I took part in the debate on the Digital Economy Bill in Parliament this week. The Bill was the last significant piece of legislation to be passed in this Parliament and covered a range of initiatives including a commitment to enable everyone in the country to have decent access to broadband and making it easier for mobile phone users to change operators.
During my speech l focused on proposals for a social media code of conduct. I said the scale of inappropriate content online was growing and referenced the fact that 400 hours of video content were being uploaded onto YouTube alone every minute. While most of that content is perfectly innocent, every day YouTube removes 200,000 videos that have been flagged as inappropriate. In 2015 YouTube removed 92 million inappropriate videos, up from 14 million in 2014.
I acknowledged the progress that has been made by some technology companies to deal with inappropriate online content but cautioned that it was not enough. I said that they need to take their responsibilities far more seriously than they have of late and warned that Parliament would be prepared to act if technology companies do not take sufficient action themselves.
We need to send a message loudly and clearly, that although they are doing something they are not doing enough. If that means that they have to spend millions, tens of millions or billions working on making sure that we, our children and our families are protected and can operate online in safety, so be it. I would prefer the companies to do this of their own volition and to take appropriate action by investing considerably in technology and human resources—bodies to make judgments and assessments on the appropriateness of content online—but I hope that I can work with colleagues across the parties to ensure that if they do not act we will take action for them.
I also took the opportunity to praise the work done by my Parliamentary colleagues from both sides of the aisle in producing a vital, consumer-friendly Bill. It has been very nice for me, as a relatively new MP, to see Parliament working at its best, when we work across parties, have meetings and discussions, and disagree respectfully, but come to reasonable conclusions because we have the same goals in mind.