Speeches by Hinds.

“I think this may call for a short reprise.”

“During this inquiry, we keep hearing the new phrase, “public service algorithm.” It also appears in this morning’s hot-off-the-press publication, in which the Government say that they are “supportive of PSM providers developing algorithms in line with public service values, that strike the right balance between offerin…”

“To be fair, they also were not what I asked about. I don’t think people would put religious programming in the same bracket as lifestyle programming, or gameshows or quizzes.”

“Finally from me, I said at the start that when it comes to prominence, some things are more controversial than others. Kids’ TV and news are at the very uncontroversial end; is that the extent of the ambition, or do people mean prominence for lifestyle content and lifestyle programmes on Pinterest?”

“What do you say, Helen?”

“You say that you have never been a snob, and I certainly will not accuse you of being a snob, but that is about what counts within public service broadcast content. There is another question about whether something else on Pinterest, or any other platform that one might think of, has an equal call on people’s time and …”

“I think this may call for a short reprise.”

“I am sorry to interrupt, but we are short on time. If you have a human creating it, by definition, it is then not an algorithm, right?”

“Indeed. Sorry, my memory is not perfect, but there were different stages in the passage of the Bill, and there were clauses that people anticipated were going to be in the final Online Safety Act that were not, in the end.”

“Yes. Media and whatever they called it—content of democratic importance—were always going to be exempt. The question is more what they were going to be exempt from. In the final version of the Online Safety Act—sorry, we are not here to discuss the Online Safety Act, but some of the clauses were not in the final Act. I…”

“Okay, let’s talk about newspapers. If I make prominent a little snippet of text that I have just copied from thetimes.com, The Times gets no remuneration for that at all, because nobody has any need to go to The Times website or app or what have you; I have just consumed my news and no journalist has been paid. How man…”

“Could you say that again? That sounded brilliant. There is a way to define the media without defining it. You should be drafting legislation. That is brilliant—if we can figure that out.”

“During this inquiry, we keep hearing the new phrase, “public service algorithm.” It also appears in this morning’s hot-off-the-press publication, in which the Government say that they are “supportive of PSM providers developing algorithms in line with public service values, that strike the right balance between offerin…”

“Finally from me in this little segment, when people talk about a public service algorithm, do they just mean on iPlayer or on ITVX, or is the ambition a little bit deeper? Let us take Instagram, as it is the more extreme version because YouTube is fundamentally about videos, even though they are often quite short. If y…”

“When people talk in a scale context about a public service algorithm, what do they mean? The iPlayer has an algorithm. It might be a really basic algorithm, but it is definitely an algorithm. When children go on it and click “Kids”, they get content that is not shown when an adult goes on it. If someone has been watchi…”

“Helen, you anticipate my next question. Of course we all want to see local newspapers having prominence, and everyone could probably agree on a small number of publications. I have just looked this up: we abolished licensing of the press on 3 May 1695. In the modern world, who would decide, “This is a real newspaper, b…”

“Are you at liberty to give your own thoughts on what the end state looks like?”

“My word! My hon. Friend puts it in very striking terms. [Interruption.] I see the Minister indicating that he has heard her question, so I think it is right that I defer to him to say a word about the matter when he makes his speech. As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst and other colleagues have said, this is …”

“As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) did, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. I pay tribute to him for securing it and for all his work with the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood. He puts an awful lot of work into it—it is not like…”

“Really—there isn’t public discussion of the output of the BBC? I know we don’t have Barry Took any more, but come on! There are weekly programmes on the BBC about this; newspapers fill acres of newsprint with it. We are talking about it now! We have this whole Select Committee talking about it. Come on, the idea that i…”