My Lords, it is a great honour to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Foster, who put the case for this group of amendments incredibly well. I do not want to go over the ground he has already covered, but I would just like to endorse three key points behind them.

First, children should be afforded the same protections against inappropriate content, whatever channel they are on. As my noble friend the Minister will remember well, what goes on in the real world should apply also to the digital world and vice versa. Secondly, it is the role of Parliament—no one else—to set out the rules when it comes to issues as important as the safety of children. Thirdly, companies that wilfully and knowingly fail to take steps to protect children should face the consequences. Those are the three principles behind this group of amendments and I thank the noble Lord for putting them so well.

I also thank some of the companies and stakeholders with whom I have engaged in the drafting of these amendments. As noble Lords may have noticed, the amendments have changed quite a lot between Second Reading and our meeting today. The reason is that companies have made good points and we have adjusted the amendments to reflect some of those: I thank in particular Disney and Sky for the engaging, positive and constructive way in which they have conducted these conversations.

Amendment 60 is incredibly straightforward. It is to include the British Board of Film Classification as a statutory consultee when ofcom is drafting new video on demand codes. Statutory consultees are very common. The Children’s Commission was added during the Online Safety Bill and the BBFC is highly respected. So I hope very much that that could be waved through by my noble friend the Minister.

Amendment 61 is really the main focus of my remarks today. It would bring in a minimum standard across all ratings across tier 1 services. It would allow providers to either use the BBFC’s world-class and highly robust system or—and this is a very important “or”—a system of their own that meets equivalent standards. That is the gap that this amendment seeks to fill.

Following discussions with the providers, it also includes a provision for services provided by linear broadcasters to use a system based on the Ofcom Broadcasting Code. If I can, I will briefly explain that point. Many broadcasters have a linear service that is quite reasonably overseen by Ofcom and have a Broadcasting Code arrangement. It seems sensible—to me at least—that those standards should apply to their VOD broadcasts as well. That was one of the changes we were pleased to make to the amendments we have laid.

Amendment 61 sets out the process by which Ofcom can assess the ratings systems that are not based on the BBFC’s and, following the discussions I mentioned, the ability for Ofcom to designate some content, such as news or live events, as exempt from age ratings. That seems like a sensible exemption to me. Amendments 62 to 66 are consequential on Amendment 61 and would extend Ofcom’s enforcement powers to cover breaches related to the minimum standards for age-ratings requirements.

During Second Reading, there were some concerns raised that it would be inappropriate to mandate a particular solution and that these amendments might go against the tech-neutral approach of the overall Bill. If that were the case then I would share those concerns, but I reassure noble Lords, who will see this from the text, that those concerns are based on a misunderstanding of both the intent and substance of these amendments. The provisions would apply only to tier 1 services that choose to use age ratings as part of their overall audience protection duties. No service would be forced to use age ratings against its will and the requirements would not apply to any service that finds a different or better audience protection measure, whether that is tomorrow or in 50 years’ time. Nor would it mandate a specific age-ratings system, such as the BBFC’s. In fact, my amendment provides a clear choice of three different approaches, one including a bespoke service to them, provided it meets the minimum standards.

That is what my amendments are really about. They aim to ensure that, in the same way parents know what PG and 12A mean when they go to the cinema or buy a DVD, they can trust the age ratings that pop up on their TV at home or on the basis of their parental controls. For that reason, I hope very much indeed that my noble friend the Minister will embrace this set of amendments.