My Lords, before I talk to the amendments I had intended to address, I will make a very narrow point in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser. About 10 years ago, when I started doing work on children, I approached Ofcom and asked why all its research goes to 24, when childhood finishes at 18 and the UNCRC says that a child needs special consideration. Ofcom said, “Terribly sorry, but this is our inheritance from a marketing background”. The Communications and Digital Committee later wrote formally to Ofcom and asked if it could do its research up to 18 and then from 18 to 24, but it appeared to be absolutely impossible. I regret that I do not know what the current situation is and I hope that, with the noble Lord, Lord Grade, in place it may rapidly change overnight. My point is that the detailed description that the noble Baroness gave the House about why it is important to stipulate this is proven by that tale.
I also associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Allan, who terrified me some 50 minutes ago. I look forward to hearing what will be said.
I in fact rose to speak to government Amendments 196 and 199, and the bunch of amendments on access to data for researchers. I welcome the government amendments to which I added my name. I really am delighted every time the Government inch forward into the area of the transparency of systemic and design matters. The focus of the Bill should always be on the key factor that separates digital media from other forms of media, which is the power to determine, manipulate and orchestrate what a user does next, see how they behave or what they think. That is very different and is unique to the technology we are talking about.
It will not surprise the Minister to hear that I would have liked this amendment to cover the design of systems and processes, and features and functionalities that are not related to content. Rather than labouring this point, on this occasion I will just draw the Minister’s attention to an article published over the weekend by Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, the UK’s foremost expert on gambling and gaming addiction. She equates the systems and processes involved in priming behaviours on social media with the more extreme behaviours that she sees in her addiction clinics, with ever younger children. Professor Bowden-Jones is the spokesperson on behavioural addictions for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and the House ignores her experience of the loops of reward and compulsion that manipulate behaviour, particularly the behaviour of children, at our peril.
I commend the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, for continuing to press the research issue and coming back, even in the light of the government amendment, with a little more. Access to good data about the operation of social media is vital in holding regulated companies to account, tracking the extent of harms, building an understanding of them and, importantly, building knowledge about how they might be sensibly and effectively addressed.
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My concern here is that, when making a concession, the Government most often reach for a review at some time in the future. In the case of research, the future is
too late. We are at an inflection point right now, at which digital tech may or may not overwhelm our job market and our understanding of what is real and what is not. It has the potential for societal and technological change that is both beneficial and harmful, but at such a scale that it will certainly transform society as we understand it before 18 months or two years—the point at which the review is triggered and then takes place.
I feel passionately that, in the context of where we are now and the game of catch-up we have been playing for the last couple of decades, it should not be left to the companies to decide what is or is not in the public arena. As a minimum, independent research would allow the regulator to better understand the operation of social media platforms. More broadly, it would keep our universities on a level playing field—as a number of noble Lords have commented—and, maybe most importantly, ensure that the regulator, academia and civil society have a seat at the table of the future of tech.
For that reason, I again ask the Government, as a minimum, to accept the shorter date that was proposed or perhaps to think again before Third Reading.