1: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Purposes of Act
(1) This Act has the following purposes—(a) to secure that regulated internet services comply with UK law and do not endanger public health or national security,(b) to provide a higher level of protection for children than for adults in respect of regulated internet services, (c) to identify and mitigate the risk of reasonably foreseeable harm arising from the operation and design of regulated internet services,(d) to recognise and respond to the disproportionate level of harms experienced in relation to regulated internet services by people on the basis of one or more protected characteristic,(e) to apply the overarching principle that regulated internet services should be safe by design,(f) to safeguard freedom of expression within the law and privacy in relation to regulated internet services, and(g) to secure that regulated internet services operate with transparency and accountability in respect of online safety.(2) The Secretary of State and OFCOM must have regard to the need to fulfil these purposes in exercising functions under this Act.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would implement a recommendation of the Joint Committee which carried out pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, setting out a range of purposes for the legislation and making clear that both the Secretary of State and OFCOM must have regard to those purposes when exercising their statutory functions.
I must say I am quite relieved that so many noble Lords have stayed; I thought that a single group with a single amendment on a sunny afternoon might have been enough to drive most noble Lords away. I take it as a thoroughly good- going sign that this will be a useful debate for us to have in Committee. I am privileged, and it is a great honour, to open this Committee stage with Amendment 1— at last.
Amendment 1 is in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Gilbert of Panteg. The noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, has let me know that he would have liked to have been present today and had intended to speak but, unfortunately, he has a hospital appointment. As noble Lords will be aware, he was recently a distinguished chair of your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee and would, I think, have had a lot to say about some of the issues that we are going to discuss this afternoon. I had the pleasure of working with him there, and he has kindly agreed that I can mention a couple of the points that he would have liked to make had he been present; I will be delighted to do so.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness and noble Lords for signing this amendment; that highlights the all-party support for ensuring that the Bill will achieve the high hopes that we all have for it. It also points to the fact that all the signatories were members of the Joint Committee of both Houses which undertook comprehensive pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill 18 months ago—a process that I thoroughly endorse and count as one of the highlights of my time in your Lordships’ House.
I observe in passing that this amendment, based as it is on a recommendation from that Joint Committee, represents one of the few recommendations not yet implemented in the Bill before us today—just saying, Minister. I got that phrase from my kids; I am not quite sure what it means but they use it a lot, so I think it must have some commonality.
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In conclusion, this is a very long and complex Bill, so it is a very fair question to ask: why on earth are we adding to it? I strongly believe that the impact of the Bill will be lessened if there is no clear, concise statement of what the Bill is designed to do and what it will change once it is up and running. Rather than critiquing the rationale of moving this amendment, therefore, I hope the debate this afternoon will focus on ensuring that it does what the Joint Committee wanted. Does it make clear what the Bill is trying to achieve? After the Bill receives Royal Assent, will we see a reduction in the seemingly ever-increasing harms caused by social media services and search engines? Is the balance between privacy and freedom of expression correct? Is the priority need to protect children secure and well embedded in the Bill? Will the system as a whole operate with transparency and accountability? Does it foreground what citizens and consumers want and need? Will they be able to get redress if their interests are harmed?
The Government will likely respond by saying that everything that I have set out in this amendment is already in the Bill. I agree. However, while the words are all there, they are scattered about in various places, with most of the substance being in Schedule 4, which, of course, will have limited application. It is very hard to get a sense of what the overarching priorities are: hence the amendment. I also agree with the Government when they say that legislating for a largely unprecedented, comprehensive, future-proofed and enforceable framework has required the creation of a range of targeted duties and a series of new definitions; and that an overall objective might risk confusing rather than clarifying. That is a fair point.
It is correct to say, however, as I am sure the Minister will say in his response, that the fact that the Bill is complicated—and, boy, it is—does not necessarily mean that the framework itself will, in practice, be overly complicated for services to comply with and for Ofcom to enforce. My argument today is not about a concern that Ofcom’s codes of practice and any associated guidance might not provide detail and clarity for services as to what steps they need to take to comply with their legislative duties, taking into account their risk profiles. I have confidence that Ofcom will do that very well indeed, and recent discussions on that have confirmed my impression. It will be independent, it will be important for it to be seen as independent, and it will act in the best interests of what we require in this space.
My concern is that, without also asserting a clear vision of what we want to happen as a result of passing this Bill, Parliament, and the people who use the social media and search resources of the internet, will have no framework by which to judge the success or otherwise of this important Bill. This amendment, as I said, is primarily declaratory, but I hope I have proved that it is also purposive. I think that the Government should look at it very carefully and hope that they will accept it. I beg to move.
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register, which I declared in full at Second Reading. It is an absolute pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and, indeed, to have my name on this amendment, along with those of fellow members of the pre-legislative committee. It has been so long that it almost qualifies as a reunion tour.
This is a fortuitous amendment on which to start our deliberations, as it sets out the very purpose of the Bill—a North Star. I want to make three observations, each of which underlines its importance. First, as the pre-legislative committee took evidence, it was frequently remarked by both critics and supporters that it was a complicated Bill. We have had many technical briefings from DSIT and Ofcom, and they too refer to the Bill as “complicated”. As we took advice from colleagues in the other place, expert NGOs, the tech sector, academics and, in my own case, the 5Rights young advisory group, the word “complicated” repeatedly reared its head. This is a complex and ground-breaking area of policy, but there were other, simpler structures and approaches that have been discarded.
Over the five years with ever-changing leadership and political pressures, the Bill has ballooned with caveats and a series of very specific, and in some cases peculiar, clauses—so much so that today we start with a Bill that even those of us who are paying very close attention are often told that we do not understand. That should make the House very nervous.
It is a complicated Bill with intersecting and dependent clauses—grey areas from which loopholes emerge—and it is probably a big win for the deepest pockets. The more complicated the Bill is, the more it becomes a bonanza for the legal profession. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, suggests, the Minister is likely to argue that the contents of the amendment are already in the Bill, but the fact that the word “complicated” is firmly stuck to its reputation and structure is the very reason to set out its purpose at the outset, simply and unequivocally.
My Lords, I am pleased that we are starting our Committee debate on this amendment. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.
In this Bill, as has already been said, we are building a new and complex system and we can learn some lessons from designing information systems more generally. There are three classic mistakes that you can make. First, you can build systems to fit particular tools. Secondly, you can overcommit beyond what you can actually achieve. Thirdly, there is feature creep, through which you keep adding things on as you develop a new system. A key defence against these mistakes is to invest up front in producing a really good statement of requirements, which I see in Amendment 1.
On the first risk, as we go through the debate, there is a genuine risk that we get bogged down in the details of specific measures that the regulator might or might not include in its rules and guidance, and that we lose sight of our goals. Developing a computer system around a particular tool—for example, building everything with Excel macros or with Salesforce—invariably ends in disaster. If we can agree on the goals in Amendment 1 and on what we are trying to achieve, that will provide a sound framework for our later debates as we try to consider the right regulatory technologies that will deliver those goals.
The second cardinal error is overcommitting and underdelivering. Again, it is very tempting when building a new system to promise the customer that it will be all-singing, all-dancing and can be delivered in the blink of an eye. Of course, the reality is that in many cases, things prove to be more complex than anticipated, and features sometimes have to be removed while timescales for delivering what is left are extended. A wise developer will instead aim to undercommit and overdeliver, promising to produce a core set of realistic functions and hoping that, if things go well, they will be able to add in some extra features that will delight the customer as an unexpected bonus.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow other noble Lords who have spoken. I too support this key first amendment. Clarity of purpose is essential in any endeavour. The amendment overall sets out the Bill’s aims and enhances what will be vital legislation for the world, I hope, as well as for the United Kingdom. The Government have the very welcome ambition of making Britain the safest country in the world to go online. The OSB is a giant step in that direction.
As has been said, there has been remarkable consensus across the Committee on what further measures may still be needed to improve the Bill and on this first amendment, setting out these seven key purposes. Noble Lords may be aware that in the Christian tradition the number seven is significant: in the medieval period the Church taught the dangers of the seven deadly sins, the merits of the seven virtues and the seven acts of mercy. Please speak to me later if a refresher course is needed.
Amendment 1 identifies seven deadly dangers—I think they are really deadly. They are key risks which we all acknowledge are unwelcome and destructive companions of the new technologies which bring so many benefits: risks to public health or national security; the risk of serious harm to children; the risk of new developments and technologies not currently in scope; the disproportionate risk to those who manifest one or more protected characteristics; risks that occur through poor design; risks to freedom of expression and privacy; and risks that come with low transparency and low accountability. Safety and security are surely one of the primary duties of government, especially the safety and security of children and the vulnerable. There is much that is good and helpful in new technology but much that can be oppressive and destructive. These seven risks are real and present dangers. The Bill is needed because of actual and devastating harm caused to people and communities.
My Lords, I too support this amendment. I was at a dinner last night in the City for a group of tech founders and investors—about 500 people in a big hotel ballroom, all focused on driving the sort of positive technology growth in this country that I think everyone wants to see. The guest speaker runs a large UK tech business. He commented in his speech that tech companies need to engage with government because—he said this as if it was a revelation—all Governments turned out not to speak with one voice and that understanding what was required of tech companies by Governments is not always easy. Business needs clarity, and anyone who has run a large or small business knows that it is not really the clarity in the detail that matters but the clarity of purpose that enables you to lead change, because then your people understand why they need to change, and if they understand why, then in each of the micro-decisions they take each day they can adjust those decisions to fit with the intent behind your purpose. That is why this amendment is so important.
I have worked in this space of online safety for more than a decade, both as a technology leader and in this House. I genuinely do not believe that business is wicked and evil, but what it lacks is clear direction. The Bill is so important in setting those guardrails that if we do not make its purpose clear, we should not be surprised if the very businesses which really do want Governments to be clear do not know what we intend.
I suspect that my noble friend the Minister might object to this amendment and say that it is already in the Bill. As others have already said, I actually hope it is. If it is not, we have a different problem. The point of an upfront summary of purpose is to do precisely that: to summarise what is in what a number of noble Lords have already said is a very complicated Bill. The easier and clearer we can make it for every stakeholder to engage in the Bill, the better. If alternatively my noble friend the Minister objects to the detailed wording of this amendment, I argue that that simply makes getting this amendment right even more important. If the four noble Lords, who know far more about this subject than I will ever do in a lifetime, and the joint scrutiny committee, which has done such an outstanding job at working through this, have got the purposes of the Bill wrong, then what hope for the rest of us, let alone those business leaders trying to interpret what the Government want?
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This amendment is intended to be declaratory, although it is also what the Public Bill Office—it has done a great job for us, we should all say—says is purposive. I had to look that one up, I confess; I discovered that it means “having or tending to fulfil a conscious purpose or design”. So this is a purposive amendment—indeed, it does what it says on the tin.
As the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, would have said had he been present, the Bill is very difficult to understand, in part because of its innate complexity and in part because it has been revised so often. A simple statement of its purpose will help us all. I agree.
I stress at the outset that the amendment on its own does not seek to add anything to the considerable detail already in the Bill. However, it does five important things. It says up front what the Government are trying to achieve with this legislation and highlights what those companies within the scope of the Bill will need to bear in mind when they prepare for the new regime. It makes it clear that the new regime is centred on ensuring that the duties of care are placed on the companies that are in scope
“to identify and mitigate the risk of reasonably foreseeable harm arising from the operation and design of”
their services. It calls for “transparency and accountability” from all concerned in respect of online safety.
Had he been present, the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, would have added that the amendment also sets out a few important principles that Ministers claim are fundamental to the way in which the Bill works but are absent from the detailed provisions when one comes to read them—such as, for example, that this Bill is about systems, not content. We will have to keep reminding ourselves of those words as we go through the Bill: it is about the systems that deliver the content but not the content itself.
Finally, this amendment would send a clear message about the trust that we in Parliament are placing in our independent regulator, Ofcom. That is a very important point. The amendment leads with a requirement that regulated services comply with UK law and do not endanger public health or national security. National security and public health are of course topical issues, but even if we were not in the midst of a storm about USA national security leaks shared on a Minecraft Discord server, which is certainly a user-to-user service that is widely accessed in the United Kingdom, it is probably wise to stress early on how vital it is for leaks of this nature to be at the forefront of regulated companies’ approach to the Bill. Today’s warnings by a Cabinet Minister and former Secretary of State at DCMS about cybersecurity affecting our national infrastructure are relevant here—likewise for public health.
I will not go through the amendment line by line. I am sure that others will want to comment on how it is laid out, the order of it and other matters, which are relevant but do not capture what the amendment is trying to do. However, I will focus on one: the reference to regulated companies having to have regard to reasonably foreseeable harm, as outlined in proposed new subsection (1)(c). I regret that the term “reasonably foreseeable harms” is absent from the Bill, although of course it featured heavily in the preceding White Paper when Sir Jeremy Wright was Secretary of State. The dropping of the “legal but harmful” category raises the question of how Ofcom will future-proof the system. Now that a wide-ranging risk assessment is no longer required by Ofcom, it will be hard to see what harms are coming down the track that might harm children in the future when applied to them or indeed hobble the regime by undermining the ability to look forward with the full resources of Ofcom and the companies working in concert. There are amendments on this issue which we will come to later, including one tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford that may test this issue.
The Government confirmed in a Written Answer to me of 8 February that AI products in a user-to-user or search engine service would be covered by the Bill, but the sudden recent explosion of AI products is a very good example of why a more general sense of foreseeability of harms may be required, rather than simply relying, as I think we will have to, on a list of things that we currently know about.
Our Joint Committee report made clear that the inclusion of this overarching objectives amendment would help all of us to ensure that the Online Safety Bill will be easy to understand, not just for service providers but for the public. Its inclusion would mean that we would be able to get into the detail of the Bill with a much better understanding of what the Government are seeking. I see the flow, which the committee was very clear about—having clear objectives that lead into precise duties on the regulated providers, robust powers for the regulator to act when the platforms fail to meet those legal and regulatory requirements, and a continuing role for Parliament, which is something that we will come to in future debates.
The internet is a wonderful invention. The major online services have become central to how people around the world access news and information, do business, play games, and keep in touch with family and friends, and the internet is free to use. But is it free? These services are highly profitable businesses. Where does that money come from? It is a commercial model based on selling targeted advertising. User data—our data—is collected and used to train algorithms to maximise engagement and users’ attention. The length of time and the frequency with which users engage on the platforms increase their value. More spent online means that more advertising reaches users, which leads to more revenue for the companies. It is a vicious circle.
However, we are where we are. Actively seeking to increase engagement through personalisation has the power to create more harmful user experiences for vulnerable people and children, who are more likely to see content which will increase their vulnerabilities or do them harm. The more that people interact with conspiracy theories, for example, the more of them they will see. The grouping together of users with similar interests can create environments which normalise hate speech and extremism. Design features that favour the spread of information over safety facilitate the targeting and amplification of abuse, as we have seen.
There is no doubt that this Online Safety Bill is a key step forward for our citizens and consumers. I have made it absolutely clear that I support the Government in their Bill and that we will do what we can to make sure that it reaches the statute book as quickly as possible. It is also important to remember that it is showing other democratic societies that want to bring accountability and responsibility to the internet how it can be done, and I believe that this Bill will do it very well. However, it will only be effective if online services are held accountable for the design and operation of their systems by the regulations introduced by this Bill—and of course its successors, because this is the first of a number of Bills which we know we will be seeing in this area. There are very important points here about how we approach this, the need to maintain the will of Parliament throughout these areas, and the appointment of an independent regulator rather than those who happen to reside in Silicon Valley.
Secondly, the OSB is a framework Bill, with vast amounts of secondary legislation and a great deal of work to be implemented by the regulator. At a later date we will discuss whether the balance between the Executive, the regulator and Parliament is exactly as it should be, but as the Bill stands it envisages a very limited future role for Parliament. If I might borrow an analogy from my previous profession, Parliament’s role is little more than that of a background extra.
I have some experience of this. In my determination to follow all stages of the age-appropriate design code, I found myself earlier this week in the Public Gallery of the other place to hear DSIT Minister Paul Scully, at Second Reading of the Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill, pledge to uphold the AADC and its provisions. I mention this in part to embed it on the record—that is true—but primarily to make this point: over six years, there have been two Information Commissioners and double figures of Secretaries of State and Ministers. There have been many moments at which the interpretation, status and purpose of the code has been put at risk, at least once to a degree that might have undermined it altogether. At these moments, each time the issue was resolved by establishing the intention of Parliament beyond doubt. Amendment 1 moves Parliament from background extra to star of the show. It puts the intention of Parliament front and centre for the days, weeks, months and years ahead in which the work will still be ongoing—and all of us will have moved on.
The Bill has been through a long and fractured process in which the pre-legislative committee had a unique role. Many attacks on the Bill have been made by people who have not read it. Child safety was incorrectly cast as the enemy of adult freedom. While some wanted to apply the existing and known concepts and terms of public interest, protecting the vulnerable, product safety and the established rights and freedoms of UK citizens, intense lobbying has seen them replaced by untested concepts and untried language over which the tech sector has once again emerged as judge and jury. This has further divided opinion.
In spite of all the controversy, when published, the recommendations of the committee report received almost universal support from all sides of the debate. So I ask the Minister not only to accept the committee’s view that the Bill needs a statement of purpose, the shadow of which will provide shelter for the Bill long into the future, but to undertake to look again at the committee report in full. In its pages lies a landing strip of agreement for many of the things that still divide us.
This is a sector that is 100% engineered and almost all privately owned, and within it lie solutions to some of the greatest problems of our age. It does not have to be as miserable, divisive and exploitative as this era of exceptionalism has allowed it to be. As the Minister is well aware, I have quite a lot to say about proposed new subsection (1)(b),
“to provide a higher level of protection for children than for adults”,
but today I ask the Minister to tell us which of these paragraphs (a) to (g) are not the purpose of the Bill and, if they are not, what is.
This lesson is also highly relevant to the Bill, as there is a risk of giving the impression to the public that more can be done quicker than may in fact be possible. Again, Amendment 1 helps us to stay grounded in a realistic set of goals once we put those core systems in place. The fundamental and revolutionary change here is that we will be insisting that platforms carry out risk assessments and share them with a regulator, who will then look to them to implement actions to mitigate those risks. That is fundamental. We must not lose sight of that core function and get distracted by some of the bells and whistles that are interesting, but which may take the regulator’s attention away from its core work.
We also need to consider what we mean by “safe” in the context of the Bill and the internet. An analogy that I have used in this context, which may be helpful, is to consider how we regulate travel by car and aeroplane. Our goal for air travel is zero accidents, and we regulate everything down to the nth degree: from the steps we need to take as passengers, such as passing through security and presenting identity documents, to detailed and exacting safety rules for the planes and pilots. With car travel, we have a much higher degree of freedom, being able to jump in our private vehicles and go where we want, when we want, pretty much without restrictions. Our goal for car travel is to make it incrementally safer over time; we can look back and see how regulation has evolved to make vehicles, roads and drivers safer year on year, and it continues to do so. Crucially, we do not expect car travel to be 100% safe, and we accept that there is a cost to this freedom to travel that, sadly, affects thousands of people each year, including my own family and, I am sure, many others in the House. There are lots of things we could do to make car travel even safer that we do not put into regulation, because we accept that the cost of restricting freedom to travel is too high.
Without over-labouring this analogy, I ask that we keep it in mind as we move through Committee—whether we are asking Ofcom to implement a car-like regime whereby it is expected to make continual improvements year on year as the state of online safety evolves, or we are advocating an aeroplane-like regime whereby any instance of harm will be seen as a failure by the regulator. The language in Amendment 1 points more towards a regime of incremental improvements, which I believe is the right one. It is in the public interest: people want to be safer online, but they also want the freedom to use a wide range of internet services without excessive government restriction, and they accept some risk in doing so.
I hope that the Minister will respond positively to the intent of Amendment 1 and that we can explore in this debate whether there is broad consensus on what we hope the Bill will achieve and how we expect Ofcom to go about its work. If there is not, then we should flush that out now to avoid later creating confused or contradictory rules based on different understandings of the Bill’s purpose. I will keep arguing throughout our proceedings for us to remain focused on giving the right goals to Ofcom and allowing it considerable discretion over the specific tools it needs, and for us to be realistic in our aims so that we do not overcommit and underdeliver.
Finally, the question of feature creep is very much up to us. There will be a temptation to add things into the Bill as it goes through. Some of those things are essential; I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has some measures that I would also support. This is the right time to do that, but there will be other things that would be “nice to have”, and the risk of putting them in might detract from those core mechanisms. I hope we are able to maintain our discipline as we go through these proceedings to ensure we deliver the right objectives, which are incredibly well set out in Amendment 1, which I support.
As we have heard, we are living through a period of rapid acceleration in the development of AI. Two days ago, CBS broadcast a remarkable documentary on the latest breakthroughs by Google and Microsoft. The legislation we craft in these weeks needs future-proofing. That can happen only through a clear articulation of purpose so that the framework provided by the Bill continues to evolve under the stewardship of the Secretary of State and of Ofcom.
I have been in dialogue over the past five years with tech companies in a variety of contexts and I have seen a variety of approaches, from the highly responsible in some companies to the frankly cavalier. Good practice, especially in design, needs stronger regulation to become uniform. I really enjoyed the analogy from the noble Lord, Lord Allan, a few minutes ago. We would not tolerate for a moment design and safety standards in aeroplanes, cars or washing machines which had the capacity to cause harm to people, least of all to children. We should not tolerate lesser standards in our algorithms and technologies.
There is no map for the future of technology and its use, even over the rest of this decade, but this amendment provides a compass—a fixed point for navigation in the future, for which future generations will thank this Government and this House. These seven deadly dangers need to be stated clearly in the Bill and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, to be a North Star for both the Secretary of State and Ofcom. I support the amendment.
That is why it is so important that we put the purposes of the Bill absolutely at the front of the Bill, as in this amendment. If we have misunderstood that in the wording, I urge my noble friend the Minister to come back with wording on Report that truly encapsulates what the Government want.