Hansard

Like all the other speakers in the debate, I am grateful to Stewart Maxwell for bringing this important issue to the chamber and creating the space for us to contribute to what has been a responsible debate that allows us to consider what more we need to do to keep children safe.

The protection of children’s wellbeing is the responsibility of us all. We each have a duty to take the steps that we can to ensure that children and young people are not exposed to harm. That is the case as much in our increasingly digital world as it is in our homes, schools, businesses and communities.

Although matters of internet regulation remain reserved to the United Kingdom Government, I continue to encourage it to collaborate fully with us through the UK council on child internet safety in recognition of Scotland’s devolved responsibilities in key areas of internet safety. I say that because it took a bit of work for the Scottish Government to ensure that we were always involved in those discussions. Notwithstanding the Prime Minister’s clear commitment to the issue, there needs to be an understanding that internet safety transcends boundaries and that it is important for us, with our devolved responsibilities for keeping children safe, to have the door to those discussions always open.

Like Graeme Pearson and Stuart McMillan, I recognise the need for young people to have input to the discussion. As I think Graeme Pearson was trying to say without offending us about our ages, young people are not necessarily to be found on Facebook, because that is often where their grandparents are. As new things develop online, we need to know where our young people are online—just as we want to know where our young people are when they are offline. We need to stay ahead of the game in that regard, which is why it is important to get young people involved in the discussions. They are the ones who can inform us about what is important to young people and how they are communicating with their peers.

Like Stewart Maxwell, Liz Smith and others, I welcome the voluntary steps that are being taken by the UK music industry to ensure that music videos are given age ratings by the British Board of Film Classification. I am committed to ensuring that we continue to work with the BBFC, as part of its advisory consultative committee, and with other partners within the industry to see whether more can be done to persuade companies that are based overseas and which have not yet committed to the initiative to do so.

Allied to that is the decision by the four main mobile networks to place content that is rated 18 or R18 by the BBFC behind access controls, meaning that such content can be excluded by parental controls. Those are important signals that the industry is taking seriously the valid concerns of parents about the ease with which children can access inappropriate content. I also welcome the scheme that allows businesses to display the friendly wifi symbol to show that the wifi provided by them is filtered and safe for children and young people to use.

Although those developments are welcome, they should not ever allow for complacency. There are still myriad ways in which children might be exposed to harmful content, whether it be on the covers of newspapers or magazines that are displayed in shops and newsagents within a child’s eye line, or online. The most significant online risks faced by our children and young people will not easily be eliminated by increasing parental controls or filters. The increase in peer-to-peer sharing of indecent images—revenge porn, as Christina McKelvie said—the growth in live streaming of child sexual exploitation, grooming for the purposes of blackmail and exploitation and the objectification of women all happen on platforms that lie outside the specifics that are mentioned in the motion.

The majority of content that is uploaded and online is not subject to a classification system that lends itself to parental controls or effective filters. A recent Ofcom survey demonstrated that many parents choose not to employ parental controls, so although parents want more control, in some cases and for many reasons, they are not taking that action. The reasons for that are many and varied. Some parents feel that their children can be trusted without the need for additional controls, while others point out that their children are never unsupervised while they are online. However, a significant proportion reported concerns that setting up controls appeared to be complicated and beyond their technical know-how. Industry therefore has a continued role in ensuring that such controls are accessible to as many people as wish to use them.

There is also a job of work for us to do. That is why the Scottish Government’s digital participation strategy focuses efforts on helping everyone to develop the skills and confidence to become active digital citizens, and on giving the parents who have such concerns help, should they wish to use it. The Scottish stakeholder group for child internet safety will work with Police Scotland and other key partners in co-ordinating our response to the challenges in conjunction with the work that is being undertaken as a result of our national action plan on child sexual exploitation.

We must make it absolutely clear to perpetrators of online crime that the full force of the law will be brought to bear on them. We must not forget that the responsibility for crimes being committed online lies with those committing the offence, and we must ensure that deterrents are as robust as possible.

Moreover, the national sexual crimes unit within the Crown Office is doing important work on increasing the number of successful convictions of sexual crime, and Police Scotland’s national child abuse investigation unit complements that work by providing consistent, high-quality support for robust investigations into reports of complex child abuse and neglect, including child sexual exploitation and online child abuse.

We should also acknowledge the work that practitioners do to protect children every day, whether in education or other children’s services. Many examples of original and creative approaches are being developed by schools and youth groups to educate our children and young people about the risks in a meaningful way that engages with them where they are.

It is also important to remember that we must not demonise the internet. As many members have noted, children and young people use the internet in ways that are unimaginable to those of us who did not grow up in the digital age, and we all want to see a Scotland where children are encouraged and enabled to benefit from the huge opportunities that are offered by digital technologies. We do not want to push our young people into the dark and scary places that Christina McKelvie talked about by constantly demonising the internet. Our language and actions need to be appropriate.

In conclusion, I welcome the approaches that the industry has taken so far, while recognising that more can and should be done. Parental controls are important tools, but the use of technical controls must be seen as a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, broader approaches that make it clear that parents do not shoulder the full weight of keeping children safe online. We must ensure that Scotland is seen as a hostile environment for online crimes, while promoting the digital world as being essential to our growth and prosperity, and encouraging and enabling all of our citizens to take part in online life to the fullest extent and to do that in the safest possible way.

Once again, I extend my thanks to Stewart Maxwell and the other members who have taken part in today’s debate. I look forward to continuing our dialogue as we strive to ensure that our children can grow up safe from harm, especially in the online world.