Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)

My Lords, in speaking on issues related to online safety, I seem to spend most of my time apologising for the fact that the Act is not as up-to-date, efficient or effective as it should be, but here is another example of where technology has overtaken the good work that we did all those years ago to try to bring forward that legislation. I learned about this at the same meeting that has been referred to already. At first sight, it looks as though it is an answer to a lot of problems that we have with the way in which younger people in particular interact with the internet. Those of us who were involved in pursuing what is now the Online Safety Act will be aware that we were largely looking at the user end of the material and cycle, looking at the apps and their interactions, that were being generated by those who were involved in servicing the internet. We did not look at technology in the hardware side at all and had no real thought about anything that we were dealing with in the then Bill affecting it. Yet this seems a very interesting and easy-to-adopt technology that would solve a lot of problems in relation to issues about the spread of material, which we would think should not be available where there are things like age bars or other means of providing gaps in the access to it. There are always going to be problems with how we manage the changeover between childhood and adulthood, and we are aware that the technology is moving fast on that as well. It may well be that what is current today may be out of date by the time this Bill becomes law. But the Government should look very closely at the way in which this technology operates to prevent, at the equipment level, access to material which should not be seen by children particularly. There will, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, has said, be issues about free speech, and I do not think we should underestimate those. There are obviously ways in which this could be used against societal values; but for the particularity of how children are to be protected, making it impossible for them to access material, which they should by law not see, on the equipment they buy seems a very useful way forward, and I commend it to Ministers.