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Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, and I hope that I can reassure him that an enormous amount of consideration has been given to the structure of the joint commissioning proposal, precisely because we recognise the importance of the BBC's retaining sufficient scale in-house.

Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP): Will the Secretary of State understand the bemusement that will be felt in Scotland at this promotion of British citizenship through the re-branding of the BBC as the British bulldog corporation? In the meantime, we will lose our national voice by losing our governor. The 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock news service is increasingly irrelevant and unnecessary in Scotland. Instead of waving flags, can the BBC not accept the new constitutional reality of the UK and set its agenda accordingly?

Tessa Jowell: I hope that I can reassure the hon. Gentleman by pointing out that the specific purpose is to reflect the diversity of the UK's nations and regions. He will no doubt read with interest in the White Paper the references to Gaelic broadcasting.

Mr. Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton, South-East) (Lab): Most Members will support a well-funded, high-quality and strong BBC. As the Secretary of State knows, broadcasting today, particularly television, is vastly different from 10 years ago, and in 10 years' time it will be vastly different again. Does she therefore accept that there is a duty to ensure not only a strong BBC, but strong competitors? Will she say a bit more
 
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about how her Department plans to create an environment in which, as new technologies unfold and choice increases, we have not only the high-quality public service broadcasting from the BBC that we all want to see, but strong competitors that can produce and launch initiatives and provide similarly high-quality broadcasting? Overall, it is the viewer and listener who would be the winner through taking such an approach.

Tessa Jowell: My hon. Friend is right. The licence fee payers—the people of this country—are best served by having a wide choice in broadcasting. A unique challenge for broadcasting in this country is balancing the interests and scale of the BBC—which is, in any theoretical formulation, an intervention in the market, but which is there by virtue of long-established national consensus—with the importance of promoting innovation and diversity, as well as inward investment from other countries, subject to our regulatory system. The White Paper achieves that balance and rigour, maintaining choice in broadcasting for licence fee payers.

Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con): The Secretary of State said that the White Paper is rich in substance, but is not the truth that it is lightweight and vapid in its reforms? Even the concept of the trust is limited. The White Paper says that the BBC Trust will not be a trust in the legal sense and its members will not be trustees of any property. Who are the trustees of the BBC's property, intellectual and physical, if not the trust?

Tessa Jowell: My answers are no and no to the hon. Gentleman's first two points. The trust will not be a legal entity in the fiduciary sense. It will hold the responsibilities of accountability, regulation and governance of the BBC on behalf of the licence fee payer. The hon. Gentleman is arguing about a fine legal point, but licence fee payers, with whom we have had extensive discussions on the issue, understand precisely what the trust is intended to achieve and support it by a majority for that reason.

Tony Lloyd (Manchester, Central) (Lab): Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the logic of the move to Manchester—I note her welcome for that—is not regeneration, as the Liberal Democrats seem to think, but about unlocking the creativity of the whole nation and ensuring that we build up the clusters and cultures that can deliver the television of the future? In that context, can she make it clear to those in the BBC who are resistant to the move that they cannot use it as a bargaining chip in licence fee negotiations, because the logic of the move has to be determined entirely by what is good for the viewing public?

Tessa Jowell: I am sure that those with sense in the BBC will listen to my hon. Friend and take seriously what he says. The creative gain will be enormous and the gain for the BBC in establishing a broader identity will be enormous. The potential for collaboration with other broadcasters will also be enormous. All of that provides a compelling case in support of the proposal. It will ultimately be a decision for the BBC, which will have to produce the business case and the arguments, but my hon. Friend should be in no doubt about the strength of the support for the proposal on this side of the House.
 
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Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): The Secretary of State knows that for years the Public Accounts Committee has been campaigning for the present voluntary arrangements with the National Audit Office, which we have had for the past year or two. It is true that the White Paper will strengthen the arrangements somewhat, and I thank her for that. However, does she realise that we will still be missing the holy grail of external audit, whereby the external auditor has the untrammelled right to investigate a public sector body, which cannot veto that investigation? Under the White Paper, the interim arrangements will continue. The Public Accounts Committee met the National Audit Office last night and we decided to continue campaigning. Will the Secretary of State keep an open mind on this, because the spending of £3 billion of public money should be accountable to this House, the national Parliament?

Tessa Jowell: The hon. Gentleman is well aware of the arguments that have been resisted by this Government and the BBC. Like him, I welcome the settlement that the White Paper provides and I welcome the fact that the NAO will be invited to exercise scrutiny over the self-help and efficiency savings over the next period of the licence fee. I simply reiterate the point that the BBC is a unique organisation. The arrangements are unique and it is the responsibility of all those within the BBC to make them work in the public interest.

 
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Point of Order

5.15 pm

Mr. Don Foster (Bath) (LD): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will be aware that Mr.   Speaker has frequently deprecated the provision of statements and other information to members of the press ahead of their provision to Members of Parliament. Are you therefore willing to draw to his attention my concern about the statement that we have just heard? Although the Secretary of State was especially generous in her interpretation of the ministerial code in making the statement available to me and to the hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) in advance of her making it to the House, you might be surprised to learn that members of the press received it one and a quarter hours before we did.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): I understand that that might be the usual practice, with the proviso that the press should observe certain procedures, such as an embargo. I have noted what the hon. Gentleman says and I hope that those procedures have been observed in the present case.

Mr. William Cash (Stone) (Con): Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Even if there was an embargo, the press at least had the opportunity to look at the statement, whereas we had no opportunity even to see it until the Secretary of State sat down. It seems to me that that is disrespectful to Parliament, and the practice should be deprecated and cease.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I have noted what the hon. Gentleman says, but I have nothing to add to my reply to the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster).

 
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Licensing of Child Location Services

5.16 pm

Judy Mallaber (Amber Valley) (Lab): I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a licensing regime for the sale or promotion of any service providing data on the location of children where these data have been derived from any mobile telephone network, satellite system or other electronic or communications medium.

Only weeks ago, I knew nothing about electronic location services, but now I seem to hear about them everywhere I go and I am becoming paranoid about whether I am being tracked. I just saw an item on CNN about CeBIT, the world's largest annual high-tech trade fair, which opened in Hanover last week and at which more than 6,000 companies are showing off their latest wares for the IT and communications market. There was an item about the sector of the fair devoted to devices for tracking individuals—location services. One exhibitor said that he was amazed that more parents had not yet invested in his child location product—"Just pop it in your kid's backpack and get peace of mind." But what if it is someone else who pops that tracker into your kid's backpack—someone else who wants to trace your child? The exhibitor said nothing about how he checks whether he has sold his product to a parent or to a paedophile.

That illustrates my main point: in the right hands, location data—knowing where someone is—can be valuable and reassuring, but in the wrong hands such data are extremely dangerous. My Bill will set up a licensing and regulatory regime to make sure that those services are in the right hands and that those who are being tracked know about it.

I also have a broader point: for the first time in our history, we have it within our power—every one of us, not just James Bond types or the police—to track another person 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The mass consumer market is about to be flooded—is being flooded—with cheap, easy-to-use tracking devices; some are even being given away free. In addition to special tracking devices, there are services to track people through their mobile phones. Since the children's charities internet adviser told me of the new industry, I have learned of three journalists who in recent weeks have used such services to track people without their knowledge. The supposed safeguards to stop that happening did not work; they can be evaded all too easily. It is hard to believe but it is true: Members could all easily be being tracked now.

Urgent debate is needed and controls must be established, not least because it is in the name of child protection that the new surveillance technologies are starting to reach the mass consumer market. Let us take the Teddyfone as an example. Launched last November, it is not hard to guess what the device looks like: its fetching blue and white livery will instantly appeal to the hungry eyes of at least the younger end of the 4 to 10-year-old market in which the company says it is interested. It will easily fit into tiny hands, pockets or backpacks. A Teddyfone does what any phone will do—it lets someone talk to the person who has it—but just sending a text message automatically
 
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and silently converts it into a listening device. As Teddyfone told a colleague of mine, if the child knew that someone was listening, it would defeat the point. The Teddyfone also provides information about the physical whereabouts of the person carrying the phone.

All mobiles are now potential tracking devices. When any mobile phone is switched on, it is transmitting and receiving signals from individual, geographically specific radio cells on the owner's mobile phone network. The network knows where someone is, possibly to a matter of metres. If the phone has been turned off, has run out of power or is out of range of the network, the network knows where it was at that last connected moment.

The emergency services have always been able to access that information, if necessary. However, the UK's mobile phone networks have now put that location information on sale to the public and, so far, about 30 companies, of which Teddyfone is one, are packaging and selling it. Some are doing so as part of so-called child safety products. In the case of Teddyfone, parents do not have to go to the trouble of speaking to their child; they just go to a website to see where he or she is, or ask for a map showing that information to be sent to their mobile phone.

There are lots of other examples. The i-Kids phone even lets parents listen to their child's conversation, which is not a very good recipe for relationships with their teenager or for harmonious family life. That phone runs on satellite-based technology: the global positioning system. It is great to have satellite navigation in one's car to find a route, or so that one can be found by the emergency services in the event of an accident, but it is dangerous if, say, a violent man were to post a device to his estranged partner in a refuge with an anonymous post office box number in order to track her down, and that is very easy to do.

Getting back to child protection, in theory the child must consent to his phone being tracked in the first place, but is there not something a bit odd about the idea of a four year-old, part of Teddyfone's target market, being able to give and maintain consent? An oppressive parent could insist on the child giving consent, or a devious paedophile skilled at grooming could easily find a way around the necessity, for example, by registering the second phone to himself before handing it to the child or hiding it in his backpack. To extend that to adults, The Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre showed recently that someone needs possession of another person's mobile phone for only a couple of minutes to appear to give the consent required under mobile phone companies' current procedures. The person he was tracking never got any of the warning messages that were meant to have been sent to her. Even more scarily, a hacker's website has recently published information telling how to spoof consent without even having to have temporary possession of the target's phone; all that is needed is the number. If someone has a person's number, he can track them. It is not a problem. I know where the website is, but I am not going to tell Members. It is possible to track people just through their phone numbers.
 
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There are other devices. Pupillo can listen and can watch as well, even in the dark. It was brought out recently and sees in the dark for anyone who has the number to dial. It may be ideal for a baby monitor, but what else will it be used for? That is a serious question.

There are meant to be controls over location services. The Home Office, the police and children's charities negotiated with the UK's six largest networks and agreed a voluntary code of practice governing the deployment of child location services and location services generally. The code is meant to cover the identity of the person doing the tracking, his relationship with the person being tracked, getting consent and giving warnings, but in practice, as journalists have found, the voluntary code can only too easily be evaded—if it is applied in the first place or if people knew that it is meant to be applied. Furthermore, it does not apply to new tracking devices using the GPS system or new technologies that bypass mobile phone networks. They are being sold without any code of practice governing their deployment. That needs to be checked and followed up.

Appeals to the Home Office and the Department of Trade and Industry to get involved have so far drawn a blank. In one case, the DTI gave financial assistance to a company that was developing a child tracking product. When asked whether it had considered possible criminal or other misuses of such technology, the DTI answered that such questions were not part of its business. Indeed, it gave the firm in question a prize for innovation. When DTI officials were asked whether they should have consulted child protection specialists, they said, "No."

I hesitate before calling for yet another national debate, but someone somewhere needs to take responsibility for the situation before it gets out of hand. The DTI and the Home Office have done excellent work on other child protection and
 
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technology issues; now they need to tackle the problem I have set out. The internet was kicking around for 20 years or more without anyone taking much notice—it was just the plaything of a few boffins—but once it started to penetrate the mass market, we realised that it raised many social and political issues. It is a great force for good, but it also allows trade in child pornography, the movement of criminal funds and other dangers.

Let us talk now about the implications of this latest surveillance technology for family life, children's safety and society as a whole. A child location service can give parents peace of mind, but what peace of mind will they have if such services remain unregulated and open to any stranger to misuse? That stranger may be one of those people who are so clever at grooming a child.

The issue is not just about child protection. We are sleep-walking into a world where jealous partners or obsessed stalkers could spy on us simply by obtaining our phone number. We must act now before that new surveillance industry gets out of hand. We must establish controls and a licensing regime fast.

I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Judy Mallaber, Kali Mountford, Annette Brooke, Margaret Moran, Derek Wyatt, Mrs. Betty Williams, Paddy Tipping, Dr. Howard Stoate, Mr. Ian Taylor, Siobhain McDonagh, Roger Berry and Mary Creagh.

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