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Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I’m an hour early so I’ll have to
scrap my opening paragraph which says ‘we’ve just heard from the Minister for Children’,
and say how good it is to follow Bill Thompson and his very thought-provoking remarks, quite
a lot of which philosophically I had a huge amount of sympathy for. So rather than as
it were read out the strict text, perhaps I could make my remarks in the context of
what Bill was saying and try and perhaps communicate to Bill the problems that I have as a politician,
and politicians that – the problems we’re trying to er overcome. And I think that what
the work that UKCCIS is trying to do as well to try and tackle some of the issues that
the internet is throwing up in terms of our society to put it bluntly.
I come to this as the Minister for the Internet. When I also tell you I’m the Minister
for Fashion, er I hope I communicate that one doesn’t necessarily have to know the
product to have policy responsibility for it. But I’ve found it a fascinating job,
which we also, Jeremy and I, covered it in opposition, and that covers a lot of issues.
It covers internet governance and the governance of the web which is a very important feature,
but it covers other social issues that arise such as the desire of consumers to have some
control over their data and privacy – either by understanding the deep semantics of Facebook,
or being able to have some say on whether they’re tracked over the internet. It includes
issues like net neutrality, but a very important issue is what we call access to inappropriate
content by children.
And there is a very important balance to be struck here because obviously we all celebrate
the extraordinary success of the web, the massive impact it’s had on our economy – worth
£100 billion a year – and we all look in awe at the millions of people who go online
everyday – 40 million users in the UK, pretty much most of the population – 2 billion
people online – and the exponential growth of the use of the internet and indeed of different
devices. A third of children, for example, aged between 12 and 15 now have a smartphone
and that’s how they’re accessing the web. And what we have to do is celebrate that success,
make sure that government doesn’t interfere inappropriately to stymie that success, recognise
that a lightly regulated world wide web has been hugely beneficial. But we then have to
address some of the issues that that er… er brings up. So as well as all the good,
there is to put in bluntly quite a bit of bad as well.
And we’ve already addressed this to a certain extent and the UK I think has been at the
forefront of this. The last government working with industry set up the Internet Watch Foundation,
which there was no argument about. There was absolutely no argument that there was a need
to try and tackle and reduce access to websites that are used by paedophiles or facilitate
child abuse. There can’t be any argument about that and I haven’t heard anyone argue
that that could give succour to regimes like China. And indeed, the rest of the world has
followed that example. And I think the rest of the world looks at the work of UKCCIS in
bringing together the myriad of stakeholders who are involved in this debate and thinks
it’s a very, very effective model of bringing together different voices to have to tackle
that.
But the issue of children inadvertently accessing or deliberately accessing inappropriate content
is a real live issue. And I’ll tell you just a story just to I think possibly help
Bill to understand the issues that we have to face, and I’m not saying that Bill by
the way that Bill that you’re saying don’t do anything, I think you were quite right
in saying that these are the challenges and hurdles we face. But we had a meeting with
MPs yesterday of every single political party: Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Conservative,
including some Conservatives who you would see jump at the chance to go on the Today
programme to say 'Don’t regulate this. Don’t regulate that. We don’t believe
in regulation'. And every single one of them bar none, wants the world wide web regulated
in order to try and prevent children accessing inappropriate content. And indeed some of
the Conservatives think we’re not doing enough, we’re going too slowly and we need
to do more. And survey after survey shows that mums and dads all want this as well.
And I think we put ourselves in the position as consumers and lay users of the web. And
I was interested by Bill’s talk because I think that probably trying to understand
technology for most of us is probably more difficult than trying to understand Wittgenstein.
And parents want easy ways to try and protect their kids. But I would say to the industry
that that mood in that room with those politicians is your hurdle, because they are the ones
that will be calling for regulation and there will be similar groups of politicians in virtually
every jurisdiction across the globe who want regulation. And I completely understand what
Bill was saying, which is the development of this technology is happening at such a
rapid pace that regulation and legislation can easily be out of date before the ink is
dry on them, which is another reason why we’re so keen to see industry take the lead and
drive things forward.
And I’ve said again and again at every single forum, all I think people are asking for is
simple measures that they can take to protect their family and no body is pretending that
the measures they take will be foolproof and 100% effective, but they want to see it be
as effective as possible. And we all know that a lot of work is being done. We’ve
seen the first BSI kitemark awarded to Netintelligence for their filtering software. I was encouraged
by the launch of TalkTalk’s HomeSafe product, even though there’s obviously a debate about
whether device filtering or network filtering is more effective, but again it seemed to
me to be a very consumer friendly way of saying to parents, this is what you can do if you
want to take measures to protect your family. And Mike Galvin from BT is leading in this
area. He’s doing fantastic work I think in bringing the industry along and persuading
people to introduce this kind of work.
I think what the government wants to see are clearer commitments around the handling and
communication of reports which highlight inappropriate content issues. For example, we want to see
clearer measures on websites and on ISPs to allow consumers to take what necessary action
they can take.
So that’s really what I came here to say, which is that I am a very committed minister
as a member of UKCCIS. I work closely with Tim Loughton and James Brokenshire. I have
good relationships I think across the industry. I’m grateful for the work that Mike Galvin
is doing in this. And all I would really say to the industry is this – please be ahead
of the curve. I don’t think ministers want to regulate. I absolutely understand how regulation
can be a blunt instrument but you I’m sure are aware of the concerns of parents who want
to see action here, and what we would like to see are consumer friendly, easy to use
options to allow parents where they can to block inappropriate content in the home or
indeed on the move. And we look forward to more measures coming from industry over the
next few months to address those concerns.