Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab) I beg to
move, That this House has considered e-petitions 272087 and 575833,
relating to online abuse. Thank you for chairing this incredibly
important and timely debate, Sir Roger. The way that we view social
media in this country has changed dramatically in the 12 years that
I have been in Parliament. In the early days, people saw it as a
force for good, whether they were activists using Twitter and
Facebook to...Request free trial
(Newcastle upon Tyne
North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petitions 272087 and 575833,
relating to online abuse.
Thank you for chairing this incredibly important and timely
debate, Sir Roger. The way that we view social media in this
country has changed dramatically in the 12 years that I have been
in Parliament. In the early days, people saw it as a force for
good, whether they were activists using Twitter and Facebook to
organise when the Arab spring began in 2011 or just groups of
likeminded people sharing photos of their cats and clips from
their favourite video games. Many people took the anonymity it
offered to be an unqualified positive, allowing people to share
deeply personal things and be themselves in a way that, perhaps,
they felt they could not be in the real world. All that potential
is still there.
Social media has been an invaluable tool in keeping us connected
with friends and family during these incredibly challenging two
years, but the dark side of social media has also become
depressingly familiar to us all. We now worry about what exactly
these giant corporations have been doing with our personal
information. We read research describing echo chambers that fuel
political polarisation and we see the unfolding mental health
impact, particularly on young girls, of the heavily edited
celebrity images that always seem to be just one or two swipes
away.
As the Putin regime’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine proceeds,
Ukrainians do not just face the Russian troops who have entered
their country. Moscow has, predictably, stepped up its
misinformation campaigns on social media, with the intention of
sowing confusion and undermining Ukrainian morale. Meanwhile, the
ease of creating, editing and sharing videos that appear to
document events has left many uncertain what to believe or where
to turn for reliable information. The Ukrainian people are seeing
their worst nightmare unfold in a tragic, bloody war that they
did not want. Before I make my main comments, I am sure I speak
for us all here in saying that our thoughts, our solidary and our
resolve are with Ukraine today. I know that many Members wanted
to be in this important debate, but events and issues in the main
Chamber have rather taken over.
What prompted the Petitions Committee inquiry into online abuse
and the report we are debating is the growing concern expressed
by petitioners about the abuse that people receive on social
media platforms and the painfully slow progress in making online
spaces less toxic. The scale of public concern is shown by the
popularity of the e-petitions that our Committee has received on
this subject in recent years, particularly the petitions created
by television personalities Bobby Norris and Katie Price.
Bobby, who is sitting in the Public Gallery, is a powerful
advocate and has started two petitions on this issue. The first
called for the online homophobia of which he has been a target to
be made a specific criminal offence. The second, which prompted
our inquiry, was created in September 2019 and called on the
Government to require online trolls to be blocked from accessing
social media platforms via their IP addresses. It received over
133,000 signatures before closing early due to the 2019 general
election.
Members will also be aware that Katie Price has spoken movingly
about the vile abuse to which her son Harvey has been subjected.
She and her mum Amy told the Committee that platforms fail to
take down racist and anti-disability abuse aimed at Harvey and
continue to respond poorly to complaints and reports about
abusive posts. Katie’s petition was created in March 2021 and
called on the Government to require social media users to link
their accounts to a verified form of ID, so that abusive users
can be more easily identified and prosecuted. The petition
said:
“We have experienced the worst kind of abuse towards my disabled
son and want to make sure that no one can hide behind their
crime.”
It received almost 700,000 signatures by the time it closed in
September 2021, with more than 500,000 coming in the weeks after
the deplorable racist abuse aimed at England footballers last
summer.
The inquiry that we have just concluded took place in the context
of the Government’s draft Online Safety Bill. There is not time
for me to talk through the Bill in detail today, but I know it
will be the subject of intense scrutiny and debate in the coming
months, and it is expected to impose new legal requirements on
social media and other online platforms, including any platform
that enables UK users to post content such as comments, images or
videos, or to talk to others via messaging or forums online. I
look forward to hearing the Government’s comments on that,
although I appreciate that we await the publication of the
Bill.
Online abuse is not something that just affects people in the
public eye; it is something that most of us have at least
witnessed, if not been subjected to ourselves. Ofcom’s pilot
online harms survey in 2020-21 found that over a four-week
period, 13% of respondents had experienced trolling, 10%
offensive or upsetting language, and 9% hate speech or threats of
violence. It is not an unfortunate side-effect of social media
that victims can just shrug off. Although the abuse takes place
online, we know that it can have a significant and devastating
impact on the lives of victims offline. Glitch, which we spoke to
as part of our inquiry, collated testimonies of online abuse as
part of its report, “The Ripple Effect: Covid-19 and the Epidemic
of Online Abuse”. One woman said:
“I shared a post on the rise in domestic abuse during lockdown
and received dozens of misogynistic messages telling me I
deserved to be abused, calling me a liar and a feminazi. My
scariest experience, however, was when I shared a photograph of
my young son and me. It was picked up by someone I assume to be
on the far right, who retweeted it. Subsequently, throughout the
day I received dozens of racist messages and threats directed at
my son, at his father, and at me. It was terrifying.”
Sadly, distressing accounts of fear, isolation, difficulty
sleeping, anxiety and depression are alarmingly familiar for
people who are targeted for online abuse and harassment. However,
the abuse is not directed equally, and the online world does not
stand apart from real-world inequalities. Our inquiry found that
women, disabled people, those from lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender communities, and people from ethnic minority
backgrounds are not only disproportionately targeted for abuse;
often it is their very identities that are attached.
International research conducted by the Pew Research Centre found
that 70% of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults have encountered
online harassment, compared with about 40% of straight
adults.
We heard not only that incidents of antisemitic abuse have
increased, but that Jewish women are disproportionately singled
out for abuse. Similarly, although women are generally subjected
to more online bullying than men are, ethnicity further
influences a woman’s vulnerability. Amnesty International’s
research suggests that black women are around 84% more likely
than white women to be abused online. In this way, online abuse
can reflect and amplify the inequalities that exist offline. It
also reinforces marginalisation, discouraging the participation
of such communities in online spaces. Demos, which we spoke to as
part of our inquiry, catalogued the effect of misogynistic abuse
on women’s mental health as part of its 2021 report, “Silence,
Woman”. Many women quoted in the report talked of wanting to stop
their social media presence altogether and leave activities that
they otherwise enjoy. One said:
“At the moment, it makes me want to quit everything I do
online.”
Another said:
“I can’t even look at social media because I’m so scared that
I’ll see more sexism. It’s really affecting my mental
health.”
It is essential that any measures to tackle online abuse also
recognise and respond to inequalities in the volume and severity
of that abuse. Therefore, our report makes several
recommendations to Government. First, we recommend that a
statutory duty be placed on the Government to consult with civil
society organisations representing communities most affected by
online harassment. These organisations best understand the needs
of victims, and such consultation will ensure that legislation is
truly effective in tackling online harms. Their involvement is an
important counterbalance to the lobbying efforts of social media
companies.
Secondly, we believe that the draft Online Safety Bill should
align with protections already established in the Equality Act
2010 and hate crime laws, and should include abuse based on
protected characteristics as priority harmful content. It should
list hate crime and violence against women and girls offences as
specific relevant offences within the scope of the Bill’s illegal
content safety duties and specify the offences covered under
those headings.
Finally, platforms should be required in their risk assessments
to consider the differential risks faced by certain groups of
users. Those requirements should be made explicit in the risk
assessment duties set out in the draft Online Safety Bill. The
evidence is clear: if someone is female, from an ethnic minority
or from the LGBT community, they are much more likely to be
abused online. Any legislation that assumes online abuse affects
everybody equally, separate from real-world inequalities, does
not address the problem. For the draft Online Safety Bill to be
effective, it must require platforms to assess the vulnerability
of certain communities online and tackle the unequal character of
online abuse.
The related issues of online anonymity and identification of
users also emerged as important and controversial issues, not
only in our inquiry and the petitions that prompted it, but in
the wider public and policy discussion about online abuse. The
evidence we heard on the role of anonymity in facilitating abuse
was mixed. Danny Stone of the Antisemitism Policy Trust, with
whom I have worked closely as chair of the all-party
parliamentary group against antisemitism, told us that the
ability to post anonymously enables abusive behaviour and pointed
to research demonstrating disinhibition effects from anonymity
that can lead to increased hateful behaviour. Danny cited a
figure suggesting that 40% of online antisemitic incidents over
the course of a month originated from anonymous accounts. Nancy
Kelley from Stonewall and Stephen Kinsella from Clean Up The
Internet also argued that anonymity should be seen as a factor
that increases the risk of users posting abuse and other harmful
content.
However, other witnesses took different views, arguing that
evidence of a causal link between anonymity and abusive behaviour
is unclear. Chara Bakalis from Oxford Brookes University argued
that
“focusing so much on anonymity and trying to make people say who
they are online”
risks misconstruing the problem as a question of individual
behaviour, rather than the overall toxicity of online spaces. We
also heard that the ability to post anonymously can be important
for vulnerable users. from Index on Censorship told
us how valuable it is for victims of domestic abuse to be able to
share their stories without fear of being identified, and Ellen
Judson from Demos warned that there is no way to reduce anonymity
in a way that only hurts abusers.
Tackling the abuse itself, whether or not it comes from anonymous
users, should therefore be the focus of efforts to resolve this
problem. Allowing users to post anonymously always entails a
risk. We recommend that online platforms should be required to
specifically evaluate the links between anonymity and abusive
content on their platforms, in order to consider what steps
should be taken in response to it.
A related question is whether users should be required to
identify themselves if they want to use social media, as a way of
preventing online abuse. On Friday, the Government announced that
the draft Online Safety Bill would require the largest social
media companies to allow users to verify their identities on a
voluntary basis, and users will therefore have the option to
block other users who choose not to verify their identity. This
is a positive forward, giving users control over who they
interact with and what they see online.
However, that would not be a silver bullet and should not be
presented as such. It is an extra layer of protection, but it
should not be the main focus for tackling online abuse. It
absolutely does not absolve social media companies of their
responsibility to make online spaces less toxic, which must be
our focus, nor is it without risks. The Committee heard
counter-arguments about users having to choose to use the option
to block unverified users, which could mean that domestic abuse
victims and other vulnerable users might be less likely to want
to verify themselves, and therefore their voices will not be
heard by other users. When Ofcom draws up its guidance, it must
therefore offer ways to verify identity that are as robust but as
inclusive as possible.
Bobby Norris’s petition argues that it is “far too easy” for
social media users who have been banned to simply create a new
account and continue the abuse. Katie Price and her mum Amy also
raised the issue of banned users who seemingly have no problem
returning and behaving in the same appalling way. The major
social media platforms told us that they already have rules
against previously banned users returning, as well as the tools
and data to identify users and prevent them from starting new
accounts. However, the evidence that we heard does not support
that.
Our inquiry found that preventing the return of abusive banned
users is not a priority for social media companies, and some
users are taking advantage of the lax enforcement of bans to
continue abusing their victims. That is a significant failing,
and platforms must be held accountable for it. Robust measures
must be put in place to require social media platforms to
demonstrate that they can identify previously banned users when
they try to create new accounts and must discourage—or, even
better, prevent—unstable accounts from posting abusive
content.
Where a platform’s rules prohibit users from returning to the
platform, they should be able to show that they are adequately
enforcing those rules. The regulations must have teeth, so we
also recommend that Ofcom should have the power to issue fines or
take other enforcement action if a platform cannot demonstrate
that.
We also took evidence from the Law Commission, which has
recommended the creation of two new offences covering online
communications. The proposed introduction of a harm-based offence
would criminalise communications
“likely to cause harm to a likely audience”,
with harm defined as
“psychological harm, amounting at least to serious distress”.
An additional new offence covering threatening communications
would criminalise communications that convey
“a threat of serious harm”,
such as grievous bodily harm or rape.
We also heard that if the proposed new offences were introduced,
some abusive content may be treated as
“a more serious offence with a more serious penalty”
than if it were prosecuted under existing law. The Committee
believes that is a positive step forward that would better
capture the context-dependent nature of some online abuse. A
photograph of someone’s front door, for example, may be entirely
innocent in some contexts, but can take on quite sinister
connotations in others, where it quite clearly implies a threat
to a person’s safety.
The Government should also monitor how effectively any new
communications offences, particularly the Law Commission’s
proposed harm-based offence, protect people and provide redress
for victims of online abuse, while also protecting freedom of
expression online. The Government should publish an initial
review of the workings and impact of any new communications
offences within the first two years after they come into force.
We have to make sure we take this opportunity to get this right
and review it within two years to make sure it is as effective as
it can be.
The Law Commission also recently concluded a review of hate crime
law. It acknowledges two points highlighted in the Petitions
Committee’s 2019 report: the unequal treatment of protected
characteristics in hate crime law, and the failure to classify
abuse of disabled people as a hate crime in cases where the
offence may have been motivated by a sense that disabled people
are easy targets, rather than being clearly motivated by
hostility to disabled people.
The commission recommended extending existing aggravated hate
crime offences to cover all characteristics currently protected
under hate crime law, and reforming the motivation test for an
offence to be treated as a hate crime, proposing an alternate
test of motivation on the grounds of “hostility or prejudice”.
The Government have stated that hate crime offences will be
listed in the draft Online Safety Bill as priority illegal
content. That means that the legislation will require platforms
to take steps to proactively prevent users from encountering hate
crime content.
There is some confusion, however, as we do not yet know if this
will be limited to the existing stand-alone racially and
religiously aggravated and stirring up hatred offences, or if the
intention is to require platforms to proactively prevent users
from encountering, for example, communications that involve
hostility based on a protected characteristic such as disability.
When the Minister responds, will he tell us what the Government
expect the practical impact to be on how platforms are required
to deal with, for example, the abuse of disabled people
online?
Our inquiry heard again and again that changes to the law on
online abuse risk becoming irrelevant, when we lack the capacity
to even enforce the law as it stands. The uncomfortable truth is
that, despite the dedication of our officers, police resources
have been diminished to the point where even relatively simple
crimes in the offline world go unsolved more often than not,
according to Home Office statistics. Meanwhile, the proportion of
reported crimes leading to successful prosecutions has reached an
all-time low.
It is not surprising that we found such scepticism about the
state’s capacity to enforce a law against criminal online abuse,
which, in many cases, will be complex and time-consuming to
investigate. gave the following evidence to
the Committee:
“When I got my first death threat in 2014, at that point the
police did not have access to Facebook. It was banned…Although
they can now see it, they do not have the resources available to
help them prosecute. Whether the legislation is amended or not,
it is so incredibly important that the criminal justice system
can do its work. To do that, they need resources.”
While we believe the Law Commission’s proposals are eminently
sensible, we are deeply concerned that the inadequate resourcing
of our police and criminal justice system is the real elephant in
the room. It could prevent us from dealing with the most serious
forms of online abuse, such as death threats, the sending of
indecent images and illegal hate speech.
I suspect that the Treasury is unlikely to look favourably on
this resourcing issue any time soon, but the Committee would be
neglecting its duty if we failed to draw attention to it.
Resources in the police and criminal justice system have to be an
essential part of the conversation on tackling online harms. If
the Government are serious about tackling the most serious forms
of online abuse, they must ensure that our police and courts have
the resources to enforce the laws against it.
Although we talk a lot about Twitter, Facebook and TikTok in
these discussions, abusive content hosted on smaller platforms
also plays a significant role in encouraging prejudicial
attitudes and real-world harm. Some of these platforms have
become safe havens for some of the most troubling material
available online, including holocaust denial, terrorist
propaganda films and covid-19 disinformation. From an internet
browser today, anyone can easily access videos that show graphic
footage of real-world violence and allege the attacks are part of
a Jewish plot, or find an entire channel dedicated to the idea
that black people are a biological weapon designed to wipe out
western civilisation—I could go on. Danny Stone of the
Antisemitism Policy Trust told the Committee:
“It is not just the Twitters and Facebooks of this world; there
are a range of harms occurring across a range of different
platforms. It is sinister, we have a problem and, at the moment,
it is completely unregulated. Something needs to be done.”
We have heard no evidence to suggest that the negative effects of
abuse on people’s wellbeing or freedom of expression are any less
serious because the abuse comes from a smaller platform. Failure
to address such content would risk significantly undermining the
impact of the legislation. The duties set out in the draft Online
Safety Bill relating to content that is “legal but harmful” to
adults must apply to a wide range of platforms to ensure that
abusive content is removed from the online sphere, not merely
shifted from the larger platforms to darker corners of the
internet.
The Committee therefore recommends that the draft Online Safety
Bill require smaller platforms to take steps to protect users
from content that is legal but harmful to adults, with a
particular focus on ensuring that such platforms cannot be used
to host content that has the potential to encourage hate or
prejudice towards individuals or communities. They do not get a
free pass just because they are smaller platforms.
The Minister has previously indicated that the Government have
considered amending the conditions for classing a platform as
category 1, so that it covers platforms with either a high number
of users or posing a high risk of harm to users, rather than both
conditions having to be met, as is the case in the draft Bill. We
would welcome an update on whether the Government are minded to
take that forward.
Legislators have a way of making the debate around online safety
sound incredibly complicated and inaccessible. However, the
fundamental issue is simple: too many people are exploiting
online platforms to abuse others, and not enough has been done to
protect the victims and create online spaces where people are
free to express themselves in a constructive way. In the offline
world, there are rules on acceptable behaviour and how we treat
other people. We invest huge amounts of time and energy into
ensuring that those rules are followed as much as possible. The
same simply cannot be said of the digital sphere.
The online world has changed dramatically in such a short time.
Our laws and regulations have not kept up. They have allowed a
culture to develop where abuse has become normalised. It was
deeply troubling to hear in every single one of the Committee’s
school engagement sessions that pupils believe that abuse is just
a normal part of the online experience. Is that really what we
want our children to grow up believing? We can do so much better
than that.
Social media companies make so much money. It is not too much to
ask that they invest some of that in ensuring that their
platforms are safe, and that people cannot inflict enormous harm
on others without consequences. Of course, there will always be
some abuse and inappropriate behaviour online, and nobody expects
any Government to prevent it all, just as no home security system
could stop every clever and determined burglar, but we can
certainly do a lot better.
The Committee welcomes the opportunity provided by the draft
Online Safety Bill, and our report sets out several ways the
Government can improve the legislation. Ministers must recognise
the disproportionate way that women, ethnic minorities, people
with disabilities and LGBT people are targeted, so that nobody
feels they cannot express themselves or engage with others
online. We need to hold the platforms accountable if they fail to
prevent banned users from rejoining, and we must ensure our
police have the resources they need to tackle the most dangerous
forms of online abuse. We look forward to the Government
addressing our recommendations when their formal response to our
report is published, and to the Minister’s response today.
Social media offers such fantastic opportunities to connect with
others and is a real source of positivity and enjoyment for so
many people. If we get the Bill right, we will be taking the
first step towards bringing some much-needed light to the dark
side of social media and amplifying the benefits of the
unprecedented connectivity of the world we live in. Our report
and today’s debate are important steps in bringing to Parliament
the concerns of hundreds of thousands of members of the public
who want a safer and more equal online world. We will continue to
hold Ministers to account on behalf of the petitioners, so that
the draft Online Safety Bill makes its way through Parliament and
achieves what we know petitioners want.
4.57pm
(Folkestone and Hythe)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and address the petitions
on online abuse, which reflect the understandable growing public
concern about the prevalence of abusive material and behaviour
online, in particular on social media. I chaired the Joint
Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill—the pre-legislative
scrutiny Committee. We had consistent evidence from people about
the nature of the abuse they had faced online, and how that abuse
creates spaces online where not only are people targeted, but
hate speech, racist speech, vile abuse and extremism have become
normalised within the echo chambers of certain sectors of social
media.
People are frustrated because they have raised these concerns
directly with social media platforms, their Member of Parliament
and the Government. The sort of action that they think should be
taken to combat abusive behaviour, and that would be taken if the
behaviour took place in a public space, is not being taken
online. People cannot just log out of their accounts. We cannot
just say, “Well, the easiest way to avoid online abuse is not to
be online.” Many people are required to be online due to the
nature of their work. Why should people not be able to go online
and enjoy, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North
() said, the connectivity
that comes from being on social media without being the victim or
target of abuse? We do not create spaces for abuse in the
physical world; we should not create such spaces in the online
world either.
As the hon. Member said, the draft Online Safety Bill is big and
quite complicated. I urge everyone to read the 60,000-word report
by the Joint Committee. The Bill becomes a lot simpler and
clearer after reading the report. At the heart of the Bill is
something simple: activity that is illegal offline should be
regulated online, and the laws that Parliament has created and
that our courts enforce offline should be applied online as well.
Offences are committed not just by someone who is abusing another
person, but by a platform that actively hosts, amplifies and
creates an audience for that content, and platforms should be
liable to combat abuse. Indeed, without that liability, we will
not be able to combat it.
Online platforms should not be amplifying abusive behaviour to
others. In a shocking incident last summer—one of many—members of
the English national football team were the subject of racist
abuse after the final of the European championships. That was
foreseen by the football authorities, who warned social media
companies that this would be a problem, but the companies did
nothing to combat it. The issue is not just that foreseeable
abuse was not acted on and stopped; it is that social media
companies’ systems were making people aware that the abuse was
taking place, and even highlighting the key words. People were
prosecuted in the courts following that event because of their
use of racist language, and the racial abuse directed towards
others.
We know what the offences are, and we know what the thresholds
are for legal action. That standard should be enforced online.
The draft Online Safety Bill should, by regulating illegal
activity online, set the minimum standards required. It should
allow us to set the safety standards that we think should be set,
so that they are based not on terms of service written by
American technology companies in California, but on our laws and
the thresholds we set to keep people safe. They should be
proactively enforced. The company should not be waiting for
people to complain; they should be proactively looking for this
content.
I will focus my remarks on a part of the Bill that it is
important to get right: priority harms. The term that has been
used is “legal but harmful”. Clearly illegal content exists;
content that constitutes child abuse or a terrorist offence is
clearly illegal and no context is needed to understand why it is
bad. The Government propose creating a schedule of priority harms
of other offences. I am pleased to see the steps the Government
have taken since the Joint Committee report was published; they
are writing more of those offences into the Bill, and making it
absolutely clear when they apply. However, we do need certainty;
victims need to know that an offence has been committed. They
should be seeking redress based on the fact that an offence has
been committed against them. The social media companies need to
know which offences are in scope, and what they are expected to
do in different situations. The regulator needs to give
certainty, based on the law and its regulatory powers, about
where those thresholds are.
That is why the Joint Committee recommended removing the
definition of “legal but harmful” from the Bill, and instead
writing into the Bill those offences that it applies to, making
it really clear which offences are in scope. Once the regulator
is established, its first job will be to create the risk
registers from which it will create the codes of practice that
apply to the different companies. Then the regulator will be well
placed to act if Ofcom feels that there are gaps in the
regulatory regime—if there are offences that should have been
included but were not, or if new offences need to be added to the
priority harm areas. It is much better if offences in the
regulatory regime are based on laws that are understood, that
Parliament has passed and that the courts enforce, so that there
is no ambiguity. I understand the desire to future-proof the
legislation, and to say, “Something bad may happen that we cannot
foresee; there should be provision to regulate for that.”
However, it is difficult to take enforcement action against a
social media company for not acting against content that was not
proscribed or recognised by the regulator.
The Government have done a good job of bringing so many offences
into the Bill. One of the concerns was whether equalities
legislation was enforceable online—how would we enforce race
hate, and other abuse, online? The Government have made clear how
that could be done. However, it would be better if the regulatory
regime was based on offences named in the Bill, rather than our
having an additional general definition of something that is
“legal but harmful”.
I do not believe that the Government’s intention is for the
regulator to start creating new offences; the Government want to
bring clarity. Having a tight focus on existing offences, as
regulated through the codes of practice that set the minimum
safety standards, gives more clarity and more certainty. That is
what people want. They want to know what they are being protected
from, that the companies have to be proactive in removing certain
sorts of content, and that there is no ambiguity or confusion
over what that is and how it should be done. When the Minister
responds and the Government give their thoughts about the final
draft of the draft Online Safety Bill, they should bear that in
mind. The Bill will provide a lot more clarity if we give people
certainty—both those who are concerned about freedom of
expression, and those who want to know that certain offences will
be covered by the Bill.
5.04pm
(Strangford) (DUP)
I am very pleased to participate in this debate. I congratulate
the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North () on setting the scene
so well, and on representing the Petitions Committee. My office
faces online abuse regularly; the draft Online Safety Bill will
lead to changes. I give credit to the Minister, who has always
been very responsive to the issues that we bring to his
attention. Today I seek confirmation that the commitment that the
Minister has given will actually lead to the changes that we
want. The petitions come at a pertinent time, as we are waiting
to see the next stages of the draft Online Safety Bill. The
Minister today has an opportunity to hear the points raised by
our constituents.
As the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North said, covid-19
has moved many people online. Undoubtedly, people say things they
should not online. They think there is no recrimination or
accountability, but there is, and I hope the draft Online Safety
Bill will give us the change that I wish to see. The online harms
White Paper of April 2019 said that
“all pornography sites should have duties to stop children from
accessing them, regardless of whether the sites hosted
user-to-user content”,
that
“individual users should be able to complain to an Ombudsman when
platforms failed to comply with their obligations”,
and that
“a senior manager should be designated as the ‘safety controller’
with liability for a new offence—failing to comply with their
obligations when there was clear evidence of repeated and
systemic failings that resulted in a significant risk of serious
harm to users.”
That was the request in April 2021. Perhaps the Minister can
indicate whether we have got to that stage.
The hon. Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North, and for
Folkestone and Hythe (), referred to attacks on
disabled people. The Minister is well aware of the disgraceful
and disgusting comments made by an anonymous internet user to my
colleague Diane Dodds MLA. They were absolutely despicable,
atrocious, hurtful and dirty comments regarding the tragic death
of her wee son, who was disabled. Politics had nothing to do with
the response whatever. There was a cry from mothers and fathers
throughout my constituency, urging me to make clear the changes
that are needed to remove anonymity and remove the power from the
unknown and faceless warrior trolls—those who pick on the most
hurtful aspects of life and spew bile.
The person responsible happened to be from the Republic of
Ireland, and I am very pleased that the investigation, which is
ongoing, has ascertained who they are. My mailbox contained much
correspondence from people who do not necessarily vote for my
party. They were expressing their support for a lady who does not
deserve such comments, regardless of her politics. That is an
example of online abuse and its impact. That sums up one of the
issues that I do not believe is fully addressed in the draft
Online Safety Bill. I would like much stronger restrictions, to
remove anonymity and to give platforms the responsibility to
immediately remove posts and users once a complaint has been
made. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children—I declare an interest; I contribute regularly to the
charity—argues for a regulator, who would enforce a duty of care,
and a duty to protect children on social media. I make that plea
again to the Minister, who I know is keen to respond.
Barnardo’s welcomed the draft Online Safety Bill, although it
cautioned that the devil is in the detail, as it always is, and
said that it would work with the Government to make sure that the
legislation was effective as possible. Again, perhaps the
Minister can respond to the comments from Barnardo’s and the
NSPCC. Anne Longfield, the former Children’s Commissioner, said
she was pleased that the Government would introduce a duty of
care. However, she said it was essential that the draft Online
Safety Bill was introduced as soon as possible to keep children
safe. I do not pretend to have expertise—I have enough difficulty
turning on my laptop, to be honest—but for those who use the
internet regularly, there has to be protection.
Another great concern is about access to pornography. A survey
carried out by Middlesex University, which was jointly
commissioned by the National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children and the Children’s Commissioner for England,
showed that around 53% of 11 to 16-year-olds have seen graphic
porn content online and that 94% of them had viewed adult content
by the time they were just 14. In total, 1,001 children aged
between 11 and 16 were questioned and the survey found that 65%
of the 15 to 16-year-olds had viewed pornography and that 28% of
11 to 12-year-olds had done so. More than half of the boys
surveyed—53%—said they thought that pornography was a realistic
portrayal of sex, as did 39% of the girls surveyed.
The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North talked about that
issue, and I totally agree with her because it shows the
destructive effect that pornography has on our young people if
they think that it is the norm, when quite clearly it is not. We
need to correct that. I thank the hon. Lady for making that
point; it was one of the issues that I wanted to talk about as
well.
More than a third of 13 to 14-year-old boys and a fifth of 11 to
12-year-old boys also said they wanted to copy the action that
they had seen. What will society be like if what is perverted and
wrong is seen as normal? We have to address that very harshly,
very strongly, very firmly and with great focus. I look forward
to hearing the Minister’s response on that issue.
This is a problem and we need to ask if it is being addressed in
the Online Safety Bill thus far. I have my reservations and they
are shared by Christian Action, Research, and Education, which
says:
“The Bill is silent in respect to commercial pornographic
websites that fall outside the scope of the Bill at present. It
is also silent on whether the Bill will specifically cover some
of the most violent pornography that is concerning because of its
impact on violence against women and girls.
In its final submission to the Online Safety Bill Select
Committee, CARE said it ‘disagreed with the Government’s claim
that the most accessed pornographic sites will be covered by the
Bill. The current definition of “user-generated” content means
porn sites could simply amend how they operate to make sure they
are outside of scope.’”
The Minister is always forthcoming with his responses and he is
always incredibly helpful, but will he explain on the record how
the Government will ensure that that will not happen? CARE’s
concern is to thwart porn sites, to stop them acting outside the
guidelines and laws by getting the rules moved slightly and then
suddenly finding themselves protected.
The protection of innocents is something we must get right. We
cannot protect our children from the world indefinitely—I know
that—but we have to make every effort to do the best we can.
However, the ability of children to access dangerous and harmful
pornography must be curtailed. I would very much appreciate it if
the Minister could outline how we can guard against certain
user-generated content and keep it away from our children. With
respect, I remain unconvinced that the Bill goes far enough.
The Library briefing for this debate notes that the Minister has
said that priority offences will include encouraging or assisting
suicide. That is so important. We all know of people in our
constituencies who have lost their lives after listening to what
someone said on a website. There are also offences relating to
sexual images, including revenge and extreme pornography, which I
have referred to already. We really need to address those
priority offences. Other offences include incitement to and
threats of violence, hate crime, public order offences,
harassment and stalking, which many constituents have come to see
me about. There are also drug-related offences, weapons and
firearm offences, fraud and financial crime, money laundering,
exploiting prostitutes for gain—it is despicable how pimps
exploit ladies for their own gain—and organised immigration
offences.
I am glad that the Minister has said that all of those offences
will be priority offences. I want to ensure, however, that
legislation, including the Online Safety Bill, can give us the
confidence that our children will be protected, that vulnerable
ladies will not be challenged, and that those who use online
means for their perverted and evil deeds will be held
accountable.
With that in mind, I believe that more needs to be done to get
the Bill right. I look forward to the Government and the
Minister, who is particularly interested in this subject—there is
no dispute about that—doing the best they can to put the right
Bill in place to provide the protection and confidence that I and
my constituents need.
5.15pm
(Stroud) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I
thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North () for her wide-ranging
and powerful opening speech, and my hon. Friend the Member for
Folkestone and Hythe () for the incredible work he
has done with the Committee.
I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about online harms and
online abuse. We have heard some positive announcements from the
Government, thanks to the Minister’s hard work; no doubt, we will
hear more about that in due course. I have spoken before about
the misery of the dark cyber streets and alleyways. Our
constituents around the country are looking to us to help clean
up digital Dodge City. The Government have responded by creating
a wide-ranging draft online harms Bill and by taking the extra
step of having prelegislative scrutiny, which was incredibly
thorough and created the report on which we are concentrating our
minds today.
Not all abuse is anonymous—I know that because I get quite a lot
of it myself—but the most frightening threats are often from
faceless, nameless and cowardly perpetrators, who prevent us from
being able to assess and understand the true risk of a post
because we do not know who is behind it. I have focused my time
on campaigning to tackle anonymous abuse. I promoted a ten-minute
rule Bill seeking verification measures, so that social media
users could verify their own accounts. Why should only
celebrities and MPs, for example, have blue ticks? That should be
open to all and be clearly labelled. The Bill would also allow
social media users to only follow and be followed by verified
accounts. On the issue of verification, the petitions have
attracted nearly 700,000 signatures. I thank everybody who has
worked so hard to raise this issue.
I have spoken to the new Secretary of State for Digital, Culture,
Media and Sport and her team on a number of occasions. She has
genuinely listened to the concerns of victims and I can see an
incredible change of tack in the draft legislation, which
addresses much more clearly the daily experience of social media
users and the ways in which we can improve that experience.
I came to this issue originally because I received a lot of abuse
when I announced my pregnancy, which is bonkers in this day and
age. After that, Stroud residents spoke to me about their own
experience of online abuse. They were everyday people, such as
social workers, Army veterans and schoolgirls. The cyber-flashing
issues faced by so many young girls are appalling, and the
majority of that comes from anonymous accounts.
This job is very weird on a normal day, but I have been able to
talk to some incredibly glamorous, popular and well-followed
celebrities. I thank Bobby Norris, Katie Price, Emily Atack,
Malin Andersson and others I have spoken to. They have brought to
the fore the fact that, while we may look at them as glamorous
people who are to be envied, behind the scenes they are suffering
so much because of online abuse, which is scary, debilitating and
damaging to mental health. Given all the people who are
suffering, it is right that the Government have listened and made
changes.
A few months ago, I gave a speech on this subject and tried to
explain how parents had received abuse following the death of
their children or babies. I really struggled, as I will never
understand why people wake up in the morning and think it is okay
to start sending nasty, threatening, scary or harassing messages
to people. It is completely mindless and it needs to be shut
down.
Briefly, we know that anonymity and lack of verification mean
less self-policing, because users feel less accountable and
responsible for their actions. We know that there is less actual
policing because it is so difficult to trace people who are
anonymous, and the preventive and protective measures can often
be dodged—if we block or ban an abusive user on a platform, they
just start a new account, as we have heard from other Members
present today.
It is worth going over some of the challenges that my proposals
to tackle anonymity and to introduced verification rightly
received. First, people said that anonymity is a source of
protection for marginalised and endangered people—there is a
force for good in it. I completely agree that anonymity can not
only fuel abuse, but offer a means of protection to enable people
to get online. That is why the nuanced approach of giving social
media users more choice, as we are suggesting, is so
important.
Secondly, this is no magic bullet. The proposal would not stop
all abuse online, and it would be wrong to suggest that that
would be the case. That will not happen. We have not been able to
eradicate bullying in the playground over all the years that that
has been going on. However, our proposed measures, which have
been added to the Online Safety Bill—I am so grateful for
that—along with the creation of a regulator and other measures,
will really help to significantly reduce abuse of all forms, but
anonymous abuse in particular. People who choose that option can
in effect opt out of seeing it.
I will conclude. I have kept my comments relatively short because
I talk so often about this matter. I am keen to hear from the
Minister and his opposite number, the hon. Member for Pontypridd
(), about what is to come.
What we are seeing so far is very positive. It will be a very
lively piece of legislation, not least because it is massive. It
is right for such a serious piece of legislation to receive so
much scrutiny and challenge. If it has the victims of abuse at
its heart, and if we think about the whole range of different
people who experience abuse daily and about the campaigning that
is happening—supporting the FA with Kick It Out, and the racism
and antisemitism groups—it is pretty obvious that this is the
right course of action. We will be on the right side of history
pushing the Bill through. I thank the Minister and his team for
everything that they are doing.
5.22pm
(Pontypridd) (Lab)
I am very glad to respond to this important debate on behalf of
the Opposition. It is also brilliant to serve under your
chairmanship again, Sir Roger. I place on the record my thanks to
my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North () for her excellent work
on the Petitions Committee inquiry, for introducing both
e-petitions and for outlining the issues facing us and why we
desperately need the Online Safety Bill.
Clearly, there is a strong appetite among constituents across the
UK for a change in regulation of the online space. The strength
of feeling about the need to strengthen online protections is
crystal clear. Colleagues across the House noted that this
afternoon. I also pay tribute to the hard work of campaigners,
including Katie Price, Emily Atack, Amy Hart and Bobby Norris,
whom I was hoping to have with us today. They have called for
action for some time now, along with so many others. As has been
noted, the petitions have amassed more than 800,000 signatures—a
significant number that cannot be ignored. It is abundantly clear
that the Government must now take notice and, most importantly,
take decisive action.
The experiences and stories shared in the debate bring a very
human issue into sharp relief. As others have said, it is easy to
get lost in technical language when speaking about internet
regulation, so let me be clear: the Government can and should do
more. The Conservatives promised that the Government would bring
what was billed in their online harms White Paper as “world
leading” legislation urgently to the forefront of the
parliamentary agenda. Yet here we are, more than three years
later, and we are still waiting.
Never has such legislation been more timely, given what we are
seeing with the disinformation and misinformation being spread
online about the appalling situation in, and the invasion of,
Ukraine. All our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine and we
stand in solidarity with them today.
The Government’s first attempt at a comprehensive draft online
harms Bill was widely seen as too narrow, hard to follow and
confusing in parts, and it was indeed in need of significant
strengthening. That opinion was shared throughout the sector. The
children’s charity the NSPCC conducted its own analysis and found
that the first draft of the Bill failed in 10 of its 27
indicators for the protection of children. Those damning concerns
were shared elsewhere. A 2021 study by the online safety group
Internet Matters found that the 2 million most vulnerable
children in Britain are seven times more likely to come to harm
online than their peers across the globe. Of course, colleagues
and, I am sure, the Minister will already know that.
The need for change and real regulation online has been well
reported and the reality is that without robust change, more and
more people will continue to suffer abuse at the hands of an
unregulated internet. We need only to reflect on last summer and
the England side’s success at the men’s UEFA Euros final to
scratch the surface of the power of the internet to perpetuate
hate and abuse. Although I know that colleagues will be aware
that I am an immensely proud Welsh MP and will therefore always
naturally believe that the Welsh side was utterly robbed of
glory—not just then, but at the weekend, too—the Euros final was
a hugely exciting time for all our country and the nation as a
whole. However, despite the incredible work of the team and the
pride and unity that those football matches brought to so many,
their achievements were hugely tarnished by the utterly shocking
abuse a number of players faced online following an impossibly
difficult penalty shoot-out. It is beyond reprehensible that
social media companies defended the use of a monkey emoji—we all
know what was meant—saying that it was out of scope and could not
be regulated because it was an emoji.
It is not just about the football last summer. Only this
afternoon, I saw a great, brilliant and prominent black Welsh
rugby player, Ashton Hewitt, reaching out and begging Twitter to
block an anonymous troll with the username LladdPoblDduon. For
the non-Welsh speakers in the room, that username literally
translates as “killing black people”. How are people even allowed
to create an account with that handle?
That is why the Labour party has long called for tougher
penalties for those at the top of social media companies. Ofcom
will take on some of the biggest tech firms in the world, with
all the power and resources at their fingertips. It is a David
and Goliath situation and Ofcom must have access to a full range
of tools in its belt, including a provision to make top bosses
criminally liable for persistently failing to tackle online harm.
We all want to see effective and fit-for-purpose legislation that
cracks down on harms and the hate and fake news that flourish
online. I reach out to the Minister and to his Government—he has
the cross-party support to ensure that that happens.
Labour believes that it is only by making senior social media
executives personally liable for failures to prevent dangerous
content from spreading, including that which glorifies violence,
racism, antisemitism, homophobia or misogyny, that we will ensure
that the social media companies begin to take it seriously.
Instead of doing the right thing, the Government U-turned on the
commitment for the Bill to have its Second Reading before
Christmas.
The Minister knows that the scale of the problem is huge, yet
despite years of warnings from Labour alongside campaigning
groups and charities alike, the Government have persistently
delayed robust action. The vast range of people, from young to
old, being impacted by online trolls hiding behind anonymity is
truly massive, and we heard powerful testimony from the hon.
Member for Stroud () about her experiences of
suffering at the hands of anonymous trolls. It is a sad fact that
women in public life see it as the norm that we are treated
online as an easy target for abuse. By all means, debate my
politics and my voting record, talk to me about my politics and
my policies, but criticising my appearance, my accent, how I look
and how I dress, just because I am a woman in public life, is
completely unacceptable.
Although we welcome some of last week’s announcements, including
the one that large social networks will be forced to let people
filter out unverified accounts in an attempt to tackle anonymous
abuse, there are still some gaping holes. They failed to address
the back-of-house issues, especially those to do with illegal
activity online. Moreover, the smaller social networks are yet to
be factored in, as outlined by the Antisemitism Policy Trust.
The Government need to wake up and recognise that, sadly, when it
comes to perpetuating hate, fake news or other negative
behaviours online, the reality is that where there is a will,
there is a way. The upcoming draft Online Safety Bill is a unique
opportunity to put those wrongs right. That brings me to Labour’s
key asks of the Minister this afternoon. I am keen to give the
Minister plenty of time to respond, and we have that this
afternoon, so I will keep my questions brief.
Given the urgency, and the devastation that an unregulated
internet is having on users every day, will the Minister finally
confirm exactly when this long-awaited legislation will be
brought back to Parliament? We are looking for an exact date.
Surely, given the long delays already incurred, giving
clarification is the least that the Minister can do.
As I and others have already mentioned, anonymous abuse occurs
not just on large platforms. In fact, some of the smaller
platforms can be the most problematic in hosting, promoting and
perpetuating abuse. Will the Minister confirm exactly how the
upcoming legislation will ensure that the issues with smaller but
high-harm platforms are also addressed?
I know that the hon. Member for Strangford () raised this point, and it is an issue that I am
personally concerned about. The Minister recognises the
horrifying content that is so easily accessed online by anyone
with an internet connection. I welcome the Government’s recent
commitment to introduce age-verification technology to prevent
under-18s from accessing pornography online, but the Minister
must also know that the technology is far more advanced than ever
before. Only this week, the BBC reported the extremely disturbing
story about the Metaverse app, which, in essence, allows children
into virtual strip clubs online. A researcher was able to pose as
a 13-year-old girl and quickly witnessed grooming, sexual
material, racist insults and a rape threat in a virtual reality
world. I encourage colleagues who are not familiar with the story
to read up on it and see the graphics for themselves, because
they are utterly shocking and appalling. It just cannot be right.
It is all very well banning access to pornography, but Twitter
has a minimum age threshold of 13 and fails to block pornographic
content on its site. It is simply unfathomable that that is
allowed to continue.
The internet is an inherently creative space and the legislation
must keep up. How will the Minister ensure that the Bill is
future-proofed, to prevent it from being out of date—the next
generation of technology is already coming through—by the time it
is finally put in place?
Lastly, I repeat the calls made by the hon. Member for Folkestone
and Hythe () and the Joint Committee on
the draft Online Safety Bill. Labour firmly believes that the
online space must be kept in check by an independent regulator,
instead of by distant bodies in Silicon Valley. That is what is
urgently needed, and what we have urgently needed for a long
time. I hope that the Minister is listening.
5.32pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture,
Media and Sport ()
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir
Roger. Colleagues will be pleased to hear that I do not
anticipate taking up the entire two hours that remain.
First, I associate myself with the remarks made by the shadow
Minister, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (), and by the hon. Member
for Newcastle upon Tyne North () about the terrible
events unfolding in Ukraine, which are being debated in the
Chamber at the moment. I know that we are all deeply concerned
and want to send our thoughts, prayers and more to the people of
Ukraine, who are suffering so terribly.
I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne
North for introducing the debate with such eloquence and passion.
I extend those thanks and congratulations to the hundreds of
thousands of people across the whole United Kingdom who signed
the petitions, whose voices are being heard today, and especially
to those who took the time and the trouble to organise the
petitions, including Bobby Norris, who has done a huge amount of
work in this vital area. I am sure that we all want to pay
tribute to him.
Although the online world presents enormous opportunities for
communication, research and better understanding one another,
there is no question but that, as the hon. Member for Newcastle
upon Tyne North put it at the very beginning, in many areas of
enormous concern people are suffering terrible abuse that affects
their day-to-day lives in the most awful and unimaginable ways.
More than that, on occasion, people are subjected to abuse that
is straightforwardly illegal and deserves criminal
prosecution.
The Government fully recognise the problems in the online space,
and the devastating impact that they can have on victims. We also
recognise the fact that women, girls, people in the LGBT+
community, members of ethnic minorities, and others, very
often—as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North said at
the beginning—suffer disproportionately severe forms of abuse
online, simply because of who they are. That is a point that the
shadow Minister also made very powerfully. It is simply
unacceptable, and it is essential that we take action.
The draft Online Safety Bill is the principal vehicle through
which action will be taken. It is a huge piece of legislation, as
Members have mentioned, and I want to touch on some of the points
raised about it during the debate. The shadow Minister asked
about timing. It is true that it has been some time in
preparation—from the White Paper, to the draft Bill presented
last May, to the Joint Committee’s prelegislative work through
the autumn and up until just before Christmas. I would like to
take the opportunity to pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend
the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (), who chaired that
Committee, which did fantastic work. Its report has almost 200
pages and we have been devouring every single one of them. To
answer the question about timing, the introduction of the updated
Bill is very imminent. I will not give a precise date, because it
is still subject to collective Government agreement, but it is a
matter of a small number of weeks, if I can put it that way. I
hope that that gives an indication that it is extremely imminent
and that all that work is about to come to fruition.
I want to make it clear that the Government have been in very
careful listening mode for the past nine or 10 months since
publication. We have, of course, listened to the Joint Committee
and its report. The Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media
and Sport also produced a report, and Members who have been
raising points about the Bill in Parliament and elsewhere. As
Members will have gathered, significant changes will be made to
the Bill on introduction. It will be very different, in a number
of significant ways, when it is introduced very shortly, compared
with the draft version published last May. That is due to the
work that parliamentarians and other stakeholders—some children’s
charities were mentioned earlier—have done. We want to take every
opportunity to make sure that the Bill is as good as it can be.
It is not really a party political issue, is it? I am sure there
will be areas to improve, but when the Bill is introduced I hope
that the House of Commons will get behind it and speak as one for
the whole country, because we all have the same objectives. I
think that the scrutiny that has already taken place has been an
example of Parliament at its best, and I hope that when the Bill
goes through the House it will be another example of Parliament
working at its best.
I want to pick up on a few points raised by my hon. Friend the
Member for Folkestone and Hythe. Obviously, I cannot pre-announce
all of the updates that will be in the Bill. Some have been
announced already. He made important points about ensuring
clarity on how the different provisions will operate. We have
already made it clear that we will specify the priority illegal
offences, and social media firms will have to be proactive in
preventing such illegal things from appearing online. That will
be a first step towards providing some of the clarity referred to
by my hon. Friend. There is then the question of how we bring
similar clarity in the area of legal but harmful; there will be
more to say on that in the very near future.
Whether or not the illegal act or illegal thing is a priority
item, there will be a duty to take action where any illegal
activity occurs online. Critically, that particular duty applies
to all platforms, regardless of size, so even the smaller ones
that are not category 1 will have to take action—proactive action
for priority illegal harms, and retrospective action for
everything else that is illegal. Similarly, on things that are
legal but harmful to children, which is obviously a major area of
concern, that duty will apply to all platforms where children are
likely to be significantly present, regardless of the size of the
platform. The only qualification on size applies to the area of
legal but harmful to adults, where the obligations sit with the
larger, category 1 companies. I want to make clear, however, that
the Bill as previously drafted in May also applied to all
platforms, regardless of size, the obligations relating to
content that is illegal and legal but harmful to children. That
point came up a couple of times.
The hon. Member for Strangford (), who unfortunately has had to go to another meeting,
raised points in his speech about the exposure of children to
pornography. He was quite right to raise those points: 51% of 11
to 13-year-olds are exposed to online pornography. The
overwhelming majority of parents want that to stop and, as the
shadow Minister said, just a couple of weeks ago the Government
made an announcement making it clear that the provisions on
pornography would be expanded to cover all online pornography,
including commercial pornography, which was previously outside
the scope of the Bill. That vital change has been announced
already and will be in the Bill on introduction, as will the
obligations on the face of the Bill to adopt age-assurance
measures to prevent children under 18 from accessing pornography.
Again, that is an important change to make the Bill a lot
stronger than it was in its first draft. I hope that that gives a
foretaste, a flavour, of the way changes are being made to the
Bill to ensure that we really do prevent the terrible abuse that
we have heard about this afternoon.
A number of hon. Members asked about enforcement, because clearly
it is all very well writing in obligations to stop illegal
activity and to control abuse, but if the enforcement measures
are not there, then, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne
North and others said, the legislation is toothless. I will not
comment on the police, the prosecution, side of this—because that
is for my colleagues in the Home Office and the Ministry of
Justice—other than to observe that 20,000 extra police officers
are being recruited and I hope that some of them can direct their
attention to such issues.
The shadow Minister has said that it is important that the Bill
is enforced domestically, here in the United Kingdom, and that we
do not rely on people in California. That is of course why Ofcom
is being appointed as the regulator. There was a question about
resourcing. Between the Government and Ofcom, we will put an
extra £110 million over two years into resourcing up in order to
prepare for the Bill’s coming into force, and thereafter Ofcom
will raise the money that it needs to operate by charging fees to
the social media companies themselves. The £110 million has been
agreed already; that was in the spending review a few months ago,
so the resourcing for Ofcom is hardwired in. As for its ability
to then take enforcement action, it clearly has the power to levy
fines of up to 10% of global income for these social media firms.
Although it depends on the geographic distribution of sales, 10%
of global income is almost certain to be more than 100% of UK
income, because the UK tends to be responsible for between 5% and
8% of those firms’ global revenue, so the fines amount to over a
year’s worth of UK revenue. That obviously is for any company a
significant amount of money.
The Bill already contains criminal liability provisions that make
named individuals liable if they do not, for example, provide
information to Ofcom as regulator. They commence a couple of
years down the line. I do not want to pre-empt what we may do in
that area, but we have been listening very carefully to
parliamentarians and we are studying extremely carefully
proposals that have been made. We may well have some more to say
on that topic in the near future.
The shadow Minister asked about the Metaverse, which has been
around for only a few weeks, and what the Bill will mean for
that. The Bill has been crafted as it has to make it
technology-agnostic and future-proof, because we realise that
what is around today will be different tomorrow. The fact that
the Metaverse has popped up in the last few weeks is evidence of
that. The horrifying abuse of children in the Metaverse that the
hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North described will be
covered by the Bill as drafted, because what she described is
clearly harmful to children. When the Bill passes, as I hope it
will, there will therefore be a duty on Meta to prevent that from
happening. In fact, that would be the case even if it was not
Meta and was a smaller company, because the bits of the Bill on
content that is harmful to children apply to all companies where
children are likely to be significantly present. Therefore, what
the shadow Minister described on Meta would be in the scope of
the Bill as we will present it.
I want to touch on the contribution from my hon. Friend the
Member for Stroud () and on anonymity. I pay
enormous tribute to the campaign that she has run. She has been a
persuasive, powerful and persistent —in a nice way—advocate for
changes, and her ten-minute rule Bill had enormous support from
both sides of the House. On Friday, in response to the campaign
that my hon. Friend and other MPs from both sides of the House
ran, we therefore announced with great pleasure that we would
make changes to the Bill and have a requirement for category 1
firms to give all users the choice to have their identity
verified, and then give users the choice about whether or not to
interact with people. That level of user choice and user
empowerment will be powerful. I thank my hon. Friend again and
congratulate her on her campaign. I agree, as the hon. Member for
Newcastle upon Tyne North said in her speech and as my hon.
Friend the Member for Stroud acknowledged, that although that
measure will go a long way towards helping, it is not in itself a
silver bullet. It is a very good measure, but we need to do more
to prevent online abuse. The Bill will do more to tackle abuse,
whether it is perpetrated by those who are anonymous or those who
are not, because, as my hon. Friend said, much of the abuse is
not anonymous. Shamefully, much of it is done in people’s own
name, so that needs to be tackled as well.
I have tried to touch on the comments that colleagues have made,
but I hope that everybody here and those listening will clearly
understand that the Government and the whole House of Commons
strongly sympathise and agree with the points made by the
petitioners, and I suspect by millions of our fellow citizens up
and down the country. When the updated Bill is introduced in the
very near future, we aim to make it better and stronger to ensure
that our fellow citizens—especially children, but including
everybody who suffers abuse—are far better protected than they
are today. I hope the Bill will serve as an example around the
world and keep people in this country safe online for many years
to come.
5.47pm
I thank the Minister for that response. I appreciate there are a
range of issues that will become clearer once the Bill is
introduced, but it is reassuring to hear so clearly the
Government’s commitment to listening to the voices of the
petitioners and to take forward the changes that we need to
see.
I also want to thank and pay tribute to the hon. Members for
Folkestone and Hythe (), for Stroud (), and for Strangford
(), and I thank also the shadow Minister, my hon.
Friend the Member for Pontypridd (). The Minister expressed
correctly that this is a cross-party issue and we work together
on it. It is not party political and we all want to see the
changes. That is the power of petitioners, because we work
together as parliamentarians, heeding the call from the public
and from petitioners who want to see changes.
We know that social media offers fantastic opportunities to
interact and connect in a way that previous generations
—certainly when I was growing up—could never have imagined. It
has been a lifeline for the last two years for so many people to
be able to stay connected and see our families when we have been
horribly deprived from interaction with others. But it has also
allowed a horrible, toxic world to develop, which we need to get
a handle on. We need to ensure not only that we create a more
positive atmosphere but that we defend our freedom of speech,
because parts of the online world are so toxic that they actively
disallow the voice of those being targeted disproportionately for
abuse online. It has not been better expressed than by Bobby
himself, who said:
“I’m not here to bash social media. I love it, and 95% of it is
an amazing tool…When used in the right way, it’s amazing, and
especially during lockdown”.
He spoke of the ability to use technology to stay in touch with
family and friends, and how it has been a lifeline, adding:
“But there is a very dark side to social media as well.”
Bobby and Katie have done the work, which cross-party colleagues
have responded to to bring forward this legislation, working
together to make it as strong, robust and long-term as it can be
to get ahead of the social media companies that, quite frankly,
are profiting from the pain of millions of people who are abused
online. That needs to change.
We will continue to work with the Government but will very much
hold their feet to the fire to make sure that the legislation is
as strong as it can be. The Government will hear not only from
the likes of me and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd, but
from their own Back-Benchers and most, importantly, from
petitioners and the public, if we do not get this right. Let us
work together to make sure we can truly create a positive online
world for us and, most importantly, for the young people coming
up in an online world that most of us did not grow up in.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has s considered e-petitions 272087 and 575833,
relating to online abuse.
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