My Lords, I am grateful for those contributions. They address some very important issues, some of which we will deal with now and some of which we will deal with later during the progress of the Bill. To start at the end, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, made some interesting points regarding the statement that I made. We absolutely acknowledge some of them. I have listened to his suggestions. Our focus here is to protect children. That is what this Bill is for. That is what our manifesto commitment was. When he sees our suggestions, I hope that he will be able to contribute to the debate on Report—but I have noted everything he said.
The introduction of a new law requiring appropriate age verification measures for online pornography is a bold new step. It represents the first stage of ensuring that commercial providers of online pornographic material are rightly held responsible for what they provide and profit from.
Amendment 54B would require the regulator to publish guidance about the overarching duty of care on internet-service providers and ancillary service providers, and their responsibility to ensure that all reasonable steps are taken to ensure the safety of a child or young person involved in activities or interaction for which the service provider is responsible. The purpose of our measures is to protect children from pornographic material. Seeking to stretch the framework further to regulate companies on a different basis risks the delivery of our aim. However, that is not to say that we want to ignore the issue. We take the issue of child safety online seriously and engage intensively with the industry through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety to ensure that robust protections are in place.
The Government expect industry to play a leading role in internet safety provisions, as it is best placed to offer safety and protection to children and young people. We know that it is already doing this and has default protections for under-18s, including the use of parental controls and tools to allow users to flag content, protect user privacy as well as educate users on staying safe with information and advice. We will have further opportunities to discuss the role of the industry, including social media and internet service provider filters later in Committee.
Amendment 54D seeks to introduce a new clause with the requirement that the Secretary of State must consult on the role of the age verification regulator. The clause further seeks that the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report on the results of the consultation and the Secretary of State’s conclusions, with any appointments to be subject to approval in each House. The introduction of the measures requiring appropriate age verification for online pornography follows public consultation. We asked about the powers that a regulator should have and there was strong support for a number of responsibilities that we have introduced. The passage of this Bill has provided an important opportunity for debate on this and we have seen the introduction of an important new blocking power for the regulator, which we shall discuss later.
We are grateful to the DPRRC and the Constitution Committee for their reports, which a number of noble Lords mentioned. They made a number of recommendations about the designation of the regulator and how the regulator should fulfil its role. We are carefully considering those and will publish our response before Report.
Amendment 55, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, would specify that the Secretary of State is to designate the British Board of Film Classification as the age verification regulator. As the Committee will know, Clauses 17 and 18 provide for the designation of the regulator and we intend to designate the BBFC to carry out most—as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, reminded us—of the functions of the regulator. Indeed, some noble Lords may have seen the BBFC’s recent presentation to the Children’s Media and the Arts APPG.
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It is important that we work with organisations that have a proven record in their field and the right attributes to carry out the role effectively. This is why we are pleased to be working with the BBFC, which
has expertise in making editorial judgments over pornographic content. We also believe it is right that Parliament should have the opportunity to scrutinise this important appointment, and Clauses 17 and 18 enable that to happen. The noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Jones, my noble friend Lady Byford and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, all asked whether we should outline in the Bill who any additional regulators, if they are necessary, should be. We have said consistently that this could be a job for more than one regulator because it is a big task. The feedback from our public consultation and from our engagement with key stakeholders suggests that this is a task that could be dealt with by two regulators.
We propose that the BBFC should carry out the initial monitoring, assessing and notification work, and we are carefully considering alongside this the option for an enforcement regulator. But we understand that Parliament should be able to take a view on this. We continue to consider the appropriate timing for introducing civil sanctions for non-compliant providers, and for deciding who the regulator will be. This is a new system and this approach provides the appropriate level of flexibility and the right levers to ensure that the providers of pornographic material will be incentivised to comply. We have listened to the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and other noble Lords on this. Again, the DPRRC has made a recommendation on this, which we are considering, and to which we will respond ahead of Report.
Amendment 55B adds the requirement:
“The age-verification regulator must make an annual report to the Secretary of State … in particular on the effectiveness of … the provisions in Part 3 of reducing the number of children under 18 accessing pornographic material online … The Secretary of State must lay a copy of any report made under this section before each House of Parliament”.
The regulator will of course be expected to report on the impact of age verification measures but we do not think that it is right to prescribe this in the Bill. The importance of getting this measure right means that the Government remain open-minded and wish to retain flexibility as to how best to respond to changing circumstances, without placing additional burdens on the regulator. Any new scheme must be given time to fine-tune the changes required to establish the most effective system.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, asked about ancillary service providers, in connection with social media. I confirm, as she asked me to do, that it remains our view that under this legislation an internet site can be classified by the regulator as an ancillary service provider where it is enabling or facilitating the making available of pornographic or prohibited material, as I said at Second Reading. That means that such sites can be notified of pornographers to whom they provide a service. There is a range of potential ancillary service providers and the differing actions they could take are often technology-dependent. The regulator is consulting with the industry and we expect it to publish guidance on the circumstances in which it will notify ancillary service providers.
We think there is a fundamental difference between a pornography website that produces dangerous material, which can be closed down, and an ancillary service provider, which can make it available. The method of
notification is what we are expecting to use and we are reluctant to move further than that at the moment. We will see how it works. We do not want to get to the situation where we have to close down the whole of Twitter—which would make us one of two countries in the world that has done that.
On the basis of those explanations, I would be grateful if the noble Baroness felt able to withdraw her amendment.