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10.13 am
Mr. Brian Cotter (Weston-super-Mare): I should declare an interest in the debate, as I--like other hon. Members--have an e-mail address and was one of the first hon. Members on the international website. However, I do not want to present myself--or lay myself open--as an expert, expected to know an awful lot about the subject.
The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mr. Fraser) made a timely reference to the fact that hon. Members have to be well informed on the subject if we are to legislate on it. Perhaps we should all join the recently established all-party internet group. There is great potential for improvements in the delivery of public services by innovative internet use, which will allow savings in tedious and repetitive work.
The previous Government produced the Green Paper "Government Direct", which was warm in words but short in public investment. I hasten to add, however, that the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), who is in the Chamber, was notable in his desire to obtain money to support the Green Paper's objectives. Unfortunately, that money was not forthcoming.
Liberal Democrats very much believe that the state has a directional role to play in setting the agenda for change, in encouraging the private sector to develop solutions, and in explaining to citizens the benefits of the changes that the internet makes possible. The new Government seem to be more enthusiastic about the internet, but I should mention--as other hon. Members have done--the problem of the millennium bug.
Although Robin Guernier was appointed to head an organisation established to deal with concerns about the millennium bug, he was sidelined after highlighting the problems that Government might face in implementing a solution. His organisation was replaced by Task Force 2000, which had only a part-time chairman. Moreover--I do not know whether people realise it--its three top executives were not to be put in place until January 1998. If they were not in place, they were not able to do the job.
Mrs. Gillan:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the situation is even worse than that? Action 2000 had a one-day-a-week chairman, and it appointed a director only a few days ago.
Mr. Cotter:
I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification, and for making the point that I was trying to make. The organisation's top staff have only recently been appointed to deal with a problem that should have been dealt with, and perhaps solved, so that everyone in the United Kingdom knew what to do about it. It is a great concern.
Mr. White:
One of the problems with the millennium bug is that--as the hon. Gentleman said--the public debate has been about personalities rather than the real issues. The longer people carry on talking about personalities, the less we will talk about the real issues of the 2000 problem.
Mr. Cotter:
That is certainly correct. However, we have to talk about personalities, because people will deal with the concerns.
I very much welcome the Government's statements on giving children access in school to the internet. It is very important that they should have keyboard access, and not only an e-mail address. We will therefore require more equipment, not only in schools but in public buildings.
Mr. Maxton:
Surely it is not a matter only of an e-mail address or of allowing kids occasional access to a keyboard? The state of Texas has taken a decision not to buy any more textbooks. Every child receives a laptop computer, with access to the internet, and receives information in that manner. Is that not how we should proceed with education in this country?
Mr. Cotter:
The hon. Gentleman has a very good point, although I am slightly conservative and do not want all paperwork to go out of the door. Books are very available.
We welcome the pilot project in Newcastle, for example, where jobcentres have put vacancies on line, and job seekers can access jobs and call employers directly.
I should like also to put in a little plug for Weston-super-Mare. It is part of a trial area in which information on resorts, bookings, hotels--including pictures and details--and other tourist attractions in the constituency is available on the internet.
I should like to address the following three issues: infrastructure, systems and security. Infrastructure must reach everyone who wants to get on line, especially in country areas. There is a risk of concentration of services in towns where there are many people. With cable companies cherry-picking in towns and cities, there is a danger of a new poverty: the information have-nots--very much in rural areas. It is difficult being unemployed with no car, in a village with no bus service. Electronic job-searching from the local village hall, or eventually from home, will uplift not just the jobless but disabled people, carers and others who, for one reason or another, are tied to the home.
There is huge scope for development in systems, such as in job seeking, finding a way around the benefits maze, lodging tax returns, and many areas of local and national government, such as local government planning applications.
I want to touch on the question of security. I say "touch on" it because it is a very big subject. A BBC News report on the internet, entitled "The Great Encryption Debate", which reminds me of the children's book "The Great Pie Robbery", is a big story on the continuing debate, which has been followed by many on the internet, who are asking what encryption is. It is a system of security, which is of concern.
There is a contradiction between wanting encryption for security, so that messages can be confidential and encoded by the sender, and wanting privacy in personal messages. Most people accept that some limit is necessary. We, like the Government, are concerned about the use of the internet by terrorists, race-hate groups, criminal gangs and the like.
The proposed key system could enable security services to tap into the internet as need be. At the moment, by Government agreement, telephones can be tapped when
necessary. Encryption will cause difficulty in accessing systems. I do not pretend to be able in today's debate to solve such problems.
Mrs. Gillan:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the problems of encryption is that, once one has a code and can access internet details, one can also access both historical records and any future messages that pass between sender and receiver? A telephone tap is a one-off measure by which one can listen to a conversation. There is no historical record.
Mr. Cotter:
I thank the hon. Lady for advancing the debate. She succinctly puts our concern. I shall not in this short debate dwell any longer on the subject, but merely highlight it as a problem. Solutions will be difficult to find, but the matter needs to be addressed. The Government need particularly to address on the one hand problems about who could be going through the internet, and on the other concerns about the privacy to which individuals are entitled.
Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston):
Perhaps the new computer tsars described by my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) should be called "caesars". In reflecting on how bad the Government and the House are on the matter, he ought to reflect on what happened before. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), who took a very progressive view in very difficult circumstances under a very unprogressive Government.
In 1992, the vision in the House, and indeed in British industry, was lamentable. Computers were things down corridors, dealt with by IT departments. This House was the only one in Europe, bar Turkey, that did not have a fully fledged network. Advances since then have been extraordinary. I was at the recent opening of the House exhibition on computer services, where one of the Clerks pointed out--I shall be more chivalrous than he--that, when Madam Speaker came to the House as a secretary, quill pens were still in use. We have advanced a very long way since then.
In October 1996, as a result of a recommendation of the Information Committee, the House took the decision to put the full Hansard text on the web. That was a very progressive step. At last year's European telework conference in Stockholm, I challenged other European Governments to do the same. Only the Swedish Government at the moment can anywhere near match what we are doing in that field.
I shall touch on just two points, and on one or two others tangentially; it is difficult to wrap up the subject in such a short time. I turn first to trading on the net, or e-commerce. I encourage hon. Members to look carefully at the speech of Lord Haskel, which was made in another place in October 1997, in which he set out a number of answers to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey. I shall not re-run those points.
In a fairly light-hearted article on e-commerce recently, I set out a point similar to that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) when he intervened on the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mr. Fraser). My hon. Friend said that there is not a great deal of difference in the regulatory regime necessary to deal with points about access for children in this respect and that needed to deal with access to hard copy. Exactly the same argument applies to trading.
Trading between two individuals is based on trust. The key issue is how to establish that trust. Are two people simply getting together, one passing over the goods and the other passing over the money; or are there intermediary devices, such as a bank card or, over the telephone, a credit card? If such trading is done by telephone with a credit card, what is the difference between personal trading of goods and services between supplier and consumer on the telephone and on the internet? There is no difference.
The credit card is used as the vehicle for trust. Establishing relationships that will create the same trust is the key factor that will help the evolution of e-commerce. One needs to know that the information is reasonably protected, and the system is not open to abuse.
There were early experiments in e-commerce on the Merseyside web, on which it was possible to buy an Everton football strip five or six years ago. From small beginnings, the system has evolved to the supply of office furniture. Now large-scale trading occurs across national boundaries. There are still many difficulties for the finance sector, which financial institutions are examining in detail.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey mentioned the case of my constituent Louise Woodward. A large-scale electronic campaign, of which I was at the centre, has raised many thousands of pounds for the defence. It would be inappropriate for me to go into the many reasons why I am firmly convinced of Louise's innocence. I hope to do that when she is safely back home.
I wrote a letter yesterday to Mr. Al Gore, the Vice-President of the United States, setting out some of the problems we need to address on the international regulation of internet-related issues. First, I brought to his attention an e-mail from an allegedly reputable firm of lawyers in the United States. I cannot read the text of that e-mail, because it would be decidedly unparliamentary. It is obscene, disgraceful and libellous. It has been put in the public domain by a firm of lawyers allegedly representing the other side of the case.
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