Culture chief calls for web standards

Andy Burnham, the culture secretary, said on Wednesday that the UK had moved into a new era in which people were willing to “glue back together” a consensus on decency and impartiality on the internet.

He said that parliament should have an important debate about regulating the internet and turning back some of the destructive aspects of the online world.

“People are actually beginning to challenge this notion that was around a few years ago that the internet came along and it has smashed everything to pieces and we have to give up,” Mr Burnham told a House of Lords committee.

“[There is] an idea that there can be some kind of, albeit voluntary, regulation, some kind of consensus glued back together about standards and content, taste, decency, impartiality – all these kind of things in the new world.”

He cited Ofcom’s report this week on the risks of social networking and the Byron report last week on children’s use of the internet and violent video games, but said it was also an important debate for parliament.

On Thursday the Home Office will publish guidelines to promote best practice for social networking sites, which is expected to focus on safety for young users.

“I think we have moved into a slightly different phase at the moment whereby people are not accepting that the online world has just smashed everything apart irrevocably, for good,” he said.

Mr Burnham gave as another example the efforts by music publishers to reach a solution with internet service providers to combat downloading piracy.

He also told the Lords committee that state funding for public service broadcasting by Channel 4, ITV and Five, as well as by minor broadcasters, did not automatically mean taking money from the BBC licence fee. That solution, known as top-slicing, was favoured in a Conservative policy document earlier this week.

Mr Burnham said he did not agree with the idea that this was the only way of preserving public service broadcasting and suggested that the BBC could provide material help rather than cash, as exemplified by regional news broadcasting on ITV1.

The culture secretary said the BBC could perhaps share its studios with ITV or others to maintain the plurality of news programming in the regions.

In a separate development, the European Commission on Wednesday queried public funding to help cover Channel 4’s capital costs during the switchover to digital television by 2012.

A Brussels statement said: “The Commission has serious doubts as to whether the proposed aid ... is necessary and proportional and does not overcompensate Channel 4.”

The Commission’s investigation into the matter followed complaints about possible financial assistance to Channel 4, on the grounds that the broadcaster had plenty of cash to fund the switchover with no need for public support.

The broadcaster said: “As [the Commission’s] statement makes clear, this is a specific proposal to examine the government’s plan to fund Channel 4’s switchover costs, and they do not oppose state funding for broadcasters in principle.”