I am delighted to introduce this debate on the very important and topical subject of protecting our children and other vulnerable groups from harmful online content. First, I welcome the announcement that the pilot by the British Board of Film Classification to put an age rating on music videos made by artists signed in the United Kingdom is to be made permanent. That has been agreed by not only major music labels Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music, but YouTube and Vevo. It represents a big step forward in the regulation of online content.
The internet has really only been available in homes for about 20 years. It is a new and mostly unregulated medium. While it has many advantages, the lack of regulation has created some corresponding problems. Those problems have been compounded in recent years by the increasing availability of mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones, which mean that children who might before have been sitting at the family’s personal computer in the living room are now in their bedrooms, where their viewing is entirely unsupervised.
Music videos only really began in the 1980s, with the rise of MTV, but they quickly became an integral part of pop songs. Quite often, a powerful video could help to sell a rather weak song. Music videos make a strong impression and sell records or downloads, which gives those videos great commercial value. The drive for sales has led to increasingly extreme lyrics and videos; the accessibility of the internet has contributed to that. Songs and images that could never have been commercially successful in the past because they were too explicit to have been shown on television can be made and streamed on the internet to be viewed by anyone, anywhere, at any time.
In the past, people producing music and videos that they wanted to sell to young people had to get past gatekeepers to access radio and television stations, through which they could communicate with young people. The radio and television stations were licensed and regulated and the organisations that ran the media companies were answerable for the content that they broadcast. Nowadays, music and video producers can talk directly to a child without the parents scrutinising or authorising what is being shown or said.
We are all aware of how impressionable children, particularly young children, can be, and of the highly sexualised, violent and, worst of all, sexually violent content of certain music videos. I am sure that that is a great concern to many of us. Analysis of academic research into music videos has found that women—disturbingly, particularly black women—are routinely portrayed in a hyper-sexualised fashion. That objectification of women, particularly along racial lines, is extremely unhealthy for boys and for girls and it is right that we shield children from those disturbing images, specifically those which involve criminality such as drug taking, which is a particular issue in some rap music videos.
I am, therefore, heartened that after the success of the British Board of Film Certification’s pilot for major labels, independent labels in the United Kingdom are now taking part in a six-month trial to submit their videos to the BBFC for age rating. I hope that they follow the example of the major labels in making that classification permanent.
I was interested to note that, during the initial trial of the major labels, which took place in 2015, of the 132 videos that were reviewed, 56 were classed as suitable for children aged 12 or under and were given a 12 classification; 53 were given a 15 classification; and one video was classified as an 18. That sample shows that about 50 per cent of the music videos that are produced in a six-month period by UK-signed artists are unsuitable for people under the age of 15. However, I would be surprised if they had not been viewed by a large percentage of children under that age.
One of the major advantages of this system of classification is that it is the same as that for films and is simple and widely understood. Everyone with children will be able to interpret the classifications immediately. A consultation that was carried out by the BBFC in 2013 of more than 10,000 people across the UK found that the public has great confidence in the classifications. The public agree with the BBFC’s classifications in more than 90 per cent of cases; 95 per cent of parents with children who are under the age of 15 check the BBFC classification; and 84 per cent of parents with children who are aged between six and 15 consider that the BBFC is effective at using age-rating classification to protect children from unsuitable content. The system enjoys a high level of public confidence and support, and that is another heartening feature of this extension of the BBFC’s classification system to music videos.
It is interesting to note that independent research into the pilot that was commissioned by the BBFC shows that 78 per cent of Britons would value age ratings on online music videos, and that up to 60 per cent of people aged between 10 and 17 are watching music videos that they think their parents would not approve of.
The rating system would provide clear guidelines for parents and children and make it easier for parents to impose and enforce rules in homes across the country about what can be viewed. I believe that many children will also welcome the classification system. I am sure that there are young children who have been shocked and distressed by some of the images that they happen to have seen and would welcome the fact that they have the security to be able to watch a video in the knowledge that they will not be upset by what it might contain.
Let me be clear: this is not about banning material that is suitable for adults; it is about ensuring that material that is not suitable for children is not available to children.
Another heartening development is the decision by Scotland’s four mobile networks—EE, O2, Three and Vodafone—to place mobile content that would be rated 18 or R18 by the BBFC behind access controls and internet filters. It is worth noting that R18 is a special category for films that are particularly strong or explicit. R18 DVDs cannot be ordered by mail order, and have to be viewed in a specially licensed cinema or sold over the counter in a specially licensed shop. It is particularly important, therefore, that that material is not available to children. The BBFC is the independent regulator of mobile content and the system that has been voluntarily adopted by the mobile operators means that filters can be put in place by parents to restrict the ability of people under the age of 18 to access online pornography and harmful sites such as pro-anorexia sites from their mobile phones. Nevertheless, there is a problem in that children can access those sites via their devices through public wi-fi in places such as coffee shops and shopping centres.
Different standards apply depending on how the information is accessed, whether through a public wi-fi system, mobile networks or home broadband. I believe that the time has now come to put stricter controls in place so that age ratings apply to accessing information via public wi-fi, in order to create a consistent system without loopholes that protects our children and other vulnerable people, no matter where they are accessing the internet from.
The BBFC’s classification system is clearly a step in the right direction, but it applies only to online music videos for artists signed to labels in the UK. Non-UK-signed artists are not covered by the classification system and that is a problem. I therefore call on labels in the United States of America, from where so much popular music emanates, to voluntarily submit their music videos to the BBFC for classification, particularly as some of the most controversial music videos come from the USA.
The BBFC is an independent non-government body that was set up in 1912, so for more than 100 years it has been providing guidance for parents on the suitability of films and, later on—in fact, since 1984—guidance on the suitability of videos for children. It is to be congratulated on extending its role to online content to keep up with changes in technology, and I am pleased to commend the work of the BBFC to the chamber, while at the same time reminding colleagues across the chamber that there is still some way to go in ensuring a consistent approach to protecting our children from inappropriate materials online.
12:41