Contributions
582 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARDFull-fibre and Gigabit-capable BroadbandMy hon. Friend is right to welcome the universal service obligation. Schemes such as our gigabit broadband voucher scheme allow businesses to access the far faster speeds that…16 Jan 2020HANSARDFull-fibre and Gigabit-capable BroadbandI begin by paying tribute to the former right hon. Member for Loughborough, who is now Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from the Lords. She is still very…16 Jan 2020HANSARDFull-fibre and Gigabit-capable BroadbandMy hon. Friend is right that notspots are by no means confined to rural areas. Through the Government’s voucher scheme, we are covering all of the country, and the 2025 commitment…16 Jan 2020HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationMy hon. Friend characterises our response absolutely correctly. It is time that will allow us to produce the best possible solution for protecting children. We will be responding…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationIf what I said was open to misinterpretation, I apologise. I am not suggesting for a second that it is a child’s responsibility to protect themselves online. That is why the…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationI am afraid I am too young to recall precisely the experience to which my right hon. Friend refers—and I am sure he was speaking on behalf of others, rather than himself. However,…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationI thank my hon. Friend for her question. She is right that it is important for us to retain the confidence of stakeholders. For instance, the response of the National Society for…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationThe hon. Lady highlights the importance of a comprehensive approach that goes far beyond online. The nature of the lessons that she talks about is not within my Department’s…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationMy right hon. Friend is absolutely right. While pornography is one extreme example of some of the corrosive effects of the internet, we have to look far more broadly than online…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationI hesitate to pre-empt what will ultimately be in the draft Bill, but it is obvious that we would want any regulator to have extremely strong sanctions in extreme circumstances.…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationThe hon. Lady is right that the framework was potentially a start, but I think that we can do better. We have a duty to present a coherent set of regulations rather than introduce…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationI think what the hon. Lady is saying is that in many ways prevention is better than cure, and that is why the online harms approach will place a duty of care on website operators…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationMy hon. Friend is of course completely right. It is a critically urgent issue, but it is also critically urgent that we get it right, and I do think that we can make that progress…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationThe approach of introducing a duty of care on all relevant companies through the online harms Bill is what will allow us to go further. The hon. Lady—as I did at the beginning of…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationOf course the Secretary of State appeared before my hon. Friend’s Select Committee yesterday, after the publication of the written ministerial statement. The Secretary of State…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationI thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words at the beginning of his question, if not much else. He is absolutely right in his closing point that online harms is a difficult…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationI share a huge number of the hon. Lady’s concerns. This is not an indefinite postponement of the measures that we are seeking to introduce; it is an extension of what they will…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationI thank my hon. Friend for her question and for the work that she did as my predecessor at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It will always be the priority of…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationThe precise purpose of changing our approach is to have a regulator that, in due course, will have comprehensive authority to take the actions that we need to protect children.…17 Oct 2019HANSARD Online Pornography: Age VerificationI say gently to the hon. Gentleman that the online harms being discussed in this urgent question are fundamentally about the protection of children on the internet, and I hope we…17 Oct 2019