HANSARD
Online Safety Super-Complaints (Eligibility and Procedural Matters) Regulations 2025
- Considered in Grand Committee
- 4:33 pm
- Moved by
- That the Grand Committee do consider the Online Safety Super-Complaints (Eligibility and Procedural Matters) Regulations 2025.Relevant document: 29th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Special attention drawn to the instrument
- My Lords, as the Online Safety Act sets out, the Secretary of State must make these regulations under Sections 169(3) and 170(1) of the Act. They enable the super-complaints regime to operate by establishing the eligibility criteria that entities must meet to submit a super-complaint, as well as the procedural matters relating to Ofcom’s assessment of super-complaints.Super-complaints are an integral part of the Act’s complaints handling, reporting, and redress mechanisms. They provide a means for eligible entities, including civil society groups with expertise in online safety matters, to raise systemic issues about the features or conduct of one or more regulated services with Ofcom, the Act’s independent regulator.Super-complaints cannot be made by individuals, nor can they be made about individual pieces of content. The Act establishes, under Section 169, the scope of issues that super-complaints can address. This includes where the features and/or conduct of regulated services may be causing significant harm to, significantly adversely affecting the freedom of expression of, or otherwise adversely impacting users, particular groups or the public. We expect super-complaints to typically be about cross-platform, systemic issues. However, a complaint may cover a single service if the complaint is particularly important or impacts a large number of users or members of the public.The SI sets out several eligibility criteria that an entity must meet to be able to submit a complaint to Ofcom. Entities must: represent the interests of users of regulated services, particular groups, or members of the public; have a composition, governance and accountability arrangements that mean it can be relied on to act independently from regulated services, although funding, or representation in the entity’s governance from platforms, is allowed; contribute to public discussions on online safety matters as an expert; and be capable of being relied upon to have due regard to any guidance published by Ofcom. These criteria aim to ensure a wide range of entities are eligible while safeguarding the integrity of the process and reducing the risk of vexatious complaints.In addition to the eligibility criteria, this SI also sets out the process and timeline for assessing super-complaints. Ofcom must assess the would-be complainant’s evidence against the eligibility criteria and determine whether an entity is eligible within 30 days. Ofcom must then inform an entity whether they are eligible or not and explain why. The time for assessing eligibility reduces to 15 days where entities have been found to be eligible within the past five years. In such circumstances, an entity must submit information to show that it is still an expert contributing significantly to public discussion on online safety. Eligible entities must also present current, objective and relevant evidence to support their view that one of the grounds for a complaint under the Act is met.
- My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s comments, which set the context for this interesting statutory instrument.In the process of consultation that led to the final decisions, was there time for the department to begin to implement the Parkinson rule? When my noble friend and I last met some time ago, we discussed how and under what conditions one might be able to allow Select Committees in the Commons and here with expertise in these matters to look at SIs before they are laid. I notice that this was laid on 9 June, which is well after that meeting. Was there time to let the Select Committees see this and were there useful results from that? If not, can she give us some indication of when the department will be in a position to begin to process the Parkinson rule in relation to this?I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its very full 29th report, which went through this SI in somewhat surprising detail—we do not normally get four or five pages on an instrument each time, but that tells the story behind some of my concerns about the department’s approach to this. The committee’s first conclusion is that:“The draft Regulations are drawn to the special attention of the House on the ground that they are politically or legally important or give rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House”.We are grateful to it for doing that. These are interesting and important issues.The committee’s first point for consideration is that it worries whether the regulator, Ofcom, will have the resources to carry out the sort of work envisaged in this SI and the much larger scheme of work that it is involved in. I would be grateful if my noble friend could give some thought to that in her response. I do not think she mentioned it. We understand the basis on which Ofcom makes its funding needs available—there has been notification of that recently around the level of fees to be exercised on the companies in scope of the regulator—but that is not the narrow point raised here. It is more about the question of capacity and scale, and the ability to think more widely about the system it is trying to regulate, than it is just about the money. I would be grateful if my noble friend would say a few things about how the department judges that and how it thinks Ofcom will be able to scale up its current work, which is immense. It is very important to include this activity, which in the Bill was originally intended to be of assistance to Ofcom, although some of the way it has come out does not seem to have delivered on that.
- 4:45 pm
- My third point is on the decision not to predesignate individual complainants to be on a list of those allowed to put in super-complaints. This gets a lot of attention in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report, which makes some very good points that the Minister did not respond to. There is obviously an issue about resource and therefore, in some senses, limiting the number of complaints being considered is a sensible way of doing it. But that does not seem to be the right approach to something on which we all had concerns in discussions during the passage of the Act. These were concerns about how the system will have the ability to deal with and respond to the sorts of issues that are not well dealt with at a company level. How do you raise systemic issues across the system? These will need to be dealt with very rapidly by Ofcom to prevent a movement or explosion of difficulty and concern.
- I will come to this particular point later, but I also think there is a danger that we are seeing Ofcom confusing again the issue of the size and reach of individual companies and the risks that an individual company might provide, even if it is small. We are certainly aware—it has been in the papers and discussed more recently in other debates in the House—that websites with a very small number of users in the United Kingdom can provide a tremendous amount of damage. That is not, we think, the intention of the Act when it was passed by this House and by Parliament. The intention was that the Ofcom approach towards looking at risk across the system was a combination of size and the riskiness of the individual product being provided. Again, this was not what we expected to be the outcome of the discussions between the department and Ofcom. Could the Minister reflect on that when she comes to respond on this point? To return to my third point, it seems that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee make a very strong point about the need for a predesignated list of eligible complainants. I would be grateful if the Minister could respond in more detail.
- Point four follows very closely. There is a recommendation from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, but I do not think it was referred to by the Minister, that there should be consideration built into the structure so that some assessment is made of the time and effort that has been put into super-complaints among the less-prepared and less-organised companies. There is obviously a balance to be struck between having too much work for Ofcom and siphoning out the complaints that are not necessarily going to provide the kinds of changes that I think are envisaged by this legislation.
- On the other hand, it would be a ridiculous situation if we set up a structure so tight that only a very small number of people could ever get a super-complaint organised and, therefore, Ofcom would miss out on getting information which would be to the benefit of all. This is something that needs to be looked at. It would be hopelessly inappropriate if there were valid complaints about systemic failings or specific online harms that were simply being missed because it was not possible to identify properly or quickly enough a super-complainant who could raise that issue.
- Point five—I am afraid there are three more to come—is that I am very surprised there is no appeals mechanism. This is dealt with in some detail in the report, and I will not repeat it. For a structure of this type, which is bearing down quite heavily on those who might wish to make valid representations to Ofcom, to be a one-off structure—they apply and are either accepted or rejected and there is no way of appealing—seems to be an omission that needs to be looked at again. Smaller organisations with valid points, dealing with high-risk areas which are not necessarily always at the forefront of Ofcom’s work, which want to bring forward a super-complaint but fail to get there and are turned down, cannot apply for the next six months. That does not seem to be a valid output for this approach. Again, I would like the Minister’s response to that.
- My sixth point, which I have touched on, concerns whether we are looking for a limited amount of activity or the quality of complaints to be looked at. Would it not be sensible to build into the structure—this may need secondary legislation of its own—some sort of assessment process for how this is actually working in practice? At the moment, there are probably three things that should be considered: whether valid complaints that should be getting through are not; whether those valid complaints, had they got through, would have had an impact on the system as a whole; and whether we are providing for only the larger organisations and groups and will not necessarily see all of the risks, particularly in areas that are of narrow interest. It is important that we try to get something that looks in more detail at the way in which this works in practice.
- Finally, although I see the logic in setting up a structure of this type, with super-complaints to bring forward really important issues that extend right across Ofcom’s remit in this very complex field, as the Minister explained, it does not actually have any direct outputs. All it does is set up knowledge and experience for Ofcom to draw on should it wish to address issues that it comes across during this process. I think I get the point there, but, having gone to the trouble of getting a particular structure and training up a narrow amount of people—probably fewer than 100—simply to set up a response that gives Ofcom some information on which it may, but does not have to, act to redress this does not seem to be an efficient use of resources. This may not be the time to resolve that; again, perhaps the Minister could comment on it when she responds.
- The recommendation from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee is that this is daft and that there should be a set of procedural processes that lead to direct outcomes and, if necessary, powers for Ofcom to act should a super-complaint work. The whole idea of having super-complaints, an accelerated route and an approach to get something of real importance dealt with quickly by the regulator in a fast-moving and complex area is surely sufficient for us to think about the need for a particular set of results so that people know that, if they fall foul of the super-complaints system, there will definitely be penalties. That does not happen at the moment.
- This does seem to be a bit of a mess. What we have here, which should be an additional set of armaments needed by Ofcom to take on big tech, has been structurally set up in a way that will be rather less than the sum of its parts, rather than what we want. Ofcom needs expert help and advice from specialists in this area. It is presiding over a really complicated system, but what has been set up seems to be designed to prevent consumers getting redress on the obvious wrongs that are coming forward through the super-complaints channel. We do not have an ombudsman system yet; if we get one, it may well help resolve some of these issues. It is important, therefore, that this is given some attention over the next few months.
- My Lords, I welcome these regulations and congratulate the Minister on introducing them. I have a couple of questions and will also support some of the comments made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.Can the Minister tell us when the department will undertake the guidance that it has committed to produce before the regulations come into effect? Will the House have sight of that before they come into effect?Paragraph 5.8 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:“The whole super-complaints process must … typically be completed within 120 days, which reduces to 105 days in the event that an entity has retained eligibility status”.Is that feasible? Can that actually be delivered within the procedure? I understand from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that this is meant to be a streamlined procedure, but it is important that, if someone is limited to one complaint in a six-month period, they have the time to develop that complaint to the full, and 120 days might be quite a tight timetable.Paragraph 5.9 of the Explanatory Memorandum says:“Entities must not submit more than one complaint in a six-month period”.Again, this may mean that a genuine complaint that is completely different from the complaint already before Ofcom will be delayed, so it is not streamlining the procedure at all. It also says, “except in specific circumstances”—I wonder what those circumstances might be—and goes on to say:“Super-complaints should not merely repeat the substance of another complaint that has been made publicly available by Ofcom within the last two years and Ofcom will reject a complaint on this basis”.On the two points from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I share the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that there is neither an appeals mechanism nor the intervention of an ombudsman. For what reason was an ombudsman not considered appropriate in these circumstances? Given the pressure on Ofcom and the restrictions placed on it, particularly following on from the Online Safety Act, does the Minister feel absolutely convinced that Ofcom has all the resources that it needs at its disposal to deal with the super-complainants? Paragraph 49 of the committee’s report says:
- My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive introduction. These regulations aim to establish a formal mechanism for super-complaints to be made to Ofcom under Section 169 of the 2023 Act, as we have heard. Potentially, this represents a significant step forward in implementing the Act’s vision for civil society oversight of our online landscape. The underlying purpose is clear: to enable eligible entities to raise systemic online safety issues, alerting Ofcom to significant risks or harms that might not otherwise come to its attention. These super-complaints are indeed a vital mechanism.I welcome the clear intent behind these regulations and acknowledge the responsiveness of the Government and Ofcom to the consultation process—not always the case. Several positive changes have been made in response to stakeholder feedback, strengthening the regime’s accessibility and effectiveness. The removal of a statutory pre-notification period is a crucial improvement, enabling more timely responses to urgent online safety issues. There is the reduced administrative burden for organisations that have previously been deemed eligible. The reduction in assessment periods from 30 to 15 days demonstrates a certain sensitivity to concerns about administrative burden and procedural delays. Then there are restrictions on Ofcom’s ability to pause timelines; placing limits on Ofcom’s ability to stop the clock when seeking further information from complainants is a welcome development, addressing fears about unnecessary delays in addressing urgent harms and improving transparency.The regulations have expanded the eligibility criteria to include newer expert organisations, which directly addresses concerns about barriers facing emerging voices in what is a rapidly evolving field, in our view allowing for greater inclusivity. This approach seeks to provide a future-proofed way of enabling a range of organisations to access the super-complaints mechanism in a fast-changing online environment. Then there is the flexibility in complaints submission. The ability for an eligible entity to withdraw an initial complaint and submit a replacement, effectively prioritising a different issue, is a helpful measure to ensure that the most important concerns are addressed.
- 5:00 pm