I am repeating the following written ministerial statement made today in the other place by my noble Friend, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Future Digital Economy and Online Safety, Baroness Jones of Whitchurch.
Today, I am laying before Parliament the draft Online Safety Super-Complaints (Eligibility and Procedural Matters) Regulations 2025. This important statutory instrument establishes the eligibility criteria and procedural framework for the super-complaints mechanism under the Online Safety Act 2023 and marks an important step forward in fully implementing the Act.
The super-complaints mechanism is a crucial aspect of the Act’s overall complaints handling, reporting and redress mechanisms. A well-functioning super-complaints regime will ensure a transparent and agile approach to online safety. It will perform a vital role in ensuring that eligible entities, such as civil society groups with expertise in online safety matters, can make complaints to Ofcom, the independent regulator for online safety. The regime will allow for complaints about features of regulated services or the conduct of providers, where they are, appear to be or present a material risk of causing significant harm to users or members of the public, significantly adversely affect their freedom of expression, or have other significant adverse impacts on users or members of the public.
This will ensure that Ofcom is aware of the issues users are facing, including issues that it might otherwise not have been made aware of. This process will also help Ofcom to focus priorities, target resources and recognise and eliminate systemic failings. It will also ensure that the voices of users, including vulnerable groups and children, are heard and can be acted upon, if necessary. Ofcom will be obliged to respond to super-complaints submitted by eligible entities within a specified timeframe. This instrument follows an eight-week consultation which ran from 16 November 2023 to 11 January 2024.
Eligibility criteria
The instrument I am laying before Parliament today sets out the criteria which an entity must meet in order to be considered eligible to submit a complaint:
The entity must be a body—such as a civil society group—which represents the interests of users of services regulated by the Act, or members of the public, or a particular group of users or members of the public.
The entity must be independent from the services regulated under the Act, although this does not prevent the entity receiving funding from these services or having representatives from these services involved in their governance, provided suitable mechanisms are in place to maintain independence.
The entity must demonstrate expertise in online safety matters, such as by routinely contributing as an expert to public discussions about online safety matters and media on the subject.