My Lords, I am very glad to be here to move the Second Reading of the Online Safety Bill. I know that this is a moment which has been long awaited in your Lordships’ House and noble Lords from across the House share the Government’s determination to make the online realm safer.
That is what this Bill seeks to do. As it stands, over three quarters of adults in this country express a concern about going online; similarly, the number of parents who feel the benefits outweigh the risks of their children being online has decreased rather than increased in recent years, falling from two-thirds in 2015 to barely over half in 2019. This is a terrible indictment of a means through which people of all ages are living increasing proportions of their lives, and it must change.
All of us have heard the horrific stories of children who have been exposed to dangerous and deeply harmful content online, and the tragic consequences of such experiences both for them and their families. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who arranged for a number of noble Lords, including me, to see some of the material which was pushed relentlessly at Molly Russell whose family have campaigned bravely and tirelessly to ensure that what happened to their daughter cannot happen to other young people. It is with that in mind, at the very outset of our scrutiny of this Bill, that I would like to express my gratitude to all those families who continue to fight for change and a safer, healthier online realm. Their work has been central to the development of this Bill. I am confident that, through it, the Government’s manifesto commitment to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online will be delivered.
This legislation establishes a regulatory regime which has safety at its heart. It is intended to change the mindset of technology companies so that they are forced to consider safety and risk mitigation when they begin to design their products, rather than as an afterthought.
All companies in scope will be required to tackle criminal content and activity online. If it is illegal offline; it is illegal online. All in-scope platforms and search services will need to consider in risk assessments the likelihood of illegal content or activity taking place on their site and put in place proportionate systems and processes to mitigate those risks. Companies will also have to take proactive measures against priority offences. This means platforms will be required to take proportionate steps to prevent people from encountering such content.
Not only that, but platforms will also need to mitigate the risk of the platform being used to facilitate or commit such an offence. Priority offences include, inter alia: terrorist material, child sexual abuse and exploitation, so-called revenge pornography and material encouraging or assisting suicide. In practice, this means that all in-scope platforms will have to remove this material quickly and will not be allowed to promote it in their algorithms.
My Lords, like many in your Lordships’ House, I am relieved to be finally speaking on the Second Reading of this important Bill. I am very grateful to the Minister for his introduction. Despite being central to a recent manifesto and having all-party support, it has taken nearly six years to get us to this moment, as the Minister alluded to. A revolving door of four Prime Ministers and seven changes in Secretary of State have not exactly been conducive to this process.
But it is also fair to say that the Bill has been strengthened by consultation and by the detailed pre-legislative scrutiny carried out by the Joint Committee, to whom I pay tribute. It means that this version of the Bill bears a very welcome resemblance to the Joint Committee’s report. I also thank the Communications and Digital Select Committee for its ongoing work and warmly acknowledge the long-term campaigning work of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others in and outside this House.
It seems that every passing week reminds us why stronger online regulation is needed. Just today, we read that the influence of Andrew Tate, despite his being in custody in Romania, has whipped up a storm of rape and death threats directed to my colleague in the other place, Alex Davies-Jones. And writ large is the damning verdict of the inquest into Molly Russell’s death. I want to pay tribute to the determination of her father, Ian, who is present with us today.
In today’s digital age, social media is everywhere: in our homes, workplaces and schools. With the rise of virtual reality, it is also in our heads. It is a central influence on what we buy and think, and how we interact and behave. The power and money at stake are enormous, yet the responsibilities are minimal and accountability lacking.
The focus of this long and complex Bill is on reducing the seemingly ever-increasing harms caused by social media services and search engines, whose algorithms generate detailed pictures of who we are and push us towards certain types of content, even if it impacts on our physical and mental health. As we know, Molly Russell tragically took her own life after having been bombarded with material relating to depression, self-harm and suicide.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and the spirit of co-operation they have both shown in introducing the Bill. On our side we will be led by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, who is keeping his powder dry for the summing up.
I was pleased that there was praise for the pre-legislative scrutiny, which is a very useful tool in our locker. I was a member of the Puttnam committee, which in 2002 looked at what became the last Communications Act, and I took two lessons from that. The first was the creation of Ofcom as a regulator with teeth; it is important that we go forward with that. The other was the Puttnam amendment adding the protection of citizens’ interests to that of consumer interests as part of its responsibilities. Those twin responsibilities—to the consumer and the citizen—are valuable when addressing this Bill.
It is worth remembering that, although it may be a future Labour Government who deal with this, my experience is that this is not a dress rehearsal; this is the main event and we should seize the day. It has been 20 years since the last Bill, six years since the Green Paper, and five years since the White Paper, with a cavalcade of Secretaries of State. This House is entitled to stress-test and kick tyres in today’s debate and in Committee to see if the powers and scope meet the threats, challenges and opportunities posed by this technology.
We will play our part in delivering a Bill which is fit for purpose, but the Government must play theirs by being flexible in their approach in response to legitimate concerns and sensible amendments addressing them. The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, has already voiced concerns about powers left in the hands of future Secretaries of State. We will study what has been said this afternoon on those matters.
We welcome the Bill’s focus on protecting children. I do not think anybody who went to the presentation on the evidence in the Molly Russell inquest could have left with anything other than a determination that something must be done about this. Equally, the concerns of End Violence Against Women and other groups pose questions on whether this legislation goes far enough in the protections needed, which will have to be tested. There are real worries about the lack of minimum requirements for terms of service and the removal of risk assessment for adults. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, has been raising very pertinent questions about age verification and access to pornography. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and I intend to raise questions in Committee about the free pass given to newspapers by this legislation, although much of their activity is now online. There is no specific commitment, as has been said, to expand media literacy, despite it being a major recommendation of the Puttnam committee 20 years ago.
My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of 5Rights Foundation and the Digital Futures Commission, my positions at Oxford and LSE and at the UN Broadband Commission and the Institute for Ethics in AI, as deputy chair of the APPG on digital regulation and as a member of the Joint Committee on this Bill.
As has already been mentioned, on Monday I hosted the saddest of events, at which Ian Russell and Merry Varney, the Russell family’s solicitor, showed parliamentarians images and posts that had been algorithmically recommended to Molly in the lead-up to her death. These were images so horrible that they cannot be shown in the media, so numerous that we could see only a fraction, and so full of despair and violence that many of the adult professionals involved in the inquest had to seek counselling. Yet in court, much of this material was defended by two tech companies as being suitable for a 14 year-old. Something has gone terribly wrong. The question is: is this Bill sufficient to fix it?
At the heart of our debates should not be content but the power of algorithms that shape our experiences online. Those algorithms could be designed for any number of purposes, including offering a less toxic digital environment, but they are instead fixed on ranking, nudging, promoting and amplifying anything to keep our attention, whatever the societal cost. It does not need to be like that. Nothing about the digital world is a given; it is 100% engineered and almost all privately owned; it can be designed for any outcome. Now is the time to end the era of tech exceptionality and to mandate a level of product safety so that the sector, just like any other sector, does not put its users at foreseeable risk of harm. As Meta’s corporate advertising adorning bus stops across the capital says:
“The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real.”
I very much welcome the Bill, but there are still matters to discuss. The Government have chosen to take out many of the protections for adults, which raises questions about the value and practicality of what remains. In Committee, it will be important to understand how enforcement of a raft of new offences will be resourced and to question the oversight and efficacy of the remaining adult provisions. Relying primarily on companies to be author, judge and jury of their own terms of service may well be a race to the bottom.
My Lords, that is not an easy speech to follow, but I begin by declaring my interest as a Church Commissioner, as set out in the register. We have substantial holdings in many of the big tech companies. I am also vice-chair of the Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group. I commend the attention of noble Lords to our recent report on big tech that was published last September. There, we set out five core principles that we believe should guide our investment in and engagement with big tech companies: flourishing as persons, flourishing in relationships, standing with the marginalised, caring for creation and serving the common good. If we apply those principles to our scrutiny of this Bill, we will not only improve lives but save lives.
I will focus my remaining remarks on three areas. First, as the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, have noted, the powers granted to the Secretary of State to direct Ofcom on its codes of practice and provide tactical and strategic guidance put Ofcom’s independence at risk. While I recognise that the Government have sought to address these concerns, more is required—Clauses 39 and 157 are not fit for purpose in their present form. We also need clear safeguards and parliamentary scrutiny for Secretary of State powers in the Bill that will allow them to direct Ofcom to direct companies in whatever we mean by “special circumstances”. Maintaining Ofcom’s autonomy in decision-making is critical to preserving freedom of expression more broadly. While the pace of technological innovation sometimes requires very timely response, the Bill places far too much power in the hands of the Secretary of State.
Secondly, while the Bill encompasses activity within the remit of regulators beyond Ofcom, it is largely silent on formal co-operation. I encourage the Government to introduce a general duty to co-operate with other regulators to ensure a good and effective enforcement of the various regulatory regimes. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether the Government will commit to looking at this once more.
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as a trustee of the Loughborough Wellbeing Centre, director of Santander and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, chair of the Association of British Insurers and board member at Grayling. In fact, I could draw attention to all my interests, because what we are debating today, with online search engines and online platforms, are organisations that reach into every corner of our lives now. I want to thank current Ministers for getting us to this stage. We have heard that this is long overdue regulation. I plead guilty to being one of the “cavalcade” of previous Secretaries of State mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, but I am pleased that I have played my part in keeping this Bill on the road.
When we have passed this legislation, the UK will be world leading. That needs to be recognised, but it also means that this legislation is new and not easy, as we have heard. Polling from More in Common has said that in a list of six comparative European countries, the British are most likely to say that the Government are not doing enough to regulate social media platforms. In the brief time available, I want to set out some key themes and amendments which I hope to raise in Committee.
I welcome the criminal offences relating to violence against women and girls added to the Bill, but the whole environment of these platforms, where such online violence has become normalised and misogyny allowed to flourish unchecked, needs to change. I am afraid that adding selected offences is insufficient, and I will be calling for a specific code of practice, to be drafted by Ofcom, that the platforms and search engines will need to follow to show that they are taking the proliferation of violence against women and girls seriously.
We will hear today many arguments about freedom of speech and expression, but what about the right to access and participation online without being abused and harassed? Online violence against women and girls curtails women’s freedom of expression. The advice to avoid social media—which I myself, as a Member of Parliament, received from the authorities and the police—respects no one’s freedoms. As we have heard, women and girls are 27 times more likely to experience harassment online.
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan—and slightly intimidating. I draw the House’s attention to my register of interests: I am a director of the Antisemitism Policy Trust and a director of HOPE not hate, and I remain the chief executive of Index on Censorship. I have also had appalling experiences online. In all these capacities I have been intimately involved with the passage of this legislation over the last two years. Like every one of your Lordships, I desperately want to see a better and safer internet for all users, especially children and the most vulnerable, but I worry about the unintended consequences of certain clauses, particularly for our collective and legal right of freedom of expression.
There are certain core premises that should guide our approach to online regulation. What is legal offline should be legal online. We need secure and safe communication channels to protect us all of us, but especially dissidents and journalists, so end-to-end encryption needs to be safeguarded. Our ability to protect our identities online can be life-saving, for domestic violence victims as much as for political dissidents, so we need to ensure that the principle of online anonymity is protected. Each of these principles is undermined by the current detail of the Bill, and I hope to work with many of your Lordships in the weeks ahead to add additional safeguards.
However, some of my greatest concerns about the current proposals relate to illegal content: the definition of what is illegal, the arbiters of illegality and, in turn, what happens to the content. The current proposals require the platforms to determine what is illegal content and then delete it. In theory this seems completely reasonable, but the reality will be more complicated.
I fear what a combination of algorithms and corporate prosecution may mean for freedom of expression online. The risk appetite of the platforms is likely to be severely reduced by this legislation. Therefore, I believe that they are likely to err on the side of caution when considering where the illegality threshold falls, leading to over-deletion. This will be compounded by the use of algorithms rather than people to detect nuance and illegal content.
My Lords, the internet is a double-edged sword. It enables people to connect with work, education, information and social activities. It gives visibility to those often hidden from society. But it can be a dangerous place for many, especially disabled people, many of whom are vulnerable to attack merely for who they are. I want to focus on the indiscriminate abuse that disabled people face online.
In January 2019, the Petitions Committee published its report Online Abuse and the Experience of Disabled People, following a petition by Katie Price about her son Harvey. The committee heard evidence of extreme levels of abuse, not only on social media but in online games, web forums and in media website comments. As one disabled poet and writer wrote:
“I’ve been called an ‘it’ many times—‘What is IT doing?’ … I’ve had remarks about how I look in my wheelchair, and a few times the statements, ‘You should have been aborted’, and, ‘You don’t deserve to live’”,
and, “Why are you online?” The committee rightly concluded that the law was not fit for purpose.
The Bill does not do enough to address such abuse. The other place recently weakened the protections for disabled people, replacing the provisions on legal but harmful content with a triple shield of duties to remove illegal content for adults and harmful content for under-18s, and to empower adult users.
Under Clause 12, social media companies must now tackle content which is abusive or incites hatred towards disabled people. That is encouraging, but it is the companies that decide that, so in practice it may not change anything. We know that moderating social media is the Wild West. There is no consistency between platforms. It depends on the algorithms they use and the discretion of their moderators.
5:58 pm
20 of 136 shown
Furthermore, for non-priority illegal content, platforms must have effective systems in place for its swift removal once this content has been flagged to them. Gone will be the days of lengthy and arduous complaints processes and platforms feigning ignorance of such content. They can and will be held to account.
As I have previously mentioned, the safety of children is of paramount importance in this Bill. While all users will be protected from illegal material, some types of legal content and activity are not suitable for children and can have a deeply damaging impact on their mental health and their developing sense of the world around them.
All in-scope services which are likely to be accessed by children will therefore be required to assess the risks to children on their service and put in place safety measures to protect child users from harmful and age inappropriate content. This includes content such as that promoting suicide, self-harm or eating disorders which does not meet a criminal threshold; pornography; and damaging behaviour such as bullying.
The Bill will require providers specifically to consider a number of risk factors as part of their risk assessments. These factors include how functionalities such as algorithms could affect children’s exposure to content harmful to children on their service, as well as children’s use of higher risk features on the service such as livestreaming or private messaging. Providers will need to take robust steps to mitigate and effectively manage any risks identified.
Companies will need to use measures such as age verification to prevent children from accessing content which poses the highest risk of harm to them, such as online pornography. Ofcom will be able to set out its expectations about the use of age assurance solutions, including age verification tools, through guidance. This guidance will also be able to refer to relevant standards. The Bill also now makes it clear that providers may need to use age assurance to identify the age of their users to meet the necessary child safety duties and effectively enforce age restrictions on their service.
The Government will set out in secondary legislation the priority categories of content harmful to children so that all companies are clear on what they need to protect children from. Our intention is to have the regime in place as soon as possible after Royal Assent, while ensuring the necessary preparations are completed effectively and service providers understand clearly what is expected. We are working closely with Ofcom and I will keep noble Lords appraised.
My ministerial colleagues in another place worked hard to strengthen these provisions and made commitments to introduce further provisions in your Lordships’ House. With regard to increased protections for children specifically, the Government will bring forward amendments at Committee stage to name the Children’s Commissioner for England as a statutory consultee for Ofcom when it is preparing a code of practice, ensuring that the experience of children and young people is accounted for during implementation.
We will also bring forward amendments to specify that category 1 companies—the largest and most risky platforms—will be required to publish a summary of their risk assessments for both illegal content and material that is harmful to children. This will increase transparency about illegal and harmful content on in-scope services and ensure that Ofcom can do its job regulating effectively.
We recognise the great suffering experienced by many families linked to children’s exposure to harmful content and the importance of this Bill in ending that. We must learn from the horrific events from the past to secure a safe future for children online.
We also understand that, unfortunately, people of any age may experience online abuse. For many adults, the internet is a positive source of entertainment and information and a way to connect with others; for some, however, it can be an arena for awful abuse. The Bill will therefore offer adult users a triple shield of protection when online, striking the right balance between protecting the right of adult users to access legal content freely, and empowering adults with the information and tools to manage their own online experience.
First, as I have outlined, all social media firms and search services will need to tackle illegal content and activity on their sites. Secondly, the Bill will require category 1 services to set clear terms of service regarding the user-generated content they prohibit and/or restrict access to, and to enforce those terms of service effectively. All the major social media platforms such as Meta, Twitter and TikTok say that they ban abuse and harassment online. They all say they ban the promotion of violence and violent threats, yet this content is still easily visible on those sites. People sign up to these platforms expecting one environment, and are presented with something completely different. This must stop.
As well as ensuring the platforms have proper systems to remove banned content, the Bill will also put an end to services arbitrarily removing legal content. The largest platform category 1 services must ensure that they remove or restrict access to content or ban or suspend users only where that is expressly allowed in their terms of service, or where they otherwise have a legal obligation to do so.
This Bill will make sure that adults have the information they need to make informed decisions about the sites they visit, and that platforms are held to their promises to users. Ofcom will have the power to hold platforms to their terms of service, creating a safer and more transparent environment for all.
Thirdly, category 1 services will have a duty to provide adults with tools they can use to reduce the likelihood that they encounter certain categories of content, if they so choose, or to alert them to the nature of that content. This includes content which encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for suicide, self-harm or eating disorders. People will also have the ability to filter out content from unverified users if they so wish. This Bill will mean that adult users will be empowered to make more informed choices about what services they use, and to have greater control over whom and what they engage with online.
It is impossible to speak about the aspects of the Bill which protect adults without, of course, mentioning freedom of expression. The Bill needs to strike a careful balance between protecting users online, while maintaining adults’ ability to have robust—even uncomfortable or unpleasant—conversations within the law if they so choose. Freedom of expression within the law is fundamental to our democracy, and it would not be right for the Government to interfere with what legal speech is permitted on private platforms. Instead, we have developed an approach based on choice and transparency for adult users, bounded by major platforms’ clear commercial incentives to provide a positive experience for their users.
Of course, we cannot have robust debate without being accurately informed of the current global and national landscape. That is why the Bill includes particular protections for recognised news publishers, content of democratic importance, and journalistic content. We have been clear that sanctioned news outlets such as RT, formerly Russia Today, must not benefit from these protections. We will therefore bring forward an amendment in your Lordships’ House explicitly to exclude entities subject to sanctions from the definition of a recognised news publisher.
Alongside the safety duties for children and the empowerment tools for adults, platforms must also have effective reporting and redress mechanisms in place. They will need to provide accessible and effective mechanisms for users to report content which is illegal or harmful, or where it breaches terms and conditions. Users will need to be given access to effective mechanisms to complain if content is removed without good reason.
The Bill will place a duty on platforms to ensure that those reporting mechanisms are backed up by timely and appropriate redress mechanisms. Currently, internet users often do not bother to report harmful content they encounter online, because they do not feel that their reports will be followed up. That too must change. If content has been unfairly removed, it should be reinstated. If content should not have been on the site in question, it should be taken down. If a complaint is not upheld, the reasons should be made clear to the person who made the report.
There have been calls—including from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, with whom I look forward to working constructively, as we have done heretofore—to use the Bill to create an online safety ombudsman. We will listen to all suggestions put forward to improve the Bill and the regime it ushers in with an open mind, but as he knows from our discussions, of this suggestion we are presently unconvinced. Ombudsman services in other sectors are expensive, often underused and primarily relate to complaints which result in financial compensation. We find it difficult to envisage how an ombudsman service could function in this area, where user complaints are likely to be complex and, in many cases, do not have the impetus of financial compensation behind them. Instead, the Bill ensures that, where providers’ user-reporting and redress mechanisms are not sufficient, Ofcom will have the power to take enforcement action and require the provider to improve its user-redress provisions to meet the standard required of them. I look forward to probing elements of the Bill such as this in Committee.
This regulatory framework could not be effective if Ofcom, as the independent regulator, did not have a robust suite of powers to take enforcement actions against companies which do not comply with their new duties, and if it failed to take the appropriate steps to protect people from harm. I believe the chairman of Ofcom, the noble Lord, Lord Grade of Yarmouth, is in his place. I am glad that he has been and will be following our debates on this important matter.
Through the Bill, Ofcom will have wide-ranging information-gathering powers to request any information from companies which is relevant to its safety functions. Where necessary, it will be able to ask a suitably skilled person to undertake a report on a company’s activity—for example, on its use of algorithms. If Ofcom decides to take enforcement action, it can require companies to take specific steps to come back into compliance.
Ofcom will also have the power to impose substantial fines of up to £18 million, or 10% of annual qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is higher. For the biggest technology companies, this could easily amount to billions of pounds. These are significant measures, and we have heard directly from companies that are already changing their safety procedures to ensure they comply with these regulations.
If fines are not sufficient, or not deemed appropriate because of the severity of the breach, Ofcom will be able to apply for a court order allowing it to undertake business disruption measures. This could be blocking access to a website or preventing it making money via payment or advertising services. Of course, Ofcom will be able to take enforcement action against any company that provides services to people in the UK, wherever that company is located. This is important, given the global nature of the internet.
As the Bill stands, individual senior managers can be held criminally liable and face a fine for failing to ensure their platform complies with Ofcom’s information notice. Further, individual senior managers can face jail, a fine or both for failing to prevent the platform committing the offences of providing false information, encrypting information or destroying information in response to an information notice.
The Government have also listened to and acknowledged the need for senior managers to be made personally liable for a wider range of failures of compliance. We have therefore committed to tabling an amendment in your Lordships’ House which will be carefully designed to capture instances where senior managers have consented to or connived in ignoring enforceable requirements, risking serious harm to children. We are carefully designing this amendment to ensure that it can hold senior managers to account for their actions regarding the safety of children, without jeopardising the UK’s attractiveness as a place for technology companies to invest in and grow. We intend to base our offence on similar legislation recently passed in the Republic of Ireland, as well as looking carefully at relevant precedent in other sectors in the United Kingdom.
I have discussed the safety of children, adults, and everyone’s right to free speech. It is not possible to talk about this Bill without also discussing its protections for women and girls, who we know are disproportionately affected by online abuse. As I mentioned, all services in scope will need to seek out and remove priority illegal content proactively. There are a number of offences which disproportionately affect women and girls, such as revenge pornography and cyberstalking, which the Bill requires companies to tackle as a priority.
To strengthen protections for women in particular, we will be listing controlling or coercive behaviour as a priority offence. Companies will have to take proactive measures to tackle this type of illegal content. We will also bring forward an amendment to name the Victims’ Commissioner and the domestic abuse commissioner as statutory consultees for the codes of practice. This means there will be a requirement for Ofcom to consult both commissioners ahead of drafting and amending the codes of practice, ensuring that victims, particularly victims and survivors of domestic abuse, are better protected. The Secretary of State and our colleagues have been clear that women’s and girls’ voices must be heard clearly in developing this legislation.
I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the concerns voiced over the powers for the Secretary of State regarding direction in relation to codes of practice that currently appear in the Bill. That is a matter on which my honourable friend Paul Scully and I were pressed by your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee when we appeared before it last week. As we explained then, we remain committed to ensuring that Ofcom maintains its regulatory independence, which is vital to the success of this framework. As we are introducing ground-breaking regulation, our aim is to balance the need for the regulator’s independence with appropriate oversight by Parliament and the elected Government.
We intend to bring forward two changes to the existing power: first, replacing the “public policy” wording with a defined list of reasons that a direction can be made; and secondly, making it clear that this element of the power can only be used in exceptional circumstances. I would like to reassure noble Lords—as I sought to reassure the Select Committee—that the framework ensures that Parliament will always have the final say on codes of practice, and that strong safeguards are in place to ensure that the use of this power is transparent and proportionate.
Before we begin our scrutiny in earnest, it is also necessary to recognise that this Bill is not just establishing a regulatory framework. It also updates the criminal law concerning communication offences. I want to thank the Law Commission for its important work in helping to strengthen criminal law for victims. The inclusion of the new offences for false and threatening communications offers further necessary protections for those who need it most. In addition, the Bill includes new offences to criminalise cyberflashing and epilepsy trolling. We firmly believe that these new offences will make a substantive difference to the victims of such behaviour. The Government have also committed to adding an additional offence to address the encouragement or assistance of self-harm communications and offences addressing intimate image abuse online, including deep- fake pornography. Once these offences are introduced, all companies will need to treat this content as illegal under the framework and take action to prevent users from encountering it. These new offences will apply in respect of all victims of such activity, children as well as adults.
This Bill has been years in the making. I am proud to be standing here today as the debate begins in your Lordships’ House. I realise that noble Lords have been waiting long and patiently for this moment, but I know that they also appreciate that considerable work has already been done to ensure that this Bill is proportionate and fair, and that it provides the change that is needed.
A key part of that work was conducted by the Joint Committee, which conducted pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, drawing on expertise from across both Houses of Parliament, from all parties and none. I am very glad that all the Members of your Lordships’ House who served on that committee are speaking in today’s debate: the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron; the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Knight of Weymouth, who have very helpfully been called to service on the Opposition Front Bench; the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who speaks for the Liberal Democrats; as well as my noble friends Lord Black of Brentwood and Lord Gilbert of Panteg.
While I look forward to the contributions of all Members of your Lordships’ House, and will continue the open-minded, collaborative approach established by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and her predecessors—listening to all ideas which are advanced to make this Bill as effective as it can be—I urge noble Lords who are not yet so well-versed in its many clauses and provisions, or who might be disinclined to accept at first utterance the points I make from this Dispatch Box, to consult those noble Lords before bringing forward their amendments in later stages of the Bill. I say that not to discourage noble Lords from doing so, but in the spirit of ensuring that what they do bring forward, and our deliberations on them, will be pithy, focused, and conducive to making this Bill law as swiftly as possible. In that spirit, I shall draw my already too lengthy remarks to a close. I beg to move.
Many platforms have upped their game since, but the need for this legislation has not diminished: there remain too many cases of children and vulnerable adults being exposed to digital content that is simply not appropriate. I welcome the arrival of the Bill, but it is too late and, due to recent changes, arguably too narrow. We must now do what we can to get it on the statute book as soon as possible.
The Government have committed to changes in your Lordships’ House, but we need to see the detail, and soon, not least because of the significant public and stakeholder interest. It has become fashionable to leave major changes to legislation until Report stage, leaving noble Lords unsighted and limiting the scope for improvement. I hope the Minister will commit to bucking this trend and give noble Lords early sight of the Government’s thinking.
On these Benches, we will, as always, work constructively with colleagues across the House, and hopefully with the Minister too, as we have already been doing. But, in so doing, we must acknowledge that this Bill is unlikely to be the last word. A future Labour Government will want to return to these issues, to tidy up any deficiencies that are identified once the Bill becomes law.
I now turn to some of our priorities. I am in no doubt that other noble Lords will add to this list. There is a legitimate concern around the decision of Ministers to take powers of direction over what is supposed to be an independent regulator and to leave so much to secondary legislation. The need for flexibility is indeed understood, but Parliament must have an active role, rather than being sidelined.
On the protection of children, despite notable progress by many platforms, too many failings exist. Several children’s charities have put forward important recommendations. The NSPCC has called for user advocacy to influence future regulation, while Barnardo’s wants restrictions on access to online pornography, holding the Government to their previous promises.
The scrapping of legal but harmful provisions means a lack of protection for vulnerable adults. The Samaritans, for example, is keen to ensure that self-harm provisions properly capture vulnerable adults as well as children. We understand that defining the term is difficult, but a solution has to be found.
On anti-Semitism, racism and general abuse, the Government shifted policy in response to a former Conservative leadership hopeful who said that we cannot legislate for hurt feelings. We believe in free speech, but it is not clear that DCMS has found the right balance with its triple shield. The toggle system may prevent users from seeing categories of harmful material, but it will still exist and influence others unless the Government compel an auto-on setting.
On violence against women and girls, I welcome the commitments made in relation to cyberflashing and making controlling behaviour a priority offence. I hope the Minister confirms that there will be work with an extensive range of relevant stakeholders to build on the amendments already made, and to identify and close potential loopholes in forthcoming text.
We find it unacceptable that the Government have stripped back the Bill’s media literacy provisions at a time when these skills are more important than ever. I am grateful to organisations such as Full Fact for highlighting the need to equip people of all ages, but particularly children, with the skills necessary to identify misinformation and disinformation. We have all seen the damage caused by vaccine disinformation, not only on Covid but on HPV. This extends to other areas; social media is awash with misleading material on nutrition, breastfeeding and natural health remedies, to name but a few. Once again, we acknowledge that some platforms perform well in response to such issues, but the recent takeover of Twitter has highlighted how swiftly and radically that can change.
I know that the Minister has been working on this agenda for some time and that he wants to get it right. We can all share our own experiences or those of friends or family in respect of online harm and abuse. We can also all cite ways in which technological innovation has improved our lives. We therefore all have a stake in improving this legislation. We have a long and complex process ahead of us, but uniquely there is no political divide on the Bill. Therefore I hope that in the finest traditions of your Lordships’ House we will work together to improve what is before us, while recognising that this is unlikely to be the last word.
The internet has been an amazing catalyst for change, innovation and creativity. But those benefits have come at a price of targeted actions designed to cause harms to individuals and institutions. On all Benches we believe that freedom of expression is important, but liberal democracies have a right to provide a framework of protection against those who seek to harm it. Much will depend on the response to legislation and regulation by the internet companies. The public are not stupid; they can differentiate between tick-box exercises and compliance, between profit maximisation and social responsibility. The noble Lord, Lord Grade, is also not stupid and I wish him well as chair of Ofcom.
My work on the Puttnam committee 20 years ago was among the most satisfying of my parliamentary life. I hope we will all have similar feelings when we complete our work on this Bill.
I regret that Parliament has been denied the proper opportunity to determine what kind of online world we want for adults, which, I believe, we will regret as technology enters its next phase of intelligence and automation. However, my particular concern is the fate of children, whose well-being is collateral damage to a profitable business model. Changes to the Bill will mean that child safety duties are no longer an add-on to a generally safer world; they are now the first and only line of defence. I have given the Secretary of State sight of my amendments, and I inform the House that they are not probing amendments; they are necessary to fill the gaps and loopholes in the Bill as it now stands. In short, we need to ensure that child safety duties apply to all services likely to be accessed by children. We must ensure the quality control of all age-assurance systems. Age checking must not focus on a particular harm, but on the child; it needs to be secure, privacy-preserving and proportionate, and it must work. The children’s risk assessment and the list of harms must cover each of the four Cs: content harm, conduct harm, contact harm and commercial harm, such as the recommendation loops of violence and self-hatred that push thousands of children into states of misery. Those harms must be in the Bill.
Coroners and bereaved parents must have access to data relevant to the death of a child to end the current inhumane arrangement whereby bereaved families facing the devasting loss of their child are forced to battle, unsuccessfully, with tech behemoths for years. I hope that the Minister will reiterate commitments made in the other place to close that loophole.
Children’s rights must be in the Bill. An unintended consequence of removing protections for adults is that children will now cost companies vastly more developer time, more content moderation and more legal costs than adults. The digital world is the organising technology of our society, and children need to be online for their education and information to participate in civic society—they must not be kicked out.
I thank all those who have indicated their support, and the Secretary of State, the Minister and officials for the considerable time they have given me. However, I ask the Minister to listen very carefully to the mood of the House this evening; the matters I have raised are desperately urgent and long-promised, and must now be delivered unequivocally.
While millions of children suffer from the negative effects of the online world, some pay with their lives. I am a proud supporter of a group of bereaved parents for online safety, and I put on the record that we remember Molly, Frankie, Olly, Breck, Sophie and all the others who have lost their lives. I hope that the whole House will join me in not resting until we have a Bill fit for their memory.
Finally, I turn, as others have done, to the protection of children. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has just spoken powerfully. Can we really claim that this Bill serves to mitigate the harm that children face online when consultation of children has so far been lacking? I welcome the Minister’s remarks about the Children’s Commissioner in this regard, but we can and should go further. In particular, we should centre our decisions on promoting children’s well-being rather than on simply minimising harm. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham regrets that he is unable to be in his place today. I know he plans to raise these questions as the Bill progresses.
Related to this, we must ensure that any activity online through which children are groomed for criminal exploitation is monitored. A reporting mechanism should be brought in so that such information is shared with the police. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Derby is unable to speak today, but as vice- chair of the Children’s Society, she will follow these issues closely.
This Bill has arrived with us so late and so overcrowded that I had begun to think it was being managed by my good friends at Avanti trains. However, here at last it is. I look forward to working with noble Lords to improve this important and welcome legislation. It is my hope that, as we continue to scrutinise and improve the Bill, we will move ever closer to fulfilling those five core principles I set out: flourishing as persons, flourishing in relationships, standing with the marginalised, caring for creation and serving the common good.
We have also heard from Luke Pollard in the other place a mention of incels. While this is a complicated topic, unfortunately what is true is that data from the Center for Countering Digital Hate has found that visits to incel websites are only increasing every day, and the content on them is getting more extreme. Many small platforms hosting incels set their own terms and conditions, allowing for violent and misogynistic discussions. How the Bill tackles those issues will be of great importance and a subject of discussion in this House.
I was disappointed that the legal but harmful restrictions were dropped, but I understand why Ministers chose to do so. However, I agree that, as we have already heard, the user empowerment toggle should be set to “on” by default. Just because a user decides not to see abusive and harmful content does not mean that it is not there, either influencing others or, where it is unfortunately necessary, for the user to see so that they can provide evidence to the authorities, including the police. I include my own experience of having seen that abuse, gathering it and then sending it to the authorities. If we have the toggle set to “off”, in relation to violence against women and girls the onus will yet again be on women to protect themselves, rather than the abuser being compelled to cease their abuse. Related themes to explore in Committee will be the minimum standards needed for risk assessments, as well as minimum standards for platforms’ terms and conditions; the publication of risk assessments to create a culture of transparency on the part of service providers; and further detail on how the information gathered by Ofcom under Clause 68 is to be used.
We will hear discussion—we already have—about the welcome creation of the offence of sending communication which encourages serious self-harm. However, as we have heard, Samaritans has pointed out that all such content needs to be regulated across all platforms for all users. Turning 18 does not stop young people being vulnerable to suicide or self-harm content. I also support the calls by Vicky Ford and others to specifically include eating disorders within the self-harm clause.
It was my pleasure last year to chair this House’s special committee on the Fraud Act 2006 and digital fraud. Time is short, but there will be more to say on the issues of fraud, as well as independent researchers’ access to information. My noble friend the Minister has mentioned senior manager liability. We will wait to see what the clause introduced says, but it needs to be sufficiently tough to change the culture.
I will absolutely support the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and that proposed by my noble friend Lord Bethell, on age verification for online pornography.
I was recently at an event in this building with tech companies, including a major search engine, who complained that, via the Bill, the Government are experimenting on them. I put it to them then, and I say now, that these companies have experimented on us, particularly our children and vulnerable adults, for years without facing the consequences of the illegal and harmful material across their platforms and search engines. The Bill is long overdue. I look forward to the debates and amendments.
I will give your Lordships an example of an unintended consequence this has already led to. A video of anti-government protests in Lebanon was deleted on some current platforms because an algorithm picked up only one word of the Arabic chants: Hezbollah, an organisation rightly proscribed in the UK. But the video actually featured anti-Hezbollah chants. It was an anti-extremism demonstration and, I would speculate, contained anti-extremist messaging that many of us would like to see go viral rather than be deleted.
Something is already twice as likely to be deleted from a platform by an algorithm if it is in Urdu or Arabic, rather than English. This will become even more common unless we tighten the definition of illegality and provide platforms with a digital evidence locker where content can be stored before a final decision on deletion is made, thus protecting our speech online.
The issue of deletion is deeply personal for me. Many of your Lordships may be aware that, as a female Jewish Labour Member of the other place, I was subjected to regular and vicious anti-Semitic and misogynist online abuse—abuse that too often became threats of violence and death. Unfortunately, these threats continue and have a direct effect on my personal security. I know when I am most vulnerable because I see a spike in my comments online. These comments are monitored—thankfully not by me—and, when necessary, are referred to the police, with the relevant evidence chain, so that people can be prosecuted.
Can the Minister explain how these people will be prosecuted for harassment, or worse, if the content is automatically deleted? How will I know if someone is threatening to kill me if the threat has already gone? I genuinely believe that the Government wish to make people safer online, as do we all, but I fear that this Bill will not only curtail free speech online but make me and others much less safe offline. There is significant work to do to make sure that is not the case.
Clause 18 adds to those problems, requiring platforms also to consider freedom of expression and privacy issues. They will be in an impossible position, caught between competing claims for protection from abuse and freedom of speech. At the very least, the legal but harmful provisions must be restored.
Greater control for disabled people using social media is laudable. They must be consulted on the best way to achieve that. The Bill says that terms of service must be “clear and accessible”. It should provide for Ofcom to give guidance with input from disabled people. It should not be left to social media services to set their own standards.
Consistency is also vital for the way the verification process works. Clause 57 refers to “verification … of any kind” and “clear and accessible” explanations. Ofcom’s guidance will be crucial on both issues, with disabled people’s input essential. It should be mandatory to follow the guidance.
Will the Minister assure me that he will address these matters before Committee? Will he meet me and disability organisations which have expertise in this field for guidance? This is a landmark Bill and very welcome. Let us ensure that it works for everybody, especially those who need it most.