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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 353-vii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMittee
harmful content on the internet and in video games
WEDNESDAY 14 MAY 2008 KEVIN BRENNAN MP, RT HON MARGARET HODGE MP and MR VERNON COAKER MP Evidence heard in Public Questions 577 - 631
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday 14 May 2008 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Philip Davies Mr Nigel Evans Paul Farrelly Alan Keen, Mr Adrian Sanders ________________ Memorandum submitted by Department for Culture, Media and Sport Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Kevin Brennan MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and Mr Vernon Coaker MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome to this, a further session of the Committee inquiry into harmful content on the Internet and in electronic games. Due to the slightly unusual timing of our hearing today, the Committee is not at full strength and some of my colleagues have to depart but we are hoping for further reinforcements in due course. I welcome three Ministers: from DCMS Margaret Hodge, from the Department for Children, Schools and Families Kevin Brennan, and from the Home Office Vernon Coaker. Q577 Mr Evans: It is appropriate particularly as well that Kevin Brennan is before the DCMS Select Committee this afternoon as he will be performing for us tonight at the Royal Albert Hall. We wish you well on that. Have you been rehearsing? Kevin Brennan: I think that I am more confident about tonight then I am about today. Q578 Mr Evans: The written evidence that the Committee has received is a short memorandum from DCMS and BERR but we are wondering why the Home Office and the Department for Children, Schools and Families did not submit their own independent written evidence. Margaret Hodge: This is a committee to which we are accountable primarily, this is a departmental committee, but, in preparing that evidence, we of course not only consulted but incorporated the views of all of the relevant departments and indeed, you will know, Chairman, that we wanted to bring four ministers to today's hearing and you decided in your wisdom that that would outdo you in number, so we limit ourselves to three. We are working very, very strongly. I think that I have given evidence with Vernon jointly to a number of Select Committees probably about three or four times. I have not had the pleasure of giving evidence with Kevin before but I am looking forward to doing so today. We are very joined up, but we thought it would be easier for you to have one bit of evidence from across Government with input from all departments. Q579 Mr Evans: I thought it was important to establish that. Dr Bryon has proposed a UK Council for Child Internet Safety to be chaired jointly by DCSF and the Home Office. Should the Department for Culture, Media and Sport also have a co-chairing role in that? Mr Coaker: In Dr Byron's report, it also says that DCMS should play a crucial role and mentions DCMS specifically as well playing a key role in the new UK Council that she has recommended and we have accepted and indeed we have written out to members - my colleague Kevin Brennan will also say something about this - of the Home Secretary's Taskforce today inviting them to become members of the new UK Council which Dr Byron was saying should be started in April 2009 but in fact we are going to set up in September of this year recognising the importance of it. Also, the report said that the Home Secretary's Taskforce was a model of good practice with respect to child protection on the Internet and what she was very keen to do was to ensure that that model of good practice that brought industry, children's charities, Government and law enforcement, all of those different people, together was taken forward. Hence, the need for the Home Office to be one of the co-chairs but also, as you know, Mr Evans, alongside that part of the report, she talked about the need to better inform parents and better inform people in terms of educating them, not only young people but parents as well, in the crucial importance of this given that she has asked for a self-regulatory framework. In looking at that, she therefore came to the judgment that it would be better, having looked at different options, that you have a co-chair involving ourselves at the Home Office and the DCSF but with DCMS as well as a number of Government departments and all of the other various partners that we have had on the Home Secretary's Taskforce playing a crucial role. Margaret Hodge: We are currently members of the Home Office Taskforce, so we really are joined at the hip on this one. Kevin Brennan: As well as the existing members, we have also written out today to other stakeholders inviting them to join the Council and indeed the devolved administration as well as Government departments. Q580 Mr Evans: On a general basis, what do you think that this Council is going to be able to do to achieve? Where do you see the weaknesses that currently exist which need this Council to fill the gap? Kevin Brennan: Dr Byron's report, which I know you have read and which I think is an excellent report and quite an exemplary way of making this kind of policy, says that the Home Secretary's Taskforce has been very successful so far. In a sense, rather like a video game, it is time to move on to the next level. I think that, in the UK Council, we have a very powerful potential vehicle here which will be reporting to ministers but containing all the main stakeholders including industry representatives co-chaired by Government Ministers with other departments represented reporting directly to the Prime Minister with an annual summit to monitor progress. I think what she is looking for is a body which will have additional traction in order to make progress in this area and in particular in the recommendations that she has made in her report for what we need to do both in relation from Government to public education, education of parents and education of young people and children, but in addition to the way in which we draw the industry in to upping its game in relation to its own user policies and the independent monitoring of that as well. I think that the Council is the vehicle which will enable Dr Byron's recommendations to be brought to fruition within the timescale she has outlined. Mr Coaker: I would like to add in to what Mr Evans was asking. What we have to also remember is that the Home Secretary's Taskforce was specifically around child protection on the Internet and often had as its focus illegal content and trying to do something about safety on the Internet. The move to the Prime Minister's Taskforce is to try to have a more all-embracing taskforce to look at some of the other issues that are involved, not just with respect to illegal content but also what to do about some of the - we have all read the evidence and I know that the Committee has been deliberating as well - not only illegal but harmful and inappropriate content as well and how you do with all those aspects of content on the Internet which may not be illegal but which cause all of us concern, Therefore, I think that it is broadly within the remit of the Home Secretary's Taskforce into the bigger Prime Ministerial Council but using that as an example of good practice as to actually how to do it and I think that that is the fundamental change between what we have now and where we are trying to move to. Margaret Hodge: I would like to add one final point which is that technology is changing so fast and, with the development of new platforms, you are never quite sure where the intervention may be required or at least consideration of intervention needs to be required. Having this broader based council with all stakeholders plus all Government departments is really, really of huge importance so that we can take preventative action before something emerges that we did not know about. Q581 Mr Sanders: You have pledged to implement all of Dr Byron's recommendations in full. Is there no area in which concerns have been registered meriting additional consideration, for example the dual classification on Internet game packaging which has received some negative comment? Margaret Hodge: We are certainly committed to implementing all the recommendations. What Dr Byron said on the dual classification of games was that because many parents do not know and do not understand and, because they do not really understand, they do not really have proper regard to the current age classification that go on games. She therefore recommended a hybrid system and what she then said was that we should consult on it. We are going to consult. We hope to have our consultation paper ready by the end of June and have a proper consultation. I have already started having discussions with certain industry interests and they have concerns. We need to listen to those and then come to a conclusion which will give us something that works and which gives us a proper age classification system that has respect, that parents understand, that they have regard to and therefore that it properly plays its role in preventing children playing unsuitable games. Q582 Mr Sanders: So, you do not expect us to end up with a system where you would have the PEGI classification on the front and the BBFC classification on the back or the other way round? Margaret Hodge: It is the other way round. Her recommendation is BBFC on the front. She makes another recommendation which I think is really important which is that the BBFC should take responsibility for looking at classification of games from 12 plus which would be a change, so we need to consider that, and I think, quite rightly, that is because her view, experience and professional judgment is that, at 12, children are much more autonomous in the decisions they make. So, we need to consider that. The final answer I think depends on the outcome of the consultation and I think that she wisely said there - because it is one of the more contentious recommendations - that we should consult. Let me pull out a little one of the areas of contention. She recommended that we move to this hybrid system of classification. What the industry has said to me so far - and presumably to you in the course of your consideration of this issue - is that they think that is difficult in the context of a global market and that they would rather see a European classification. So, they would prefer the PEGI classification. I have question marks about that which she clearly had. One is that Germany has its own classification at the moment and various other countries do, so does it really muddle people if countries have different classifications? I can understand that it makes the marketing more difficult. The other question mark I have is that the PEGI classification system is a paper-based system - people fill in tick boxes and fill in a form - whereas the BBFC classification system is, I think, rather more thorough and therefore commands greater confidence and I think that that is what has swayed her towards having this more hybrid system. We are going to test it, we are going to consult, and the paper should be out by the end of June. Q583 Mr Sanders: In terms of consultation, the important people here are actually the parents. Margaret Hodge: Absolutely. Q584 Mr Sanders: Far more than the industry or indeed, for that matter, Dr Byron. From the parents' point of view, a single classification system is far easier to understand than two classification systems on a box. Would that sway you in reaching a determination? Margaret Hodge: First of all, she is suggesting a hybrid single classification system with the BBFC symbol, which is much bigger and clearer, on the front and the PEGI classification on the back. Q585 Mr Sanders: But that is two, is it not? Margaret Hodge: It is a hybrid but it is a bringing together --- Q586 Mr Sanders: You might call it a hybrid but it still ends up with two different age ratings on the same package. Margaret Hodge: It is not two parallel systems which we have at present. It is a hybrid system with the BBFC having the role of assessing and classifying --- Q587 Mr Sanders: With respect, if I am a parent and I am looking at packaging which says 18 on the front and 12 on the back, what does it say? Margaret Hodge: It will not say 18 on the front and 12 on the back because the hybrid system will be the coming together of the two organisations. It will not say that. You raise a perfectly legitimate concern which is why we are going to have a period of consultation and you are right to say that a system which parents can easily understand is the most important objective that we must bear in mind and we will just have to test it. The industry on the whole prefers the PEGI system. As I said to you, I think that the advantage of the BBFC system is that it is a more thorough assessment of the games and I think that it was that conflict between thoroughness and ease and the expense associated with that process - remember, these are self-financing systems by the industry - representations from the industry and priorities for parents that led Tanya Byron to talk about a unified but hybrid system bringing in the two. Let us test it. I hear your concerns, I do not know if they are shared across the Committee, but let us test it, let us consult and then let us take a considered view at the end of that consultation. Q588 Chairman: May I come back to the role of the Council on Child Internet Safety. Yesterday, the Committee took evidence from Ofcom. Ofcom have a role particularly in the implementation of the Audio Video Media Services Directive which is for the first time meaning that they have some requirement to look at the material on the Internet. They also were fairly critical of the present self-regulatory structure being administered by ISPs and others. They suggested to us that they would want to be satisfied that improvements were being made and they clearly saw themselves as having a role. Indeed, the Chief Executive suggested that Ofcom was the ideal body to decide whether or not sufficient improvements have been made. How do you see Ofcom and the Council working together or is Ofcom off their patch and should this be left to the Council? Mr Coaker: In the first instance, Ofcom are members of the Home Secretary's Taskforce and will be invited to be members and we hope will be members of the UK Council. The concerns that they have will be shared and will have to be worked through. As you know, the Government's view is that by and large a self-regulatory framework is appropriate and the way forward with some recommendations that others have made to further improve that system and no doubt Ofcom will play a part in developing that framework under the auspices of the new UK Council. Q589 Chairman: The evidence that we received prior to Ofcom was generally that the self-regulatory structure was working pretty well and you, chairing the Home Secretary's Taskforce, have played a part in continuing discussions in the interim. Do you agree with Ofcom that actually there are some serious areas where improvement is needed? Mr Coaker: It would be complacent to say that there are not areas across the board where there is not a need for improvement. We can look at the issue of blocking when we come to it if we need to and we can look at the issue of clarification of the law which Dr Byron recommends and I also think is important; we can look at how the system works in terms of ensuring that the various bits of guidance that have come out from the Home Secretary's Taskforce are implemented and ensuring that all of that is done and therefore at the independently monitored codes; we can look at what we actually mean by harmful and inappropriate content and how that is actually looked at and dealt with and how companies take that down. In all of those areas, there is a need for improvement. In answer to Mr Evans's question earlier on, Ofcom has been a part. Has the Home Secretary's Taskforce been successful? In many respects, yes, it has. Now, however, there is a need for a step change, a move forward, to take account of some of these other areas where we need to actually take further action to move again and Ofcom will play a role in that alongside us and alongside the other departments in ensuring that we build a safe environment that we want particularly for our children but for everyone and it is incumbent upon us to have some monitoring mechanism, some way in which we judge whether what we are saying at that Prime Minister's Council actually reflects into changed practice and actually reflects into better procedures throughout the industry and throughout what is happening on the Internet. Margaret Hodge: Ofcom have a statutory remit around media literacy and that is hugely, hugely important in this area. They are going to have a role to play on the Council but I think that they will take a lead around the media literacy issues and no doubt they will play their part particularly if you think about new platforms. It is this whole thing of, as we move into new platforms, we think about harmful content on new platforms, so they will play their part, but media literacy is their lead. Q590 Chairman: There is also a little confusion about the extent to which the structure will remain as a self-regulatory one or whether or not it will become co-regulatory. There has been a lot of praise for the self-regulatory system but Dr Byron was suggesting that the Council would be standing behind and would actually have some potential powers to intervene if it was felt that the self-regulatory system was not working sufficiently. Kevin Brennan: I did read her evidence to the Committee and I think that what Dr Byron was describing was self-regulation plus, if you like. With the new Council, it would give additional backing to the self-regulatory system but essentially what she was calling on the industry to do was to show in the period to come that they can be held to account for their own safe use policies and that the Council obviously is there in part to help facilitate and assist in the industry in making sure that it can achieve those safe use policies to which she has referred in her report, that they can be independently monitored so that they are prepared to be held to account for what they say themselves that they will do and the Council stands there to monitor that. Ultimately, I think that remains a self-regulatory system but with a much more effective means of traction for getting some movement and improvement in the industry itself. Q591 Chairman: Do you see the Council as having any powers beyond exultation? Kevin Brennan: I do not think that she recommends in her report that it should have any powers in relation to some sorts of sanctions against industry, but I think the power that she is talking about in a sense is in the nature of the industry itself, in that these major providers that have grown very rapidly in recent years from pretty small companies into huge multi-national, multi-billion dollar businesses depend for their revenue on their reputation and ultimately, if their reputation is poor, then they will not get the kind of brand advertising that they need in order to generate revenue. So, it is in a sense an enlightened self-interest argument that Dr Bryon has put forward backed up with creating the UK Council to say to the industry, "If this does not happen, people will know about it" and I think that that is the power of her approach as opposed to simply trying to use the very blunt instrument of regulation and sanction to achieve it. Q592 Chairman: May I give you a specific example which came up in our evidence. Microsoft operate MSN Messenger and there is a single button which one can click on which takes you directly to CEOP. So, a child who has an approach from a potentially harmful adult can get help very quickly. We were told by CEOP that other providers had been asked to provide a similar one-click route to CEOP and have been unwilling to do so. Is that the kind of area where the Council might step in and, if nothing else, perhaps name and shame? Kevin Brennan: That is an area in which we would definitely like to see progress and in which I would definitely like to see progress in the period to come. I visited CEOP, as I know the Committee has as well, and I know that Vernon is very closely associated his department with CEOP. It does seem that there is much more that could be done in this area and hopefully this will lead the Taskforce towards making sure that there are quick, easy and direct routes for abuse to be able to be reported quickly and to the appropriate authority and, in the case of the UK, that would be CEOP. Certainly my view - and I have said this publicly before - is that this whole process should help to shine a light on that issue and encourage at this stage those providers who have millions of very young users who use these sites. I know that my own daughter and children of members of this Committee use sites such as Bebo and so on. I am sorry, no reference to you, Chairman, intended, and I should tell you that my daughter is 14 and I am not going to tell you how old she was when she first joined! Clearly that is a concern, but we have accepted Dr Byron's recommendations in full because we think that the quality of the work that she has done and the evidence that she has drawn from industry, from other stakeholders, from children's charities from parents and from children really does point to the way forward for us. There is always a danger in this area in that we can all issue tough words, statements and so on, but really what we are looking for is an effective regime in the end that will protect children. Q593 Paul Farrelly: That is really welcome, Kevin. There is a phalanx of civil servants here who are all busy taking notes, so which Minister here is now going to commit to writing to all the other Internet providers to ask them to follow Microsoft's lead in having that one stop? Kevin Brennan: What we have done is written to them today and invited them to join the Council which I think is a mechanism by which we are going to get the action that the Council needs. Q594 Paul Farrelly: Which Minister is going to say to the Committee now, "I am going to write to all Internet providers whether or not they join the Council to ask them to follow that system"? Mr Coaker: You will be aware of the social networking guidance that we recently published from the Taskforce and that lays out a number of different principles which different Internet service providers should try to adhere to and, as part of that work, we also looked at different reporting mechanisms that different Internet service providers had and, as you would expect, there is a variability between them. One of the things that I will ask in the letter that I have already decided - and it is a very good point but just to give you a little clarity - to write asking them to look at what they have accepted as part of the Home Secretary's Taskforce on the Internet and what is currently provided and look to see how, within the self-regulatory framework - they are going to move to be much more consistent with these principles. There is one other thing that I think is important for the Committee. CEOP deals with illegal content and with child abuse and clearly there has to be a way for children or whoever who are on the Internet to be able to get from that to CEOP and we need to ensure that that is there. However, we also have to recognise that there are other harms and other inappropriate misses, for want of a better way of putting it, on the Internet which may be cyber bullying or may be violent images or may be suicide websites or whatever that somebody would want to report as well. Of course, reporting abuse with respect to child abuse and protecting children is a CEOP issue, but there is also an issue which I think that the Prime Minister's Taskforce will help us address in regard to where somebody goes if they believe that they have come across something that is illegal but may not be child abuse. Where does somebody who has come across a suicide website or something that they want to report go? Where does somebody go if there is something else that is inappropriate? I think that of course there should be a mechanism, whether it is one click, two or whatever, a clear definable way of getting to CEOP. It seems to me that there is also alongside that the necessity for having a clearly defined way of getting, say, to The Samaritans or whoever. In direct answer to what Paul Farrelly was asking earlier on, I will be writing along the lines that I have said and I had already decided to do that. Q595 Paul Farrelly: Lest there is no action because we cannot have one click or we cannot incorporate five or ten clicks, the answer to the question you have rightly raised, Vernon, is that CEOP's website should provide that pathway to report alternative ... Mr Coaker: That might be a solution to it. As you know, I work very closely with CEOP and you have had Mr Gamble here as well who is excellent and who I think has been a trailblazer in this area. It is a question of what we then do with respect to CEOP. If, all of a sudden, instead of getting, let us say, a few hundred child abuse reports, these are prioritised and dealt with, we then, not only receiving that, start to receive hundreds of reports of bullying, hundreds of reports of suicide illegality and hundreds of violent reports, all sorts of things, in a sense, we would need to consider what the implications for CEOP would be if everything that was a problem was directed to them. I know that some others who are involved in this like The Samaritans and so on would feel that - and this is the debate that takes place - in the first place they would want something directed first to them rather than through somebody else. These are the sorts of things that we need to resolve between ourselves through discussion and through deliberation to actually achieve the common goal, but I agree very much with what Paul Farrelly has just said about the need for action and that it cannot be used as an excuse for not taking action. Kevin Brennan: I will also be meeting as part of our Cyber Bullying Taskforce some of the industry in June and no doubt these are some of the issues that we will be exploring further at that point. It is also worth making the point - and I am sure that the members of the Committee would agree when we have these discussions - that the Internet and these social networking sites are not just a dark force. They are actually overwhelmingly a good thing and a wonderful opportunity for young people to be creative and for children to interact with each other. We are obviously trying to put in place a system that means that just in the same way that we would not let our children wander down a dark alley in the Inner City after midnight on their own - that would not be a sensible thing to do - parents know how they can help protect their children when they are on the Internet and that the industry is co-operating fully in making sure that it is a safe environment for them. Margaret Hodge: This is a bureaucratic point but I think that it is an important point in response to Paul Farrelly. It is not really who writes, it is whether we will write collectively. The structures that we have in place and the mechanism that we have in place would ensure that action is taken. Whether Kevin signs the letter, Vernon signs the letter or whatever is less important than whether we have those mechanisms in place to take the decisions and the answer is "yes". Are we committed to implementing the recommendations and the answer is "yes". I think that the structure coming through will enable us to act collectively. Paul Farrelly: Three is better than one! Q596 Philip Davies: All of you have said on a number of occasions that you are going to implement the Byron recommendations in full but may I press you a little further on that because it is not just a question of whether you appear nominally to have implemented the recommendations, it goes a little deeper than that and it is about whether or not they are implemented in the way that Dr Bryon envisaged when she wrote the report. Therefore, are you actually saying that you are prepared to take the cost and that, whatever the cost might be of implementing of the Byron recommendations, you will commit to meeting that cost? Kevin Brennan: In the action plan that we are announcing in June we will be setting out the full costs of implementing Tanya Byron's recommendations and you can certainly hold us to account if you think that we have not adequately covered those costs at that time. Of course, with any report of this kind, it is not a case of a blank cheque. We would have an idea broadly about the sorts of resources that her review are likely to need. We are going to have to set up the UK Council which will have a secretariat, it will have an annual summit; it will have to have council meetings and so on. On top of that, of course a number of the recommendations within Byron fit very well with a lot of the strategies that are already ongoing in Government. For example, in February, we launched across Government the Staying Safe: Action Plan for Children which already has built into it a significant budget line for an information campaign to improve children's safety and the recommendations in Byron fit very, very well with that approach. It is not entirely a case of always having to invent the wheel all over again because a lot of government working is moving in that direction, but it is our pledge to implement it in full. We will be issuing the Action Plan in June and if we think that that is inadequate at that time, then obviously you can hold us to account about that. Margaret Hodge: Some of the recommendations will need implementation by our partners in industry. For example, Dr Bryon's recommendation is that the promotional campaign for parents should be funded by industry and clearly we have already started those discussions rolling to see how we ensure that they too play their part in helping us implement what we all agree on this table is a very, very powerful and excellent set of recommendations. Q597 Philip Davies: Have you not potentially put the cart before the horse in saying that you will implement all the recommendations before you have worked out what the cost will be? Can we therefore not envisage in the future one of you coming back to us and saying, "Well, of course we accept all the recommendations and it is something that we aspire to, but we have just totted it all up and actually it is going to cost far more than we thought it was going to cost, so we cannot implement it all in one go as we had hoped; it might have to take longer"? Are we potentially getting ourselves into that kind of situation? Kevin Brennan: Whether the Government should say that or not is an interesting process which I have accepted, but the point is that the recommendations are not entirely a mystery neither in the course of taking evidence - it is an independent review - nor in reporting progress on it. The direction of approach that Dr Byron was heading down is not entirely a mystery and therefore the likely resource implications of her report are not a mystery to us. In other words, I do not think there are hidden billions in here that we do not know about that you will have to worry about in the future. We are confident that her recommendations contain, as I said, a number of things including the communications on child safety issues which we have already factored into our Staying Safe: Action Plan which was issued in February before Dr Byron's report. Q598 Philip Davies: You say that but, when we asked Dr Byron how much the UK Council would need to be effective, she said that she was not really sure and that she had not really given a great deal of thought to it, but what she did know was that they would need lots of money. Kevin Brennan: I read her evidence and it was amusing. In fairness, I do not think we asked her to produce a detailed budget line for the new Council. I think that it is for us in Government to have a pretty strong idea of what this sort of thing costs rather than for Dr Byron, whose expertise in fairness lies elsewhere. Q599 Philip Davies: Following on from that, I was certainly very impressed with the evidence she gave to us and I think that many other members of the Committee were too. It struck me that one of the things she appeared to be quite passionate about was not just that these things were implemented, although she was obviously passionate about that, but that they were implemented in a timely fashion. In fact, we had quite a detailed discussion about the timescales involved. Are you equally committed to implementing the recommendations in the timescales that she envisaged because that to me is what is meant by implementing her recommendations in full? Kevin Brennan: We are and of course we are ahead of the timetable at the moment because we have just invited stakeholders to join the Council today and we are obviously issuing our across-department action plan in June and then starting off the Council launch in September, which is six months ahead of schedule, and looking for that first Internet Safety Summit in the spring. As well as Government timetables, you are quite right that there are industry timetables and clearly getting the Council off to an early start is something that we hope will stimulate the industry to fulfil the quite challenging timetables, I would accept, that Dr Bryon has set in relation to the acceptable user policies for particularly user-generated content sites that she recommended in her report. Clearly, quality is important and, at the end of the day, we need to make sure that what is produced is what is required. I think we are pretty confident that we can fulfil the timetables from the Government point of view and that the Council will play a strong role in helping industry to fulfil its side of the bargain. Margaret Hodge: On the whole, industry has also welcomed the recommendations, so I think that everybody sees that this is an area in which everybody wants to work together. Interestingly enough - and Vernon now leads on that work - when I was Children's Minister and we started that work, what was so fascinating about this was how easy it was to build a partnership between industry, parents, education and Government to try and ensure that we all have successful interventions which ensure that you protect children certainly at that point child abuse images and now we are moving it a little further and we are thinking about new platforms. I think that there is a good record of co-operation between all the partners on which we now need to build. Q600 Alan Keen: Unlike the ticket touting inquiry we did recently where not all the industry wanted to eradicate the problem even though this Committee wanted to, everybody has the same aim, thank goodness. The differences will be at what level. Jim Gamble himself said that he feels that the law will have to be changed or that new laws introduced. What is your view on that? You have already mentioned sites promoting suicide and even the computer-generated images of paedophiles abusing children in Second Life time games. That sounds so appalling and must be damaging and Jim told us that that was somewhere where the law should be changed. Have you had time in your department to look at these aspects? Mr Coaker: I would like to mention a couple of really important points around this. First of all, I think that there is a need for us to clarify, which is again another recommendation that Dr Byron made ... It is clear if you talk about child abuse that that is illegal and we start from what is illegal offline is illegal online. When it starts to get near the margins, people become a little bemused as to whether it is illegal or whether it is something that somebody finds offensive and does not like. I think that there is a need for us to look at the law and clarify exactly what we mean. Not at the extremes because it is obvious with some, but sometimes there is a need. So, there is a need for us first of all to clarify some of the laws. With respect to avatars, Second Life, it is the case that, frankly, we would not have asked this question two years ago or three years ago. We can argue what that was but, two, three or four years ago, nobody would have had a clue what Second Life or avatars were. I would not, to be honest about it. This is a really deep philosophical question and the Government have consulted on this about the cartoon depiction or fantasy sort of world of Second Life and whether the law should be saying anything or doing anything about it. We consulted on it - we consulted on it for a few months at the beginning of 2007 - and we had 87 responses and a few different responses as you can imagine came back and we consulted again and we are now considering as to what law, if any, we should come forward with. It is very difficult. In reading the Committee's deliberations - and I think that the Committee recognised this - it is a completely new area of work to actually say, should the law intervene in an area where nobody has been harmed. It is a fantasy world; there is no criminal. On the other hand, if you imagine it at its worst, a paedophile or somebody decides, I know, I will become a paedophile as my avatar; I will sexually abuse children; I will create all sorts of images on the Internet; I will buy and sell" and whatever in that virtual environment, I find that as an individual a disgrace and disgusting. The problem then becomes, as I am disgusted, appalled and outraged, does that then mean that that should be made illegal? I am just posing the arguments here. That is what the Government are considering. That also then brings in the question, if somebody is acting that out in a virtual environment, what does that do for them in the real world? Does that make them more likely or less likely ...? I think that the evidence is mixed. The social scientists and psychologists disagree as to that link. We would probably disagree as individuals as to what the impact is of watching this or acting in this. This is a long-winded way - and I apologise for being longwinded - of saying that we are looking at this whole area because it raises fundamental, philosophical questions for us to actually resolve as to whether this is an area about which we would never have thought in which the law should intervene. My final point on that is on suicide because it makes the point very well for me. The Law Commission was clear that aiding and abetting suicide, whether it be online or offline but in this particularly with respect to online, is illegal, something should be done about it and it should be taken down, and there are other areas where there is illegal content which we need to ensure is taken down. We have improved law enforcement with regard to child protection through CEOP and I think that the task for us is to ensure that the law is in force with respect to that and I think that is something that the new Council will have to look at. Margaret Hodge: I am going to add very little because I thought that covered most things. The only thing I wanted to add was where Vernon ended and that is to say that because it is such a complex issue, this is precisely one of the key roles that the Council will have in considering difficult issues like this and then making recommendations. That is the first thing. The second thing is that, when much of this law was established, we did not have chat rooms and social networking sites and it is what emerges on those sites and how we deal with potentially harmful content on those sites, where the boundaries are and what is permissible and what is not permissible. It is fantastically complex stuff and I think that we need to give that really, really serious consideration. The third point to make is that one of her recommendations - it comes back to something we were discussing earlier - is that what we need to think about is, if there is that sort of content, how can you give people the quick link to The Samaritans or Child Line or one of those supportive organisations that can help people through the harm that might be created either through content on a site itself or through the content that is emerging in conversation on the social networking sites. This is really tough territory. I suppose the final thing I would add is that, with all these things, we have to keep looking at the evidence and we have to make sure that any decision we take is evidence based and we have to keep revisiting the evidence of links between what people see and experience and how they behave because, as we well know, very little of this is proven and the area where we have proven it is done on sexual activity and it is very much Vernon's role to take that through. Mr Coaker: Very much so. Margaret Hodge: Just to show how cross-Government we are on suicide, of course the new OMJ is currently reviewing the law to see whether or not it is appropriate in the new world of social networking sites and the Internet. Q601 Chairman: That is the fifth Government department that has become involved. Margaret Hodge: It does take you back but let me just say this to you. Many of the issues with which I have dealt in Government always require cross-Government action. Very often people say, "Let us set up a special ... Let us give it to one department" and the only thing you always do on this in my experience is bring some things together and then you create new difficulties which you have to tackle by cross-Government action. At the end of the day, rather than spend your time fiddling around, should we set up an Internet Department or an Internet Agency, I think that what we should do is tackle the actual issues and make sure that the way in which we work is properly co-ordinated and linked. Q602 Alan Keen: I am very pleased but we know very well that there will not be a definite answer and it would be wrong if there were. Out of interest, have you discussed with the industry what even greater fees there may be for the future with the very quick evolving of the technology in these twisted people's ideas? Mr Coaker: One of the things that is worrying in terms of this whole area of technology and new technology - and we have Second Life and avatars - is the increasing mobility, the mobile phone and what is available, such as Blackberries, and what is essentially becoming a mobile terminal. The fact is that people will very soon be able to get out from their pocket access to all of the things about which we have been talking. Again, I do not know exactly where we have got to with these mobile platforms but, as I understand it, that is of increasing concern as well. Similarly, the increasing move from the use of pier-to-pier connection so that you are not going through a central connecting point, if you like. So, there is the pier-to-pier transmission. Also, when I was at CEOP, the use by paedophiles of games consoles to send bits to each other but it was not sent as a whole, it was something which you collected from one game and you went to another game and collected another bit. These are criminal and immoral people whose expertise in that warped sense is at the forefront of all of that technology and the last point I would make is that, in a sense, is it the success of some of the work that law enforcement has done which has forced these people to be ever more inventive. Kevin Brennan: I think that we should give some credit to the mobile phone industry for what they have done so far to protect children from some of the images that might be more easily available elsewhere and in fact I think that in many ways they are leading the way in making sure that some of this unsuitable content or even 18-rated sites are not available when phoned from a mobile platform and they have co-operated across industry to achieve that. Mr Coaker: I congratulate all of the industry for the work they have done. They have worked very closely with us on a whole range of things to try and move this forward. It is always the next step, is it not? Q603 Alan Keen: Am I right in presuming that the increased numbers of prosecutions is because of the efforts that have been put in to catch people doing this and may I also presume that there is an increase in people getting involved in this? Mr Coaker: I think that it is both those things. We are talking about section 27 of the Communications Act and there has been a quite significant increase in that from 2003 to 2006. It is, as you say, the increase in use of the Internet and the increase in use of all of the various sites as we know and, alongside that, an increased awareness of that offence and an increased use of it by law enforcement. Kevin Brennan: I am sure that it is well known to this Committee that about two thirds of households now have an Internet connection but in fact, in households with children, that figure rises to 80%. So, it really is becoming close to universal when you consider the availability in public libraries and so on as well for those who do not have usage and, as we know, the big users are children and young people. Q604 Chairman: Will the measures in the new Criminal Justice and Immigration Act help in this? Mr Coaker: Are you referring to the email addresses that have been made available? Q605 Chairman: The whole position with extreme pornographic images. Mr Coaker: The whole range. That new offence will help. It is another tool in the box. It is a possession offence that is not there. I think that the change to the notification requirements for sex offenders will help where they will now be required, once we have passed the secondary legislation, to give email addresses to law enforcement. I think that will help. Of course, if they choose not to or give a false one, that is a criminal offence with imprisonment of up to five years, so I think that will help alongside that. Of course, more generally with sex offenders, we have changed the rules with respect to dual criminality. So, if somebody now goes abroad - just as a piece of information to the Committee but I think there is an interest - say to Thailand to commit an offence that is not an offence in Thailand but would be an offence if it were committed there, we have ended the dual criminality of that so, when they come back, we can prosecute them for that and I think that is again something that generally people would welcome, although it is perhaps slightly outside the remit of what we are talking about. Q606 Chairman: Before I bring in Paul Farrelly, we still have a little way to go but are the three of you content that we should continue? Mr Coaker: Yes, absolutely. Q607 Paul Farrelly: Quite apart from the Byron recommendation on the Internet Child Safety Council, there have been voices that have called from time to time for an Internet standards authority insofar as it can help with a firmer base in this country rather like the model of the Advertising Standards Authority or perhaps the Press Complaints Commission. What are the different departments thinking over that issue? Margaret Hodge: We have our convergence think-tank which is considering issues such as this and we always keep an open mind, should it become appropriate we will do so. At present, I think that we do not want to over-regulate, we want to do as much as we can through voluntary mechanisms and we think that the Internet impacts on all of us and the fact that we have gone through probably five departments or six departments - you could have brought a number of departments here today to give evidence to you - and w think that it is better to work through existing structures at present, but of course you keep an open mind on this and I think that this is an issue that will emerge in the convergence think-tank. I do not know if you have come to a view on it? No doubt you will tell us your view. Q608 Paul Farrelly: In a debate on cyber bullying back in February, Beverley Hughes made the statement that she thought that business needed to raise its game and we have just discussed one example where Jim Gamble thought that business could raise its game in terms of following Microsoft. We have listened here, just one further example and a horrific example, to Google admitting that YouTube had nobody pro-actively monitoring what went on site and in fact, to the extent that complaints were made, the unspecified number of people responding to those complaints completely missed a video which portrayed and depicted in its content as a gang rape. The portrayal and content is of importance because I know that there are issues about the police taking up about what actually went on. Is that sort of practice acceptable? Do you expect businesses to do more? Kevin Brennan: I think you are right, we should not comment on what actually happened in that video but that is not the point, the point is that it was flagged and how quickly it should have been taken down and how these things are dealt with. On the issue of cyber bullying and the comments you made about my colleague in the Department, Beverley Hughes, she is right in a sense and that is why we are working with the industry in relation to cyber bullying to see what more can be done. In fairness, they have done quite a lot so far to work with us. They have provided free advertising space for our digital information campaign on cyber bullying; that reached 6.5 million unique IP addresses as a result of that and had 98,000 different users visiting the website. Vodaphone and O2 have made financial contributions towards our cyber bullying resource pack and Google, YouTube, Piczo and Myspace have all been working with us and we are having another meeting on 4 June of the Cyber Bullying Taskforce to actually see what more we can do. The evidence that you took in the session which I have read was very interesting, that revelation that there was not a single person employed to preview rather than to review user-generated content was quite an interesting revelation. What I would say is that what the Byron Review does and what the Council will do is shine a light on this whole issue of the extent to which - not that you can preview all user-generated content, I do not think that is a realistic prospect - you can spot potentially unacceptable content through words or through flesh tones, through that kind of technology and then screen it down for preview rather than review. That perhaps is the issue that really needs to be explored with people like YouTube. Q609 Paul Farrelly: If you do not have a single person you are not making any effort whatsoever. Kevin Brennan: Yes, and that is a legitimate point to draw to their attention and to press on with, with the Council, and to engage them on because it is very important that the industry is engaged on this. As you all know, this is a worldwide business and industry and there are different jurisdictions, different rules and regulations, so it is particularly suited to getting an engagement, getting an acceptance of what corporate social responsibility - particularly where children are involved - means, getting acceptable use policies that are monitorable and then holding those industries to account for their own policies to ensure that they are following that. When you put people together in a room - children's charities, government ministers and industry - that is where the dynamic tension that creates progress comes in this, rather than having a shouting match - enjoyable as that may be, I am not sure that that is what produces the outcome. I thought that that was a very, very interesting piece of evidence. Q610 Paul Farrelly: This is one area where, as you have said, it really is relevant to question whether there should be some sort of minimum standard, however applied and enforced, as to what efforts firms should be expected to make. As an alternative though, if you take the happy slapping case where the young girl was convicted for having videoed it as if she was part of the crime, then by admission of the minister without the outlet of the likes of YouTube --- Kevin Brennan: That crime would never have been picked up. Q611 Paul Farrelly: You could go along and create criminal sanctions for those firms as accessories after the fact if they did not do certain things as well, but that would be the last resort. Surely, this sort of thing, when people complain it is entirely voluntary as to how the firms treat the complaint and react afterwards. Kevin Brennan: The strength of Byron is exactly that, that it actually holds the industry to their own voluntary user practices and shines a light on those user practices so that they are public and clear, not only to the users or the community as they tend to call them, but also to the advertisers who are very concerned and pay for these sites to work. We are all clear, I am sure, that the virtual world is not a valueless world and that where these things are happening there does have to be a light shone upon it and effective action taken, but there is a pretty broad consensus, backed by the evidence in the Byron Report, that the right way to do it is the way that she has suggested rather than trying to use the big stick of regulation and the law which, at the end of the day, is not fleet of foot enough, frankly, to deal with this ever-changing world. Margaret Hodge: Could I just add two things? One is that we have always got to be mindful of the European E-commerce Directive which has quite a clear view of what should or should not be on the net or on particular sites, and the other thing is that there is, which you in particular will appreciate, always a balance to be struck between freedom of expression and protection from harm and we have always got to be beware of trying to walk that tightrope to protect our freedoms as protecting from harm. Mr Coaker: As a final point, the point is very well made that at the end of the day we have social networking guidance and we have guidelines. We have lots of other guidelines and I know there was the debate with Dr Byron about co-regulation or self-regulation; at the end of the day what everybody was trying to arrive at is if we are going down the self-regulation/co-regulation route, the documents that are produced and the warm words that are said, all of those issues are actually reflected in the practice. All I can say is that I think there has been considerable progress right across, which has been brought about by the self-regulatory framework. That is not to say that there is not more progress that needs to be made - that was the point I made to Mr Farrelly earlier on about the need to write and say we have agreed these guidelines, how are we going to ensure now that we bring about a step change in what we are doing. I also think that the success of what we have done and what we are doing is reflected in the fact that other countries are actually coming to us now and asking about how this self-regulatory framework is working. When we launched the social networking guidance the Americans came, the Australians came and only this morning I met the French to talk about what we were doing with respect to this. We can look at what we have done and say so far so good but now - I think this is the point Mr Farrelly is getting at - how do we then bring about, again, the change that we need so that we have got people proactively seeking out some of these things, not just reacting, and how we get the reporting systems consistent and right across the system and how we deal with the other issues that Mr Keene raised about advertising and all of the other issues, how we deal not only with illegal content but harmful and inappropriate content, and the vehicle of the Prime Minister's taskforce gives us an opportunity to build on good practice and, as Kevin Brennan said, to take it to that next stage, that next level. Q612 Paul Farrelly: I just have three quick factual questions to conclude. Firstly, when the Government submitted its evidence there was a tail of 5% of broadband providers which had not been signed up to taking the Internet Watch Foundation list of barred sites. Has the target of 100% been reached now? Mr Coaker: No, it has not been reached. I set the target of 100% by the end of 2007 and said that if that was not reached we would then have to consider what we needed to do. That is what we are currently doing, we are not satisfied with the 5% that have not put in place blocking mechanisms as the other 95% have so we are looking at what we need to do with that. Q613 Paul Farrelly: Are you considering naming and shaming? Mr Coaker: Most of them are very small companies and all sorts of things are being considered, whether we need to go down the legislative route, whether we need to take other action, whether there are other technical solutions that we can come to, whether just by meeting again with them we can say you need to conform in the way the others have done. There are all sorts of things being considered, but it is not satisfactory that we have still got 5% that did not take action. Q614 Paul Farrelly: The second question is again a Home Office one: what is CEOP's budget going to be for 2008/09? Mr Coaker: It is £41/2 million from the Home Office. Kevin Brennan: We provide some in kind help in staffing secondments. Mr Coaker: It is £41/2 million from the Home Office and it gets about £3 million from children's charities. It then gets a little amount from DCMS. Q615 Paul Farrelly: Is that the same then as last year or has it increased? Mr Coaker: I will drop you a note about it, but let me just say that in the future, clearly, we are going to make sure that it is continued. The CEOP funding is guaranteed until April 2009 but it is inconceivable that the Government will not fund it in future. Q616 Paul Farrelly: Finally, if you could let us have by way of a note the total Government spending for internet-related child safety and protection. Mr Coaker: We will have to write to you about that. It does not answer the question about what the budget was last year so I will drop a note to the Committee, Chairman, if that is okay, just to clarify the budget figure, but this year's figures are £4.5 million from the Home Office, charities, industry and EU £3.22 million, additional Government funding (FCO and DCSF) £0.16 million. I will write to the Committee about how that compares to last year's budget and I will also send you the details about the budgetary figure for child protection. Q617 Paul Farrelly: Very finally, on that, when we visited CEOP we saw the fantastic work that they were doing and one of the things we saw was a very measured advert that runs in Australia frequently, along the lines of the sort of frequency that we see asking people to slow down to 20 mph because the chances of killing someone, especially a child, are far less. In terms of the advertising budget of CEOP, they did not feel they had sufficient support to extend their activities in terms of advertising the dangers and also warning people off. Kevin Brennan: We are committed to a big public information campaign as a result of Byron and the Staying Safe Action Plan, which I mentioned earlier on, because it is not just a case of warning children, and I have seen some of CEOP's very effective stuff. In fact, my daughter has seen it at school and told me that she had seen it there too, but it is also a case, obviously, of closing that knowledge gap amongst parents because 81% of people say that principally it should be parents' responsibility to protect their children when they are on-line but only 25% of parents say they are confident about how to do that, so the information campaign has to be targeted at the parents also - as Byron puts it, they have the wisdom but not the technological knowledge, the kids have got the technological knowledge but they have not got the wisdom, so that is the gap that we have to close through an information campaign. Q618 Paul Farrelly: The way they put it to us was that they could not find it in their budget but actually in terms of publicity it is really a departmental and Government issue of priorities really. Kevin Brennan: Yes. Could I say there is a huge amount spent, obviously, throughout Government and particularly in our department in relation to child safety, staying safe and safeguarding children, and in terms of children's services the spend has gone up 7% per annum in real terms over the last few years from £2.2 billion in 1997 to £5.6 billion now, but on top of that there are all sorts of other measures like the £30 million we have supplied to NSPCC to run and expand Childline into some of these new technologies over the next few years and we are also spending a lot of money to try and get kids out and away from the computer through the £235 million that we are investing in our play strategy, and I know Dr Byron also mentioned in her evidence that it is important that we do not have battery-farmed kids locked up because all they will do is play and explore in the internet rather than playing safely outside in their community. Q619 Paul Farrelly: If you let me have some money now I will invest it wisely on behalf --- Kevin Brennan: I am sure you will be chivvying your local authority to make a bid for the money; it is still there. Q620 Chairman: Can I just pursue Mr Farrelly's point slightly? The money that the DCSF and other departments are spending is welcome but CEOP is doing the most important task. You have been full of praise for CEOP and I have to say that we were extremely impressed when we went there, so when we said to Jim Gamble about whether he was satisfied, he replied "Do we have sufficient funding? No. Are children being put at risk? That is a very difficult question for me to answer. I have said we do not have sufficient funding; the reality is that there was no new money." Given the extent to which more and more people are going on-line as technology is increasing, the number of reports is growing, should we not be increasing CEOP's budget dramatically? Mr Coaker: If CEOP come to us with a case for more money - my understanding at the moment, and I will correct this if it is wrong, is that there is no bid into the Home Office for additional money for CEOP, but of course if there were to be that bid we would have to consider it. Q621 Chairman: It sounds like a bid to me: "Do we have sufficient funding to be able to do it? No." Mr Coaker: Not formally into the Home Office. Jim Gamble, as I have said, is fantastic and CEOP is fantastic and we would always consider any bid that we get from them with respect to this. There are other issues that I mentioned with respect to Mr Keen about law enforcement with images other than child abuse images and enforcement of the law there. There is also an issue about how we - if you look at the annual report of CEOP they said they actually facilitated a number of arrests for police forces around the country, so there is also the work that we do with respect to individual forces to increase their awareness of this and develop that link between police forces and CEOP as well. As I say, we will always consider, because we regard it as a priority, if particular bids come in for money - as one came in last year where we made an additional amount of money available. We will always consider it. Q622 Chairman: You would be pretty sympathetic to a bid in this area. Mr Coaker: I am always sympathetic to CEOP and always sympathetic to Jim Gamble, of course, but that does not mean even in this area that you can say to people automatically if they bid for money they will get it. Margaret Hodge: The point I was urging my colleague to make to the Committee is that actually CEOP works with secondees from various other Government departments. Kevin Brennan: Including from us. Margaret Hodge: And also from charities; therefore, rich as the Home Office is, it does not necessarily just fall on them, there are other ways in which if CEOP needs strengthening they can approach that. Q623 Alan Keen: Better information and education on e-safety, and rightly so, is quite prominent in the Byron Review. I would also like to hear about education in schools afterwards but can I say first of all that we are hearing, week in and week out, that the problems in society are all to do with lack of parental responsibility. If parents knew as little about hot water in kettles and road traffic dangers as they know about the internet their kids would be disappearing in their thousands. How are we going to get through to the parents who have no idea most of the time what is going on - and most of the parents have no idea all of the time what is going on on the internet, although a lot of parents obviously do. How are we going to educate parents so that they can actually warn their children? Kevin Brennan: That is a very good point and, as I said earlier on, there is that information deficit with only 25% of parents saying they are confident that they can advise their children on safe use of the internet, and the only way we can achieve that is through a massive information and education and media literacy campaign. Byron quite clearly showed that there is a lack of understanding that the internet is not just a matter of looking up some pages, it is actually something on which young people in particular interact and share ideas, swap photographs, swap information, create films and do all sorts of things. I was personally surprised as a parent when I was talking to my daughter who posts her Harry Potter tribute videos on YouTube and I said "Why don't you make some other sort of videos?" and she said "I have to think of my subscribers." I said, "What do you mean, your subscribers?" She said, "I have got people who subscribe to my videos" and I said, "Let me have a look at that" and one of her videos had been viewed by over 100,000 people. I said "Can I have a penny for every one?" but there is a whole world out there so that we as parents suddenly have the scales fall from your eyes and you suddenly realise. I looked at the comments people had made on her videos and one of them said "Your videos are very good, how old are you?" and she had written in response, "It is not my policy to reveal my age." I thought, that is what we are trying to do; as Tania Byron says in her report you can build the swimming pool, you can put a fence around it, you can employ a lifeguard but you have got to teach people how to swim. Parents have got to understand what kind of technology we are talking about and that needs a massive education and information campaign, with the industry helping and with Government as well, but we have also got to give our children the wisdom to be able, just as if they were walking down the street and came across a situation, to know how to cope with a situation when they arrive at it. It is a big, big challenge but this report really shows us a way forward. Q624 Alan Keen: Have you got any plans, have you got any ideas in your mind as to an information campaign? Kevin Brennan: I would not say I am a communications expert but we do need --- Q625 Chairman: Is there a budget for it? Margaret Hodge: There is some from industry. Can I just add one other thing which is that it is partly about information and it is also about the ease of the controls, which we have talked a little bit about, so if it is easier to block or filter or lock-off or whatever you want to do, that makes your life as a parent a heck of a lot better, so it is a mixture of trying to use every bit of expertise and PR funded by government and the industry and us getting the technology right. Kevin Brennan: We are also in the process of developing this one-stop shop. You have to be able to use a computer to get to it, but the one-stop shop on-line place is where people can go and be directed to all the appropriate places including CEOP or the correct charity and so on, because parents say most of all they are confused and they do not know where to go. This will be a government thing so if you go to this government information website that page is there that will direct you to the right place and, hopefully, provide some clarity from the fog that parents say they feel about it at the moment. Mr Coaker: There is a real fog about parents and the need for information but it is also help and support with what Margaret Hodge was saying, and this debate about filtering and whether you have pre-installation of filtering mechanisms. That in itself then causes a problem because, as the evidence shows, sometimes they cause so many problems with the children going back to the parents and saying what is happening, the parents switch it off or it creates a false sense of security that there is a filtering mechanism on it, therefore you do not have to worry. Then the kids themselves find out how to do it et cetera, et cetera, so there is that debate about that but alongside that, as you will know, one of the other things the Home Secretary's taskforce has done is developed with children's charities, the industry and others a BSI kitemark which can be made available, and that kitemark can be put onto filtering software so that alongside the purchase of the computer there will be in due course a kitemarked piece of software which parents will then be able to use to put onto the computer in a proportional way. It seems to be the case that if parents do it themselves that is more likely then to be used and controlled than if it is put in in a pre-installation fashion, but I know there are different views on that. Kevin Brennan: Tania Byron's recommendation is that you take it out of the box and you switch the computer on and it asks you the question straightaway about the levels of safety you want to set. It does not preset it for you, but it says what levels of safety there are. I think that is the right approach. Q626 Alan Keen: If you want to get through to the fathers at least Madonna, Kylie and Tania Byron would have a dramatic effect. Kevin Brennan: I would not dare to respond to that, Chairman. Q627 Philip Davies: A point that Adrian was on about was video games; everybody has legitimate concerns and everybody wants to see something done, but just on a note of caution about this, the video games industry is an increasingly global industry and the people representing the games developers in their submission said: "Canada and other countries have recognised the importance of this industry, offering modern, high value-added employment and skills, but if in the UK policymakers and politicians continue to blame the industry for the ills of society we will lose yet another great British invention." I just wondered to what extent you across Government were concerned that if you were to have additional burdens of regulation on the industry it might encourage that industry, which we might want to encourage in this country, to base itself in other parts of the world where there was less regulation. Margaret Hodge: The video games industry is hugely important. In fact, when you look at the way in which we define the creative industries probably over half of the GDA which comes to the UK from the creative industries comes through the video games industry. We are fourth; we were third but Canada then offered a whole load of tax incentives which I do not think you would approve of. Q628 Philip Davies: I certainly would; I would approve of tax incentives, I always approve of tax incentives. Margaret Hodge: You would approve of intervening in the market with --- Q629 Philip Davies: Lower taxes, I always approve of lower taxes. Margaret Hodge: These are actual interventions in distorting the market which we are considering whether or not are appropriate for consideration by the WTO. Kevin Brennan: Negative subsidy. Q630 Philip Davies: That is different, subsidies are different. Margaret Hodge: I would be amazed if you approve of them but if you do maybe you can explain that to me outside this room. It is a hugely important industry and something we lose when we have these sorts of debates - Kevin said it earlier on in his remarks - the power of what is happening in information, in the whole of information, is hugely important, fantastically life-enhancing, very important for education and skills - there are endless ways in which it is important. Video games, which do often get a bad name, for all sorts of reasons, and we had two very long Friday debate in which some of us in this room participated, on whether or not we should further regulate the games industry. We do tend to emphasise the bad and we do not talk about the good and, actually, in my own constituency when I first became the MP 14 or 15 years ago and I walked into primary schools and saw the very low levels of literacy and lack of comfort in dealing with numbers, I now walk in and it just is honestly transformed. One of the mechanisms that many of them use is individual PCs on which they play educational video games which support learning. We never hear enough about that. There is a very good lab in Bristol which is doing important work, probably funded in part by the DCSF, to use that technology to support educational outcomes and raise educational standards. I completely know, therefore, where the games industry is coming from. Finally - I could babble on and on about this endlessly - it is because we do not want to go down the statutory regulatory path that we are working so hard across government on all these issues to try and get voluntary agreement in the interests of protecting children from the harm but enabling them to exploit the massive potential right across that spectrum. Kevin Brennan: There are great games for kids out there and only 5% of the games that are produced are rated 18; you would not think that if you followed the debate about it. What is important, as ever in these matters, is to empower parents to be able to take informed decisions and having a consumer-facing system empowers parents who are involved in accessing those games that were not designed for them. I think that is the key to this, and that is what has been drawn out very powerfully in the report. Q631 Chairman: Thank you very much for giving up so much of your time; that is all we have. Mr Coaker: Thank you very much. |