Ofcom: Protection of Children Codes

Question

15:10:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the draft Protection of Children Codes published by Ofcom on 24 April under the Online Safety Act 2023.

My Lords, we welcome Ofcom’s protection of children codes, which will make a substantial difference to the online experience of children. From July, platforms will be required to use measures to protect children—such as highly effective age assurance and filtering out harmful algorithms—or face enforcement action. We will monitor implementation carefully, and Ofcom has said that it is clear that the codes are iterative. However, the codes are the foundation, not the limit, and we will not hesitate to strengthen the law further to ensure the safety of our children, if needed.

My Lords, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, of which I am a member, has drawn these codes to the attention of your Lordships’ House. The committee has particular concerns, especially around the potential regulatory gaps in the codes produced by Ofcom because they do not require regulated services to address all the risks identified in the risk assessments. Does my noble friend the Minister agree with Ofcom’s interpretation of the Online Safety Act? Will her department bring forward an urgent amendment to the Act to close this loophole and require regulated services to mitigate all the risks to children online—which Ofcom itself has comprehensively evidenced in its research—that those services might identify in their own risk assessments?

I thank my noble friend for that question. I should make it clear that Ofcom’s codes will improve child safety online and go beyond similar regimes elsewhere to achieve this. By regularly conducting thorough risk assessments, services can proactively identify emerging threats and adapt safety measures accordingly. The Government’s measures in the code allow Ofcom to hold companies accountable for their overall management of risks to children. Ofcom will monitor implementation of risk assessment processes and code measures, building on its approach where needed. The Government will separately monitor whether legislation needs to be strengthened.

My Lords, Ofcom has identified live-streaming as a functionality which causes harm. There is nothing in the codes requiring the tech companies to mitigate this risk. Does the Minister agree that such an urgent issue, which cannot wait until Ofcom’s additional safety measures consultation, should be included in the present children’s codes?

The noble Viscount has raised an important issue. Ofcom has recognised that live-streaming can pose specific risks to children and will consult on proposals to reduce these risks, alongside a number of other measures. It will publish this consultation before the Summer Recess. The Act and Ofcom’s codes are clear: services are required to use highly effective age assurance to prevent children encountering primary priority content, including pornography. That will extend to live-streaming services that allow pornography.

My Lords, I declare my ombudsman interest as set out in the register. The SLSC questioned, quite rightly, how practical it is for children to complain about harmful content and noted that it was unclear what further action children could take if a complaint was rejected by a service provider. How will Ofcom and the Government ensure that complaint mechanisms are truly practical, accessible and designed with a children-first approach? What independent recourse will children have if their complaints about harmful content are rejected by service providers?

My Lords, I pay tribute to the work that the noble Lord has done in promoting ombudsman services. He will know that the codes and the Act require that all service providers provide a named person to receive any complaints and for them to be able to demonstrate that they are acting upon them. We are aware that we need to monitor how effectively that is working, and, if needs be, we will supplement that with other measures. For the time being, we want to see that the named person and a proper complaints process is working as it should be.

My Lords, the Online Safety Act sets out in Section 1 that regulated services must be “safe by design, and … designed and operated in such a way that … a higher standard of protection is provided for children than for adults”. This requirement is the result of an amendment that was brought forward in this place. However, currently, Ofcom’s codes do not go far enough to actually bring this into practice. Will my noble friend confirm that the Government will urgently amend the Online Safety Act to introduce a statutory code of practice for safety by design, to ensure that Ofcom delivers on the expectations of Parliament in this important area?

My Lords, safety by design is an absolutely fundamental principle of the Online Safety Act, and the Government have reiterated that in our strategic priorities which we have set out to Ofcom. We expect all platforms to implement safety by design and we will monitor the effectiveness of that.

My Lords, this Chamber provides important scrutiny to the work that Ofcom does, but it is worth noting that the Online Safety Act was a mammoth Bill and that Ofcom has undertaken an absolutely mammoth task in being ready to carry forward this regulation. Does the Minister agree with me that Ofcom is fast becoming the most important and effective regulator in this field, and that all the people who have worked to make this happen deserve our sincere congratulations for the work they have achieved so far?

I welcome the noble Lord’s comments. He is absolutely right: this has been a mammoth exercise, and I am so pleased that we are now beginning to see the fruits of it. There are huge numbers of people working in Ofcom on this important issue. We very much hope that, with the implementation of the illegal content codes and now the children’s codes, there will be a step change in the way that everybody—particularly children—engages with platforms online. To give noble Lords a flavour of how this will affect children, the law means that platforms must protect children from seeing suicide, self-harm, pornography and violent content. This will make a real difference to children. I am very excited to see that platforms operate this, and it is important that Ofcom plays its part.

The New Zealand Education Minister says that its school smartphone ban has led to more engagement and less cyberbullying. With Ofcom warning that harmful content often reaches children through algorithmic feeds on smartphones, can the Minister give one positive reason why we should allow smartphones to continue to be used in the classroom?

My Lords, as I think I have said here before, we are carrying out research to look at the implications of the use of smartphones for children. The Department for Education’s mobile phones in schools guidance is clear that schools should prohibit the use of devices with smart technology throughout the school day, including during lessons, transitions and breaks. The Government expect all schools to take steps in line with this guidance to ensure that mobile phones do not disrupt pupil learning, but we still need to learn the absolute lessons. The noble Lord raises important points about algorithms, and we hope to come back to noble Lords and Parliament with further details of how we are going to take this work forward.

My Lords, the Minister has set out the progress that has been made since the Bill became an Act. That is to be welcomed, but, my goodness me, some of the stuff that is available to young people should shock and disturb us and keep us all the time on the front foot to do all that we can. Our children—children across the world—deserve protection from this awful stuff.

The noble Lord is absolutely right about that. As part of my role, I have seen horrendous material that I do not think anybody—not adults and certainly not children—should see. We are determined to get this right and to be forward-looking, because anything that we do in legislation needs to be fit for the next generation as well. There is no point legislating just for the now; we need to legislate for the future. We are very aware of that. We are continuing to talk to Ofcom and other stakeholders about how we can take this work forward. We are determined to make this a safe place for children to grow up and thrive.

My Lords, the Minister talked about the research that the Government are doing on the impact of phones on children. The research is overwhelming on the impact of screen use on early years development for children, but there appears to be no specific guidance to help parents navigate that. What are the Government doing to ensure that parents of preschool children get proper, age-appropriate guidance on the use of screens?

The noble Baroness makes an important point. We are looking at what further advice we can give to parents. This is a sensitive issue and, as the noble Baroness will understand, we must be careful in how we raise these issues. We all understand that children often have a very different experience and a detailed knowledge of how smartphones work from their parents, so we have a role in education. Obviously, media literacy is an important part of that, but we are looking again at what further guidance we can give to parents.