Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)

My Lords, it is a huge privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. I am sure many noble Lords will have the same sentiment as I do in thanking him for his extraordinary service to his country. I would like to associate myself with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has said, and particularly add my support to Motion A2 from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I will not repeat those arguments, but I want to make two particular points. It is of great sadness to me that, on this topic, we appear no longer to be working as a collaborative group. Those of us who worked on the Online Safety Act, across all sides of this House and the other place, spent quite a lot of time together discussing how to find common ground. That seems to have been absent in the last couple of weeks. Although I really recognise the effort that both Ministers on the Front Bench today have put into this personally, we have really missed out on trying to find that common ground that I think all of us here want to find to protect children. As a result, I find myself again supporting my noble friend Lord Nash on an amendment that I really do not like in order to try to get to the amendment that I really do like in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I think that is because we have lost the ability to collaborate on this topic, which is a great shame and something that none of us should feel very proud of. I think there is a path; it is about time, as everyone has been saying. I am afraid I do not believe that “a ceiling, not a target” works. That is not what has happened with the Online Safety Act at any stage. Every ceiling has definitely been a target and some of them have been missed. I am afraid the same is true for the DMCC Act; in this digital world, ceilings definitely become targets. The Minister says that there is the power to review the enforcement of Ofcom. When are the Government going to use that power? A commitment to use it, to shorten the time and to work collaboratively throughout the consultation would move quite a few of us.