need to have a wee bit of self-exploration in order to try and work out who we are. There are so many positive aspects of the internet, but we need to ensure that children and the most vulnerable adults in particular are kept safe online.
This is not the perfect Bill. This is not necessarily the Bill that I would have liked to see. It has gone through so many changes and iterations over the time we have been trying to scrutinise it that some of it has gone back to what it previously looked like, except the harmful content in relation to adults. I am pleased that the internet will be a safer place for our children and our children’s children. I am pleased that they will have more protections online. I have an amount of faith and cautious optimism in the work of Ofcom, because of how fast it has been scaling up and because of the incredible people it has employed to work there—they really know what they are talking about. I wish the Government and Ofcom every success in ensuring that the Bill is embedded and ensuring that the internet is as safe as possible. I would just really like a commitment from the Minister on ensuring that this legislation is kept under proper review and that legislative change will be made, should we identify any loopholes.