UK Government Watch

An investigation into the Home Office Go Home ad vans campaign has been launched by the UK advert censor following a series of complaints.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) confirmed they launched their investigation after receiving 60 complaints expressing concerns that the ads were reminiscent of slogans used by racist groups to attack immigrants in the past .

The regulator said some complaints also centred around the claim that 106 arrests last week in your area made in the advert was misleading.

Last month, adverts displayed on billboards transported by vans in six London boroughs were driven around in a Government effort to tell overstaying migrants to go home , or face arrest and deportation.

Britain hosts the third biggest volume of internet pornography in the world and is home to more than half a million sites. There are more than 52million pages of pornographic content in the country registered under the national domain .co.uk.

There are no restrictions on pornographers registering their sites under Britain's domain name, for which a private company called Nominet UK is responsible.

John Carr, an anti-porn campaigner acting as an adviser to the government on child internet safety, called on Nominet to ban websites containing certain words like rape and said the free for all should end. He said that all porn sites should be under the domain name .xxx and declared:

The UK should not provide succour and comfort to porn merchants. Nominet should have a policy that websites registered under the national domain name do not contain depraved or disgusting words. People should not be able to register websites that bring disgrace to this country under the national domain name.

Ed Vaizey, the communications minister, is now writing to Nominet to ask what its plans are to prevent abusive behaviour . He added that he took Carr's complaint 'extremely seriously' .

The evidence that Britain hosts more pornography than any other country apart from the US and Holland will be presented by a web analysis company called MetaCert this week. Apparently Britain hosted six times as many porn web pages as Germany in fourth place and ten times as many as France in fifth place. The US is home to nearly two-thirds of the world's pornography.

The BBC has dismissed a call by the culture secretary to take further action over Wimbledon commentator John Inverdale's sexist comments, with the corporation saying it considers the matter closed .

Director general Tony Hall has fired off a response to Maria Miller , who said in a letter published on Thursday that Inverdale's remarks about Marion Bartoli undermined her efforts to promote women in sport, admitting that the incident was totally unacceptable and fell well beneath the standards we expect of our presenters .

Despite Inverdale issuing an on-air apology and sending a letter to Bartoli, Miller called for an explanation about further action to be taken by the BBC.

The BBC considers the incident, which attracted more than 700 complaints , to have been dealt with -- a spokesman said The BBC considers this matter closed now.

Offsite Comment: How do you solve a problem like Maria Miller?

27th July 2013. See  article from  spiked-online.com by Patrick Hayes

Attempts to influence the media by the head of what was known as the ministry of fun are no laughing matter.

ATVOD has the bizarre idea that online porn is likely to 'deprave and corrupt' children. Hence the Video on Demand Censor claims that the banks could ban card payments on the grounds that the porn contravenes the Obscene Publications Act.

However online porn has been available for some time and there's not much evidence of masses of depraved children. Most campaigners against online porn are more realistically concerned that it provides a bad education for children, and that boys may be learning to treat girls less respectfully than they should.

Floella Benjamin, a member of the House of Lords asked the Government this week:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the action taken by the Authority for Television on Demand (ATVOD) to ensure that United Kingdom websites providing explicit pornography keep such material out of reach of those aged under 18; and whether they will take steps to assist ATVOD in acting in relation to websites operating from outside the United Kingdom.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the suggestion by the Authority for Television on Demand that United Kingdom financial institutions should consider whether it is possible to decline to process payments from the United Kingdom to the operations of non-United Kingdom websites which appear to be breaking the Obscene Publications Act 1959 by allowing children to access explicit hardcore pornography.

Lord Gardiner of Kimble answered:

I welcome the work that the Authority for Television on Demand (ATVOD) has undertaken in this area to explore with UK financial institutions and card companies the possibility of declining to process payments to websites operating from outside the EU which allow under 18s in the UK to view explicit pornographic content. The protection of children online is of the utmost importance and we will watch this work with interest. ATVOD provided a report on this area to the UKCCIS executive board on July, 8th, 2013 and we look forward to receiving further reports on their progress in due course.

The reply doesn't seem to imply much pro-active support from the government, just a a vague interest to see how ATVOD gets on.

Daily Mail Dave delivered a speech promising to censor more or less anything on the internet but has drawn the line at banning sexy pictures in newspapers.

Cameron said he would never support a ban on topless images on page 3 of the Sun newspaper. Pressed to explain the distinction between his censorial position on online pornographic images and his laissez-faire stance on topless images in newspapers, he said that it was up to consumers whether or not they wanted to buy the Sun [or Daily Mail].

Asked by Woman's Hour presenter Jane Garvey whether he was worried that his daughters could be confronted by Page 3, he said:

This is an area where we should leave it to consumers to decide, rather than to regulators ... As politicians we have to decide where is the right place for regulation, where is the right place for legislation, where is the right place for consumers to decide.

The founder of the No More Page 3 campaign, Lucy Holmes, said she thought Cameron's willingness to acknowledge the dangers of online pornography while ignoring the parallel dangers of topless images on page 3 of Britain's best-read newspaper was peculiar :

David Cameron must see that these pictures are damaging for women. Is he afraid of upsetting the Sun?

Daily Mail spokesman David Cameron is set to announce that the Dangerous Pictures Act will be extended to cover the glorified depiction of rape and other serious sexual offences.

In a speech on Monday, David Cameron will also laud agreements between the Government and internet firms to restrict access to pornography online to those opting to see certain sites and to introduce new censorship requirement for public Wi-Fi connections.

The Government hopes that such actions will convince Daily Mail readers that it is taking action.

Internet firms have also called for tougher legal safeguards on pornography if ministers want to police the web, as the companies do not believe they should be held responsible for deciding what content should be restricted.

The Telegraph has obtained a letter to campaign organisation Rape Crisis South London from Damian Green, the Policing Minister, in which he said the Coalition is actively considering amending legislation on so-called rape pornography .

In his letter Green said: The Government is now actively considering the serious matters [raised by campaigners] including amending the existing criminal law.

A letter sent to the UK's four leading ISPs from the government has made them very cross indeed. So cross that someone in the industry has passed it to the Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC.

The letter comes from the Department for Education but it sets out a list of demands from Downing Street, with the stated aim of allowing the prime minister to make an announcement shortly. The companies are asked, among other things, for a commitment to fund an awareness campaign for parents. They're not particularly happy about promising cash for what the letter concedes is an unknown campaign

But it also asks them to change the language they are using to describe the website censoring options they will be offering to internet users. Instead of talking of active choice + , they are urged to use the term default-on.

A person at one ISP told Cellan-Jones the request was staggering - asking us to market active choice as default-on is both misleading and potentially harmful .

The letter reads:

Dear All,

I am emailing to ask for some specific action which the prime minister plans to announce shortly. This follows a meeting yesterday at No 10 yesterday to discuss a range of child internet safety issues including parental controls and filters. The prime minister would like to make some further specific requests of industry and his office have asked us to ask you when you could deliver the following actions.

1. Implementing browser intercept

I understand that Talk Talk will be trialling a browser intercept to force existing customers to choose either to proceed with parental controls (pre-ticked), choose their own settings or turn them off completely. The prime minister wants to announce that by the end of the year, every household with a broadband internet connection will have had to make a decision to opt-out of installing filters. Will the other three ISPs consider making a commitment to adopting this approach - even before it has been trialled?

2. Age-verification systems/closed-loop

The prime minister expects customers to be required to prove their age/identity before any changes to the filters are made. I understand that you will all be implementing closed-loop systems which will notify account holders of any changes that are made to the filters and that you have robust systems in place but please could you all confirm the precise information that is required to enable customer to access, set-up and change their filters?

3. Awareness campaign for parents

I understand that it was agreed at Claire Perry's meeting a few weeks ago that Talk Talk, BT and others would undertake some further research to establish what the focus of the campaign should be. The prime minister would like to be able to announce a collective financial commitment from industry to fund this campaign. I know that it will be challenging for you to commit to an unknown campaign but please can you indicate what sum you will pledge to this work that the PM can announce.

4. Using the phrase default-on instead of active-choice +

The prime minister believes that there is much more that we can all do to improve how we communicate the current position on parental internet controls and that there is a need for a simplified message to reassure parents and the public more generally. Without changing what you will be offering (ie active-choice +), the prime minister would like to be able to refer to your solutions are default-on as people will have to make a choice not to have the filters (by unticking the box). Can you consider how to include this language (or similar) in the screens that begin the set-up process? For example, this connection includes family-friendly filters as default [or as standard] - if you do not want to install this protection please un-tick the box (obviously not intended to be drafting). Would you be able to commit to including default-on or similar language both in the set-up screen and public messaging?

We are all aware of the really excellent work that you are doing and but there are a number of specific areas that the prime minister thinks need further immediate action. You are likely to receive a further message from colleagues in DCMS and the Home Office regarding tackling illegal images but given the short deadline for this work we thought it better to give you some time to work on these issues in the meantime. I need to report back to No 10 by the end of the week on these points so I would be grateful if you could consider this request as a matter of urgency and respond by midday Friday.

Apologies for the very tight deadline and grateful for your help with this work.