Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Rt Hon Oliver Dowden CBE MP, appeared before the DCMS Select Committee to answer questions from MPs on the impact of coronavirus. The Department’s Permanent Secretary, Sarah Healey, also appeared as a witness. The session raised several relevant points for the creative industries.
- Accessing Government support schemes: Kevin Brennan MP asked about the amount of freelances in the creative industries who cannot access a form of Government support.
Oliver Dowden said that he was continuing to work with the Treasury to fill the gaps and ensure that the creative and tech industries are well represented.
- Digital exclusion: Julie Elliott MP raised points about digital exclusion and asked what assessment had been made of the vulnerable people not being able to access digital services and how the Government was working to address this. Ms Elliott said that 25 per cent of the most vulnerable cannot access the internet or digital platforms and that the ONS had estimated that one million people are not connected to the internet.
The Secretary of State discussed how he had been working with the Department for Education to provide vulnerable children with laptops and other devices so that they continue their schooling.
Julie Elliott responded by welcoming the initiative but saying that it only really targets people of exam age. She said she was concerned about vulnerable people of all ages.
Oliver Dowden discussed how the Government is working on the contact and tracing NHS app and ways to prevent digital exclusion.
- Broadband roll out: Julie Elliott MP asked how many households the Government expected to be digitally connected in the future, in the context of the broadband roll out.
Sarah Healey said that the Government was working with telecommunications companies to identify vulnerable people and ensuring that they were being priortised for connection. She said that investment in broadband meant that more people now have access to the internet. She said that the Department is working with the DevicesDotNow campaign which provides donations of smart phones and other devices for vulnerable people and working with telecommunications companies to allow them provide data packages to the vulnerable.
The Secretary of State said he would write to the Committee with the exact numbers of people they were hoping to target with these measures. He also said that the Government are working with Ofcom to get exact figures on broadband access. He reiterated that broadband roll out was a priority for the Government.
- Online harms: Oliver Dowden discussed proportionality as a key approach that needs to be taken with legislation. He said that the Online Harms Bill must be proportionate in nature so that well-intended legislation does not result in unintended bureaucratic consequences. For example, he discussed SME’s and the administrative burden that a disproportionate online harms law would have on their businesses. He said the Government are looking at ways to carve out the legislation and focus it.
The Secretary of State discussed the fast moving nature of the sector. Committee members raised the idea to add to the legislation an expectation of platforms to proactively assess what harms could be caused by their activity and then have a duty of candour to publish those. Oliver Dowden said he would take this idea away.
The Chair of the Committee, Julian Knight MP, discussed the potential sanctions for breaches under the legislation.
Oliver Dowden mentioned personality liability for directors as a consideration and discussed how sanctions would be on a scale with very high levels of harm meriting more enforcement. Again, he raised the proportionality point saying that often regulation starts out with the best intentions but can ‘get a life of its own’ and does things that Parliament did not intend. He stressed that the Government do not want hard walls around the legislation so that it is flexible.
Given the disruption caused by the coronavirus outbreak the Secretary of State acknowledged that timescales will be affected but he said the Government did not want to ‘kick the can down the road’.
Oliver Dowden said that Ofcom had not been confirmed as the regulator but that the Department had indicated its preference for Ofcom to perform this role. Funding was discussed and he said that he expected the Government to fund the regulation initially as they could not introduce a levy straight away. They would gradually ask tech companies to pay and move to an industry financed scheme. He said that all details would be published in the white paper.