Geoff Hoon is the MP for Ashfield, near Nottingham. He is also the Labour Party's spokesman on Trade and Industry responsible for the information superhighway, communications and related issues. His view of the future centres on individuals getting information from fixed sources rather than using technology to communicate among themselves. He suggests a highly regulated market for bandwidth, and is clearly in favour of censoring various forms of material, one way or another.
Wired: What is the Labour Party's IT goal?
Hoon: A society in which every individual has access through some sort of broadband connection to the wealth of information that presently resides in libraries and computers around the world. We believe very strongly that an information society will only have real benefit for our community if every citizen either has individual access or access via a school or a library.
So what are the routes from here to there?
The Labour Party has started to think very practically about that, and our understanding with BT is an important part of that process. Exchanging regulatory reform for a commitment to connect schools, colleges, libraries and other public places is a starting point. Even if the cable companies roll out their networks to 100% of the places that they are - under their franchises - expected to wire up, there will be a fifth of the country without a cable connection. We aim to move things along so the whole country has access.
What role, if any, does a government regulator have in creating a level playing field among the operators?
I see the very rapid development of real price competition. I think that will mean that whoever is regulating telecoms - and it may not be a simple telecoms regulator, but one that extends into what are now other areas, like broadcasting - will focus on allowing those who may not own a network access to it. But, clearly, someone building a new network has got to get a return on it. So the role of the regulator will be judging how long that return is a reasonable one, and what limitations should be im-posed on those that seek to use the network during that period.
The regulator would then look at return over all networks as interconnectivity grows?
I think that's perfectly reasonable.
What are other ways government might get involved?
I know that several efforts have been made to persuade the board of BT to invest in broader-band connections much closer to the home. They have not been successful because there hasn't been seen to be a sufficient return to justify it. Government could say, "Look, we have an enormous amount of information and we have a lot of people we need to reach." Government is a sufficiently big player to encourage others to come in.
What's an example?
I recently went to Leeds and saw the Web site the city council there has established. There is practical information a business might need if it were thinking of moving to Leeds. There is a range of information about what the council actually does, which I think is important for citizens in that community - what's going on in terms of council committees, or what the minutes of the council committees are. They've given all of their councillors a PC and a connection, so that people can actually email their councillors.
One of the fashionable things to talk about if you're in politics is how little people are interested in politics, how they don't attend meetings or vote. I think the provision of information is a way in which we can enormously improve the relations between government and its citizens.
What privacy protection are you willing to offer?
At the moment we have a principal that information collected for one purpose should not be used for another purpose. I'm not sure we're going to get the benefits of integration if we can't provide information across departments. Removing those limits, though, will be a big issue in the UK. That is something that we will have to debate. It's not something that I could say today that either the Labour Party - or indeed the public - are ready for.
Personally I think the important thing about privacy is that if information is held about people, it is held accurately. I think we need to be much more determined to allow individuals access to information that is held about them, and much more determined to ensure that it is accurate.
What, if anything, does government do about policing content on the Net while retaining the diversity of that content?
I think that there needs to be a degree of responsibility, particularly by the service providers, in what material they allow over their networks. I have a fear that this year or next year we will see a moral panic. People are concerned about what technology might do to change society. If they see and read in the newspapers stories about terrible things that might happen to them and their children then that can generate a moral panic that will lead my colleagues in the House of Commons to demand that something must be done. Then the wrong thing will done.
Given that both you and I think that moral panic is a bad thing, what can we do about it?
There are concerns about children and fairly hardcore pornography. I think there are concerns about racist far-right material, which might contain information about bombs and so on, which might well be of concern to governments. But you're not going to stop those people who want access to that material from getting it. All you need to ensure is that the generality of the population can't get it by accident.
In my previous life as a barrister I saw some pretty hardcore pornography that I wouldn't want my children to see. The simple solution, I would say, for most children is you don't allow them access online. My son has a computer in his room - he's eleven - but he's not going to have a telephone connection.