2022 Queens Speech Covers Digital Infrastructure and Internet Safety

Prince Charles has today carried out the State Opening of Parliament event – formally still referred to as the “Queen’s Speech“, which sets out the UK Government’s agenda for the coming session. The speech contained no real surprises, but it did include and reiterate some bills that will impact broadband infrastructure and internet safety.

The speech itself is very much a ceremonial affair, which often only serves to feed the media with a tiny sliver of new information on forthcoming Government policy and precious little else in the way of detail. On the other hand, you do sometimes get a few surprises and as usual we keep an eye out for anything to do with broadband or telecoms.

In terms of broadband and internet policy, this year there were no huge surprises as most of what was announced has already been reported or introduced. This time, the relevant legislation covered the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill (UKIBB), as well as the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill (PSTIB) and the now extremely familiar Online Safety Bill (OSB).

We’ve summarised each of the three aforementioned bills below, based on the information that the government has published alongside today’s speech. The full briefing document can be found here.

UK Infrastructure Bank Bill

“My Government will establish the UK Infrastructure Bank in legislation, with objectives to support economic growth and the delivery of net zero.”

The purpose of the Bill is to:

● Finalise the creation of the UK Infrastructure Bank by establishing it in law with clear objectives to support regional and local economic growth and deliver net zero, and ensuring it has the full range of spending and lending powers.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

● Ensuring the Bank can become fully operational and is able to utilise its £22 billion financial capacity to help grow the economy to address the cost of living and support the transition to net zero by 2050.

● Providing a boost to infrastructure investment by cementing the Bank’s leading role in the market. The Bank will partner with the private sector to unlock more than £18 billion of additional investment in infrastructure.

The main elements of the Bill are:

● Enshrining the Bank’s objectives and functions in legislation to ensure that it will be a long–lasting institution with a clear policy mandate to support economic growth, including at a regional and local level, and the delivery of net zero.

● Protecting the Bank’s operational independence by setting out clear accountability for how it is to be run, including reporting and board requirements.

● Providing the Bank with the necessary powers to lend directly to local authorities and the Northern Ireland Executive, enabling the Bank to play a key role in delivering public sector infrastructure projects.

Territorial extent and application

● The Bill will extend and apply across the UK.

Key facts

● The UK Infrastructure Bank is a British state–owned investment bank. It is intended to help with the Government’s plan to support economic growth in regional and local sectors across the UK and reach net zero carbon by 2050.

● The UK’s core infrastructure – including power, heat and transport networks – accounts for over two–thirds of UK carbon emissions. Low carbon investment must therefore scale up quickly to deliver net zero. The Bank is part of a wider infrastructure strategy aimed at addressing this shortfall and builds on the existing expertise of the National Infrastructure Commission and the Infrastructure Projects Authority.

● The Bank has £22 billion of financial capacity to offer a range of financial tools, including debt, equity and guarantees. It has already undertaken several investments, including a £107 million loan to support Tees Valley Combined Authority in the redevelopment of the South Bank Quay in the Teesworks Freeport area. Once finished, this will host a GE Renewable Energy site for the manufacture of offshore wind turbines, creating around 800 jobs.

● The Bank will focus on investments in under–invested areas where it can take a lead in the market and encourage more private finance into these areas. Through this focus, the Bank will partner with the private sector to unlock more than £18 billion of additional investment in infrastructure.

● Infrastructure projects required to meet our objectives often do not garner the confidence or secure the finance needed from the private sector as they tend to be complex, novel and long–term. The Bank will provide the long–term policy certainty required to support the growth of key nascent industries, for example Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage which encounters many of the same problems experienced by the offshore wind industry in its early days.

● Disparity in infrastructure across the country has been identified as a key driver of economic disparities. Without intervention, the private sector is likely to continue to target geographic areas which have historically received higher levels of private capital for further investment.

Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

The purpose of the Bill is to:

● Improve cyber resilience and digital connectivity for individuals and businesses across the UK, further growing the economy.

● Ensure that smart consumer products, including smart phones and televisions, are more secure against cyber–attacks.

● Accelerate and improve the roll out of mobile and broadband networks so that more people can have good digital connectivity more quickly.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

● Protecting consumers from cyber–attacks by ensuring that manufacturers, importers and distributors only sell smart devices that meet tougher security standards.

● Ensuring product security requirements, which protect devices from emerging threats, will be regularly updated. Manufacturers will also be required to have a point of contact for reporting software vulnerabilities. This will increase consumer confidence in new technologies.

● Accelerating the rollout of broadband in the coming years, to enable faster and more reliable connectivity for more of the population. By 2025 the Government is aiming for a minimum of 85 per cent gigabit–capable coverage.

● Reducing the number of new sites and installations needed to meet the Government’s digital connectivity targets by utilising existing equipment. This makes it cheaper and easier to install apparatus, giving operators more funding to invest in digital rollout, helping communities and businesses across the UK.

The main elements of the Bill are:

● Requiring manufacturers, importers and distributors of smart devices to comply with minimum security standards. The legislation also imposes duties on these businesses to investigate and take action in cases of non–compliance.

● Providing a robust regulatory framework that can adapt and keep pace with rapid technological advances, techniques used by cyber criminals, hostile states and broader global regulation.

● Reforming the Electronic Communications Code to support faster, fairer and more collaborative negotiations for the use of private and public land to enable deployment of telecommunications networks.

Territorial extent and application

● The Bill will, in the main, extend and apply across the UK.

Key facts

● The average UK household was estimated to have nine or more smart devices in 2020.

● In the first half of 2021 alone, there were 1.5 billion attempted compromises of connectable products, double the equivalent 2020 figure. Personal data has been lost and compromised devices have been used to launch attacks on businesses, governments and critical infrastructure. This Bill is a vital lever that will help protect these organisations from such attacks.

● To provide faster and more reliable connectivity to both the public and businesses, the Government wants 95 per cent of the UK’s geographic landmass to have 4G coverage by 2025, and for the majority of the population to have 5G coverage by 2027.

Online Safety Bill

The purpose of the Bill is to:

● Deliver the manifesto commitment to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online by improving protections for users, especially children, whilst protecting freedom of expression.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

● Preventing online fraud and scams by requiring large social media platforms and search engines to prevent the hosting or publication of fraudulent paid–for advertising.

● Tackling the most serious illegal content, including child sexual exploitation and abuse.

● Ensuring communication offences reflect the modern world, with updated laws to tackle threatening communication online as well as criminalising cyberflashing.

● Safeguarding freedom of expression. Tech companies will no longer be able to arbitrarily remove content. If users feel like they have been treated unfairly, they will have the right to appeal. And journalistic and democratically–important content will also be protected from arbitrary removal.

● Restoring public trust by making companies responsible for their users’ safety online, whilst supporting a thriving and fast–growing digital sector.

The main elements of the Bill are:

● Introducing a duty of care on online companies, making them responsible for protecting users and tackling illegal content. This will create safeguards and standards so that users know when and how companies are using tools to identify illegal content and to stop harmful material being viewed by children.

● Empowering users by ensuring the largest platforms give users tools to exercise greater control over the types of people and content they interact with.

● Protections for democratic and journalistic content. The Bill sets a higher bar for the removal of content that contributes to democratic political debate, and all ‘recognised news publishers’ will be exempt from the Bill’s safety duties (for both children and adults).

● Requiring providers who publish pornographic content on their services to prevent children from accessing that content, and for the largest platforms to put in place proportionate systems and processes to prevent fraudulent adverts being published or hosted on their service.

● Ensuring the big social media companies keep their promises to users by enforcing their terms and conditions consistently. Requiring platforms to have effective and accessible user reporting and redress mechanisms to report concerns about harmful content, and challenge infringement of rights (such as wrongful takedown).

● Designating Ofcom as the independent online safety regulator and giving it robust enforcement powers to uphold the regulation. This will include fines of up to £18 million or ten per cent of qualifying annual global turnover – whichever is greater – as well as business disruption measures, making them less commercially viable in the UK. Senior managers of tech firms can be held criminally liable if they fail to comply with information requests from the regulator.

Territorial extent and application

● The Bill will extend and apply across the UK.

Key facts

● In 2020, adult internet users in the UK spent an average of three hours and 37 minutes online each day, up by nine minutes compared to 2019. However, over 80 per cent of UK adults expressed a concern about going online in 2020.

● In a month–long period during 2020, the Internet Watch Foundation and its partners blocked at least 8.8 million attempts by UK internet users to access child sexual abuse material online.

● During COVID–19 lockdowns, research by YouGov showed that 47 per cent of children and teens had seen content they would rather avoid, leaving them feeling uncomfortable (29 per cent), scared (23 per cent), and confused (19 per cent). One in seven (13 per cent) were exposed to harmful content on a daily basis.