My Lords, I will start with the final point of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I remind him that, beyond the world of the
smartphone, there is a small company called Microsoft that also has a store for software—it is not just Google and Apple.
Principally, I say well done to the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, in deploying all of her “winsome” qualities to corral those of us who have been behind her on this and then persuade the Minister of the merits of her arguments. She also managed to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Allan of Misery Guts, that this was a good idea. The sequence of research, report, regulation and regulate is a good one, and as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, reminded us it is being deployed elsewhere in the Bill. I agree with the noble Baroness about the timing: I much prefer two years to four years. I hope that at least Ofcom would have the power to accelerate this if it wanted to do so.
I was reminded of the importance of this in an article I read in the Guardian last week, headed:
“More than 850 people referred to clinic for video game addicts”.
This was in reference to the NHS-funded clinic, the National Centre for Gaming Disorders. A third of gamers receiving treatment there were spending money on loot boxes in games such as “Fortnite”, “FIFA”, “Minecraft”, “Call of Duty” and “Roblox”—all games routinely accessed by children. Over a quarter of those being treated by the centre were children.
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The article reported that Apple’s and Google’s app stores are
“increasingly offering games with gambling-style mechanics”—
systems addictive by design rather than safe by design. Leon Xiao, a loot box expert and PhD fellow at the IT University of Copenhagen, reports that
“there were informal standards for these games—such as a requirement to publish information about the probability of winning on a slot machine spin—but even these were not being adhered to”.
He is quoted as saying:
“Apple says if you want to upload your game to the Apple Store, you need to make disclosures about the probability of randomised features”.
He continued:
“We checked in 2021 and a third of companies were not doing it. Existing regulation is not being enforced”.
I gather that the Minister’s department has a working group to examine loot boxes. An update on that now, or in writing if he would prefer, would be helpful. The main point of raising this is apparent: app stores are an important pinch point in the digital user journey. We need to ensure that Ofcom has a proper look at whether including them helps it deliver the aims of the Bill. We should include the powers for it to be able to do that, in addition to the other safeguards that we are putting in the Bill to protect children. We strongly support these amendments.