Online Safety Bill (Ninth sitting)

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Philp]

There is a difference between random individuals posting stuff on Facebook, as opposed to content generated by what we have defined as a “recognised news publisher”. We will debate that in a moment. We recognise that is different in the Bill. Although the Opposition are looking to make amendments to clause 50, they appear to accept that the press deserve special protection. Article 10 case law deriving from the European convention on human rights also recognises that the press have a special status. In our political discourse we often refer generally to the importance of the freedom of the press. We recognise that the press are different, and the press have made the case—both newspapers and broadcasters, all of which now have websites—that their reader engagement is an integral part of that free speech. There is a difference between that and individuals chucking stuff on Facebook outside of the context of a news article.

There is then a question about whether, despite that, those comments are still sufficiently dangerous that they merit regulation by the Bill—a point that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Pontypridd, raised. There is a functional difference between comments made on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat or Instagram, and comments made below the line on a news website, whether it is The Guardian, the Daily Mail, the BBC—even The National. The difference is that on social media platforms, which are the principal topic of the Bill, there is an in-built concept of virality—things going viral by sharing and propagating content widely. The whole thing can spiral rapidly out of control.

Virality is an inherent design feature in social media sites. It is not an inherent design feature of the comments we get under the news website of the BBC, The Guardian or the Daily Mail. There is no way of generating virality in the same way as there is on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are designed to generate massive virality in a way that comments below a news website are not. The reach, and the ability for them to grow exponentially, is orders of magnitude lower on a news website comment section than on Facebook. That is an important difference, from a risk point of view.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

This issue comes down to a fundamental point—are we looking at volume or risk? There is no difference between an individual—a young person in this instance—seeing something about suicide or self-harm on a Facebook post or in the comments section of a newspaper article. The volume—whether it goes viral or not—does not matter if that individual has seen that content and it has directed them to somewhere that will create serious harm and lead them towards dangerous behaviour. The volume is not the point.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady raises an important philosophical question that underpins much of the Bill’s architecture. All the measures are intended to strike a balance. Where there are things that are at risk of leading to illegal activity, and things that are harmful to children, we are clamping down hard, but in other areas we are being more proportionate. For example, the legal but harmful to adult duties only apply to category 1 companies, and we are looking at whether that can be extended to other high-risk companies, as we debated earlier. In the earlier provisions that we debated, about “have regard to free speech”, there is a balancing exercise between the safety duties and free speech. A lot of the provisions in the Bill have a sense of balance and proportionality. In some areas, such as child sexual exploitation and abuse, there is no balance. We just want to stop that—end of story. In other areas, such as matters that are legal but harmful and touch on free speech, there is more of a balancing exercise.

In this area of news publisher content, we are again striking a balance. We are saying that the inherent harmfulness of those sites, owing to their functionality—they do not go viral in the same way—is much lower. There is also an interaction with freedom of the press, as I said earlier. Thus, we draw the balance in a slightly different way. To take the example of suicide promotion or self-harm content, there is a big difference between stumbling across something in comment No. 74 below a BBC article, versus the tragic case of Molly Russell—the 14-year-old girl whose Instagram account was actively flooded, many times a day, with awful content promoting suicide. That led her to take her own life.

I think the hon. Member for Batley and Spen would probably accept that there is a functional difference between a comment that someone has to scroll down a long way to find and probably sees only once, and being actively flooded with awful content. In having regard to those different arguments—the risk and the freedom of the press—we try to strike a balance. I accept that they are not easy balances to strike, and that there is a legitimate debate to be had on them. However, that is the reason that we have adopted this approach.

--- Later in debate ---

“Recognised news publisher”

[Kim Leadbeater]

I beg to move amendment 107, in clause 50, page 46, line 46, leave out from end to end of clause and insert

“is a member of an approved regulator (as defined in section 42 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013).”

This amendment expands the definition of a recognised news publisher to incorporate any entity that is a member of an approved regulator.

The primary purpose of the Bill is to protect social media users from harm, and it will have failed if it does not achieve that. Alongside that objective, the Bill must protect freedom of expression and, in particular, the freedom of the press, which I know we are all committed to upholding and defending. However, in evaluating the balance between freedom of the press and the freedom to enjoy the digital world without encountering harm, the Bill as drafted has far too many loopholes and risks granting legal protection to those who wish to spread harmful content and disinformation in the name of journalism.

Amendment 107 will address that imbalance and protect the press and us all from harm. The media exemption in the Bill is a complete exemption, which would take content posted by news publishers entirely out of the scope of platforms’ legal duties to protect their users. Such a powerful exemption must be drafted with care to ensure it is not open to abuse. However, the criteria that organisations must meet to qualify for the exemption, which are set out in clause 50, are loose and, in some cases, almost meaningless. They are open to abuse, they are ambiguous and they confer responsibility on the platforms themselves to decide which publishers meet the Bill’s criteria and which do not.

In evidence that we heard recently, it was clear that the major platforms do not believe it is a responsibility they should be expected to bear, nor do they have the confidence or feel qualified to do so. Furthermore, David Wolfe, chairman of the Press Recognition Panel, has advised that the measure represents a threat to press freedom. I agree.

Opening the gates for any organisation to declare themselves a news publisher by obtaining a UK address, jotting down a standards code on the back of an envelope and inviting readers to send an email if they have any complaints is not defending the press; it is opening the profession up to abuse and, in the long term, risks weakening its rights and protections.

Let us discuss those who may wish to exploit that loophole and receive legal protection to publish harmful content. A number of far-right websites have made white supremacist claims and praised Holocaust deniers. Those websites already meet several of the criteria for exemption and could meet the remaining criteria overnight. The internet is full of groups that describes themselves as news publishers but distribute profoundly damaging and dangerous material designed to promote extremist ideologies and stir up hatred.

We can all think of high-profile individuals who use the internet to propagate disinformation, dangerous conspiracy theories and antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic or other forms of abuse. They might consider themselves journalists, but the genuine professionals whose rights we want to protect beg to differ. None of those individuals should be free to publish harmful material as a result of exemptions that are designed for quite a different purpose. Is it really the Government’s intention that any organisation that meets their loose criteria, as defined in the Bill, should be afforded the sacrosanct rights and freedoms of the press that we all seek to defend?

I turn to disinformation, and to hostile state actors who wish to sow the seeds of doubt and division in our politics and our civic life. The Committee has already heard that Russia Today is among those expected to benefit from the exemption. I have a legal opinion from Tamsin Allen, a senior media lawyer at Bindmans LLP, which notes that,

“were the bill to become law in its present form, Russia Today would benefit from the media exemption. The exemption for print and online news publications is so wide that it would encompass virtually all publishers with multiple contributors, an editor and some form of complaints procedure and standards code, no matter how inadequate. I understand that RT is subject to a standards code in Russia and operates a complaints procedure. Moreover, this exemption could also apply to a publisher promoting hate or violence, providing it met the (minimal) standards set out in the bill and constituted itself as a ‘news’ or ‘gossip’ publication. The only such publications which would not be exempt are those published by organisations proscribed under the Terrorism Act.”

If hostile foreign states can exploit this loophole in the Bill to spread disinformation to social media users in the UK, that is a matter of national security and a threat to our freedom and open democracy. The requirement to have a UK address offers little by way of protection. International publishers spreading hate, disinformation or other forms of online harm could easily set up offices in the UK to qualify for this exemption and instantly make the UK the harm capital of the world. For those reasons, the criteria must change.

We heard from several individuals in evidence that the exemption should be removed entirely from the Bill, but we are committed to freedom of the press as well as providing proper protections from harm. Instead of removing the exemption, I propose a change to the qualifying criteria to ensure that credible publishers can access it while extremist and harmful publishers cannot.

My amendment would replace the convoluted list of requirements with a single and simple requirement for the platforms to follow and adhere to: that all print and online media that seeks to benefit from the exemption should be independently regulated under the royal charter provisions that this House has already legislated for. If, as the Bill already says, broadcast media should be defined in this way, why not print media too? Unlike the Government’s criteria, the likes of Russia Today, white supremacist blogs and other deeply disturbing extremist publications simply could not satisfy this requirement. If they were ever to succeed in signing up to such a regulator, they would swiftly be expelled for repeated standards breaches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

I thank the hon. Member for Batley and Spen for her speech. There is agreement across the House, in this Committee and in the Joint Committee that the commitment to having a free press in this country is extremely important. That is why recognised news publishers are exempted from the provisions of the Bill, as the hon. Lady said.

The clause, as drafted, has been looked at in some detail over a number of years and debated with news publishers and others. It is the best attempt that we have so far collectively been able to come up with to provide a definition of a news publisher that does not infringe on press freedom. The Government are concerned that if the amendment were adopted, it would effectively require news publishers to register with a regulator in order to benefit from the exemption. That would constitute the imposition of a mandatory press regulator by the back door. I put on record that this Government do not support any kind of mandatory or statutory press regulation, in any form, for reasons of freedom of the press. Despite what has been said in previous debates, we think to do that would unreasonably restrict the freedom of the press in this country.

While I understand its intention, the amendment would drive news media organisations, both print and broadcast, into the arms of a regulator, because they would have to join one in order to get the exemption. We do not think it is right to create that obligation. We have reached the philosophical position that statutory or mandatory regulation of the press is incompatible with press freedom. We have been clear about that general principle and cannot accept the amendment, which would violate that principle.

In relation to hostile states, such as Russia, I do not think anyone in the UK press would have the slightest objection to us finding ways to tighten up on such matters. As I have flagged previously, thought is being given to that issue, but in terms of the freedom of the domestic press, we feel very strongly that pushing people towards a regulator is inappropriate in the context of a free press.

The characterisation of these provisions is a little unfair, because some of the requirements are not trivial. The requirement in 50(2)(f) is that there must be a person—I think it includes a legal person as well as an actual person—who has legal responsibility for the material published, which means that, unlike with pretty much everything that appears on the internet, there is an identified person who has legal responsibility. That is a very important requirement. Some of the other requirements, such as having a registered address and a standards code, are relatively easy to meet, but the point about legal responsibility is very important. For that reason, I respectfully resist the amendment.

[Kim Leadbeater]

I will not push the amendment to a vote, but it is important to continue this conversation, and I encourage the Minister to consider the matter as the Bill proceeds. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[John Nicolson]

I beg to move amendment 86, in clause 50, page 47, line 3, after “material” insert—

“or special interest news material”.