Updated, 9.49pm: MPs passed the third reading of the Digital Economy Bill without putting it to the vote. The draft legislation will now move to the House of Lords.

Original story

The government's plan to force UK ISPs to block porn sites that fail to provide age checks has been backed by MPs debating the report stage of the Digital Economy Bill.

Labour, as expected, mounted little opposition against the government's proposal. Junior culture shadow minister Kevin Brennan told MPs on Monday evening that the government's recent stealth amendment to the bill—which took British telcos by surprise—had come at "quite a late stage" and contained "significant changes."

The new clause, which proposes that ISPs should block porn sites that fail to comply with age verification checks, was added to the bill last week. Brennan asked digital minister Matt Hancock to allay fears that the measures could end up being extended to "Internet censorship" for adult porn users.

But Hancock claimed that news reports had "misread the bill," adding that it was "neither our intention nor our understanding of the working of these amendments."

Brennan said:

We just want to put on record our concern that we didn’t have the opportunity at committee stage to pore over these kinds of proposals... not withstanding our support for blocking, we think there’s a lot more scrutiny that will be required when there’s more time available in the other place.

He described the planned age verification system as a "blunt object" and added that Labour wanted to see an amendment added to the bill that requires schools to teach kids about the risks and dangers of online porn, alongside the legal age requirement to access such material. However, the party's proposed amendment was shot down by MPs who voted 278 to 181 against Labour's clause being added to the bill.

Earlier in the debate, Hancock was challenged by Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael, who asked the minister to offer assurances—in light of recent high profile hacks—about data safeguards in the bill, particularly around age verification.

"All of the data measures in this act and all of the consequences of the age verification process will be within the Data Protection Act, which has a very strong consensus of support behind it," Hancock said. He declined to say whether the data will be anonymised, however. "It will be held in such a way that it is required to be secure and the data is not made available," the minister said.

Net neut neutered?

On the spiky topic of net neutrality—a measure that then prime minister David Cameron in late 2015 promised would be swerved with regulation, if necessary, in order to allow British ISPs to continue, on a voluntary basis, to apply network-level filters (euphemistically described as parental controls) to block access to perfectly legal porn sites—Hancock told MPs:

In committee we discussed the concerns that the EU net neutrality regulation would render these controls—which have worked well—illegal. I am clear that our interpretation of the EU net neutrality regulation is that filters are allowed where they can be turned off as then they are a matter of user choice. But I know there remains uncertainty on this matter and concerns that filters could be challenged. and I’m happy to confirm to the house that for the avoidance of doubt we will bring forward an amendment in the other place to the effect that providers may offer these filters to put this issue beyond doubt.

He was then challenged by John Whittingdale—the Tory who first tabled the Digital Economy Bill in July this year, before being dropped from his culture secretary post when Theresa May became PM—who asked what was being done about porn being routinely served up on websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Hancock said:

The age verification requirements apply to the commercial provision of pornography. Now commercial provision is not only paid for it’s also that which is provided for a commercial return. There is a difference between websites that provide commercial pornography and platforms on which others can upload images. And getting this right around that second group is much harder than around the first group.

He said the government wanted to put forward the bill to try to address age checks on porn sites. He then admitted: "I appreciate for those who want to access porn online then, if they’re really intent on doing it, there is a big challenge in stopping that," before adding: "platform-based pornography is a much more difficult technical nut to crack."

Which, perhaps put another way, suggests that the challenge is far more difficult because the likes of Twitter and Facebook aren't homegrown companies—making regulation very tricky.

Later in the debate, Whittingdale urged caution on forcing ISPs to block "legal content." He said: "like it or not, the sites we are discussing are visited by millions and millions of people every day." The back bencher added that he supports age verification, even though it was yet to be made clear how the system would work. He argued that the government was "asking a lot" to expect porn users to dish up their credit card details.

"I personally was not persuaded about the necessity of introducing ISP blocking. It does represent a considerable infringement of civil liberties of individuals who are wanting to access material… at a time when we are concerned about censorship online… I do think this is a dangerous road to go down," Whittingdale said.

Nonetheless, the government's planned amendments to bring in ISP porn-blocking where sites fail to comply with age checks looks set to be waved through by MPs.

At time of publication, parliamentarians had finally begun talking about Part 5 of the draft Digital Economy Bill. Brennan said the proposed law should be amended "in the aftermath of the Care.data scandal." Labour is concerned that patient confidentiality could be undermined based on the current information sharing clause detailed in the bill.

Identifiable information about patients should be exempt from access by public bodies and the bill should clarify this, Brennan said.