House of Lords
Horticultural Peat
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
To ask His Majesty’s Government why they have delayed the complete ban on the sale of horticultural peat until 2030.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, we have not delayed the complete ban on the sale of peat. Last August, we announced that we would ban the sale of peat for use in amateur gardening by 2024. We are clear that we are considering limited technical exemptions for professional growers where alternatives do not exist. Professional use will be banned from 2026, with exemptions from the ban for essential use until 2030. These measures will be brought forward when parliamentary time allows.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that reply, but a voluntary approach to ending peat use was agreed in the horticultural sector back in 2011. It has already had 12 years to find alternatives—what has gone wrong with all that? As he said, most retail growers are already marketing peat-free compost and are on target to meet the 2024 deadline, so why do the professional growers need an extended deadline when, as we know, peat is not a unique growing medium and peat-free alternatives already exist? In the meantime, as he will know, every year of peat extraction—which is continuing to happen on an industrial scale—causes millions of tonnes of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere.
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right, which is why we are bringing forward this mandatory ban. I am aware of the voluntary requirement from 2011 to find an alternative because I brought it in. We are now having to pass measures to see this happen. The Horticultural Trades Association and others are registering concerns about how they are going to get their members to use alternative means and maintain our food security. Environmentalists and those of us who want to see an early ban are very keen for that to happen as quickly as possible. The fact that both sides are unhappy means that we might be getting this just about right.
Baroness Humphreys (LD)
My Lords, while it is important to introduce a ban on peat as quickly as possible, with EU imports continuing but not to the same standards as those applied to UK growers, what are the Government doing to ensure a level playing field to enable the UK industry to remain competitive?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness asks a very important question. We could act unilaterally, which would result in the export of jobs, skills and benefit to our economy to countries which are not bringing in measures as rigorous as we are. We want to ensure that we are operating this in the same way as we buy timber, where we recognise the impact we are having globally as well as nationally. We are seeing a massive reduction in the use of peat, and we want to see it end. We have set forth a clear timetable for that to happen. The target of 2026, with certain exemptions, will mean that there will be a tiny amount left which will continue to be used. That will maintain some key areas of our food security, such as mushroom production.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, the Lea Valley in my diocese is an area sometimes known as Britain’s salad bowl. The Lea Valley Growers Association already faces huge problems, mainly because of the increase in energy costs at the moment, and many of these growers are going out of business. Its concern is that some crops are grown in very specialist ways, and some of the alternatives are not working very well. The association wants real guarantees and help to make sure that, where there are not good alternatives, growers have some security for their planning at a time when many of them are not planting anymore. Can the Minister give those assurances?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The right reverend Prelate accurately sums up the difficulty for some growers. We have learned, through detailed engagement with the industry, that the alternatives have not been easy to produce but, as the noble Baroness says, great progress has been made in finding new media. Large organisations now declare themselves peat free, and we want to ensure that the specialist areas can continue to move towards our clear timeline of 2026, with certain exemptions that will allow the propagation of plants that are very much needed and the protection of businesses, such as he mentions.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
Perhaps noble Lords will know of my interest in the horticultural industry, and I might say that our firm is peat free: we use it neither as a growing medium nor as a packing medium. What help are the Government giving to the horticultural industry in practical terms that will make it easier? The right reverend Prelate put the case for specialist growers that are finding the alternatives suggested to them not effective whatever. There will need to be a partnership between the industry and government, and I should like to hear that from the Minister.
Lord Benyon (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right, and there is a very good partnership in dealing with this. He comes from a part of the world where there is a lot of peat, but it is a diminishing resource. We want to talk not just about the use of peat for crops that we grow in specialist settings but protecting peat where it is farmed. That is another issue where we are determined to react to the clear direction given to us by the Climate Change Committee, and this is all part of that.
Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)
My Lords, banning peat is something we obviously all support and want to achieve as soon as possible, but, as the Minister has highlighted, the supply of peat is a complex issue. Can he reassure the House that the department has carried out an environmental impact assessment of the alternatives to peat to make sure that we are not jumping out of the frying pan into the fire?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Lord makes a very good point: in every policy area, there is an unintended consequence unless we fully consider it. In producing alternative media, there is sometimes a cost to the environment. If we are buying coir from abroad, what impact is that having on some very vulnerable parts of the world? There are many other growing media with which we have to ensure that, in our determination to protect our remaining peatlands, we are not exporting the problem and causing problems further afield. It is a very difficult issue, as the noble Lord rightly raises, and I assure him that we are all across this subject.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, clearly it is critical that we stop peat extraction, but restoration must also be a priority. What are the Government’s plans to increase the restoration of our peatlands, and what resources are being provided, including through ELMs?
Lord Benyon (Con)
In our environmental improvement plan we have set clear targets for the restoration of peat, both in uplands and lowlands. With lowland peat this involves re-wetting and assisting those growers to farm in a different way on wetter peatlands using cover crops. In uplands we have a demanding target of restoring moorland peat in a way that reflects the fact that it locks up an enormous tonnage of carbon every year. I do not know of any other country that is doing more to protect its peatlands.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, something that really annoys me about this Government—
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
All right, one of the things that really annoys me about this Government is that they are not coherent or joined-up in their thinking. The Government have just allocated £20 billion to develop carbon capture and storage, and at the same time they are allowing CO2 to be released from peat, which is one of nature’s own carbon sequestration systems. Why are the Government not more joined-up in their thinking and why can they not see that they are encouraging damage to the climate?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness has made the point that I am about to make rather better than I will, and that is that we need to do all of these things. We need carbon capture and storage, because that will be a big part of dealing with our greenhouse gas emissions and protecting our environment, including our peatlands. I am sorry that this Government annoy her; I live for the moment when she and her Green Party colleague stand up and congratulate the Government on having serious targets for protecting our peatland and addressing climate change in a way that no other country is.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend not accept that one of the reasons he is able to pass laws and deal with this in a balanced manner is he has the freedom to do so because we have left the European Union?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I did not see that one coming. I may have been on a different side to my noble friend but I can tell him that, on environmental issues, I am enjoying the freedom that I have, both nationally and internationally, to take action to protect our environment.
Secondary Metastatic Breast Cancer
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the incidence of secondary metastatic breast cancer in England.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, the latest cancer registration data shows that secondary breast cancer accounted for 14% of the 39,871 recorded diagnoses of female breast cancers. NHS England is funding a new clinical audit on breast cancer, including metastatic breast cancer, to provide evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care may vary, in order to increase the consistency of access to treatments and help stimulate improvements in outcomes for patients. The first outputs are expected next year.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. Given the anticipated rise in cancer incidence, what steps are the Government taking to increase the NHS’s capacity to deliver innovative radiotherapy treatments for cancer—including molecular radiotherapies, which have additional infrastructure requirements? Also, what access to clinical trials and medicines are the Government providing for those diagnosed with metastatic secondary breast cancer? While I welcome the audit, will it be made permanent?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership commissions, develops and manages the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme on behalf of NHS England, NHS Wales and the other devolved nations. This includes five national clinical audits focused on priority cancers, such as prostate, lung, breast, oesophageal, gastric and bowel cancers. These audits have been introduced to reduce variation in treatment by demonstrating where care is being provided in line with standards, and where a service is doing well or could be improved. Five additional new clinical audits were announced in May 2021, one of which will focus on metastatic breast cancer. I would be very happy to update the House on the metastatic breast cancer audit once it is in a form that I can share.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, the audits are very welcome, but nevertheless there is great variation in the way in which innovative drugs are being given to some patients. With the prognosis being much better with new, innovative drugs and treatments, what access is particularly given to those patients?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting timely access for NHS patients to clinically effective and cost-effective new drugs, including for breast cancer. NICE is able to recommend the vast majority of cancer medicines that it appraises. It has also made positive recommendations in all 19 of its appraisals of breast cancer treatments since 2016. This track record has been made possible by the cancer drugs fund, which has benefited more than 88,000 patients as of March 2023, with 102 medicines treating 241 different cancers having received funding. The CDF has enabled breast cancer patients to access promising new medicines such as Enhertu and Ibrance, while allowing for the collection of further data on their clinical and cost effectiveness.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, while it is good to hear about the audit, five months ago respected oncologist Professor Carlo Palmieri from Liverpool University estimated that the number of cases of metastatic breast cancer in England increased from more than 48,000 in 2019 to more than 57,000 in 2020-21, resulting in an increased need for clinical activity and work. What planning, design and recommissioning of appropriate cancer services have been undertaken by the NHS? Have the Government provided the extra resources needed to deliver clinical services to these patients this year?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The department has committed an additional £8 billion from 2022-23 to 2024-25, on top of the £2 billion elective recovery fund and the £700 million targeted investment fund already made available to the NHS. The Autumn Statement 2022 provided additional funding of £3.3 billion, and £3.3 billion for 2024-25, to support the NHS in managing the pressures that it faces.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, modelling from Cancer Research UK shows that the number of cancer cases in the UK is projected to rise by as much as a third in the next 15 years. As it takes 15 years to train an oncologist, a pathologist, a radiologist or a surgeon, can the Minister assure the House that the Government’s very long-awaited workforce plan will give transparent and ambitious projections for 10, 15 and 20 years into the future, to reflect the time it takes to train the cancer specialists that patients need?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The target within the cancer workforce plan of more than 4,000 staff members for 2016 and 2021 was exceeded by 226, with an annual growth rate of the cancer workforce of 3% to 4%. The Government have committed to publishing an NHS long-term workforce plan for the next 15 years, covering doctors, nurses and other key professionals. This should be published in spring 2023. In 2023-24, NHS England will continue to make investments in education and training to increase capacity in the cancer and diagnostics workforce, building on the £81 million invested in 2022-23.
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
My Lords, earlier questions have indicated the importance of accurate data. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that data is collected to find out the number of patients living with metastatic breast cancer today?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, up-to-date and accurate data is critical to finding a cure for this terrible disease. The National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service works closely with hospital trusts to determine sources of data that can be used to complete the cancer outcomes and services dataset, and works with the software suppliers of cancer management systems to ensure that data items can be recorded. Compliance and data standards are monitored by local integrated care boards, otherwise known as ICBs.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, time is critical in all cancer cases. What impact is the ongoing industrial action in the NHS having on the average delays to cancer diagnoses and the commencement of treatment for such cancers?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
I thank the noble and gallant Lord for that question. I do not have specific data regarding strike action, but while strike action is unhelpful, the faster diagnosis standard, which ensures that 75% of patients receive a definitive diagnosis regarding cancer within 28 days of referral from a GP or screening services, was met for the first time in February 2023, at 73.5%.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, the Minister said that the workforce plan would be published this spring. In his department, when does spring end?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
I can reassure the noble Lord that I asked that exact question before I came to this Dispatch Box. Unfortunately, I cannot give a definition of spring; my personal view is that spring ends sort of at the end of June, but I hope to bring a work- force plan to noble Lords sooner rather than later.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, perhaps I could assist the Minister. This morning he may have been listening to one of his colleagues, who told the “Today” programme that, in his view, the workforce plan would be published within the next couple of months. I think that is a slightly less precise answer than the one he has just given, for which no doubt the House is grateful. Of the very large numbers that the Minister has mentioned in the course of giving various answers on this Question, can he tell the House how much of the money he has mentioned is new money, and how much of it is simply being repurposed from the current NHS budget?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
In an answer I gave just a moment ago, I referred to the Autumn Statement—from 2022, just last autumn—providing additional funds of £3.3 billion. But on the precise question that the noble Baroness asked, I am afraid I will have to write to her.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
Can the Minister guarantee to the House that the long-awaited workforce plan will contain specific numbers and targets for each clinical group—numbers to be trained over the next 10 or 15 years, accompanied by a commitment from the Treasury to fund those places? Otherwise, it will be a waste of time.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The noble Lord raises a very good point, and I will feed that back to the department.
Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister assure us that older women, both those who have experienced breast cancer and those who have not, can continue to have access to breast cancer screening into their 70s and older?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
Absolutely. We have provided an extra £10 million for the breast screening programme, which will provide 28 new breast screening units, targeted at areas with the greatest challenges of uptake and coverage, which includes more senior members of the community.
Vehicles: Headlamp Glare
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Vere of Norbiton on 31 March (HL6792), what progress has been made at the United Nations to amend headlamp aiming criteria so as to reduce the risk of glare from LED and other light sources.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s road vehicle lighting expert group met at the end of April and agreed changes to the headlamp aim requirements to reduce the occurrence of glare. This includes the introduction of mandatory automatic headlamp levelling systems for all types of headlamps in new vehicles, most likely from 1 September 2027.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that Answer, which deals only with the aiming of the lights and not the lights themselves, and for the meeting that she had with me. However, the Department for Transport seems to think that, because no deaths have been recorded, there is not a problem. In fact, the College of Optometrists reports that nearly all their members are seeing patients presenting with what they think is a problem with the eyes, to discover it is the lights from cars that are at fault rather than their sight. Many people are in fact choosing not to drive at night because of that. Since my last Oral Question, I have heard from cyclists saying they have a problem, and from motorcyclists who say that, when it is wet, there is a real dazzle with the visors. There are three-quarters of a million cars retrofitted with unregulated LED lights; that is a real road safety issue. Could the Minister perhaps get the department on to the front foot, to get some research done and get some action? We should not wait for accidents and deaths before we do something about this problem.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am delighted to let the noble Baroness know that the department has already done research in this area. The 2018 research concluded that overall there are no direct adverse health effects from LED lights in normal use. However, the crux of all this—the noble Baroness did point it out—is that there is no evidence of any causal link at all to headlight glare causing accidents. Glare is subjective; sometimes it can be caused by poor eye health, which can be corrected in certain circumstances, but we cannot eliminate glare altogether, because of course having headlights pointing in the right direction is essential for road safety.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell us whether and how the issue of headlamp glare is addressed as part of the MoT testing process? I understand that many newer headlamps may not be properly checked for aim during an MoT inspection because the equipment used by MoT testing stations to accurately measure aim does not work with the latest high-intensity headlamps. What steps might the Government take to remedy this, or indeed to include brightness as well as aim in the MoT testing criteria?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I will have to take that back to the department. It is not an issue I have come across previously. Headlight aim and bulbs are checked at the annual MoT test but, obviously, if there is not the correct equipment to do that we need to do something about it. Again, I will have to take that to the department; it is not something that has previously been brought to my attention.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, if the Government intend to bring in some regulations on glare, could it be extended to the glare from cycle headlights? Some of them are very bright and dazzle you at night. In this House many noble Lords talk about cycles with no lights, which is just as dangerous, but perhaps she could just look at the new lights that some cyclists use and check that they conform as well.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am not aware that there are regulations around the use of bright lights for cyclists. I agree that they could indeed cause glare and be a road safety issue and, again, I will take that back to the department.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
The noble Baroness is urging action by the Government on a road safety issue, and another area where we need action is on e-scooters. Research by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety shows that between 2019 and 2021 we went from zero accidents involving injury to roughly 1,400, and reports by A&E services show that a disproportionate number involve head injuries. We have been promised a major transport Bill for four years now, so are we going to get that before the general election? As we have illustrated this afternoon, there are a number of road safety issues that need including in it. If not, do we put it down as another broken government promise?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The Government are of course looking very carefully at the evidence around e-scooters, are considering policy, and will bring proposals before Parliament when parliamentary time allows.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I also thank the Minister for seeing some of us about these concerns. Can she say whether headlights causing glare potentially have a disruptive effect on wildlife, including mammals and bees, as is now being argued for daylight-approximating LED street lighting in locations where efforts are being made to reduce such lighting to enhance the environment?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am not aware that there are specific concerns around wildlife and headlights. There are certainly sometimes concerns about where wildlife crosses a road very frequently, and there is a road sign now available to warn drivers that this may be the case. If the noble Earl has any evidence, I would be very happy to see it.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, in the past decade the number of passenger cars produced in the UK has declined from over 1.5 million to fewer than 800,000. Growing the UK’s motor manufacturing industry would not only provide a real boost to the economy and create jobs but also allow the Government to support the production of better-quality and well-regulated vehicles, including specifying safety features such as headlamp criteria. What steps are the Government taking to support the car manufacturing industry?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
Actually, what the Government are doing to support the car manufacturing industry is working in lockstep with our colleagues internationally. As the noble Baroness will know, many of the regulations around type approval for cars come from this international community—about 75%. The extent to which we are able to work with our friends and neighbours in other countries on road safety issues means that this provides the level playing field that the UK automotive manufacturing sector needs.
Lord Cormack (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that one of the curses of the age is light pollution? It is very difficult to go anywhere and enjoy natural evening light. While I accept the importance of safety features on vehicles, can the Government also do something to encourage developing more areas which are not polluted by light?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
That is slightly beyond my brief but, from a transport and a car perspective, one of the reasons why we have dipped headlights is to prevent light pollution for other drivers and for pedestrians et cetera using the roads
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend specifically asked a question about safety and e-scooters; I do not think it was dealt with in a way that the House might want. The figures I have are 1,352 collisions—compared with 460 in 2020—1,434 people injured and 10 killed, all of whom were e-scooter riders. That is Department for Transport information. Could the Minister answer the question about what is being done to improve road safety for pedestrians, cyclists and other road users?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am unable to say much more then I said before. I welcome the stats that the noble Baroness gave the House. The Government are also looking at the evidence that they are collating and are considering policy. We will make a decision as to how we take forward these new forms of transport in due course.
Energy Profits Levy
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Lord McNicol of West Kilbride
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the Energy Profits Levy on energy companies.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)
The energy profits levy was introduced to respond to extraordinary profits in the oil and gas sector and includes an investment allowance to encourage companies to reinvest their profits in the UK. It has raised £2.8 billion to date and is expected to raise almost £26 billion by March 2028, in addition to around £25 billion from the permanent regime over the same period.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her response. We have all seen the eye-watering profits of the oil and gas companies. The energy profits levy does not treat all companies the same. Many of the largest companies pay considerably less, with their profits and extraction being largely outside the UK. This is not the same for many of the smaller domestic UK producers. Moreso, the EPL has a more favourable capital relief than the electricity generator levy. How can the Government justify a levy that gives favourable treatment to oil and gas companies over renewable developers?
Baroness Penn (Con)
On the noble Lord’s first point, he is right that the energy profits levy is applied to profits made in the UK or on the UK continental shelf. That is in line with other profit-based taxes on companies that operate in the UK and overseas. On the difference between the energy profits levy and the electricity generator levy, they are structured in completely different ways. The headline rates of those two taxes are also completely different. We have different programmes in place to ensure that we incentivise continuing investment in our renewables, which is why we have such a great track record on delivering renewable energy in the UK.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, one of the peculiarities between the energy profits levy and the electricity generator levy is the huge difference in tax relief—80% and 0% respectively, as the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, alluded to. So why this preferential treatment for the oil and gas sector? It is not as though we need new sources of fossil fuels for domestic use—or are the IEA, the IPCC, the vast bulk of UK scientists and the Government’s own net zero tsar, Chris Skidmore, wrong on this?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I disagree with the noble Baroness that there is preferential treatment for the oil and gas sector, which faces a far higher tax rate based on the extraordinary profits it is benefiting from. That is entirely appropriate. On the investment incentive, we will continue to need oil and gas as we transition to net zero. We need to encourage investment into UK oil and gas fields to help meet that demand, and that is something the Government will continue to do.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, in November 2022 the current Chancellor estimated that the levy would raise £40 billion over six years. Six months later, the Treasury’s estimate seems to have gone down to £28 billion. What is responsible for that? Is it by any chance the OBR’s estimate of the increase in oil and gas expenditure by these oil and gas companies, rather than renewables expenditure, which they released alongside the Spring Budget, and the consequential forecast increase in tax relief on those sectors’ windfall tax bills?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, a number of factors affect predicted revenues from the EPL, not least the high degree of volatility that we have seen in commodity prices. I say to the noble Lord that, if we do not have investment allowances in place and if we do not invest in the future of this industry in the UK, there will be less revenue in future coming from UK oil and gas fields to contribute to the Exchequer and our priorities in future.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, following that answer by the Minister, I completely agree that we still need oil and gas as we transition to net zero. We cannot have a modern digital economy with high-speed electric rail running on solar and wind only, as the technology stands. However, the issue with the levy is that there are companies that are now saying they will pull investment from the North Sea. So how do we encourage that investment, given that we need it in the transition to net zero?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My noble friend is right. That is why the Government have always sought to deliver a balance between a fair return for the UK from the use of its resources and providing the right conditions to attract investment in the North Sea. That is why we have the investment allowance in the EPL that provides an additional incentive for companies to reinvest profits in the UK. On the point about environmental impact, the level of tax relief available for upstream decarbonisation expenditure was increased from January this year to incentivise companies for the cleaner production of oil and gas.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, the Government’s energy levy leaves billions in excess profits on the table while many households struggle through an unprecedented cost of living crisis. Only last week BP announced quarterly profits of over £6 billion while Shell recorded a quarterly profit increase of 22%, handing a further £5 billion to shareholders and now allocating more to dividend payments alone than to its entire investment in renewables. Given that, and with households and small businesses facing sky-high energy bills, how well does the Minister think the current levy is working?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I welcome the noble Lord to the Front Bench. He referred to figures that are the global profits of companies. As I have said to his noble friend, the UK applies its windfall tax to UK profits, and I think that is the Labour proposal also. Abolishing the investment allowance would be counter-productive. As I have said, the UK is still reliant on gas for its energy supply. Reducing incentives to invest would lead to investors pulling out of the UK, damaging the economy, causing job losses and leading to lower future tax revenue—tax revenue that we have used to put in place unprecedented cost of living support to families, which is still going out to households at the moment, so that those who are worried about their bills who are on low incomes and means-tested benefits can look forward to more support coming from the Government over the next year.
Lord Woodley (Lab)
My Lords, while I am delighted that the Government took Labour’s advice to introduce the windfall tax that has been mentioned, there is no doubt that what is happening now, with the profiteering coming from these energy giants, is insufficient and is just not working. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it is almost peanuts when you look at the profits that were announced last week. So when will the Government fight back against “greedflation” and bring in a windfall tax with real teeth in it—something similar to what is happening across the rest of Europe at the moment?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I do not know whether referring to over £50 billion of tax take as “peanuts” reflects the broader Labour Party’s attitude towards public finances, but the Government consider that the measures we have put in place are working well. We need to balance the rightful approach of taxing the unexpected profits of these companies while ensuring that we have investment incentives in place that protect UK jobs and UK energy security.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
Does my noble friend have any figures for the amount of money when profits are made that goes into pension funds and therefore to people who are earning pensions?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My noble friend makes an important point. Investors in these companies can come from all sources, including pension funds. It is right and proper that they think about the return they get from their investments when making those decisions.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests. May I take the Minister back to her fundamental argument that the electricity generator levy, which applies to renewable energy, is completely different from the energy profits levy? She has argued strongly that the latter needs the additional investment allowance to encourage investment in oil and gas, but somehow the electricity generator levy does not need that additional investment incentive. Is she absolutely sure that that is true and is she in any way concerned about the report that we may lose some offshore wind projects because of it?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The electricity generator levy reflects a historic approach to how we pay for our electricity. New electricity contracts are often done, for example, under the contracts for difference process, which is not subject to this levy. We have also put in place a wide range of other measures to support investment in renewables. That is why we have such a great track record and why I have every faith that we will meet our stretching targets on decarbonisation in future.
Business of the House
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Earl Howe
That Standing Order 38(1) (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with on Wednesday 10 May 2023 to enable debate on the second reading of the Illegal Migration Bill to begin before Oral Questions that day.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion on the Order Paper in the name of the Leader of the House.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I think this is a debatable Motion.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I am more than happy to hear from the noble Lord in a second. Although I principally rise to move the Motion, I should like to seek the indulgence of the House on one matter before I briefly address what the Motion is for.
Your Lordships have just returned from the Coronation Recess. Many of the staff of your Lordships’ House did not enjoy the weekend off. As many of us know, they were in this building, supporting noble Lords who were attending the Coronation events. I know that our tireless doorkeepers were here from the early hours of Saturday to assist with robes, as were those providing the excellent catering and those keeping us all safe. While it is always invidious to pick out individuals, I pay especial tribute to Black Rod’s office. During the last weeks, its staff have dealt with all sorts of anxious queries with their characteristic endless patience. I am sure that all noble Lords will join me in thanking all the staff involved for their dedication.
Earl Howe (Con)
I turn briefly to the Motion. Tomorrow, the House will debate the Illegal Migration Bill. This is a flagship piece of legislation and 87 noble Lords have indicated their desire to speak. To allow the maximum possible time for debate, the usual channels have agreed to sit at 11 am. The House will consider the Second Reading of the Bill between 11 am and 2 pm, when we will adjourn to allow Members to attend group meetings. The House will resume at 3 pm. After Oral Questions and any Private Notice Questions, we will return to the Bill. We will break after 6 pm to consider Commons Amendments to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. Once this is complete, we will return to the Bill until the rise of the House. These extra hours have allowed the usual channels to agree to a six-minute advisory speaking time, which I hope will allow all sides of the House to express their positions satisfactorily on this important Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it always the case that when there is a difficulty for the Government, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, is put forward to deal with it, because we all love him so much. The Government think they can get away with anything when they put the noble Earl up. However, I associate myself with the remarks that he made in relation to all the staff; I am sure everyone in the House would do that. It is one of the reasons I am concerned that we are going to meet at an early hour tomorrow, with this whole helter-skelter of activity during Wednesday.
Ideally, if the Government had not got their legislative programme into a total mess—we all know it is a total mess, with Bills being brought in, taken out again and amended, so we do not know where we are—and if we were dealing with this properly, as we ought to be, the obvious thing would be to have two days for Second Reading. Many Members want to speak in the debate—87, I think the noble Earl said—but then we could deal with it properly. After all, the Illegal Migration Bill is a very important Bill. As one of my colleagues said, they are not sure whether “illegal” refers to migration or to the Bill. I think it is the Bill.
The noble Earl, Lord Howe, has been put forward. The noble Lord, Lord True, would make a good case but he is not as persuasive—not as gentle and kind—as the noble Earl. This is going to happen again and again unless we take a firm stand now. I hope we get an assurance from the noble Earl that it is not going to happen again and again, disrupting our Wednesdays, and maybe even having us meeting early on days when those of us who do not live in or near London have difficulties. I hope we will have a guarantee that we will not have this again and again. The only reason we are having is it that the Government’s legislative programme is in absolute disarray, and we should not be made to suffer for it.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I want briefly to add my comments to those of the noble Earl regarding the staff on Saturday. Not only did they carry out their duties well and properly but they were friendly and courteous and took extra steps to make the whole day enjoyable. I join with the noble Earl in his remarks.
Turning to my noble friend’s contribution, unfortunately my noble friend Lord Kennedy, our Chief Whip, cannot be here, so I am the friendly face. I accept the comments of my noble friend Lord Foulkes but we have agreed on tomorrow. In terms of a precedent, I hope the noble Earl will take my noble friend’s comments on board for future occasions.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I certainly take the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on board. There is always a judgment to be made, when the list of speakers is as long as it is tomorrow, as to whether one should seek to divide a Second Reading up into more than one day and thereby have a breakage by way of an adjournment, which in itself is never very satisfactory, or to do as we have done, which is to attempt to make a single debate fit into a single day. It was the general feeling in the usual channels that this is the right outcome in this instance, particularly as it will allow a reasonable speaking time for noble Lords and a reasonable rising time as well.
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) (Amendment) Order 2023
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Penn
That the draft Orders laid before the House on 27 and 29 March be approved.
Relevant document: 36th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 2 May.
Electricity Transmission (Compensation) Bill
Tuesday 9th May 2023
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Electricity Transmission (Compensation) Act 2023 View all Electricity Transmission (Compensation) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 25 January 2023 - (25 Jan 2023)
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Unless, therefore, any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill
Tuesday 9th May 2023
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 View all Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 132-I Marshalled list for Third Reading - (5 May 2023)
Lord Collins of Highbury
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I will not detain the House for too long. I am very grateful to the Public Bill Office and the clerks for advising me on these consequential amendments which arise from the amendments carried by the House on Report. I am grateful for these technical amendments to be approved by the House. It does not particularly change my view on the overall impact of the Bill, but I am hopeful that the Government will focus on achieving settlements, particularly in the health service, where we have seen some progress. I do not see that the Bill, even as amended, will improve the situation but I hope noble Lords will consider these technical amendments and send the Bill back as speedily as possible. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, these amendments are intended to tidy the Bill, following the votes to amend the Bill on Report. They intend to remove from the Bill references to Section 234E, which was removed due to the passing of Amendment 5.
By convention, the Government do not oppose these amendments as we have a duty to send to the other place Bills that are internally consistent. However, I make it clear that the Government fully expect these topics to be revisited following the consideration of these amendments in the other place, which would result ultimately in them being reconsidered here also.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I note the Minister’s comments. I hope that when they return here, we will have the same level of scrutiny, because this is a bad Bill with certain consequences which will not improve industrial relations in this country—in fact, it will make them worse. It will not achieve the objectives the Government set out; it will have the completely opposite effect. Bearing those comments in mind, I welcome the Minister’s commitment to agree to these amendments.
Lord Collins of Highbury
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the scrutiny of the Bill. We had an extremely thorough and, perhaps at times, slightly repetitive debate, but that is the nature of the parliamentary process. I am grateful to everyone who engaged in that process. In particular, I thank my Whip, my noble friend Lady Bloomfield, who, as usual, has kept us all in order. Thankfully, nobody fell asleep during this one, so we were all spared her wrath on this occasion.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I will make two points. First, I thank the Minister and his colleague for their great courtesy in discussing various points. Secondly, I hope we learn something from this Bill. It is a simple lesson: this is not the way to legislate.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord has just said, this Bill arrived in your Lordships’ House in a flawed state. It sought to bypass Parliament and the devolved legislatures, with the aim of implementing a system where the Secretary of State—they alone—could implement service levels that, in effect, make strikes illegal, exposing individuals to the risk of being fired for striking. Thanks to the hard work of your Lordships’ House, it goes back to the other end somewhat improved.
I thank the Minister for his tolerant acceptance of the debate, which I know at times he found difficult. Thanks go to the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, and the Bill team, who have had to sit through all of this. A number of Cross-Benchers spoke in the debates. I pick out particularly the noble and learned Lords, Lord Hope and Lord Thomas, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and thank them for their commitment. On the Bishops’ Bench, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. His contribution was very important, as were those from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.
I thank His Majesty’s loyal Opposition for their contribution. I think we worked together very well, particularly with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, but I thank all who spoke. On these Benches, our team, including the noble Lord, Lord Allan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, gave fantastic support. They gave your Lordships very strong reasons as to why the Bill has to change. I thank Sarah Pughe in our Whips’ Office for the hard work she is doing.
When the Bill comes back, I am sure we will re-engage. I hope the team I have just listed, and others, will reconvene in the event that the Government do not see the wisdom of their ways.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, I was not going to speak, but the noble Lord was very gracious in his speech. It is true that the House of Commons, as the elected House, in the end determines and fixes the law. In the light of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, has just said, if you legislate in a bad way, the lesson you learn is to not go back to your bad ways by taking out amendments that have actually improved the legislation.
The devolved Governments not being consulted before the Government legislate will harm this United Kingdom, over which King Charles is the Head of State. I beg the other place not to take the amendments out because it is the elected House; I ask it to take them out because it thinks that that would improve the legislation. If it does not think that, please do not make us look like unruly people.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister for the way he has conducted himself, and I thank others who supported him. I thank the Bill team, which has been forthcoming about what it thinks the Bill means. I also thank my noble friend Lady O’Grady, who was thrown in at the deep end, as it were, having just arrived in this House; she acquitted herself brilliantly and made some forceful arguments. I thank all noble Lords who contributed to the debate, particularly those on the Lib Dem Benches, who played an active role, and those on the Bishops’ Benches, who played a positive role in highlighting the evidence about what the Bill could lead to.
On the point of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, this is a skeleton Bill, and we do not really know what it means legislatively. The remarks of the Minister’s friend, Jacob Rees-Mogg, sum it up: MPs will have no idea about the practical implications of the implementation of the powers that will be granted, not to the other House but to Ministers. There is no proper scrutiny.
Nevertheless, we have done a very good job and have amended the Bill. I hope that those amendments will be considered positively down the other end, but, as I have said at every stage of the Bill, when Labour returns to government fairly shortly, we will repeal this legislation.
Online Safety Bill
Tuesday 9th May 2023
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 87(Rev)-VI Sixth marshalled list for Committee - (9 May 2023)
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 155 in my name, and I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and my noble friend Lord Strathcarron. Some of my remarks in Committee last week did not go down terribly well with Members and, in retrospect, I realise that that was because I was the only Member of the Committee that day who did not take the opportunity to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on her birthday. So at this very late stage—a week later —I make good that deficiency and hope that, in doing so, I will get a more jocular and welcoming hearing than I did last week. I will speak in a similar vein, though on a different topic and part of the Bill.
This amendment relates to Clause 65, which has 12 subsections. I regard the first subsection as relatively uncontroversial; it imposes a duty on all service providers. The effect of this amendment would be to remove all the remaining subsections, which fall particularly on category 1 providers. What Clause 65 does, in brief, is to make it a statutory obligation for category 1 providers to live up to their terms of service. Although it does not seek to specify what the terms of service must be, it does, in some ways, specify how they should be operated once they have been written—I regard that as very odd, and will come back to the reason why.
I say at the outset that I understand the motivation behind this section of the Bill. It addresses the understandable feeling that if a service provider of any sort says that they have terms of service which mean that, should there be complaints, they will be dealt with in a certain way and to a certain timetable and that you will get a response by a certain time, or if they say that they will remove certain material, that they should do what they say they will do in the terms of service. I understand what the clause is trying to do —to oblige service providers to live up to their terms of service—but this is a very dangerous approach.
First of all, while terms of service are a civil contract between the provider and the user, they are not an equal contract, as we all know. They are written for the commercial benefit and advantage of the companies that write them—not just in the internet world; this is generally true—and they are written on a take it or leave it basis. Of course, they cannot be egregiously disadvantageous to the customer or else the customer would not sign up to them; none the less, they are drafted with the commercial and legal advantage of the companies in question. Terms of service can be extreme. Noble Lords may be aware that, if you have a bank account, the terms of service that your bank has, in effect, imposed on you almost certainly include a right for the bank to close your account at any time it wishes and to give no reason for doing so. I regard that as an extreme terms of service provision, but it is common. They are not written as equal contracts between consumers and service providers.
Why, therefore, would we want to set terms of service in statute? That is what this clause does: to make them enforceable by a regulator under statute. Moreover, why would we want to do it when the providers we are discussing will have, in practice, almost certainly drafted their terms of service under the provisions of a foreign legal system, which we are then asking our regulator to ensure is enforced? My objection is not to try to find a way of requiring providers to live up to the terms of service they publish—indeed, the normal process for doing so would be through a civil claim; instead, I object to the method of doing so set out in this section of the Bill.
We do not use this method with other terms of service features. For example, we do not have a regulator who enforces terms of service on data protection; we have a law that says what companies must do to protect data, and then we expect them to draft terms of service, and to conduct themselves in other ways, that are compatible with that law. We do not make the terms of services themselves enforceable through statute and regulation, yet that is what this Bill does.
When we look at the terms of service of the big providers on the internet—the sorts of people we have in mind for the scope of the Bill—we find that they give themselves, in their terms of service, vast powers to remove a wide range of material. Much of that would fall—I say this without wanting to be controversial —into the category of “legal but harmful”, which in some ways this clause is reviving through the back door.
Of course, what could be “harmful” is extremely wide, because it will have no statutory bounds: it will be whatever Twitter or Google say they will remove in their terms of service. We have no control over what they say in their terms of service; we do not purport to seek such control in the Bill or in this clause. Twitter policy, for example, is to take down material that offends protected characteristics such as “gender” and “gender identity”. Now, those are not protected characteristics in the UK; the relevant protected characteristics in the Equality Act are “sex” and “gender reassignment”. So this is not enforcing our law; our regulator will be enforcing a foreign law, even though it is not the law we have chosen to adopt here.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
I support Amendment 44. I am pleased that, as part of the new triple shield, the Government have introduced Clause 12 on “User empowerment duties”, which allow users to protect themselves, not just from abusive posts from other users but from whole areas of content. In the Communications and Digital Committee’s inquiry, we had plenty of evidence from organisations representing minorities and people with special characteristics who are unable adequately to protect themselves from the hate they receive online. I am glad that subsections (10) to (12) recognise specific content and users with special characteristics who are targets of abuse and need to be able to protect themselves, but subsection (3) requests that these features should be
“designed to effectively … reduce the likelihood of the user encountering content”
they want to avoid. I am concerned that “effectively” will be interpreted subjectively by platforms in scope and that each will interpret it differently.
At the moment, it will not be possible for Ofcom to assess how thoroughly the platforms have been providing these empowerment tools of protection for users. If the features are to work, there must be an overview of how effective they are being and how well they are working. When the former Secretary of State, Michelle Donelan, was asked about this, she said that there was nothing in this clause to pin an assessment on. It seems to me that the lists in Clause 12 create plenty of criteria on which to hang an assessment.
The new duties in Clause 12 provide for control tools for users against very specific content that is abusive or incites hatred on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sex, gender reassignment or sexual orientation. However, this list is not exhaustive. There will inevitably be areas of content for which users have not been given blocking tools, including pornography, violent material and other material that is subject to control in the offline world.
Not only will the present list for such tools need to be assessed for its thoroughness in allowing users to protect themselves from specific harms, but surely the types of harm from which they need to protect themselves will change over time. Ofcom will need regularly to assess where these harms are and make sure that service providers regularly update their content-blocking tools. Without such an assessment, it will be hard for Ofcom and civil society to understand what the upcoming concerns are with the tools.
The amendment would provide a transparency obligation, which would demand that service providers inform users of the risks present on the platform. Surely this is crucial when users are deciding what to protect themselves from.
The assessment should also look for unintended restrictions on freedom of expression created by the new tools. If the tools are overprotective, they could surely create a bubble and limit users’ access to information that they might find useful. For example, the user might want to block material about eating disorders, but the algorithm might interpret that to mean limiting the user’s access to content on healthy lifestyles or nutrition content. We are also told that the algorithms do not understand irony and humour. When the filters are used to stop content that is abusive or incites hatred on the basis of users’ particular characteristics, they might also remove artistic, humorous or satirical content.
Repeatedly, we are told that the internet creates echo chambers, where users read only like-minded opinions. These bubbles can create an atmosphere where freedom of expression is severely limited and democracy suffers. A freedom of expression element to the assessment would also, in these circumstances, be critical. We are told that the tech platforms often do not know what their algorithms do and, not surprisingly, they often evolve beyond their original intentions. Assessments on the tools demanded by Clause 12 need to be carefully investigated to ensure that they are keeping up to date with the trends of abuse on the internet but also for the unintended consequences they might create, curbing freedom of expression.
Throughout the Bill, there is a balancing act between freedom of expression and protection from abuse. The user empowerment tools are potentially very powerful, and neither the service providers, the regulators nor the Government know what their effects will be. It is beholden upon the Government to introduce an assessment to check regularly how the user empowerment duties are working; otherwise, how can they be updated, and how can Ofcom discover what content is being unintentionally controlled? I urge the Minister, in the name of common sense, to ensure that these powerful tools unleashed by the Bill will not be misused or become outdated in a fast-changing digital world.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his words—I thought I was experiencing time travel there—and am sympathetic to many of the issues that he has raised, although I think that some of the other amendments in the group tackle those issues in a slightly different way.
I support Amendments 44 and 158 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. Requiring a post-rollout assessment to ensure that the triple shield acts as we are told it will seems to be a classic part of any regulatory regime that is fit for purpose: it needs to assess whether the system is indeed working. The triple shield is an entirely new concept, and none of the burgeoning regulatory systems around the world is taking this approach, so I hope that both the Government and Ofcom welcome this very targeted and important addition to the Bill.
I will also say a few words about Amendments 154 and 218. It seems to me that, in moving away from legal but harmful—which as a member of the pre-legislative committee I supported, under certain conditionality that has not been met, but none the less I did support it—not enough time and thought have been given to the implications of that. I do not understand, and would be grateful to the Minister if he could help me understand, how Ofcom is to determine whether a company has met its own terms and conditions—and by any means, not only by the means of a risk assessment.
I want to make a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, made the other day—but I want to make it again. Taking legal but harmful out and having no assessment of whether a company has met its general safety duties leaves the child safety duties as an island. They used to be something that was added on to a general system of safety; now they are the first and only port of call. Again, because of the way that legal but harmful fell out of the Bill, I am not sure whether we have totally understood how the child risk assessments sit without a generally cleaned up or risk-assessed digital environment.
Finally, I will speak in support of Amendment 160, which would have Ofcom say what “adequate and appropriate” terms are. To a large degree, that is my approach to the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, spoke about: let Parliament and the regulator determine what we want to see—as was said on the data protection system, that is how it is—and let us have minimum standards that we can rightly expect, based on UK law, as the noble Lord suggested.
I am not against the triple shield per se, but it radically replaced an entire regime of assessment, enforcement and review. I think that some of the provisions in this group really beg the Government’s attention, in order to make sure that there are no gaping holes in the regime.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 44 and 158 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. I also note my support for the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, to ensure the minimum standard for a platform’s terms of service. My noble friend Lord Moylan has just given an excellent speech on the reasons why these amendments should be considered.
I am aware that the next group of amendments relates to the so-called user empowerment tools, so it seems slightly bizarre to be speaking to Amendment 44, which seeks to ensure that these user empowerment tools actually work as the Government hope they will, and Amendment 158, which seeks to risk assess whether providers’ terms of service duties do what they say and report this to Ofcom. Now that the Government have watered down the clauses that deal with protection for adults, like other noble Lords, I am not necessarily against the Government’s replacement—the triple shield—but I believe that it needs a little tightening up to ensure that it works properly. These amendments seem a reasonable way of doing just that. They would ensure greater protection for adults without impinging on others’ freedom of expression.
The triple shield relies heavily on companies’ enforcement of terms of service and other vaguely worded duties, as the noble Viscount mentioned, that user empowerment tools need to be “easily accessible” and “effective”—whatever that means. Unlike with other duties in the Bill, such as those on illegal content and children’s duties, there is no mechanism to assess whether these new measures are working; whether the way companies are carrying out these duties is in accordance with the criteria set out; and whether they are indeed infringing freedom of expression. Risk assessments are vital to doing just that, because they are vital to understanding the environment in which services operate. They can reduce bureaucracy by allowing companies to rule out risks which are not relevant to them, and they can increase user safety by revealing new risks, thereby enabling the future-proofing of a regime. Can the Minister give us an answer today as to why risk assessment duties on these two strands of the triple shield—terms of service and user empowerment tools—were removed? If freedom of speech played a part in this, perhaps he could elaborate why he thinks undertaking a risk assessment is in any way a threat.
Without these amendments, the Bill cannot be said to be a complete risk management regime. Companies will, in effect, be marking their own homework when designing their terms of service and putting their finger in the air when it comes to user empowerment tools. There will be no requirement for them to explain either to Ofcom or indeed to service users the true nature of the harms that occur on their service, nor the rationale behind any decisions they might make in these two fundamental parts of their service.
Since the Government are relying so heavily on their triple shield to ensure protection for adults, to me, not reviewing two of the three strands that make up the triple shield seems like fashioning a three-legged stool with completely uneven legs: a stool that will not stand up to the slightest pressure when used. Therefore, I urge the Minister to look again and consider reinstating these protections in the Bill.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, this group of amendments looks at the treatment of legal content accessed by adults. The very fact that Parliament feels that legislation has a place in policing access to legal material is itself worrying. This door was opened by the Government in the initial draft Bill, but, as we have already heard, after a widespread civil liberties backlash against the legal but harmful clauses, we are left with Clause 65. As has been mentioned, I am worried that this clause, and some of the amendments, might well bring back legal but harmful for adults by the back door. One of the weasel words here is “harmful”. As I have indicated before, it is difficult to work out from the groupings when to raise which bit, so I am keeping that for your Lordships until later and will just note that I am rather nervous about the weasel word “harmful”.
Like many of us, I cheered at the removal of the legal but harmful provisions, but I have serious reservations about their replacement with further duties via terms of service, which imposes a duty on category 1 services to have systems and processes in place to take down or restrict access to content, and to ban or suspend users in accordance with terms of service, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, explained. It is one of the reasons I support his amendment. It seems to me to be the state outsourcing the grubby job of censorship to private multinational companies with little regard for UK law.
I put my name to Amendment 155 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, because I wanted to probe the Government’s attitude to companies’ terms of service. Platforms have no obligation to align their terms of service with freedom of expression under UK law. It is up to them. I am not trying to impose on them what they do with their service users. If a particular platform wishes to say, “We don’t want these types of views on our platform”, fine, that is its choice. But when major platforms’ terms of service, which are extensive, become the basis on which UK law enforces speech, I get nervous. State regulators are to be given the role of ensuring that all types of lawful speech are suppressed online, because the duty applies to all terms of service, whatever they are, regarding the platforms’ policies on speech suppression, censorship, user suspension, bans and so on. This duty is not restricted to so-called harmful content; it is whatever content the platform wishes to censor.
What is more, Clause 65 asks Ofcom to ensure that individuals who express lawful speech are suspended or banned from platforms if in breach of the platforms’ Ts & Cs, and that means limiting those individuals from expressing themselves more widely, beyond the specific speech in question. That is a huge green light to interfere in UK citizens’ freedom of expression, in my opinion.
I stress that I am not interested in interfering in the terms and conditions of private companies, although your Lordships will see later that I have an amendment demanding that they introduce free-speech clauses. That is because of the way we seem to be enacting the law via the terms of service of private companies. They should of course be free to dictate their own terms of service, and it is reasonable that members of the public should know what they are and expect them to be upheld. But that does not justify the transformation of these private agreements into statutory duties—that is my concern.
So, why are we allowing this Bill to ask companies to enforce censorship policies in the virtual public square that do not exist in UK law? When companies’ terms of service permit the suppression of speech, that is up to them, but when they supress speech far beyond the limitations of speech in UK law and are forced to do so by a government regulator such as Ofcom, are we not in trouble? It means that corporate terms of service, which are designed to protect platforms’ business interests, are trumping case law on free speech that has evolved over many years.
Those terms of service are also frequently in flux, according to fashion or ownership; one only has to look at the endless arguments, which I have yet to understand, about Twitter’s changing terms of service after the Elon Musk takeover. Is Ofcom’s job to follow Elon Musk’s ever-changing terms of service and enforce them on the British public as if they are law?
The terms and conditions are therefore no longer simply a contract between a company and the user; their being brought under statute means that big tech will be exercising public law functions, with Ofcom as the enforcer, ensuring that lawful speech is suppressed constantly, in line with private companies’ terms of service. This is an utter mess and not in any way adequate to protect free speech. It is a fudge by the Government: they were unpopular on “lawful but harmful”, so they have outsourced it to someone else to do the dirty work.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, it has been interesting to hear so many noble Lords singing from the same hymn sheet—especially after this weekend. My noble friend Lord McNally opened this group by giving us his wise perspective on the regulation of new technology. Back in 2003, as he mentioned, the internet was not even mentioned in the Communications Act. He explained how regulation struggles to keep up and how quantum leaps come with a potential social cost; all that describes the importance of risk assessment of these novel technologies.
As we have heard from many noble Lords today, on Report in the Commons the Government decided to remove the adult safety duties—the so-called “legal but harmful” aspect of the Bill. I agree with the many noble Lords who have said that this has significantly weakened the protection for adults under the Bill, and I share the scepticism many expressed about the triple shield.
Right across the board, this group of amendments, with one or two exceptions, rightly aims to strengthen the terms of service and user empowerment duties in the Bill in order to provide a greater baseline of protection for adults, without impinging on others’ freedom of speech, and to reintroduce some risk-assessment requirement on companies. The new duties will clearly make the largest and riskiest companies expend more effort on enforcing their terms of service for UK users. However, the Government have not yet presented any modelling on what effect this will have on companies’ terms of service. I have some sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said: the new duties could mean that terms of service become much longer and lawyered. This might have an adverse effect on freedom of expression, leading to the use of excessive takedown measures rather than looking at other more systemic interventions to control content such as service design. We heard much the same argument from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. They both made a very good case for some of the amendments I will be speaking to this afternoon.
On the other hand, companies that choose to do nothing will have an easier life under this regime. Faced with stringent application of the duties, companies might make their terms of service shorter, cutting out harms that are hard to deal with because of the risk of being hit with enforcement measures if they do not. Therefore, far from strengthening protections via this component of the triple shield, the Bill risks weakening them, with particular risks for vulnerable adults. As a result, I strongly support Amendments 33B and 43ZA, which my noble friend Lord McNally spoke to last week at the beginning of the debate on this group.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I strongly support Amendments 154, 218 and 160, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, which would require regulated services to maintain “adequate and appropriate” terms of service, including provisions covering the matters listed in Clause 12. Amendment 44, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and me, inserts a requirement that services to which the user empowerment duties apply
“must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the extent to which they have carried out the duties in this section including in each assessment material changes from the previous assessment such as new or removed user empowerment features”.
The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, spoke very well to that amendment, as did the noble Baronesses, Lady Fraser and Lady Kidron.
Amendment 158, also tabled by me and the right reverend Prelate, inserts a requirement that services
“must carry out a suitable and sufficient assessment of the extent to which they have carried out the duties under sections 64 and 65 ensuring that assessment reflects any material changes to terms of service”.
That is a very good way of meeting some of the objections that we have heard to Clause 65 today.
These two amendments focus on risk assessment because the new duties do not have an assessment regime to work out whether they work, unlike the illegal content and children’s duties, as we have heard. Risk assessments are vital to understanding the environment in which the services are operating. A risk assessment can reduce bureaucracy by allowing companies to rule out risks which are not relevant to them, and it can increase user safety by revealing new risks and future-proofing a regime.
The Government have not yet provided, in the Commons or in meetings with Ministers, any proper explanation of why risk assessment duties have been removed along with the previous adult safety duties, and they have not explained in detail why undertaking a risk assessment is in any way a threat to free speech. They are currently expecting adults to manage their own risks, without giving them the information they need to do so. Depriving users of basic information about the nature of harms on a service prevents them taking informed decisions as to whether they want to be on it at all.
Without these amendments, the Bill cannot be said to be a complete risk management regime. There will be no requirement to explain to Ofcom or to users of a company’s service the true nature of the harms that occur on its service, nor the rationale behind the decisions made in these two fundamental parts of the service. This is a real weakness in the Bill, and I very much hope that the Minister will listen to the arguments being made this afternoon.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords from all sides of the House for their contributions and for shining a light on the point the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, made near the end of his remarks about the need to equip adults with the tools to protect themselves.
It is helpful to have these amendments, because they give the Minister the opportunity to accept—as I hope he will—a number of the points raised. It seems a long time since the noble Lord, Lord McNally, introduced this group, but clearly it has given us all much time to reflect. I am sure we will see the benefits of that in the response from the Minister. Much of the debate on the Bill has focused on child safety and general practicalities, but this group helpfully allows us to focus on adults and the operation of the Government’s replacement for the legal but harmful section of the Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, rightly said, perhaps some tightening up of the legislation before us would be helpful. These amendments give us that chance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken on the amendments in this group, both this afternoon and last Tuesday evening. As this is a continuation of that debate, I think my noble friend Lord Moylan is technically correct still to wish the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, a happy birthday, at least in procedural terms.
We have had a very valuable debate over both days on the Bill’s approach to holding platforms accountable to their users. Amendments 33B, 41A, 43ZA, 138A and 194A in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord McNally, and Amendment 154 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, seek to bring back the concept of legal but harmful content and related adult risk assessments. They reintroduce obligations for companies to consider the risk of harm associated with legal content accessed by adults. As noble Lords have noted, the provisions in the Bill to this effect were removed in another place, after careful consideration, to protect freedom of expression online. In particular, the Government listened to concerns that the previous legal but harmful provisions could create incentives for companies to remove legal content from their services.
In place of adult risk assessments, we introduced new duties on category 1 services to enable users themselves to understand how these platforms treat different types of content, as set out in Clauses 64 and 65. In particular, this will allow Ofcom to hold them to account when they do not follow through on their promises regarding content they say that they prohibit or to which they say that they restrict access. Major platforms already prohibit much of the content listed in Clause 12, but these terms of service are often opaque and not consistently enforced. The Bill will address and change that.
I would also like to respond to concerns raised through Amendments 41A and 43ZA, which seek to ensure that the user empowerment categories cover the most harmful categories of content to adults. I reassure noble Lords that the user empowerment list reflects input from a wide range of interested parties about the areas of greatest concern to users. Platforms already have strong commercial incentives to tackle harmful content. The major technology companies already prohibit most types of harmful and abusive content. It is clear that most users do not want to see that sort of content and most advertisers do not want their products advertised alongside it. Clause 12 sets out that providers must offer user empowerment tools with a specified list of content to the extent that it is proportionate to do so. This will be based on the size or capacity of the service as well as the likelihood that adult users will encounter the listed content. Providers will therefore need internally to assess the likelihood that users will encounter the content. If Ofcom disagrees with the assessment that a provider has made, it will have the ability to request information from providers for the purpose of assessing compliance.
Amendments 44 and 158, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, seek to place new duties on providers of category 1 services to produce an assessment of their compliance with the transparency, accountability, freedom of expression and user empowerment duties as set out in Clauses 12, 64 and 65 and to share their assessments with Ofcom. I am sympathetic to the aim of ensuring that Ofcom can effectively assess companies’ compliance with these duties. But these amendments would enable providers to mark their own homework when it comes to their compliance with the duties in question. The Bill has been designed to ensure that Ofcom has responsibility for assessing compliance and that it can obtain sufficient information from all regulated services to make judgments about compliance with their duties. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, asked about this—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is about to.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
I hope the Minister will forgive me for interrupting, but would it not be much easier for Ofcom to assess compliance if a risk assessment had been carried out?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I will come on to say a bit more about how Ofcom goes about that work.
The Bill will ensure that providers have the information they need to understand whether they are in compliance with their duties under the Bill. Ofcom will set out how providers can comply in codes of practice and guidance that it publishes. That information will help providers to comply, although they can take alternative action if they wish to do so.
The right reverend Prelate’s amendments also seek to provide greater transparency to Ofcom. The Bill’s existing duties already account for this. Indeed, the transparency reporting duties set out in Schedule 8 already enable Ofcom to require category 1, 2A and 2B services to publish annual transparency reports with relevant information, including about the effectiveness of the user empowerment tools, as well as detailed information about any content that platforms prohibit or restrict, and the application of their terms of service.
Amendments 159, 160 and 218, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, seek to require user-to-user services to create and abide by minimum terms of service recommended by Ofcom. The Bill already sets detailed and binding requirements on companies to achieve certain outcomes. Ofcom will set out more detail in codes of practice about the steps providers can take to comply with their safety duties. Platforms’ terms of service will need to provide information to users about how they are protecting users from illegal content, and children from harmful content.
These duties, and Ofcom’s codes of practice, ensure that providers take action to protect users from illegal content and content that is harmful to children. As such, an additional duty to have adequate and appropriate terms of service, as envisaged in the amendments, is not necessary and may undermine the illegal and child safety duties.
I have previously set out why we do not agree with requiring platforms to set terms of service for legal content. In addition, it would be inappropriate to delegate this much power to Ofcom, which would in effect be able to decide what legal content adult users can and cannot see.
Amendment 155, tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan, seeks to clarify whether and how the Bill makes the terms of service of foreign-run platforms enforceable by Ofcom. Platforms’ duties under Clause 65 apply only to the design, operation and use of the service in the United Kingdom and to UK users, as set out in Clause 65(11). Parts or versions of the service which are used in foreign jurisdictions—
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
On that, in an earlier reply the Minister explained that platforms already remove harmful content because it is harmful and because advertisers and users do not like it, but could he tell me what definition of “harmful” he thinks he is using? Different companies will presumably have a different interpretation of “harmful”. How will that work? It would mean that UK law will require the removal of legal speech based on a definition of harmful speech designed by who—will it be Silicon Valley executives? This is the problem: UK law is being used to implement the removal of content based on decisions that are not part of UK law but with implications for UK citizens who are doing nothing unlawful.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Baroness’s point gets to the heart of the debate that we have had. I talked earlier about the commercial incentive that there is for companies to take action against harmful content that is legal which users do not want to see or advertisers do not want their products to be advertised alongside, but there is also a commercial incentive to ensure that they are upholding free speech and that there are platforms on which people can interact in a less popular manner, where advertisers that want to advertise products legally alongside that are able to do so. As with anything that involves the market, the majority has a louder voice, but there is room for innovation for companies to provide products that cater to minority tastes within the law.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend has explained clearly how terms of service would normally work, which is that, as I said myself, a business might write its own terms of service to its own advantage but it cannot do so too egregiously or it will lose customers, and businesses may aim themselves at different customers. All this is part of normal commercial life, and that is understood. What my noble friend has not really addressed is the question of why uniquely and specifically in this case, especially given the egregious history of censorship by Silicon Valley, he has chosen to put that into statute rather than leave it as a commercial arrangement, and to make it enforceable by Ofcom. For example, when my right honourable friend David Davis was removed from YouTube for his remarks about Covid passes, it would have been Ofcom’s obligation not to vindicate his right to free speech but to cheer on YouTube and say how well it had done for its terms of service.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Our right honourable friend’s content was reuploaded. This makes the point that the problem at the moment is the opacity of these terms and conditions; what platforms say they do and what they do does not always align. The Bill makes sure that users can hold them to account for the terms of service that they publish, so that people can know what to expect on platforms and have some form of redress when their experience does not match their expectations.
I was coming on to say a bit more about that after making some points about foreign jurisdictions and my noble friend’s Amendment 155. As I say, parts or versions of the service that are used in foreign jurisdictions but not in the UK are not covered by the duties in Clause 65. As such, the Bill does not require a provider to have systems and processes designed to enforce any terms of service not applicable in the UK.
In addition, the duties do not give powers to Ofcom to enforce a provider’s terms of service directly. Ofcom’s role will be focused on ensuring that platforms have systems and processes in place to enforce their own terms of service consistently rather than assessing individual pieces of content.
Requiring providers to set terms of service for specific types of content suggests that the Government view that type of content as harmful or risky. That would encourage providers to prohibit such content, which of course would have a negative impact on freedom of expression, which I am sure is not what my noble friend wants to see. Freedom of expression is essential to a democratic society. Throughout the passage of the Bill, the Government have always committed to ensuring that people can speak freely online. We are not in the business of indirectly telling companies what legal content they can and cannot allow online. Instead, the approach that we have taken will ensure that platforms are transparent and accountable to their users about what they will and will not allow on their services.
Clause 65 recognises that companies, as private entities, have the right to remove content that is legal from their services if they choose to do so. To prevent them doing so, by requiring them to balance this against other priorities, would have perverse consequences for their freedom of action and expression. It is right that people should know what to expect on platforms and that they are able to hold platforms to account when that does not happen. On that basis, I invite the noble Lords who have amendments in this group not to press them.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, in his opening remarks, the Minister referred to the fact that this debate began last Tuesday. Well, it did, in that I made a 10-minute opening speech and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, rather elegantly hopped out of this group of amendments; perhaps she saw what was coming.
How that made me feel is perhaps best summed up by what the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said earlier when he was justifying the business for tomorrow. He said that adjournments were never satisfactory. In that spirit, I wrote to the Leader of the House, expressing the grumbles I made in my opening remarks. He has written back in a very constructive and thoughtful way. I will not delay the Committee any longer, other than to say that I hope the Leader of the House would agree to make his reply available for other Members to read. It says some interesting things about how we manage business. It sounds like a small matter but if what happened on Tuesday had happened in other circumstances in the other place, business would probably have been delayed for at least an hour while the usual suspects picked holes in it. If the usual channels would look at this, we could avoid some car crashes in future.
I am pleased that this group of amendments has elicited such an interesting debate, with fire coming from all sides. In introducing the debate, I said that probably the only real advice I could give the Committee came from my experience of being on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee in 2003. That showed just how little we were prepared for the tsunami of new technology that was about to engulf us. My one pleasure was that we were part of forming Ofcom. I am pleased that the chairman of Ofcom, the noble Lord, Lord Grade, has assiduously sat through our debates. I suspect he is thinking that he had better hire some more lawyers.
We are trying to get this right. I have no doubt that all sides of the House want to get this legislation through in good shape and for it to play an important role. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Grade, never imagined that he would become a state regulator in the kind of ominous way in which the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said it. Ofcom has done a good job and will do so in future.
There is a problem of getting definitions right. When I was at the Ministry of Justice, I once had to entertain a very distinguished American lawyer. As I usually did, I explained that I was not a lawyer. He looked at me and said, “Then I will speak very slowly”. There is a danger, particularly in this part of the Bill, of wandering into a kind of lawyer-fest. It is important that we are precise about what powers we are giving to whom. Just to chill the Minister’s soul, I remember being warned as well about Pepper v Hart. What he says at the Dispatch Box will be used to interpret what Parliament meant when it gave this or that power.
The debate we have had thus far has been fully justified in sending a few warning signals to the Minister that it is perhaps not quite right yet. It needs further work. There is a lot of good will on all sides of the House to get it right. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Morgan of Cotes
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and another in the name of Baroness Morgan, would require Category 1 providers to ensure that the default options are the safest for users in regard to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and the abuse and hate content already determined to be harmful as part of the Government’s “triple shield” approach.
Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak to this group of amendments. As it is the first time I have spoken at this stage of the Bill’s proceedings, I declare my interest as a trustee and founder of the mental health charity the Loughborough Wellbeing Centre, which is relevant to this group. If it is lawyers’ confession time, then I am also going to confess to being a non-practising solicitor. But I can assure those Members of the House who are not lawyers that they do not need to be lawyers or ex-lawyers to understand the very simple proposition at the heart of this group of amendments.
Amendments 34 and 35 are in my name, along with those of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port. I am very grateful to them for their support for these amendments, which are also supported by the Football Association, Kick It Out, Beat, YoungMinds, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Psychological Society, Mind, the Mental Health Network, the NHS Confederation, Rethink Mental Illness and Mental Health UK. I thank particularly the Mental Health Foundation for its support with making the points that we will cover in this group.
As we have already heard, and rightly, it is difficult with a Bill of this complexity to debate just one topic in a particular group. Although I have not spoken, it has been a great privilege to listen to your Lordships on earlier groups. We have already talked this afternoon and previously about the Government’s triple-shield approach and the replacement of that for the “legal but harmful” provisions that were taken out of the Bill. We have heard that the triple shield consists of the removal of illegal content, the takedown of material in breach of own terms of service—we have just been talking about that—and the provision to adults of greater choice over the content that they see online using these platforms. What we are talking about in this group of amendments is that third leg—I had put “limb” but have changed it because of what my noble friend Lady Fraser said—of the triple-shield categories, so that user empowerment tools should be on by default.
The change suggested by this proposal would require users on these platforms to flip a switch and choose whether to opt in to some of the most dangerous content available online, rather than receiving it by default. This adopts the Government’s existing approach of giving users choice over what they see but ensures that the default is that they will not be served this kind of material unless they actively choose to see it. The new offence on encouragement to serious self-harm, which the Government have committed to introducing, might form part of the solution here. But we cannot criminalise all the legal content that treads the line between glorification and outright encouragement, and no similar power is proposed to address eating disorder content. I know that others will talk about that, and I pay tribute to the work of Vicky Ford MP in relation to eating disorders; she has been brave enough to share her own experiences of those disorders.
During the Bill’s journey through Parliament, we have heard how vulnerable users often internalise the harmful and hateful content that they see online, which in turn can lead to users deliberately seeking out harmful content in an attempt to normalise self-destructive thoughts and behaviours. We have heard how Molly Russell, for example, viewed tweets which normalised her thoughts on self-harm and suicide; we have also heard how people with eating disorders often get what is called “inspiration” on platforms such as Tumblr, Instagram and TikTok.
We know from various studies that viewing this content has a negative effect on people’s mental well-being. A study carried out by the University of Oxford found that viewing images of self-harm often encouraged individuals to start self-harming, and concluded:
“Young people who self-harm are likely to use the internet in ways that increases their risk”.
Research by the Samaritans provided similar results, with 77% of respondents answering that they sometimes or often self-harmed in the same or similar ways after viewing self-harm imagery.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to be collaborating with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. We seem to have been briefed by the same people, been to the same meetings and drawn the same conclusions. However, there are some things that are worth saying twice and, although I will try to avoid a carbon copy of what the noble Baroness said, I hope the central points will make themselves.
The internet simply must be made to work for its users above all else—that is the thrust of the two amendments that stand in our names. Through education and communication, the internet can be a powerful means of improving our lives, but it must always be a safe platform on which to enjoy a basic right. It cannot be said often enough that to protect users online is to protect them offline. To create a strict division between the virtual and the public realms is to risk ignoring how actions online can have life and death repercussions, and that is at the heart of what these amendments seek to bring to our attention.
I was first made aware of these amendments at a briefing from the Samaritans, where we got to know each other. There I heard the tragic accounts of those whose loved ones had taken their own lives due to exposure to harmful content online. I will not repeat their accounts—this is not the place to do that—but understanding only a modicum of their grief made it obvious to me that the principle of “safest option by default” must underline all our decision-making on this.
I applaud the work already done by Members of this House to ensure the safety of young people online. Yet it is vital, as the noble Baroness has said, that we do not create a drop-off point for future users—one in which turning 18 means sudden exposure to the most harmful content lurking online, as it is always there. Those most at risk of suicide due to exposure to harmful content are aged between their late teens and early 20s. In fact, a 2017 inquiry into the suicides of young people found harmful content accessed online in 26% of the deaths of under 20s and 13% of the deaths of 20 to 24 year-olds. It is vital for us to empower users from their earliest years.
In the Select Committee—I see fellow members sitting here today—we have been looking at digital exclusion and the need for education at all levels for those using the internet. Looking for good habits established in the earliest years is the right way to start, but it goes on after that, because the world that young people go on to inhabit in adulthood is one where they are already in control of the internet—if they had the education earlier. Adulthood comes with the freedom to choose how one expresses oneself online—of course it does—but this must not be at the cost of their continuing freedom from the most insidious content that puts their mental health at risk. Much mention has been made of the triple shield and I need not go there again. Its origins and perhaps deficiencies have been mentioned already.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate recently conducted an experiment, creating new social media accounts that showed interest in body image and mental health. This study found that TikTok served suicide-related content to new accounts within 2.6 minutes, with eating disorder content being recommended within 8 minutes. At the very least, these disturbing statistics tell us that users should have the option to opt in to such content, and not have to suffer this harm before later opting out. While the option to filter out certain categories of content is essential, it must be toggled on by default if safety is to be our primary concern.
The principle of safest by default creates not only a less harmful environment, but one in which users are in a position to define their own online experience. The space in which we carry out our public life is increasingly located on a small number of social media platforms—those category 1 platforms already mentioned several times—which everyone, from children to pensioners, uses to communicate and share their experiences.
We must then ensure that the protections we benefit from offline continue online: namely, protection from the harm and hate that pose a threat to our physical and mental well-being. When a child steps into school or a parent into their place of work, they must be confident that those with the power to do so have created the safest possible environment for them to carry out their interactions. This basic confidence must be maintained when we log in to Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or any other social media giant.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, my Amendment 43 tackles Clause 12(1), which expressly says that the duties in Clause 12 are to “empower” users. My concern is to ensure that, first, users are empowered and, secondly, legitimate criticism around the characteristics listed in Clause 12(11) and (12), for example, is not automatically treated as abusive or inciting hatred, as I fear it could be. My Amendment 283ZA specifies that, in judging content that is to be filtered out after a user has chosen to switch on various filters, the providers act reasonably and pause to consider whether they have “reasonable grounds” to believe that the content is of the kind in question—namely, abusive or problematic.
Anything under the title “empower adult users” sounds appealing—how can I oppose that? After all, I am a fan of the “taking back control” form of politics, and here is surely a way for users to be in control. On paper, replacing the “legal but harmful” clause with giving adults the opportunity to engage with controversial content if they wish, through enhanced empowerment tools, sounds positive. In an earlier discussion of the Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, said that we should treat adults as adults, allowing them to confront ideas with the
“better ethics, reason and evidence”—[Official Report, 1/2/23; col. 735.]
that has been the most effective way to deal with ideas from Socrates onwards. I say, “Hear, hear” to that. However, I worry that, rather than users being in control, there is a danger that the filter system might infantilise adult users and disempower them by hard-wiring into the Bill a duty and tendency to hide content from users.
There is a general weakness in the Bill. I have noted that some platforms are based on users moderating their own sites, which I am quite keen on, but this will be detrimentally affected by the Bill. It would leave users in charge of their own moderation, with no powers to decide what is in, for example, Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects, which are added to, organised and edited by a decentralised community of users. So I will certainly not take the phrase “user empowerment” at face value.
I am slightly concerned about linguistic double-speak, or at least confusion. The whole Bill is being brought forward in a climate in which language is weaponised in a toxic minefield—a climate of, “You can’t say that”. More nerve-rackingly, words and ideas are seen as dangerous and interchangeable with violent acts, in a way that needs to be unpicked before we pass this legislation. Speakers can be cancelled for words deemed to threaten listeners’ safety—but not physical safety; the opinions are said to be unsafe. Opinions are treated as though they cause damage or harm as viscerally as physical aggression. So lawmakers have to recognise the cultural context and realise that the law will be understood and applied in it, not in the abstract.
I am afraid that the language in Clause 12(1) and (2) shows no awareness of this wider backdrop—it is worryingly woolly and vague. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, talked about dangerous content, and all the time we have to ask, “Who will interpret what is dangerous? What do we mean by ‘dangerous’ or ‘harmful’?”. Surely a term such as “abusive”, which is used in the legislation, is open to wide interpretation. Dictionary definitions of “abusive” include words such as “rude”, “insulting” and “offensive”, and it is certainly subjective. We have to query what we mean by the terms when some commentators complain that they have been victims of online abuse, but when you check their timelines you notice that, actually, they have been subject just to angry, and sometimes justified, criticism.
I recently saw a whole thread arguing that the Labour Party’s recent attack ads against the Prime Minister were an example of abusive hate speech. I am not making a point about this; I am asking who gets to decide. If this is the threshold for filtering content, there is a danger of institutionalising safe space echo chambers. It can also be a confusing word for users, because if someone applies a user empowerment tool to protect themselves from abuse, the threshold at which the filter operates could be much lower than they intend or envisage but, by definition, the user would not know what had been filtered out in their name, and they have no control over the filtering because they never see the filtered content.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I am afraid that on this issue, as I am sure she would expect, we profoundly disagree. I am delighted to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and those from my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, which do the same sort of thing and address the critical issue of what is a proportionate response, respecting the fact that the position for adults is different from that for children. What is a proportionate response, recognising that there is a large cadre of vulnerable people who need help to manage the beneficial but also worrying tool which is social media?
I shall cover only the issues on which I have any degree of competence in this complex field, which is to speak about the importance of this amendment because of the particular nature of eating disorders. I declare an interest as the mother of a young adult who has eating disorders and had them when she was a child. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, talked about the need to allow adults to use their reason. Let me tell the Committee about people with eating disorders: I would love it if I could get my daughter to be as reasonable as she is when I talk to her about the benefits of proportional representation, where she can beat me hands down, when I try but fail to get her to put food in her mouth.
Eating disorders have two issues of relevance to this debate, and they are why I support the case for the strongest protection for them, the default being that people should have to opt in to have access to harmful content. First, eating disorders are intensely controlling. They suck people in, and they are not just about not eating; they control how they exercise; they control who they see; they are a control mechanism over a person’s whole life. I reject the idea that you can get someone who is controlled, day and night, by an eating disorder to make the decision to opt out of accessing social media content, when we know that people with eating disorders gravitate towards it because it provides them with content that sustains their illness. It provides them with communities of other users— the pro-mia and pro-ana sites, which sound incredibly comforting but are actually communities of people that encourage people, sometimes literally, to starve themselves to death. That controlling nature means that, for me, people having to opt in is the best way forward: it is a controlling illness.
Secondly, eating disorders are a very competitive illness. If you have anorexia, you want to be the thinnest. In the old days, that meant that you would cook food that you would not eat, but you would get your sister to eat it and you would feel good because you were thinner. Of course, with social media, you can now access all these websites where you can see people with nasogastric tubes and see people who are doing much “better”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, in that dreadful phrase, they provide “thinspiration”: people look for thinness and compare themselves to other people. It is an insatiable desire, so the idea that they will voluntarily opt out of that is just away with the fairies.
As I say, we need a proportionate response. I appreciate that people with eating disorders may well choose to opt in, but I think that the state in the first place should require that people have to opt into that choice. We have heard about the various mental health organisations that have made that case, but in thinking about this and talking to Rose about it, I think there is another fundamental reason why it is right that the state should take this approach. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, eating disorders can start at a young age, but they can also start after the age of 18. If someone in their mid-20s—or mid-30s or mid-40s—is starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about their body image and starting to get some rather odd views about food but does not yet have an eating disorder, that is the time when, if they get support and do not get encouragement, we might be able to stop them getting sucked into these appalling vortexes of eating disorders. If we have this provision that people have to opt in, they might not see that content which, as has been mentioned, is being pushed at them—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford gave examples the other week of how these sites feed you stuff immediately as soon as you start going down this route. If people have to opt in, we might just have that chance of stopping them getting an eating disorder.
Yes, people have to be given access to some of this material in a free society, but it is the role of the state to protect the vulnerable, and the particular nature of eating disorders means that, for me, this amendment is vital.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, in her very moving and personal speech. I am sorry that I was unable to speak to the previous group of amendments, some of which were in my name, because, due to unavoidable business in my diocese, I was not able to be present when that debate began late last Tuesday. However, it is very good to be able to support this group of amendments, and I hope tangentially to say something also in favour of risk assessment, although I am conscious that other noble Lords have ably made many of the points that I was going to make.
My right reverend friend the Bishop of Gloucester has added her name in support of amendments in this group, and I also associate myself with them—she is not able to be here today. As has been said, we are all aware that reaching the threshold of 18 does not somehow award you with exponentially different discernment capabilities, nor wrap those more vulnerable teenagers in some impermeable cotton wool to protect them from harm.
We are united, I think, in wanting to do all we can to make the online space feel safe and be safe for all. However, there is increasing evidence that people do not believe that it is. The DCMS’s own Public Attitudes to Digital Regulation survey is concerning. The most recent data shows that the number of UK adults who do not feel safe and secure online increased from 38% in November/December 2021 to 45% in June/July 2022. If that trend increases, the number will soon pass half, with more than half of UK adults not feeling safe and secure online.
It is vital that we protect society’s most vulnerable. When people are vulnerable through mental illness or other challenges, they are surely not able to protect themselves from being exposed to damaging online content by making safe choices, as we have just heard. In making this an opt-in system, we would save lives when people are at a point of crisis.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, I contribute to this debate on the basis of my interests as laid out in the register: as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland; my work with the Scottish Government on people with neurological conditions; and as a trustee of the Neurological Alliance of Scotland. It is an honour to follow the right reverend Prelate, whose point about the inequality people experience in the online world is well made. I want to be clear that when I talk about ensuring online protection for people with disabilities, I do not assume that all adults with disabilities are unable to protect themselves. As the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, pointed out, survey after survey demonstrates how offline vulnerabilities translate into the online world, and Ofcom’s own evidence suggests that people with physical disabilities, learning disabilities, autism, mental health issues and others can be classed as being especially vulnerable online.
The Government recognise that vulnerable groups are at greater risk online, because in its previous incarnations, this Bill included greater protection for such groups. We spoke in a previous debate about the removal of the “legal but harmful” provisions and the imposition of the triple shield. The question remains from that debate: does the triple shield provide sufficient protection for these vulnerable groups?
As I have said previously this afternoon, user empowerment tools are the third leg of the triple shield, but they put all the onus on users and no responsibility on the platforms to prevent individuals’ exposure to harm. Amendments 36, 37 and 38A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, seek simply to make the default setting for the proposed user empowerment tools to be “on”. I do not pretend to understand how, technically, this will happen, but it clearly can, because the Bill requires platforms to ensure that this is the default position to ensure protection for children. The default position in those amendments protects all vulnerable people, and that is why I support them—unlike, I fear, Amendment 34 from my noble friend Lady Morgan, which lists specific categories of vulnerable adults. I would prefer that all vulnerable people be protected from being exposed to harm in the first place.
Nobody’s freedom of expression is affected in any way by this default setting, but the overall impact on vulnerable individuals in the online environment would, I assure your Lordships, be significant. Nobody’s ability to explore the internet or to go into those strange rooms at the back of bookshops that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, was talking about would be curtailed. The Government have already stated that individuals will have the capacity to seek out these tools and turn them on and off, and that they must be easily accessible. So individuals with capacity will be able to find the settings and set them to explore whatever legal content they choose.
However, is it not our duty to remember those who do not have capacity? What about adults with learning difficulties and people at a point of crisis—the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, movingly spoke about people with eating disorders—who might not be able to turn to those tools due to their affected mental state, or who may not realise that what they are seeing is intended to manipulate? Protecting those users from encountering such content in the first place surely tips the balance in favour of turning the tools on by default.
I am very sad that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, cannot be here, because her contribution to this debate would be powerful. But, from her enormous experience of work with disabled people, this is her top priority for the Bill.
In preparing to speak to these amendments, I looked back to the inquiry in the other place into online abuse and the experience of disabled people that was prompted by Katie Price’s petition after the shocking abuse directed at her disabled son Harvey. In April 2019 the Government responded to that inquiry by saying that they were
“aware of the disproportionate abuse experienced by disabled people online and the damage such abuse can have on people’s lives, career and health”—
and the Government pledged to act.
The internet is a really important place for disabled people, and I urge the Government to ensure that it remains a safe place for all of us and to accept these amendments that would ensure the default settings are set to on.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, I rise to support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. I do so somewhat reluctantly, not because I disagree with anything that she said but because I would not necessarily start from here. I want to briefly say three very quick things about that and then move on to Amendments 42 and 45, which are also in this group.
We already have default settings, and we are pretending that this is a zero-sum game. The default settings at the moment are profiling us, filtering us and rewarding us; and, as the right reverend Prelate said in his immensely powerful speech, we are not starting at zero. So I do share the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about who gets to choose—some of us on this side of the debate are saying, “Can we define who gets to choose? Can Parliament choose? Can Ofcom choose? Can we not leave this in the hands of tech companies?” So on that I fully agree. But we do have default settings already, and this is a question of looking at some of the features as well as the content. It is a weakness of the Government’s argument that it keeps coming back to the content rather than the features, which are the main driver of what we see.
The second thing I want to say—this is where I am anxious about the triple shield—is: does not knowing you are being abused mean that you are not abused? I say that as someone with some considerable personal abuse. I have my filter on and I am not on social media, but my children, my colleagues and some of the people I work with around the world do see what is said about me—it is a reputational thing, and for some of them it is a hurtful thing, and that is why I am reluctant in my support. However, I do agree with all the speakers who have said that our duty is to start with those people who are most vulnerable.
I want to mention the words of one of the 5Rights advisers—a 17 year-old girl—who, when invited to identify changes and redesign the internet, said, “Couldn’t we do all the kind things first and gradually get to the horrible ones?” I think that this could be a model for us in this Chamber. So, I do support the noble Baroness.
I want to move briefly to Amendment 42, which would see an arbitrary list of protected characteristics replaced by the Equality Act 2010. This has a lot to do with a previous discussion we had about human rights, and I want to say urgently to the Minister that the offer of the Online Safety Bill is not to downgrade human rights, children’s rights and UK law, but rather to bring forward a smart and comprehensive regime to hold companies accountable for human rights, children’s rights and UK law. We do not want to have a little list of some of our children’s rights or of some of our legislation; we would like our legislation and our rights embedded in the Bill.
I have to speak for Amendment 45. I express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for tabling it. It would require Ofcom, six months after the event, to ask whether children need these user empowerment tools. It is hugely important. I remind the Committee that children have not only rights but an evolving capacity to be out there in the world. As I said earlier, the children’s safety duties have a cliff-edge feel to them. As children go out into the world on the cusp of adulthood, maybe they would like to have some of these user empowerment tools.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said words to the effect that perhaps we should begin by having particular regard for certain vulnerabilities, but we are dealing with primary legislation and this really concerns me. Lists such as in Clause 12 are really dangerous. It is not a great way to write law. We could be with this law for a long time.
I took the Communications Act 2003 through for Her Majesty’s Opposition, and we were doing our absolute best to future-proof the legislation. There was no mention of the internet in that piece of legislation. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, with whom I sparred in those days, in was not that Act that introduced Ofcom but a separate Act. The internet was not even mentioned until the late Earl of Northesk introduced an amendment with the word “internet” to talk about the investigative powers Act.
The reality is that we already had Facebook, and tremendous damage being done through it to people such as my daughter. Noble Lords will remember that in the early days it was Oxford, Cambridge, Yale and Harvard; that is how it all began. It was an amazing thing, and we could not foresee what would happen but there was a real attempt to future-proof. If you start having lists such as in Clause 12, you cannot just add on or change. Cultural mores change. This list, which looks great in 2023, might look really odd in about 2027. Different groups will have emerged and say, “Well, what about me, what about me?”.
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. Who will be the decider of what is right, what is rude or what is abusive? I have real concerns with this. The Government have had several years to get this right. I say that with great respect to my noble friend the Minister, but we will have to think about these issues a little further. The design of the technology around all this is what we should be imposing on the tech companies. I was on the Communications and Digital Committee in 2020 when that was a key plank of our report, following the inquiry that we carried out and prior to the Joint Committee, then looking at this issue of “legal but harmful”, et cetera. I am glad that was dropped because—I know that I should not say this—when I asked a civil servant what was meant by “harmful”, he said, “Well, it might upset people”.
It is a very subjective thing. This is difficult for the Government. We must do all we can to support the Government in trying to find the right solutions, but I am sorry to say that I am a lawyer—a barrister—and I worry. We are trying to make things right but, remember, once it is there in an Act, it is there. People will use that as a tool. In 2002, at New Scotland Yard, I was introduced to an incredible website about 65 ways to become a good paedophile. Where does that fit in Clause 12? I have not quite worked that out. Is it sex? What is it? We have to be really careful. I would prefer having no list and making it more general, relying on the system to allow us to opt in.
I support my noble friend Lady Morgan’s amendment on this, which would make it easier for people to say, “Well, that’s fine”, but would not exclude people. What happens if you do not fit within Clause 12? Do you then just have to suck it up? That is not a very House of Lords expression, but I am sure that noble Lords will relate to it.
We have to go with care. I will say a little more on the next group of amendments, on anonymity. It is really hard, but what the Government are proposing is not quite there yet.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
That seemed to be provoked by me saying that we must look after the vulnerable, but I am suggesting that we use UK law and the rights that are already established. Is that not better than having a small list of individual items?
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
I agree. The small list of individual items is the danger.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, on the built-in obsolescence of any list. It would very soon be out of date.
I support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes. They effectively seek a similar aim. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, I tend towards those tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, because they seem clearer and more inclusive, but I understand that they are trying for the same thing. I also register the support for this aim of my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who cannot be here but whom I suspect is listening in. She was very keen that her support for this aim was recorded.
The issue of “on by default” inevitably came up at Second Reading. Then and in subsequent discussions, the Minister reiterated that a “default on” approach to user empowerment tools would negatively impact people’s use of these services. Speaking at your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee, on which I sat at the time, Minister Scully went further, saying that the strongest option, of having the settings off in the first instance,
“would be an automatic shield against people’s ability to explore what they want to explore on the internet”.
According to the Government’s own list, this was arguing for the ability to explore content that abuses, targets or incites hatred against people with protected characteristics, including race and disability. I struggle to understand why protecting this right takes precedence over ensuring that groups of people with protected characteristics are, well, protected. That is our responsibility. It is precedence, because switching controls one way is not exactly the same as switching them the other way. It is easy to think so, but the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, explained very clearly that it is not the same. It is undoubtedly easier for someone in good health and without mental or physical disabilities to switch controls off than it is for those with disabilities or vulnerabilities to switch them on. That is self-evident.
It cannot be right that those most at risk of being targeted online, including some disabled people—not all, as we have heard—and those with other protected characteristics, will have the onus on them to switch on the tools to prevent them seeing and experiencing harm. There is a real risk that those who are meant to benefit from user empowerment tools, those groups at higher risk of online harm, including people with a learning disability, will not be able to access the tools because the duties allow category 1 services to design their own user empowerment tools. This means that we are likely to see as many versions of user empowerment tools as there are category 1 services to which this duty applies.
Given what we know about the nature of addiction and self-harm, which has already been very eloquently explained, it surely cannot be the intention of the Bill that those people who are in crisis and vulnerable to eating disorders or self-harm, for example, will be required to seek and activate a set of tools to turn off the very material that feeds their addiction or encourages their appetite for self-harm.
The approach in the Bill does little to prevent people spiralling down this rabbit hole towards ever more harmful content. Indeed, instead it requires people to know that they are approaching a crisis point, and to have sufficient levels of resilience and rationality to locate the switch and turn on the tools that will protect them. That is not how the irrational or distressed mind works.
So, all the evidence that we have about the existence of harm which arises from mental states, which has been so eloquently set out in introducing the amendments— I refer again to my noble friend Lady Parminter, because that is such powerful evidence—tips the balance in favour, I believe, of setting the tools to be on by default. I very much hope the Minister will listen and heed the arguments we have heard set out by noble Lords across the Committee, and come back with some of his own amendments on Report.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
Before the noble Baroness sits down, I wanted to ask for clarification, because I am genuinely confused. When it comes to political rights for adults in terms of their agency, they are rights which we assume are able to be implemented by everyone. But we recognise that in the adult community —this is offline now; I mean in terms of how we understand political rights—there may well be people who lack capacity or are vulnerable, and we take that into account. But we do not generally organise political rights and access to, for example, voting or free speech around the most vulnerable in society. That is not because we are insensitive or inhumane, or do not understand. The moving testimonies we have heard about people with eating disorders and so on are absolutely spot-on accurate. But are we suggesting that the world online should be organised around vulnerable adults, rather than adults and their political rights?
Baroness Bull (CB)
I do not have all the answers, but I do think we heard a very powerful point from the right reverend Prelate. In doing the same for everybody, we do not ensure equality. We need to have varying approaches, in order that everybody has equality of access. As the Bill stands, it says nothing about vulnerable adults. It simply assumes that all adults have full capacity, and I think what these amendments seek to do is find a way to recognise that simply thinking about children, and then that everybody aged 18 is absolutely able to take care of themselves and, if I may say, “suck it up”, is not the world we live in. We can surely do better than that.
Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support Amendments 34 and 35, from the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and others in this essential group. It is not enough to say the new triple shield will help prevent adults seeing harmful but legal material if they so wish. Having removed “harmful but legal” from the original Bill, there is now a need to ensure that the default options are the safest for users in regard to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and abuse and hate content.
As the Bill stands, adults can still see the most dangerous content online. Young people over 18 may be especially vulnerable if faced with a torrent of images edited digitally to represent unattainable beauty standards; it can result in poor body image detrimental to mental health, resulting in shame, anxiety and, in some cases, suicide. As other noble Lords have said, anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental health problem. We know pro-anorexia sites are rife online. Vulnerable adults should be protected.
These amendments would make a real difference to the Bill. Changing the user empowerment provisions to require category 1 providers to have the safest options as the default for users would be a straightforward way of increasing the protection of most internet users who do not want to have this material bombard them. It would not overburden the tech companies and could do some good. It would not curtail freedom of speech, as tech-savvy users could easily flip a switch if they wished to opt in to some of the most dangerous content, which will still be available online, rather than receiving it by default.
Even with the Government’s best intentions to prevent encouragement of serious self-harm, we know they cannot criminalise all the legal content that treads the line between glorification and outright encouragement, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said. As the Communications and Digital Select Committee, on which I now serve, said in its 2021 report,
“the Online Safety Bill should require category 1 platforms to give users a comprehensive toolkit of settings, overseen by Ofcom, allowing users to decide what types of content they see and from whom. Platforms should be required to make these tools easy to find and use. The safest settings should always be the default”.
I hope the Government accept these valuable and simple amendments. They are supported by the Mental Health Foundation, to whom I owe thanks for this briefing, together with many other experts in the field of mental health.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, this is my first contribution to the Bill, and I feel I need to apologise in advance for my lack of knowledge and expertise in this whole field. In her initial remarks, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, was saying “Don’t worry, because you don’t need to be a lawyer”. Unfortunately, I do not have any expertise in the field of the internet and social media and all of that as well, so I will be very brief in all of my remarks on the Bill. But I feel that I cannot allow the Bill to go past without at least making a few remarks, as equalities spokesperson for the Lib Dems. The issues are of passionate importance to me, and of course to victims of online abuse, and it is those victims for whom I speak today.
In this group, I will address my remarks to Amendments 34 and 35, in which we have discussed content deemed to be harmful—suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and abuse and hate content—under the triple shield approach, although this content discussion has strayed somewhat during the course of the debate.
Much harmful material, as we have heard, initially comes to the user uninvited. I do not pretend to understand how these algorithms work, but my understanding is that if you open one, they literally click into action, increasing more and more of this kind of content being fed to you in your feed. The suicide of young Molly Russell is a typical example of the devastating consequences of how much damage these algorithms can contribute. I am glad that the Bill will go further to protect children, but it still leaves adults—some young and vulnerable—without some protection and with the same amount of automatic exposure to harmful content, which algorithms can increase with engagement, which could have overwhelming impacts on their mental health, as my noble friend Lady Parminter so movingly and eloquently described.
So this amendment means a user would have to make an active, conscious choice to be exposed to such content: an opt out rather than an opt in. This has been discussed at length by noble Lords a great deal more versed in the subject than me. But surely the only persons or organisations who would not support this would be the ones who do not have the best interests of the vulnerable users we have been talking about this afternoon at heart. I hope the Minister will confirm in his remarks that the Government do.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate because I now need to declare an unusual interest, in that Amendment 38A has been widely supported outside this Chamber by my husband, the Member of Parliament for Weston-super-Mare. I am not intending to speak on that amendment but, none the less, I mention it just in case.
I rise to speak because I have been so moved by the speeches, not least the right reverend Prelate’s speech. I would like just to briefly address the “default on” amendments and add my support. Like others, on balance I favour the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, but would willingly throw my support behind my noble friend Lady Morgan were that the preferred choice in the Chamber.
I would like to simply add two additional reasons why I ask my noble friend the Minister to really reflect hard on this debate. The first is that children become teenagers, who become young adults, and it is a gradual transition—goodness, do I feel it as the mother of a 16 year-old and a 17 year-old. The idea that on one day all the protections just disappear completely and we require our 18 year-olds to immediately reconfigure their use of all digital tools just does not seem a sensible transition to adulthood to me, whereas the ability to switch off user empowerment tools as you mature as an adult seems a very sensible transition.
Secondly, I respect very much the free speech arguments that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, made but I do not think this is a debate about the importance of free speech. It is actually about how effective the user empowerment tools are. If they are so hard for non-vulnerable adults to turn off, what hope have vulnerable adults to be able to turn them on? For the triple shield to work and the three-legged stool to be effective, the onus needs to be on the tech companies to make these user empowerment tools really easy to turn on and turn off. Then “default on” is not a restriction on freedom of speech at all; it is simply a means of protecting our most vulnerable.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, this has been a very thoughtful and thought-provoking debate. I start very much from the point of view expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and this brings the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, into agreement—it is not about the content; this is about features. The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, made exactly the same point, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Healy—this is not about restriction on freedom of speech but about a design feature in the Bill which is of crucial importance.
When I was putting together the two amendments that I have tabled, I was very much taken by what Parent Zone said in a recent paper. It described user empowerment tools as “a false hope”, and rightly had a number of concerns about undue reliance on tools. It said:
“There is a real danger of users being overwhelmed and bewildered”.
It goes on to say that
“tools cannot do all the work, because so many other factors are in play—parental styles, media literacy and technological confidence, different levels of vulnerability and, crucially, trust”.
The real question—this is why I thought we should look at it from the other side of things in terms of default—is about how we mandate the use of these user empowerment tools in the Bill for both children and adults. In a sense, my concerns are exactly the opposite of those of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—for some strange, unaccountable reason.
The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, the right reverend Prelate and, notably, my noble friend Lady Parminter have made a brilliant case for their amendment, and it is notable that these amendments are supported by a massive range of organisations. They are all in this area of vulnerable adults: the Mental Health Foundation, Mind, the eating disorder charity Beat, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Psychological Society, Rethink Mental Illness, Mental Health UK, and so on. It is not a coincidence that all these organisations are discussing this “feature”. This is a crucial aspect of the Bill.
Again, I was very much taken by some of the descriptions used by noble Lords during the debate. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford said that young people do not suddenly become impervious to content when they reach 18, and he particularly described the pressures as the use of AI only increases. I thought the way the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, described the progression from teenagehood to adulthood was extremely important. There is not some sort of point where somebody suddenly reaches the age of 18 and has full adulthood which enables then to deal with all this content.
Under the Bill as it stands, adult users could still see and be served some of the most dangerous content online. As we have heard, this includes pro-suicide, pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia content. One has only to listen to what my noble friend Lady Parminter had to say to really be affected by the operation, if you like, of social media in those circumstances. This is all about the vulnerable. Of course, we know that anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental health problem; the NHS is struggling to provide specialist treatment to those who need it. Meanwhile, suicide and self-harm-related content remains common and is repeatedly implicated in deaths. All Members here who were members of the Joint Committee remember the evidence of Ian Russell about his daughter Molly. I think that affected us all hugely.
We believe now you can pay your money and take your choice of whichever amendment seems appropriate. Changing the user empowerment provisions to require category 1 providers to have either the safest options as default for users or the terms of my two amendments is surely a straightforward way of protecting the vast majority of internet users who do not want this material served to them.
You could argue that the new offence of encouragement to serious self-harm, which the Government have committed to introducing, might form part of the solution here, but you cannot criminalise all the legal content that treads the line between glorification and outright encouragement. Of course, we know the way the Bill has been changed. No similar power is proposed, for instance, to address eating disorder content.
The noble Baroness, Lady Healy, quoted our own Communications and Digital Committee and its recommendations about a comprehensive toolkit of settings overseen by Ofcom, allowing users to decide what types of content they see and from whom. I am very supportive of Amendment 38A from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, which gives a greater degree of granularity about the kind of user, in a sense, that can communicate to users.
Modesty means that of course I prefer my own amendments and I agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Fraser, Lady Bull and Lady Harding, and I am very grateful for their support. But we are all heading in the same direction. We are all arguing for a broader “by default” approach. The onus should not be on these vulnerable adults in particular to switch them on, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said. It is all about those vulnerable adults and we must, as my noble friend Lady Burt, said, have their best interests at heart, and that is why we have tabled these amendments.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, this has been one of the most important debates we have had so far in Committee, covering most of the issues in Clause 12—effectively, the replacement of the legal but harmful provisions that were in the draft Bill with the user empowerment tools, introducing the new element of the triple shield, or the three-legged stool as we are now going to describe it thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser. It is about how we as adults are empowered to protect ourselves from harmful content and, most crucially, the amplification of the harm caused by the systems used on the platforms.
I welcome subsections (4) and (5) of Clause 12, on ease of use and ease of access to the tools. Many platforms already offer these sort of tools. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referred to the ParentZone research that has been circulated, which talked about a Facebook tool to prevent autoplay of ads. It took ParentZone’s tech-savvy researcher—not the noble Baroness, Lady Burt—three and a half hours to work out how to turn autoplay off. The research also found that 30% of tools had changed in the last year, so this is an ever-moving target for people to chase after.
The reality is that most of us do not have the time, even if we have the inclination, to deal with all these things. We already have user empowerment tools for unsubscribing from junk emails—and how many of us can be bothered to go through all that all the time? Sometimes I do but sometimes I just have to delete them and move on. We have to manage cookies; sometimes I do and sometimes I do not because I do not have time. That is why we need to look seriously at putting some of these tools on by default, with easily accessible settings to then turn them off if desired.
I therefore support Amendments 34 and 35, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, although I support those from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, more, which is why I put my name to them before the debate started. What the noble Baroness said about self-harm, suicide and eating disorders is really important. Again, this is less about people never being able to see individual items of content relating to those things and much more about restraining the platforms from bombarding us with similar content, as happened to Molly Russell and others. Here, of course, as many noble Lords have said, we should be mindful of the vulnerability of many young adults and other adults to the same experience that was implicated in Molly’s death.
According to Refuge’s research, which has been circulated, just over one in three UK women have experienced online abuse or harassment on social media, and perpetrators of domestic abuse are increasingly turning to technology as a tool to further their abuse. A briefing sent by the Royal College of Psychiatrists says that, according to NHS England, only 57.5% of 17 to 24 year-olds feel safe using social media in this country. Why not improve their safety as adults by having them opt in to seeing potentially harmful content—this is particularly important to some vulnerable adults with limited capacity to make decisions about internet and social media use—without limiting the freedom of adults to see this content if they want to?
The noble Lord, Clement-Jones, with Amendments 36 and 37, to which I added my name, is essentially going back to some of the debate about safety by design. As the right reverend Prelate set out so powerfully, the platforms are designed to maximise engagement, time spent on their site, data collection and the targeting of advertising. It is about their business model, not our safety. Artificial intelligence has no ethical constraint, and these user empowerment tools allow us to shift the algorithm in our favour, including to make us safer. To toggle them off is to side with the business model regardless of adult safety; to toggle them on is to side with adults having a more pleasant but slightly less engaging experience. Whose side is the Minister on? We look forward to hearing.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
Just to clarify, in a way we have reduced this debate to whether the default position should be on or off, although in fact that is only one aspect of this. My concern, and what I maybe spent too long talking about, is what happens if we turn the toggles to “on”. The assumption we keep making is that once they are on, we are safe. The difficulty is that the categories of what is filtered out after turning them on are not necessarily what the user thinks they are. I am simply asking how you get around that; otherwise, we think it is too easy—turn it on or off; press the button. Is it not problematic for us all if, in thinking you are going to stop seeing hate, hate turns out actually to be legitimate and interesting political ideas?
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
As ever, the noble Baroness is an important voice in bursting our bubble in the Chamber. I continue to respect her for that. It will not be perfect; there is no perfect answer to all this. I am siding with safety and caution rather than a bit of a free-for-all. Sometimes there might be overcaution and aspects of debate where the platforms, the regulator, the media, and discussion and debate in this Chamber would say, “The toggles have got it wrong”, but we just have to make a judgment about which side we are on. That is what I am looking forward to hearing from the Minister.
These amendments are supported on all sides and by a long list of organisations, as listed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. The Minister has not conceded very much at all so far to this Committee. We have heard compelling speeches, such as those from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, that have reinforced my sense that he needs to give in on this when we come to Report.
I will also speak to my Amendment 38A. I pay tribute to John Penrose MP, who was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and his work in raising concerns about misinformation and in stimulating discussion outside the Chambers among parliamentarians and others. Following discussions with him and others in the other place, I propose that users of social media should have the option to filter out content the provenance of which cannot be authenticated.
As we know, social media platforms are often awash with content that is unverified, misleading or downright false. This can be particularly problematic when it comes to sensitive or controversial topics such as elections, health or public safety. In these instances, it can be difficult for users to know whether the information presented to them is accurate. Many noble Lords will be familiar with the deep-fake photograph of the Pope in a white puffa jacket that recently went viral, or the use of imagery for propaganda purposes following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Content Authenticity Initiative has created an open industry standard for content authenticity and provenance. Right now, tools such as Adobe Photoshop allow users to turn on content credentials to securely attach provenance data to images and any edits then made to those images. That technology has now been adopted by camera manufacturers such as Leica and Nikon, so the technology is there to do some of this to help give us some reassurance.
Amendment 38A would allow users to filter out unverified content and is designed to flag posts or articles that do not come from a reliable source or have not been independently verified by a reputable third party. Users could then choose to ignore or filter out such content, ensuring that they are exposed only to information that has been vetted and verified. This would not only help users to make more informed decisions but help to combat the spread of false information on social media platforms. By giving users the power to filter out unverified content, we can help to ensure that social media platforms are not used to spread harmful disinformation or misinformation.
Amendments 42 and 45, in the name of my noble friend Lord Stevenson, are good and straightforward improvements to the Bill, suggesting that Clause 12(11) should include all the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010. I listened closely to the argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, about listing the various characteristics, but I think it makes much more sense to do what my noble friend is suggesting and just reference the Equality Act. If we chose separately to amend the Equality Act to change protected characteristics, that change would then flow through into this Bill. That seems to be a much more sensible and pragmatic way to proceed. Similarly, in Amendment 45 my noble friend is suggesting that consideration should be given by the Secretary of State as to whether any of these tools should also be available to child users, and we have heard good arguments in favour of that when it comes to dealing with the cliff-edge effect, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.
Lastly—and, perhaps the Committee will forgive me, slightly bizarrely—Amendment 283ZA, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, to Clause 170(7) in Part 11 invites us to consider, among other things, whether a bot can act reasonably. Given that self-coding bots are now technically possible, I would be fascinated to hear the Minister’s view on whether an autonomous bot can have reason. I asked ChatGPT this question. For the help of the Committee, it replied:
“As an artificial intelligence language model, I do not have consciousness or emotions, and therefore, I do not have a capacity for ‘reason’ in the way that humans understand it. However, I am programmed to use advanced algorithms that allow me to process and analyze large amounts of data, recognize patterns, and provide reasoned responses based on the information available to me. This allows me to simulate a form of reasoning, but it is important to note that it is not the same as human reasoning, as I do not have subjective experiences or personal biases. Ultimately, my abilities are limited to the algorithms and data that have been programmed into my system, and I cannot generate my own subjective experiences or judgments.”
That is the view of the algorithm as to whether or not bots can have reason. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the Government recognise the objectives of the amendments in this group: to strengthen protections for adults online. I hope noble Lords will agree that the Bill will indeed significantly improve the safety of all adult users, particularly those who are more vulnerable.
The user empowerment content features will not be the only measures in the Bill that will protect adults. They will act as a final layer of protection, coming after the duties on illegal content and the requirement on category 1 providers to uphold their terms of service. However, as the Clause 12 duties apply to legal content, we need to tread carefully and not inadvertently restrict free expression.
Amendments 34 and 35 in the name of my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes and Amendments 36 and 37 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, seek to require category 1 services to have their user empowerment content features in operation by default for adult users. The Government share concerns about users who experience disproportionate levels of abuse online or those who are more susceptible to suicide, self-harm or eating disorder content, but these amendments encroach on users’ rights in two ways.
First, the amendments intend to make the decision on behalf of users about whether to have these features turned on. That is aimed especially at those who might not otherwise choose to use those features. The Government do not consider it appropriate to take that choice away from adults, who must be allowed to decide for themselves what legal content they see online. That debate was distilled in the exchange just now between the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, when the noble Lord said he would err on the side of caution, even overcaution, while he characterised the other side as a free-for-all. I might say that it was erring on the side of freedom. That is the debate that we are having, and should have, when looking at these parts of the Bill.
Secondly, the amendments would amount to a government requirement to limit adults’ access to legal content. That presents real concerns about freedom of expression, which the Government cannot accept.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
Does the Minister therefore think that the Government condone the current system, where we are inundated algorithmically with material that we do not want? Are the Government condoning that behaviour, in the way that he is saying they would condone a safety measure?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
We will come to talk about algorithms and their risks later on. There is an important balance to strike here that we have debated, rightly, in this group. I remind noble Lords that there are a range of measures that providers can put in place—
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
Because of the importance of that point in relation to what the Minister is about to say, we should be clear about this point: is he ruling out the ability to prioritise the needs and requirements of those who are effectively unable to take the decisions themselves in favour of a broader consideration of freedom of expression? It would be helpful for the future of this debate to be clear on that point.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
We will come in a moment to the provisions that are in the Bill to make sure that decisions can be taken by adults, including vulnerable adults, easily and clearly. If the noble Lord will allow, I will cover that point.
I was in the middle of reminding noble Lords that there are a range of measures that providers can put in place under these duties, some of which might have an impact on a user’s experience if they were required to be switched on by default. That may include, for example, restricting a user’s news feed to content from connected users, adding to the echo chamber and silos of social media, which I know many noble Lords would join me in decrying. We think it is right that that decision is for individual users to make.
The Bill sets out that the user empowerment content tools must be offered to all adult users and must be easy to access—to go the point raised just now as well as by my noble friend Lady Harding, and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and, as noble Lords were right to remind us, pushed by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who I am pleased to say I have been able to have discussions with separately from this Committee.
Providers will also be required to have clear and accessible terms of service about what tools are offered on their service and how users might take advantage of them. Ofcom will be able to require category 1 services to report on user empowerment tools in use through transparency reports. Ofcom is also bound by the Communications Act 2003 and the public sector equality duty, so it will need to take into account the ways that people with certain characteristics, including people with disabilities, may be affected when performing its duties, such as writing the codes of practice for the user empowerment duties.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
I think the Minister is trying to answer the point raised by my noble friend about vulnerable adults. I am interested in the extent to which he is relying on the Equality Act duty on Ofcom then to impact the behaviour of the platforms that it is regulating in respect of how they are protecting vulnerable adults. My understanding is that the Equality Act duty will apply not to the platforms but only to Ofcom in the way that it regulates them. I am unclear how that is going to provide the protection that we want.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
That is right. Platforms are not in the public sector, so the public sector equality duty does not apply to them. However, that duty applies to Ofcom, taking into account the ways in which people with certain characteristics can be affected through the codes of practice and the user empowerment duties that it is enforcing. So it suffuses the thinking there, but the duty is on Ofcom as a public sector body.
We talk later in Clause 12(11) of some of the characteristics that are similar in approach to the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010. I will come to that again shortly in response to points made by noble Lords.
I want to say a bit about the idea of there being a cliff edge at the age of 18. This was raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, my noble friends Lady Morgan and Lady Harding and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. The Bill’s protections recognise that, in law, people become adults when they turn 18—but it is not right to say that there are no protections for young adults. As noble Lords know, the Bill will provide a triple shield of protection, of which the user empowerment duties are the final element.
The Bill already protects young adults from illegal content and content that is prohibited in terms and conditions. As we discussed in the last group, platforms have strong commercial incentives to prohibit content that the majority of their users do not want to see. Our terms of service duties will make sure that they are transparent about and accountable for how they treat this type of content.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, what distinguishes young adults from older adults in what the Minister in saying?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
In law, there is nothing. I am engaging with the point that there is no cliff edge. There are protections for people once they turn 18. People’s tastes and risk appetites may change over time, but there are protections in the Bill for people of all ages.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
Surely, this is precisely the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, was making. As soon as you reach 18, there is no graduation at all. There is no accounting for vulnerable adults.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
There is not this cliff edge which noble Lords have feared—that there are protections for children and then, at 18, a free for all. There are protections for adult users—young adults, older adults, adults of any age—through the means which I have just set out: namely, the triple shield and the illegal content provisions. I may have confused the noble Lord in my attempt to address the point. The protections are there.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
There is an element of circularity to what the Minister is saying. This is precisely why we are arguing for the default option. It allows this vulnerability to be taken account of.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
Perhaps it would help if the Minister wanted to just set out the difference for us. Clearly, this Committee has spent some time debating the protection for children, which has a higher bar than protection for adults. It is not possible to argue that there will be no difference at the age of 18, however effective the first two elements of the triple shield are. Maybe the Minister needs to think about coming at it from the point of view of a child becoming an adult, and talk us through what the difference will be.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Once somebody becomes an adult in law at the age of 18, they are protected through the triple shield in the Bill. The user empowerment duties are one element of this, along with the illegal content duties and the protection against content prohibited in terms and conditions and the redress through Ofcom.
The legislation delivers protection for adults in a way that preserves their choice. That is important. At the age of 18, you can choose to go into a bookshop and to encounter this content online if you want. It is not right for the Government to make decisions on behalf of adults about the legal content that they see. The Bill does not set a definition of a vulnerable adult because this would risk treating particular adults differently, or unfairly restricting their access to legal content or their ability to express themselves. There is no established basis on which to do that in relation to vulnerability.
Finally, we remain committed to introducing a new criminal offence to capture communications that intentionally encourage or assist serious self-harm, including eating disorders. This will provide another layer of protection on top of the regulatory framework for both adults and children.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
I understand all of that—I think—but that is not the regime being applied to children. It is really clear that children have a safer, better experience. The difference between those experiences suddenly happening on an 18th birthday is what we are concerned about.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
Before the Minister stands up—a new phrase—can he confirm that it is perfectly valid to have a choice to lift the user empowerment tool, just as it is to impose it? Choice would still be there if our amendments were accepted.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
It would be, but we fear the chilling effect of having the choice imposed on people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, rightly put it, one does not know what one has not encountered until one has engaged with the idea. At the age of 18, people are given the choice to decide what they encounter online. They are given the tools to ensure that they do not encounter it if they do not wish to do so. As the noble Lord has heard me say many times, the strongest protections in the Bill are for children. We have been very clear that the Bill has extra protections for people under the age of 18, and it preserves choice and freedom of expression online for adult users—young and old adults.
My noble friend Lady Buscombe asked about the list in Clause 12(11). We will keep it under constant review and may consider updating it should compelling evidence emerge. As the list covers content that is legal and designed for adults, it is right that it should be updated by primary legislation after a period of parliamentary scrutiny.
Amendments 42 and 38A, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Knight of Weymouth, respectively, seek to change the scope of user empowerment content features. Amendment 38A seeks to expand the user empowerment content features to include the restriction of content the provenance of which cannot be authenticated. Amendment 42 would apply features to content that is abusive on the basis of characteristics protected under the Equality Act 2010.
The user empowerment content list reflects areas where there is the greatest need for users to be offered choice about reducing their exposure to types of content. While I am sympathetic to the intention behind the amendments, I fear they risk unintended consequences for users’ rights online. The Government’s approach recognises the importance of having clear, enforceable and technically feasible duties that do not infringe users’ rights to free expression. These amendments risk undermining this. For instance, Amendment 38A would require the authentication of the provenance of every piece of content present on a service. This could have severe implications for freedom of expression, given its all-encompassing scope. Companies may choose not to have anything at all.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
I will try to help the Minister. If the amendment has been poorly drafted, I apologise. It does not seek to require a platform to check the provenance of every piece of content, but content that is certified as having good provenance would have priority for me to be able to see it. In the Bill, I can see or not see verified users. In the same way, I could choose to see or not see verified content.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Thank you. I may be reading the noble Lord’s Amendment 38A excessively critically. I will look at it again. To try to reassure the noble Lord, the Bill already ensures that all services take steps to remove illegal manufactured or manipulated content when they become aware of it. Harmful and illegal misinformation and disinformation is covered in that way.
Amendment 42 would require providers to try to establish on a large scale what is a genuinely held belief that is more than an opinion. In response, I fear that providers would excessively apply the user empowerment features to manage that burden.
A number of noble Lords referred to the discrepancy between the list—
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
Several times in the Bill—but this is a clear example—the drafters have chosen to impose a different sequence of words from that which exists in statute. The obvious one here is the Equality Act, which we have touched on before. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, made a number of serious points about that. Why have the Government chosen to list, separately and distinctively, the characteristics which we have also heard, through a different route, the regulator will be required to uphold in respect of the statute, while the companies will be looking to the text of the Bill, when enacted? Is that not just going to cause chaos?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The discrepancy comes from the point we touched on earlier. Ofcom, as a public body, is subject to the public sector equality duty and therefore the list set out in the Equality Act 2010. The list at Clause 12(11) relates to content which is abusive, and is therefore for providers to look at. While the Equality Act has established an understanding of characteristics which should be given special protection in law, it is not necessarily desirable to transpose those across. They too are susceptible to the point made by my noble friend Lady Buscombe about lists set out in statute. If I remember rightly, the Equality Act was part of a wash-up at the end of that Parliament, and whether Parliament debated that Bill as thoroughly as it is debating this one is a moot point.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
The noble Lord made that point before, and I was going to pick him up on it. It really is not right to classify our legislation by whether it came through in a short or long period. We are spending an awfully long time on this but that is not going to make it any better. I was involved in the Equality Act, and I have the scars on my back to prove it. It is jolly good legislation and has stood the test of time. I do not think the point is answered properly by simply saying that this is a better way of doing it. The Minister said that Clause 12(11) was about abuse targets, but Clause 12(12) is about “hatred against people” and Clause 12(13) is a series of explanatory points. These provisions are all grist to the lawyers. They are not trying to clarify the way we operate this legislation, in my view, to the best benefit of those affected by it.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The content which we have added to Clause 12 is a targeted approach. It reflects input from a wide range of interested parties, with whom we have discussed this, on the areas of content that users are most concerned about. The other protected characteristics that do not appear are, for instance, somebody’s marriage or civil partnership status or whether they are pregnant. We have focused on the areas where there is the greatest need for users to be offered the choice about reducing their exposure to types of content because of the abuse they may get from it. This recognises the importance of clear, enforceable and technically feasible duties. As I said a moment ago in relation to the point made by my noble friend Lady Buscombe, we will keep it under review but it is right that these provisions be debated at length—greater length than I think the Equality Bill was, but that was long before my time in your Lordships’ House, so I defer to the noble Lord’s experience and I am grateful that we are debating them thoroughly today.
I will move now, if I may, to discuss Amendments 43 and 283ZA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. Amendment 43 aims to ensure that the user empowerment content features do not capture legitimate debate and discussion, specifically relating to the characteristics set out in subsections (11) and (12). Similarly, her Amendment 283ZA aims to ensure that category 1 services apply the features to content only when they have reasonable grounds to infer that it is user empowerment content.
With regard to both amendments, I can reassure the noble Baroness that upholding users’ rights to free expression is an integral principle of the Bill and it has been accounted for in drafting these duties. We have taken steps to ensure that legitimate online discussion or criticism will not be affected, and that companies make an appropriate judgment on the nature of the content in question. We have done this by setting high thresholds for inclusion in the content categories and through further clarification in the Bill’s Explanatory Notes, which I know she has consulted as well. However, the definition here deliberately sets a high threshold. By targeting only abuse and incitement to hatred, it will avoid capturing content which is merely challenging or robust discussion on controversial topics. Further clarity on definitions will be provided by Ofcom through regulatory guidance, on which it will be required to consult. That will sit alongside Ofcom’s code of practice, which will set out the steps companies can take to fulfil their duties.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I appreciate the Minister’s comments but, as I have tried to indicate, incitement to hatred and abuse, despite people thinking they know what those words mean, is causing huge difficulty legally and in institutions throughout the land. Ofcom will have its work cut out, but it was entirely for that reason that I tabled this amendment. There needs to be an even higher threshold, and this needs to be carefully thought through.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
But as I think the noble Baroness understands from that reference, this is a definition already in statute, and with which Parliament and the courts are already engaged.
The Bill’s overarching freedom of expression duties also apply to Clause 12. Subsections (4) to (7) of Clause 18 stipulate that category 1 service providers are required to assess the impact on free expression from their safety policies, including the user empowerment features. This is in addition to the duties in Clause 18(2), which requires all user-to-user services to have particular regard to the importance of protecting freedom of expression when complying with their duties. The noble Baroness’s Amendment 283ZA would require category 1 providers to make judgments on user empowerment content to a similar standard required for illegal content. That would be disproportionate. Clause 170 already specifies how providers must make judgments about whether content is of a particular kind, and therefore in scope of the user empowerment duties. This includes making their judgment based on “all relevant information”. As such, the Bill already ensures that the user empowerment content features will be applied in a proportionate way that will not undermine free speech or hinder legitimate debate online.
Amendment 45, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, would require the Secretary of State to lay a Statement before Parliament outlining whether any of the user empowerment duties should be applied to children. I recognise the significant interest that noble Lords have in applying the Clause 12 duties to children. The Bill already places comprehensive requirements on Part 3 services which children are likely to access. This includes undertaking regular risk assessments of such services, protecting children from harmful content and activity, and putting in place age-appropriate protections. If there is a risk that children will encounter harm, such as self-harm content or through unknown or unverified users contacting them, service providers will need to put in place age- appropriate safety measures. Applying the user empowerment duties for child users runs counter to the Bill’s child safety objectives and may weaken the protections for children—for instance, by giving children an option to see content which is harmful to them or to engage with unknown, unverified users. While we recognise the concerns in this area, for the reasons I have set out, the Government do not agree with the need for this amendment.
I will resist the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, to talk about bots because I look forward to returning to that in discussing the amendments on future-proofing. With that, I invite noble Lords—
Baroness Kidron (CB)
I noted the points made about the way information is pushed and, in particular, the speech of the right reverend Prelate. Nothing in the Government’s response has really dealt with that concern. Can the Minister say a few words about not the content but the way in which users are enveloped? On the idea that companies always act because they have a commercial imperative not to expose users to harmful material, actually, they have a commercial imperative to spread material and engage users. It is well recorded that a lot of that is in fact harmful material. Can the Minister speak a little more about the features rather than the content?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
We will discuss this when it comes to the definition of content in the Bill, which covers features. I was struck by the speech by the right reverend Prelate about the difference between what people encounter online, and the analogy used by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about a bookshop. Social media is of a different scale and has different features which make that analogy not a clean or easy one. We will debate in other groups the accumulated threat of features such as algorithms, if the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, will allow me to go into greater detail then, but I certainly take the points made by both the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in their contributions.
Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend very much indeed, and thank all noble Lords who have taken part. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, this has been an important debate—they are all important, of course—but I think this has really got to the heart of parts of the Bill, parts of why it has been proposed in the first place, and some choices the Government made in their drafting and the changes they have made to the Bill. The right reverend Prelate reminded us, as Bishops always do, of the bigger picture, and he was quite right to do so. There is no equality of arms, as he put it, between most of us as internet users and these enormous companies that are changing, and have changed, our society. My noble friend was right—and I was going to pick up on it too—that the bookshop example given by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is, I am afraid, totally misguided. I love bookshops; the point is that I can choose to walk into one or not. If I do not walk into a bookshop, I do not see the books promoting some of the content we have discussed today. If they spill out on to the street where I trip over them, I cannot ignore them. This would be even harder if I were a vulnerable person, as we are going to discuss.
Noble Lords said that this is not a debate about content or freedom of expression, but that it is about features; I think that is right. However, it is a debate about choice, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said. I am grateful to each of those noble Lords who supported my amendments; we have had a good debate on both sets of amendments, which are similar. But as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, said, some of the content we are discussing, particularly in subsection (10), relating to suicide, pro-self-harm and pro-anorexia content, has literal life or death repercussions. To those noble Lords, and those outside this House, who seem to think we should not worry and should allow a total free-for-all, I say that we are doing so, in that the Government, in choosing not to adopt such amendments, are making an active choice. I am afraid the Government are condoning the serving up of insidious, deliberately harmful and deliberately dangerous content to our society, to younger people and vulnerable adults. The Minister and the Government would be better off if they said, “That is the choice that we have made”. I find it a really troubling choice because, as many noble Lords will know, I was involved in this Bill a number of years ago—there has been a certain turnover of Culture Secretaries in the last couple of years, and I was one of them. I find the Government’s choice troubling, but it has been made. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, we are treating children differently from how we are treating adults. As drafted, there is a cliff edge at the age of 18. As a society, we should say that there are vulnerabilities among adults, as we do in many walks of life; and exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, so powerfully said, there are times when we as a House, as a Parliament, as a society and as a state, should say we want to protect people. There is an offer here in both sets of amendments—I am not precious about which ones we choose—to have that protection.
I will of course withdraw the amendment today, because that is the convention of the House, but I ask my noble friend to reflect on the strength of feeling expressed by the House on this today; I think the Whip on the Bench will report as well. I am certain we will return to this on Report, probably with a unified set of amendments. In the algorithmic debate we will return to, the Government will have to explain, in words of one syllable, to those outside this House who worry about the vulnerable they work with or look after, about the choice that the Government have made in not offering protections when they could have done, in relation to these enormously powerful platforms and the insidious content they serve up repeatedly.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
I advise the Committee that if Amendment 38 is agreed to, I shall not be able to call Amendment 38A by reason of pre-emption.
Amendment 38
Lord Moylan
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, along with the other amendment to Clause 12 in the name of Lord Moylan, removes requirements on sites to display, on demand, only the parts of a conversation (or in the case of collaboratively-edited content, only the parts of a paragraph, sentence or article) that were written by “verified” users, and to prevent other users from amending (e.g. improving), or otherwise interacting with, such contributions.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I am going to endeavour to be relatively brief. I rise to move Amendment 38 and to speak to Amendments 39, 139 and 140 in this group, which are in my name. All are supported by my noble friend Lord Vaizey of Didcot, to whom I am grateful.
Amendments 38 and 39 relate to Clause 12. They remove subsections (6) and (7) from the Bill; that is, the duty to filter out non-verified users. Noble Lords will understand that this is different from the debate we have just had, which was about content. This is about users and verification of the users, rather than the harm or otherwise of the content. I am sure I did not need to say that, but perhaps it helps to clarify my own thinking to do so. Amendments 139 and 140 are essentially consequential but make it clear that my amendments do not prohibit category 1 services from offering this facility. They make it a choice, not a duty.
I want to make one point only in relation to these amendments. It has been well said elsewhere that this is a Twitter-shaped Bill, but it is trying to apply itself to a much broader part of the internet than Twitter, or things like it. In particular, community-led services like Wikipedia, to which I have made reference before, operate on a totally different basis. The Bill seeks to create a facility whereby members of the public like you and me can, first, say that we want the provider to offer a facility for verifying those who might use their service, and secondly, for us, as members of the public, to be able to say we want to see material from only those verified accounts. However, the contributors to Wikipedia are not verified, because Wikipedia has no system to verify them, and therefore it would be impossible for Wikipedia, as a category 1 service, to be able to comply with this condition on its current model, which is a non-commercial, non-profit one, as noble Lords know from previous comments. It would not be able to operate this clause; it would have to say that either it is going to require every contributing editor to Wikipedia to be verified first in order to do so, which would be extremely onerous; or it would have to make it optional, which would be difficult, but lead to the bizarre conclusion that you could open an article on Wikipedia and find that some of its words or sentences were blocked, and you could not read them because those amendments to the article had been made by someone who had not been verified. Of course, putting a system in place to allow that absurd outcome would itself be an impossible burden on Wikipedia.
My complaint—as always, in a sense—about the Bill is that it misfires. Every time you touch it, it misfires in some way because it has not been properly thought through. It is perhaps trying to do too much across too broad a front, when it is clear that the concern of the Committee is much narrower than trying to bowdlerize Wikipedia articles. That is not the objective of anybody here, but it is what the Bill is tending to do.
I will conclude by saying—I invite my noble friend to comment on this if he wishes; I think he will have to comment on it at some stage—that in reply to an earlier Committee debate, I heard him say somewhat tentatively that he did not think that Wikipedia would qualify as a category 1 service. I am not an advocate for Wikipedia; I am just a user. But we need to know what the Government’s view is on the question of Wikipedia and services like it. Wikipedia is the only community-led service, I think, of such a scale that it would potentially qualify as category 1 because of its size and reach.
If the Minister’s view is that Wikipedia would not qualify as a category 1 service—in which case, my amendments are irrelevant because it would not be caught by this clause—then he needs to say so. More than that, he needs to say on what basis it would not qualify as a category 1 service. Would it be on the face of the Bill? If not, would it be in the directions given by the Secretary of State to the regulator? Would it be a question of the regulator deciding whether it was a category 1 service? Obviously, if you are trying to run an operation such as Wikipedia with a future, you need to know which of those things it is. Do you have legal security against being determined as a category 1 provider or is it merely at the whim—that is not the right word; the decision—of the regulator in circumstances that may legitimately change? The regulator may have a good or bad reason for changing that determination later. You cannot run a business not knowing these things.
I put it to noble Lords that this clause needs very careful thinking through. If it is to apply to community-led services such as Wikipedia, it is an absurdity. If it is not to apply to them because what I think I heard my noble friend say pertains and they are not, in his view, a category 1 service, why are they not a category 1 service? What security do they have in knowing either way? I beg to move.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 106 in my name and the names of my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham. This is one of five amendments focused on the need to address the issue of activist-motivated online bullying and harassment and thereby better safeguard the mental health and general well-being of potential victims.
Schedule 4, which defines Ofcom’s objectives in setting out codes of practice for regulated user-to-user services, should be extended to require the regulator to consider the protection of individuals from communications offences committed by anonymous users. The Government clearly recognise that there is a threat of abuse from anonymous accounts and have taken steps in the Bill to address that, but we are concerned that their approach is insufficient and may be counterproductive.
I will explain. The Government’s approach is to require large social media platforms to make provision for users to have their identity verified, and to have the option of turning off the ability to see content shared by accounts whose owners have not done this. However, all this would mean is that people could not see abuse being levelled at them. It would not stop the abuse happening. Crucially, it would not stop other people seeing it, or the damage to his or her reputation or business that the victim may suffer as a result. If I am a victim of online bullying and harassment, I do not want to see it, but I do not want it to be happening at all. The only means I have of stopping it is to report it to the platform and then hope that it takes the right action. Worse still, if I have turned off the ability to see content posted by unverified—that is, anonymous—accounts, I will not be able to complain to the platform as I will not have seen it. It is only when my business goes bust or I am shunned in the street that I realise that something is wrong.
The approach of the Bill seems to be that, for the innocent victim—who may, for example, breed livestock for consumption—it is up that breeder to be proactive to correct harm already done by someone who does not approve of eating meat. This is making a nonsense of the law. This is not how we make laws in this country —until now, it seems. Practically speaking, the worst that is likely to happen is that the platform might ban their account. However, if their victims have had no opportunity to read the abuse or report it, even that fairly low-impact sanction could not be levelled against them. In short, the Bill’s current approach, I am sorry to say, would increase the sense of impunity, not lessen it.
One could argue that, if a potential abuser believes that their victim will not read their abuse, they will not bother issuing it. Unfortunately, this misunderstands the psyche of the online troll. Many of them are content to howl into the void, satisfied that other people who have not turned on the option to filter out content from unverified accounts will still be able to read it. The troll’s objective of harming the victim may be partially fulfilled as a result.
There is also the question of how much uptake there will be of the option to verify one’s identity, and numerous questions about the factors that this will depend on. Will it be attractive? Will there be a cost? How quick and efficient will the process be? Will platforms have the capacity to implement it at scale? Will it have to be done separately for every platform?
If uptake of verification is low, most people simply will not use the option to filter content of unverified accounts, even if it means that they remain more susceptible to abuse, since they would be cutting themselves off from most of their users. Clearly, that is not an option for anyone using social media for any promotional purpose. Even those who use it for purely social reasons will find that they have friends who do not want to be verified. Fundamentally, people use social media because other people use it. Carving oneself off from most of them defeats the purpose of the exercise.
It is not clear what specific measures the Bill could take to address the issue. Conceivably, it could simply ban online platforms from maintaining user accounts whose owners have not had their identities verified. However, this would be truly draconian and most likely lead to major platforms exiting the UK market, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has rightly argued in respect of other possible measures. It would also be unenforceable, since users could simply turn on a VPN, pretend to be from some other country where the rules do not apply and register an account as though they were in that country.
There are numerous underlying issues that the Bill recognises as problems but does not attempt to prescribe solutions for. Its general approach is to delegate responsibility to Ofcom to frame its codes of practice for operators to follow in order to effectively tackle these problems. Specifically, it sets out a list of objectives that Ofcom, in drawing up its codes of practice, will be expected to meet. The protection of users from abuse, specifically by unverified or anonymous users, would seem to be an ideal candidate for inclusion in this list of amendments. If required to do so, Ofcom could study the issue closely and develop more effective solutions over time.
I was pleased to see, in last week’s Telegraph, an article that gave an all too common example of where the livelihood of a chef running a pub in Cornwall has suffered what amounts to vicious abuse online from a vegan who obviously does not approve of the menu, and who is damaging the business’s reputation and putting the chef’s livelihood at risk. This is just one tiny example, if I can put it that way, of the many thousands that are happening all the time. Some 584 readers left comments, and just about everyone wrote in support of the need to do something to support that chef and tackle this vicious abuse.
I return to a point I made in a previous debate: livelihoods, which we are deeply concerned about, are at stake here. I am talking not about big business but about individuals and small and family businesses that are suffering—beyond abuse—loss of livelihood, financial harm and/or reputational damage to business, and the knock-on effects of that.
Recovering Access to Primary Care
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
My Lords, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place:
“Madam Deputy Speaker, with permission, I would like to make a Statement on the primary care recovery plan. For most of us, general practice is our front-door to the NHS. In the last six months, over half the UK population has used GP services, and GPs in England carry out around 1 million appointments every single day. They are doing more than ever. General practice is delivering 10% more appointments a month than before the pandemic; the equivalent of the average GP surgery sees an additional 20 patients every working day. There are more staff than ever, with numbers up by a quarter since 2019, and we are on track to deliver our manifesto target, with an additional 25,000 staff already recruited into primary care. We are investing more than ever, too, with the most recent figures showing that funding was around a fifth higher than five years before, even once inflation is taken into account.
But we know that there is a great deal still to do. Covid-19 presented many challenges across the health service, leaving us with large numbers of people on NHS waiting lists, which need to be tackled. In general practice, patient contacts with GPs have increased between 20% and 40% since the pandemic. As well as recovering from the pandemic, we face longer-term challenges, too. Since 2010, the number of people aged 70 and above has increased by a third, and this group attends five times more GP appointments than young people. Not only that, but advances in technology and treatments mean that people understandably expect more from primary care systems.
Today I can announce our primary care recovery plan, and I pay tribute to my honourable friend the Member for Harborough for this plan. I have deposited copies of the plan in the Libraries of both Houses. Our plan will enable us to better recover from the pandemic, to cut NHS waiting lists and to make the most of the opportunities ahead by focusing on three key areas: first, tackling the 8 am rush by giving GPs new digital tools; secondly, freeing up GP appointments by funding pharmacists to do more, with a Pharmacy First approach; and, thirdly, providing more GPs’ staff and more appointments. NHS England and my department have committed to make over £1.2 billion of funding available to support the plan, in addition to the significant real-terms increases in spending on general practice in recent years. Taken together, our plan will make it easier for people to get the help they need.
The plan builds on lots of other important work. Last year, we launched the elective recovery plan, which is making big strides to reduce the backlog brought by Covid-19. We eliminated nearly all wait lists over two years by last July, and 18-month waits have now decreased by over 90% since their peak in September 2021. By contrast, in the NHS in Labour-run Wales, people are twice as likely to be waiting for treatment than in England. They still have over 41,000 people waiting over two years and nearly 80,000 waiting over 18 months.
In addition, this January, I came before the House to launch our urgent and emergency care plan, which is focused on how to better manage pressures in emergency departments, with funding to support discharge to improve patient flow in hospitals. Today’s plan is the next important piece of work.
Turning to the detail of the plan, our first aim is to tackle the 8 am rush. We will do this by providing GPs with new and better technology, moving us from an analogue approach to ways of working in the digital age. An average-sized GP practice will get 100 calls in the first hour of a Monday morning, but no team of receptionists, no matter how hard-working, can handle such demand. About half of GPs are still on old analogue phones, meaning that when things get busy, people get engaged tones. We are changing this by investing in modern phone systems for all GPs, including features such as call-back options, and by improving the digital front-door for even more patients. In the GP practices that have already adopted those systems, there has been a 30% improvement in patient feedback on their ability to access the appointments they need. This also reflects the fact that online requests can help find the right person within the practice, such as being directed to a pharmacist for a medicine prescription review or to a physio for back pain.
In doing so, we will make the most of the 25,000 more staff we now have in primary care. Today’s plans fund practices without this technology to adopt it, while also providing them with staff cover to help them manage a smooth transition into this technology. Indeed, many small GP practices find it hardest to fund new technology, or to manage the disruption that comes with transitioning to new ways of working, so we are funding locum cover alongside the tech itself. Notwithstanding that, people will always be able to walk in or ring if they prefer; if someone wants to ring up and see someone face to face, these investments will make that easier, too.
We also want to make sure that patients know how their request is going to be handled on the same day that they make contact. Clinically urgent issues will be assessed on the same day, or the next day if raised in the afternoon. If the issue is not urgent, an appointment will be scheduled within two weeks, but, crucially, people will not be asked to call back tomorrow. Instead, they will get their appointments booked on the same day or be signposted to other services.
The second area of this plan is Pharmacy First. As well as giving GPs new technology, I know that we need to take pressure off GPs where possible by making better use of the skills of all clinicians working in primary care. We saw the incredible role that pharmacists played during the pandemic—their capacity to innovate and deliver for the communities that they served, freeing up GP appointments in doing so—so the second part of our plan is to introduce a new NHS service, Pharmacy First, on which we are already consulting with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee.
Some 80% of people live within a 20-minute walk of a pharmacy, so making it easier for pharmacists to take referrals can have a huge impact. Referrals might be from GPs, NHS 111 or, from next week, urgent and emergency care settings. Community pharmacists already take referrals for a range of minor conditions, such as diarrhoea, vomiting and conjunctivitis, but with our Pharmacy First approach we can go further still. We will invest up to £645 million over the next two years so that pharmacists can supply prescription-only medicines for common conditions, such as ear pain, UTIs and sore throats, without requiring a prescription from a GP.
One of the most significant shifts we are making is in oral contraception. Pharmacists can already manage the supply of contraception prescribed elsewhere; from later this year, they will also be able to start women on courses of oral contraception. This is another way in which we aim to reduce the barriers to women accessing contraception, in light of our women’s health strategy. Pharmacists will also be able to do more blood pressure checks, which is one of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Not only will those kinds of steps make it easier for people to get the care they need; we expect that they will release up to 10 million appointments a year by 2024-25.
The third part of our plan is about providing more staff and more appointments. We are making huge investments in our primary care workforce, and are on track to meet the manifesto commitment of 26,000 more primary care staff by next March, meaning that we have more pharmacists, physios and paramedics delivering appointments in primary care than ever before. In 2021, we hit our target of 4,000 people accepting GP training places, and our upcoming NHS workforce plan will set out how we will further expand GP training. We are also helping to retain senior GPs by reforming pension rules, lifting 9,000 GPs out of annual tax changes. These are the pension reforms that the British Medical Association welcomed, describing them as ‘significant’ and ‘decisive’ changes and citing them as ‘transformative for the NHS’.
As well as freeing up more staff time, our plan cuts bureaucracy, too, so that GPs spend less time on paperwork and more time caring for patients. We will remove unnecessary targets, improve communication between GPs and hospitals, and reduce the amount of non-GP work that GPs are being asked to do. For example, patients are often discharged from hospital without fit notes, meaning that they then have to go to their GP to get one. By the end of this year, NHS secondary care services, which understand those patient conditions better, will be able to issue fit notes, and we have streamlined the number of targets on primary care networks from 36 down to just five. Taken together, this work will free up around £37,000 per practice.
Today’s primary care recovery plan funds and empowers our GPs and pharmacists to do more, so that we can prevent ill health, keep cutting NHS waiting lists and improve that vital front door to the NHS for many millions of people. I commend this Statement to the House.”
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for reading out the Statement. No one can be in any doubt that patient access to primary care needs a great deal of recovering from the dire situation patients across the country find themselves in today. Millions of patients wait more than a month to see a GP—if they can get an appointment at all. Some 65% of the public think that access to GP services is getting worse, and over 40% report that they have to wait too long to see a GP. The 9 am rush and scramble to get an appointment, or even a response, is the reality for thousands of patients each day. Often, they are waiting in pain and discomfort, unable to go about their daily normal lives. While they wait, an illness goes undiagnosed and untreated, potentially getting ever more serious.
In today’s Statement the Government once again recognise the major role community pharmacies can play in relieving the pressure on GP appointments and primary care. As we have made clear, we fully support and welcome this extended role, including allowing pharmacies to provide prescriptions and routine health checks, and opening up more referral routes to NHS specialists, such as physios for back pain. However, only yesterday in the national media we heard that 670 community pharmacies have closed and the number of pharmacies across England is now the lowest since 2015, and about the impact caused by rising costs, major staff shortages and the 30% cut in government funding to date—all despite growing demand for services. The industry estimates a £1.1 billion funding shortfall each year, and that last year was the worst ever. Does the Minister acknowledge that, for many, today’s plan is too little too late when it comes to fixing the crisis in primary care?
The independent think tank the Health Foundation sums up the Government’s overall plan, saying that it
“falls well short of addressing the fundamental issues”
facing general practice. Of course, the key reason demand for GP services is so high is the sheer number of people on NHS waiting lists. The president of the Royal College of General Practitioners said recently:
“Patients are developing cancers and enduring so much pain that they cannot climb stairs”.
Do the Government acknowledge that, unless they urgently get a grip on waiting lists, the crisis in general practice will only deepen?
More phone lines and better mood music will not fix the fundamental issue: the shortage of GPs. Their numbers have been cut by 2,000 since 2015, and now the Government have abandoned their own target of 6,000 extra GPs by next year. The proposal to ease the current burden on hard-pressed GP reception staff with a £240 million investment in phone and call systems technology over the coming years is welcome, but does the Minister really think that this is a proportionate or urgent enough response to the scale of the crisis? Is the money for the new care navigator staff included in this funding? What role will these new staff play in GP surgeries? When will we have a detailed breakdown of how the overall funding will be spent, and when it will be allocated and delivered?
Even the Government’s own Benches in this House have accused them of being in total denial about the crisis facing community pharmacies. Much now needs to be discussed by the PSNC, the Department of Health and NHS England regarding the promised funding in the recovery plan, and to try to address the crisis; I hope the Minister will keep us as up to date as possible. Can he provide more detail on how the proposed new services for the seven common conditions and oral contraception are envisaged to operate and interface with GP and other primary care services?
Finally, we come back to the question of the all-important workforce plan—what else? We heard from the Minister in Questions today that he now thinks that spring runs to the end of June. On the radio today, the Commons Minister promised that we would have it in a couple of months. As with every other health and social care service and profession we speak about in this House, workforce is core. Pharmacy locum costs have increased by 80% in the past year alone. So I have two simple questions: why is the promised, fully costed workforce plan taking so long, and when will it finally be published?
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I support the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, on the Statement. We on these Benches welcome the aspirational nature of what the Government are proposing. During the Covid pandemic, we all learned that community pharmacists play an absolutely key role in supporting the health system. In my personal experience of securing additional injections, I was very impressed by how well the whole NHS system worked in delivering the inoculation service through community pharmacies. One of the good things about it is that you can book a slot, in the same way you book a slot with a GP. However, for this to succeed—and to free up 30,000 GP slots, as the Government intend—booking an appointment with a pharmacist needs to be just as easy. We then need to be very clear about what pharmacists will do, and what GPs will no longer have a contractual obligation to do.
On the workforce shortages that have been referred to, it would help if the Minister could explain whether the manifesto commitment to deliver 26,000 more primary care staff by next March is deliverable. It is difficult to see how the Government will do that unless more money is made available, so I seek the Minister’s confirmation that more resource will be delivered on the back of this initiative to ensure that it happens.
I will ask the Minister three further questions. First, were patients of different backgrounds, genders and geographies involved in drawing up the plan, and can he outline the patient involvement? Secondly, is there sufficient qualified staff of all professions to deliver the multidisciplinary plan? Finally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, asked, when does the Minister does expect the new plan to be up and running?
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their comments and appreciate the general welcome for the tenets of the plan from all sides. I want to say that, rather than “too little, too late”, this is actually a plan that bolsters a service that is already on target for an increase of 50 million appointments from 2019—a service in which we are seeing a 10% increase per month versus pre-pandemic levels. I think that, on anyone’s reckoning, that is a pretty impressive achievement. The Pharmacy First plan that we talk about will free up another 10 million appointments a year in addition to that. Also, the use of digital technology will make it easier to get appointments and ensure that those who need them most can get them. It will ease the 8 am frustrations that we are all too aware of.
Addressing the comments on the pharmacy closures that have happened, this can only help pharmacists by increasing the income-generating services available to them and increasing the footfall into those pharmacies. This can only improve their income and so their overall viability. So I hope we will see, from all of this, an increase in the number of community pharmacies. To answer the point, we will be setting up booking systems so that you can digitally book your pharmacy appointment. Equally vital will be the use of the NHS app and other technologies, such as 111, to navigate through services, so you know when you should be booking an appointment with a doctor and when you should be booking it with a pharmacy. The use of technology will be a vital element in all that.
On the workforce, I absolutely acknowledge, as I think we all do, the importance of making sure we have the right workforce in place. That is why I think we are all pleased with and all supportive of the pension changes that will increase and retain the numbers of people. I am afraid I cannot give any more news on the date of the workforce announcement, but I can say that, as mentioned before, substantial work is going on in this place. Yes, we are committed to the increase of 26,000 staff, and this whole package has £1.2 billion of funding behind it, of which £645 million goes into the community Pharmacy First plan, because a vital part of all this, as noble Lords have said, is making sure that we have we have the qualified staff in place to do it.
So, I think we have a good plan here and it is probably best to hear what the industry has said. We have seen a welcome from across the board.
“This is the most significant investment in community pharmacy in well over a decade”
came from the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee. The Boots CEO said:
“We are really pleased … Our Boots pharmacy teams sit at the heart of communities, offering easy to access care and expert advice; it is great news that they’ll be able use their clinical expertise more widely to help patients”.
I really see this as a transformational step forward, united with the digital technology which will make huge differences. With that, I commend a plan that will make a real difference to patients and the services they receive from GPs in the community.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, I commend this plan most warmly. It has long been said that family doctors are the jewel in the NHS crown, but of course there has been a total transformation in the primary care team: it is not simply family doctors but a much more complex team, and the frustration so many of them feel is that they work to the minimum of their ability rather than the maximum. As I understand this, it will enable people to work to the maximum of their skills and use their training to extremely good effect.
The other great difficulty is that patients want to be treated like partners—they want information, they want contact—so opening up the opportunity to use pharmacies far more is going to be extraordinarily important. Will my noble friend say a little more about the contribution of the NHS app? Obviously, it will take time for people to be really comfortable with it, but it seems to me that this could be a transformational component in releasing family services and making them more available.
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank my noble friend for her comments and completely agree that this plan is all about making sure that we are using our most skilled practitioners in the most effective way. We want to make sure that those people who really need to see a doctor get to see one when they need to, but that patients in need of other treatments that can be delivered by a community pharmacist, a nurse or some other medic, such as a physio, are seen by the right people. Fundamental to the navigation of all that is the use of technology and the NHS app, as my noble friend mentioned.
What I see is the app really helping inform people—giving them their patient records so they can do their own research and understand and take ownership of their own health. We all know that, just as we have seen in the space of banking and other areas, giving people ownership, so they can take control of their health, is fundamental. Once they are armed with that information, they can be helped to navigate to the point of most use. That is where I see fundamental change: it is an area where we will see such change in the way we all address our NHS services and look after our own health. I truly believe that it will be one of the most fundamental changes we will ever see in this space.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, there is much in the Statement that is welcome, but I know from my own time, many years ago, as a very junior Minister in the Department of Health, but also more recently, as Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, with the role we play in the training of pharmacists, that small, independent community pharmacists have a real challenge in finding the space and capacity to provide advice and assistance to clients in conditions of sufficient privacy. What proposals will the Government come forward with, and with what funding, to assist the small independents—we are not talking about Boots and the big guys and gals but about the small independent pharmacists? What capital assistance is going to be provided to the small community pharmacists on our high streets who can potentially play such an important role, to enable them to structure their premises in a way that enables them to give the information that the Government are suggesting they should give in preference to GPs?
Lord Markham (Con)
The noble Lord makes a very good point. It is really making sure that the independents can play a very important role. It is, where necessary, making sure that whole-estate planning takes that into account. A lot of the work I have been doing with Minister O’Brien—he heads the GP space while I look after the capital space—is looking at how we can create the sorts of models where you can put pharmacies alongside GP surgeries, in many cases, and make sure that that capability is there. I freely admit that capital is at a premium within the system, so we have to be creative in the ways we use it, but the noble Lord is absolutely correct that this is a key way to make sure we have a network of independent pharmacies that can really serve their local community.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement and put on record my gratitude to him and other junior Ministers who played a very important part in making sure that this initiative has been brought to fruition. I pay tribute to the local surgery in my own community in Norfolk, the Great Massingham and Docking surgery, where the receptionists are invariably incredibly patient and polite to everyone and the doctors are quite outstanding—they have a lot of very satisfied people in the community because of their attitude to local people who may have ailments. But, obviously, they are under pressure, and that is why I welcome the Government’s announcement on Pharmacy First and on recruiting new GPs. Can my noble friend tell the House whether the Government’s commitment to recruit an extra 6,000 GPs by the end of this Parliament is on course? Has the number of GPs in training increased? Can he just clarify those two points?
As the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, pointed out a moment ago, pharmacies are often at the centre of communities. Apart from anything else, pharmacists often have a really strong relationship with patients because they see them on a regular basis, understand their needs and see them consistently—which, unfortunately, is not always the case with doctors. That is why I support the Pharmacy First initiative, which could be a lifeline to a lot of pharmacies that are under pressure. They will be able to prescribe many more medicines, but can my noble friend tell the House whether they will be able to prescribe antibiotics for some of the conditions he mentioned? If that is the case, that would be a very positive extension to the services that they provide.
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank my noble friend. As evidence of the good work that receptionists do under trying circumstances, in a recent survey 91% of patients said that their needs were met. On the target of having 6,000 extra GPs by the end of this Parliament, currently we have increased the number by 2,000 but, in all honesty, I think the feeling is that we will struggle to meet the 6,000 target—I believe that is something that Sajid Javid, as Minister, said before. But there is a 50% increase in the number of graduate trainees since 2014, with more than 4,000 currently in training. So we have made steps in the right direction, albeit not as far as we would hope.
On the supply of antibiotics, the idea behind this is that there will be certain agreed treatments that the pharmacist will be able to give. Clearly, UTIs is an example where you often need antibiotics to clear those up, and in those circumstances there will be agreed treatments that pharmacists can give: provided that, in the pharmacist’s judgment, the symptoms warrant it, the pharmacist will be able to enable the supply of antibiotics. On all those, this is a very positive way forward.
Lord Mann (Non-Afl)
The Government’s housing policy is to build, or to have built, 300,000 new houses a year. Has that been factored into this announcement? Is it the Government’s view that these new houses are a problem for primary care provision, or can the Minister assure me that the funding formulas are sufficiently robust that new housing is seen as an opportunity for primary care?
Lord Markham (Con)
The noble Lord is quite correct to point out that, where you have a number of new houses in a local community, you need to make sure that there are primary care services to serve them as well. Funnily enough, just today I was having a conversation with Housing Minister Maclean on this very subject, about changing the way that we look at Section 106 payments—or CIL payments, as they are called these days—to make sure that the provision of the primary care estate is one of the key elements that can be funded through that. I know that DLUHC colleagues are very much on board with that, because absolutely fundamental to the point that the noble Lord makes is that we need to make sure that, alongside the new housing, which we all agree is very important, there are sufficient primary care services as well.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement but regret that it concentrates on more GP and other ancillary services to meet rising demand rather than focusing on the causes of that rising demand. A major source of pressure on GPs is due to the complications of diabetes, yet inadequate action is being taken on obesity, often in the face of pressures from the food lobby. Similarly, the Minister talked about the rising number of over-70s—I should declare an interest—yet much of that pressure is due to elderly people failing to get adequate social care and falling back on general practice because they have nowhere else to go. Yet, over the last 13 years, the Conservative Government have absolutely run away from any sort of reform agenda for social care. Will the Minister comment on whether new phones are going to plug even the short-term pressure, and will he tell us what sustained long-term solutions to managing down the demand for GP and other ancillary services his Government are thinking of?
Lord Markham (Con)
First, I completely agree with the noble Baroness’s point that prevention is better than cure—I think we would all subscribe to that—and that is what the Government’s manifesto pledge of five years’ more healthy life is all about. On how the app comes into that, it all comes down to people taking more control of their own health, such as by being able to receive reminders that it is time for their cervical smear or heart MoT, so that they can start to take ownership of their own health. Towards that, the community pharmacists have already provided 1 million blood pressure checks, through which 300,000 people were found to have high blood pressure. That is a prime example of where this expanded network really can get on to the prevention agenda, which we all agree is absolutely key to helping solve the health situation going forward.
Online Safety Bill
Tuesday 9th May 2023
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, before we continue this debate, I want to understand why we have changed the system so that we break part way through a group of amendments. I am sorry, but I think this is very poor. It is definitely a retrograde step. Why are we doing it? I have never experienced this before. I have sat here and waited for the amendment I have just spoken to. We have now had a break; it has broken the momentum of that group. It was even worse last week, because we broke for several days half way through the debate on an amendment. This is unheard of in my memory of 25 years in this House. Can my noble friend the Minister explain who made this decision, and how this has changed?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)
I have not had as long in your Lordships’ House, but this is not unprecedented, in my experience. These decisions are taken by the usual channels; I will certainly feed that back through my noble friend. One of the difficulties, of course, is that because there are no speaking limits on legislation and we do not know how many people want to speak on each amendment, the length of each group can be variable, so I think this is for the easier arrangement of dinner-break business. Also, for the dietary planning of those of us who speak on every group, it is useful to have some certainty, but I do appreciate my noble friend’s point.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
Okay; I thank my noble friend for his response. However, I would just say that we never would have broken like that, before 7.30 pm. I will leave it at that, but I will have a word with the usual channels.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 141 and 303 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. Before I do, I mention in passing how delighted I was to see Amendment 40, which carries the names of the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—may there be many more like that.
I am concerned that without Amendments 141 and 303, the concept of “verified” is not really something that the law can take seriously. I want to ask the Minister two rather technical questions. First, how confident can the Government and Ofcom be that with the current wording, Ofcom could form an assessment of whether Twitter’s current “verified by blue” system satisfies the duty in terms of robustness? If it does not, does Ofcom have the power to send it back to the drawing board? I am sure noble Lords understand why I raise this: we have recently seen “verified by blue” ticks successfully bought by accounts impersonating Martin Lewis, US Senators and Putin propagandists. My concern is that in the absence of a definition of verification in the Bill such as the one proposed in Amendments 141 and 303, where in the current wording does Ofcom have the authority to say that “verified by blue” does not satisfy the user verification duty?
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 141 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Clement-Jones. Once again, I register the support of my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who feels very strongly about this issue.
Of course, there is value in transparency online, but anonymity can be vital for certain groups of people, such as those suffering domestic abuse, those seeking help or advice on matters they wish to remain confidential, or those who face significant levels of hatred or prejudice because of who they are, how they live or what they believe in. Striking the right balance is essential, but it is equally important that everyone who wishes to verify their identity and access the additional protections that this affords can do so easily and effectively, and that this opportunity is open to all.
Clause 57 requires providers of category 1 services to offer users the option to verify their identity, but it is up to providers to decide what form of verification to offer. Under subsection (2) it can be “of any kind”, and it need not require any documentation. Under subsection (3), the terms of service must include a “clear and accessible” explanation of how the process works and what form of verification is available. However, this phrase in itself is open to interpretation: clear and accessible for one group may be unclear and inaccessible to another. Charities including Mencap are concerned that groups, such as people with a learning disability, could be locked out of using these tools.
It is also relevant that people with a learning disability are less likely to own forms of photographic ID such as passports or driving licences. Should a platform require this type of ID, large numbers of people with a learning disability would be denied access. In addition, providing an email or phone number and verifying this through an authentication process could be extremely challenging for those people who do not have the support in place to help them navigate this process. This further disadvantages groups of people who already suffer some of the most extensive restrictions in living their everyday lives.
Clause 58 places a duty on Ofcom to provide guidance to help providers comply with their duty, but this guidance is optional. Amendment 141 aims to strengthen Clause 58 by requiring Ofcom to set baseline principles and standards for the guidance. It would ensure, for example, that the guidance considers accessibility for disabled as well as vulnerable adults and aligns with relevant guidance on related matters such as age verification; it would ensure that verification processes are effective; and it would ensure that the interests of disabled users are covered in Ofcom’s pre-guidance consultation.
Online can be a lifeline for disabled and vulnerable adults, providing access to support, advice and communities of interest, and this is particularly important as services in the real world are diminishing, so we need to ensure that user-verification processes do not act as a further barrier to inclusion for people with protected characteristics, especially those with learning disabilities.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, raised so many of the challenges that people face online, and I am sure that the masses who are watching parliamentlive as we speak, even if they are not in here, will recognise what she was talking about. Certainly, some of the animal rights activists can be a scourge, but I would not want to confine this to them, because I think trashing reputations online and false allegations have become the activists’ chosen weapon these days. One way that I describe cancel culture, as distinct from no-platforming, is that it takes the form of some terrible things being said about people online, a lot of trolling, things going viral and using the online world to lobby employers to get people sacked, and so on. It is a familiar story, and it can be incredibly unpleasant. The noble Baroness and those she described have my sympathy, but I disagree with her remedy.
An interesting thing is that a lot of those activities are not carried out by those who are anonymous. It is striking that a huge number of people with large accounts, well-known public figures with hundreds of thousands of followers—sometimes with more than a million—are prepared to do exactly what I described in plain sight, often to me. I have thought long and hard about this, because I really wanted to use this opportunity to read out a list and name and shame them, but I have decided that, when they go low, I will try to go at least a little higher. But subtweeting and twitchhunts are an issue, and one reason why we think we need an online harms Bill. As I said, I know that sometimes it can feel that if people are anonymous, they will say things that they would not say to your face or if you knew who they were, but I think it is more the distance of being online: even when you know who they are, they will say it to you or about you online, and then when you see them at the drinks reception, they scuttle away.
My main objection, however, to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, and the whole question of anonymity in general is that it treats anonymity as though it is inherently unsafe. There is a worry, more broadly on verification, about creating two tiers of users: those who are willing to be verified and those who are not, and those who are not somehow having a cloud of suspicion over them. There is a danger that undermining online anonymity in the UK could set a terrible precedent, likely to be emulated by authoritarian Governments in other jurisdictions, and that is something we must bear in mind.
On evidence, I was interested in Big Brother Watch’s report on some analysis by the New Statesman, which showed that there is little evidence to suggest that anonymity itself makes online discourse more febrile. It did an assessment involving tweets sent to parliamentarians since January 2021, and said there was
“little discernible difference in the nature or tone of the tweets that MPs received from anonymous or non-anonymous accounts. While 32 per cent of tweets from anonymous accounts were classed as angry according to the metric used by the New Statesman, so too were 30 per cent of tweets from accounts with full names attached.18 Similarly, 5.6 per cent of tweets from anonymous accounts included swear words, only slightly higher than the figure of 5.3 per cent for named accounts.”
It went through various metrics, but it said, “slightly higher, not much of a difference”. That is to be borne in mind: the evidence is not there.
In this whole debate, I have wanted to emphasise freedom as at least equal to, if not of greater value than, the safetyism of this Bill, but in this instance, I will say that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, for some people anonymity is an important safety mechanism. It is a tool in the armoury of those who want to fight the powerful. It can be anyone: for young people experimenting with their sexuality and not out, it gives them the freedom to explore that. It can be, as was mentioned, survivors of sexual violence or domestic abuse. It is certainly crucial to the work of journalists, civil liberties activists and whistleblowers in the UK and around the world. Many of the Iranian women’s accounts are anonymous: they are not using their correct names. The same is true of Hong Kong activists; I could go on.
Anyway, in our concerns about the Bill, compulsory identity verification means being forced to share personal data, so there is a privacy issue for everyone, not just the heroic civil liberties people. In a way, it is your own business why you are anonymous—that is the point I am trying to make.
There are so many toxic issues at the moment that a lot of people cannot just come out. I know I often mention the gender-critical issue, but it is true that in many professions, you cannot give your real name or you will not just be socially ostracised but potentially jeopardise your career. I wrote an article during the 2016-17 days called Meet the Secret Brexiteers. It was true that many teachers and professors I knew who voted to leave had to be anonymous online or they would not have survived the cull.
Finally, I do not think that online anonymity or pseudonymity is a barrier to tracking down and prosecuting those who commit the kind of criminal activity on the internet described, creating some of the issues we are facing. Police reports show that between 2017-18, 96% of attempts by public authorities to identify anonymous users of social media accounts, their email addresses and telephone numbers, resulted in successful identification of the suspect in the investigation; in other words, the police already have a range of intrusive powers to track down individuals, should there be a criminal problem, and the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 allows the police to acquire communications data—for example, email addresses or the location of a device—from which alleged illegal anonymous activity is conducted and use it as evidence in court.
If it is not illegal but just unpleasant, I am afraid that is the world we live in. I would argue that what we require in febrile times such as these is not bans or setting the police on people but to set the example of civil discourse, have more speech and show that free speech is a way of conducting disagreement and argument without trashing reputations.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, what an unusually reticent group we have here for this group of amendments. I had never thought of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, as being like Don Quixote, but she certainly seems to be tilting at windmills tonight.
I go back to the Joint Committee report, because what we said there is relevant. We said:
“Anonymous abuse online is a serious area of concern that the Bill needs to do more to address. The core safety objectives apply to anonymous accounts as much as identifiable ones. At the same time, anonymity and pseudonymity are crucial to online safety for marginalised groups, for whistleblowers, and for victims of domestic abuse and other forms of offline violence. Anonymity and pseudonymity themselves are not the problem and ending them would not be a proportionate response”.
We were very clear; the Government’s response on this was pretty clear too.
We said:
“The problems are a lack of traceability by law enforcement, the frictionless creation and disposal of accounts at scale, a lack of user control over the types of accounts they engage with and a failure of online platforms to deal comprehensively with abuse on their platforms”.
We said there should be:
“A requirement for the largest and highest risk platforms to offer the choice of verified or unverified status and user options on how they interact with accounts in either category”.
Crucially for these amendments, we said:
“We recommend that the Code of Practice also sets out clear minimum standards to ensure identification processes used for verification protect people’s privacy—including from repressive regimes or those that outlaw homosexuality”.
We were very clear about the difference between stripping away anonymity and ensuring that verification was available where the user wanted to engage only with those who had verified themselves. Requiring platforms to allow users—
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I would like to ask him whether, when the Joint Committee was having its deliberations, it ever considered, in addition to people’s feelings and hurt, their livelihoods.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
Of course. I think we looked at it in the round and thought that stripping away anonymity could in many circumstances be detrimental to those, for instance, working in hostile regimes or regimes where human rights were under risk. We considered a whole range of things, and the whole question about whether you should allow anonymity is subject to those kinds of human rights considerations.
I take the noble Baroness’s point about business, but you have to weigh up these issues, and we came around the other side.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
Does the noble Lord not think that many people watching and listening to this will be thinking, “So people in far-off regimes are far more important than I am—I who live, work and strive in this country”? That is an issue that I think was lacking through the whole process and the several years that this Bill has been discussed. Beyond being hurt, people are losing their livelihoods.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
I entirely understand what the noble Baroness is saying, and I know that she feels particularly strongly about these issues given her experiences. The whole Bill is about trying to weigh up different aspects—we are on day 5 now, and this has been very much the tenor of what we are trying to talk about in terms of balance.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
I want to reassure the noble Baroness that we did discuss anonymity in relation to the issues that she has put forward. A company should not be able to use anonymity as an excuse not to deal with the situation, and that is slightly different from simply saying, “We throw our hands up on those issues”.
There was a difference between the fact that companies are using anonymity to say, “We don’t know who it is, and therefore we can’t deal with it”, and the idea that they should take action against people who are abusing the system and the terms of service. It is subtle, but it is very meaningful in relation to what the noble Baroness is suggesting.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
That is a very fair description. We have tried to emphasise throughout the discussion on the Bill that it is about not just content but how the system and algorithms work in terms of amplification. In page 35 of our report, we try to address some of those issues—it is not central to the point about anonymity, but we certainly talked about the way that messages are driven by the algorithm. Obviously, how that operates in practice and how the Bill as drafted operates is what we are kicking the tyres on at the moment, and the noble Baroness is absolutely right to do that.
The Government’s response was reasonably satisfactory, but this is exactly why this group explores the definition of verification and so on, and tries to set standards for verification, because we believe that there is a gap in all this. I understand that this is not central to the noble Baroness’s case, but—believe me—the discussion of anonymity was one of the most difficult issues that we discussed in the Joint Committee, and you have to fall somewhere in that discussion.
Requiring platforms to allow users to see other users’ verification status is a crucial further pillar to user empowerment, and it provides users with a key piece of information about other users. Being able to see whether an account is verified would empower victims of online abuse or threats—I think this partly answers the noble Baroness’s question—to make more informed judgments about the source of the problem, and therefore take more effective steps to protect themselves. Making verification status visible to all users puts more choice in their hands as to how they manage the higher risks associated with non-verified and anonymous accounts, and offers them a lighter-touch alternative to filtering out all non-verified users entirely.
We on these Benches support the amendments that have been put forward. Amendment 141 aims to ensure that a user verification duty delivers in the way that the public and Government hope it will—by giving Ofcom a clear remit to require that the verification systems that platforms are required to develop in response to the duty are sufficiently rigorous and accessible to all users.
I was taken by what the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, particularly the case for Ofcom’s duties as regards those with disabilities. We need Ofcom to be tasked with setting out the principles and minimum standards, because otherwise platforms will try to claim, as verification, systems that do not genuinely verify a user’s identity, are unaffordable to ordinary users or use their data inappropriately.
Likewise, we support Amendment 303, which would introduce a definition of “user identity verification” into the Bill to ensure that we are all on the same page. In Committee in the House of Commons, Ministers suggested that “user identity verification” is an everyday term so does not need a definition. This amendment, which no doubt the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, will speak to in more detail, is bang on point as far as that is concerned. That was not a convincing answer, and that is why this amendment is particularly apt.
I heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, had to say, but in many ways the amendment in the previous group in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, met some of the noble Baroness’s concerns. As regards the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, we are all Wikipedia fans, so we all want to make sure that there is no barrier to Wikipedia operating successfully. I wonder whether perhaps the noble Lord is making quite a lot out of the Wikipedia experience, but I am sure the Minister will enlighten us all and will have a spot-on response for him.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to speak on this group of amendments, and I will particularly address the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Stevenson. To start with the very positive, I am very grateful to the Minister for signing Amendment 40 —as has already been commented, this is hopefully a sign of things to come. My observation is that it is something of a rarity, and I am containing my excitement as it was agreement over one word, “effectively”. Nevertheless, it is very welcome support.
These amendments aim to make it clearer to users whether those whom they interact with are verified or non-verified, with new duties backed up by a set of minimum standards, to be reflected in Ofcom’s future guidance on the user verification duty, with standards covering—among other things—privacy and data protection. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, helpfully referred your Lordships’ House to the report of the Joint Committee and spent some useful time on the challenges over anonymity. As is the case with so many issues on other Bills and particularly on this one, there is a balance to be struck. Given the proliferation of bots and fake profiles, we must contemplate how to give confidence to people that they are interacting with real users.
Amendment 141 tabled by my noble friend Lord Stevenson and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Clement- Jones, requires Ofcom to set a framework of principles and minimum standards for the user verification duty. The user verification duty is one of the most popular changes to be made to the Bill following the pre-legislative scrutiny process and reflects a recommendation of the Joint Committee. Why is it popular? Because the public understand that the current unregulated approach by social media platforms is a major enabler of harmful online behaviour. Anonymous accounts are more likely to engage in abuse or harassment and, for those at the receiving end, threats from anonymous accounts can feel even more frightening, while the chances are lower of any effective enforcement from the police or platforms.
As we know, bad actors use networks of fake accounts to peddle disinformation and divisive conspiracy theories. I am sure that we will come back to this in later groups. This amendment aims to ensure that the user verification duty delivers in the way that the public and the Government hope that it will. It requires that the systems which platforms develop in response to the duty are sufficiently rigorous and accessible to all users.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, talked about affordability, something that I would like to amplify. There will potentially be platforms which try to claim that verification systems somehow genuinely verify a user’s identity when they do not, or they will be unaffordable to ordinary users, as the noble Baroness said, or data will be used inappropriately. This is not theoretical. She referred to the Meta-verified product, which looks like it might be more rigorous, but at a cost of $180 per year per account, which will not be within the grasp of many people. Twitter is now also selling blue ticks of verification for $8, including a sale to those who are scamming, impersonating, and who are propagandists for figures in our world such as Putin. This amendment future-proofs and allows flexibility. It will not tie the hands of either the regulator or the platforms. Therefore, I hope that it can find some favour with the Minister.
In Amendment 303, again tabled by my noble friend Lord Stevenson and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, there is an addition of the definition of “user identity verification”. I agree with the noble Lord about how strange it was that, in Committee in the Commons, Ministers felt that user identity verification was somehow an everyday term which did not need definition. I dispute that. It is no better left to common sense than any other terms that we do have definitions for in Clause 207—for example, “age assurance”, “paid-for advertisement” and “terms of service”. All these get definitions. Surely it is very wise to define user identity verification.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the range of the amendments in this group indicates the importance of the Government’s approach to user verification and non-verified user duties. The way these duties have been designed seeks to strike a careful balance between empowering adults while safeguarding privacy and anonymity.
Amendments 38, 39, 139 and 140 have been tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan. Amendments 38 and 39 seek to remove subsections (6) and (7) of the non-verified users’ duties. These place a duty on category 1 platforms to give adult users the option of preventing non-verified users interacting with their content, reducing the likelihood that a user sees content from non-verified users. I want to be clear that these duties do not require the removal of legal content from a service and do not impinge on free speech.
In addition, there are already existing duties in the Bill to safeguard legitimate online debate. For example, category 1 services will be required to assess the impact on free expression of their safety policies, including the impact of their user empowerment tools. Removing subsections (6) and (7) of Clause 12 would undermine the Bill’s protection for adult users of category 1 services, especially the most vulnerable. It would be entirely at the service provider’s discretion to offer users the ability to minimise their exposure to anonymous and abusive users, sometimes known as trolls. In addition, instead of mandating that users verify their identity, the Bill gives adults the choice. On that basis, I am confident that the Bill already achieves the effect of Amendment 139.
Amendment 140 seeks to reduce the amount of personal data transacted as part of the verification process. Under subsection (3) of Clause 57, however, providers will be required to explain in their terms of service how the verification process works, empowering users to make an informed choice about whether they wish to verify their identity. In addition, the Bill does not alter the UK’s existing data protection laws, which provide people with specific rights and protections in relation to the processing of their personal data. Ofcom’s guidance in this area will reflect existing laws, ensuring that users’ data is protected where personal data is processed. I hope my noble friend will therefore be reassured that these duties reaffirm the concept of choice and uphold the importance of protecting personal data.
While I am speaking to the questions raised by my noble friend, I turn to those he asked about Wikipedia. I have nothing further to add to the comments I made previously, not least that it is impossible to pre-empt the assessments that will be made of which services fall into which category. Of course, assessments will be made at the time, based on what the services do at the time of the assessment, so if he will forgive me, I will not be drawn on particular services.
To speak in more general terms, category 1 services are those with the largest reach and the greatest influence over public discourse. The Bill sets out a clear process for determining category 1 providers, based on thresholds set by the Secretary of State in secondary legislation following advice from Ofcom. That is to ensure that the process is objective and evidence based. To deliver this advice, Ofcom will undertake research into the relationship between how quickly, easily and widely user-generated content is disseminated by that service, the number of users and functionalities it has and other relevant characteristics and factors.
Lord Moylan (Con)
Will my noble friend at least confirm what he said previously: namely, that it is the Government’s view—or at least his view—that Wikipedia will not qualify as a category 1 service? Those were the words I heard him use at the Dispatch Box.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
That is my view, on the current state of play, but I cannot pre-empt an assessment made at a point in the future, particularly if services change. I stand by what I said previously, but I hope my noble friend will understand if I do not elaborate further on this, at the risk of undermining the reassurance I might have given him previously.
Amendments 40, 41, 141 and 303 have been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and, as noble Lords have noted, I have added my name to Amendment 40. I am pleased to say that the Government are content to accept it. The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, should not minimise this, because it involves splitting an infinitive, which I am loath to do. If this is a statement of intent, I have let that one go, in the spirit of consensus. Amendment 40 amends Clause 12(7) to ensure that the tools which will allow adult users to filter out content from non-verified users are effective and I am pleased to add my name to it.
Amendment 41 seeks to make it so that users can see whether another user is verified or not. I am afraid we are not minded to accept it. While I appreciate the intent, forcing users to show whether they are verified or not may have unintended consequences for those who are unable to verify themselves for perfectly legitimate reasons. This risks creating a two-tier system online. Users will still be able to set a preference to reduce their interaction with non-verified users without making this change.
Amendment 141 seeks to prescribe a set of principles and standards in Ofcom’s guidance on user verification. It is, however, important that Ofcom has discretion to determine, in consultation with relevant persons, which principles will have the best outcomes for users, while ensuring compliance with the duties. Further areas of the Bill also address several issues raised in this amendment. For example, all companies in scope will have a specific legal duty to have effective user reporting and redress mechanisms.
Existing laws also ensure that Ofcom’s guidance will reflect high standards. For example, it is a general duty of Ofcom under Section 3 of the Communications Act 2003 to further the interests of consumers, including by promoting competition. This amendment would, in parts, duplicate existing duties and undermine Ofcom’s independence to set standards on areas it deems relevant after consultation with expert groups.
Amendment 303 would add a definition of user identity verification. The definition it proposes would result in users having to display their real name online if they decide to verify themselves. In answer to the noble Baroness’s question, the current requirements do not specify that users must display their real name. The amendment would have potential safety implications for vulnerable users, for example victims and survivors of domestic abuse, whistleblowers and others of whom noble Lords have given examples in their contributions. The proposed definition would also create reliance on official forms of identification. That would be contrary to the existing approach in Clause 57 which specifically sets out that verification need not require such forms of documentation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, talked about paid-for verification schemes. The user identity verification provisions were brought in to ensure that adult users of the largest services can verify their identity if they so wish. These provisions are different from the blue tick schemes and others currently in place, which focus on a user’s status rather than verifying their identity. Clause 57 specifically sets out that providers of category 1 services will be required to offer all adult users the option to verify their identity. Ofcom will provide guidance for user identity verification to assist providers in complying with these duties. In doing so, it will consult groups that represent the interests of vulnerable adult users. In setting out recommendations about user verification, Ofcom must have particular regard to ensuring that providers of category 1 services offer users a form of identity verification that is likely to be available to vulnerable adult users. Ofcom will also be subject to the public sector equality duty, so it will need to take into account the ways in which people with certain characteristics may be affected when it performs this and all its duties under the Bill.
A narrow definition of identity verification could limit the range of measures that service providers might offer their users in the future. Under the current approach, Ofcom will produce and publish guidance on identity verification after consulting those with technical expertise and groups which represent the interests of vulnerable adult users.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. Is the answer to my question that the blue tick and the current Meta system will not be considered as verification under the terms of the Bill? Is that the implication of what he said?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Yes. The blue tick is certainly not identity verification. I will write to confirm on Meta, but they are separate and, as the example of blue ticks and Twitter shows, a changing feast. That is why I am talking in general terms about the approach, so as not to rely too much on examples that are changing even in the course of this Committee.
Government Amendment 43A stands in my name. This clarifies that “non-verified user” refers to users whether they are based in the UK or elsewhere. This ensures that, if a UK user decides he or she no longer wishes to interact with non-verified users, this will apply regardless of where they are based.
Finally, Amendment 106 in the name of my noble friend Lady Buscombe would make an addition to the online safety objectives for regulated user-to-user services. It would amend them to make it clear that one of the Bill’s objectives is to protect people from communications offences committed by anonymous users.
The Bill already imposes duties on services to tackle illegal content. Those duties apply across all areas of a service, including the way it is designed and operated. Platforms will be required to take measures—for instance, changing the design of functionalities, algorithms, and other features such as anonymity—to tackle illegal content.
Ofcom is also required to ensure that user-to-user services are designed and operated to protect people from harm, including with regard to functionalities and other features relating to the operation of their service. This will likely include the use of anonymous accounts to commit offences in the scope of the Bill. My noble friend’s amendment is therefore not needed. I hope she will be satisfied not to press it, along with the other noble Lords who have amendments in this group.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I would like to say that that was a rewarding and fulfilling debate in which everyone heard very much what they wanted to hear from my noble friend the Minister. I am afraid I cannot say that. I think it has been one of the most frustrating debates I have been involved in since I came into your Lordships’ House. However, it gave us an opportunity to admire the loftiness of manner that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, brought to dismissing my concerns about Wikipedia—that I was really just overreading the whole thing and that I should not be too bothered with words as they appear in the Bill because the noble Lord thinks that Wikipedia is rather a good thing and why is it not happy with that as a level of assurance?
I would like to think that the Minister had dealt with the matter in the way that I hoped he would, but I do thin, if I may say so, that it is vaguely irresponsible to come to the Dispatch Box and say, “I don’t think Wikipedia will qualify as a category 1 service”, and then refuse to say whether it will or will not and take refuge in the process the Bill sets up, when at least one Member of the House of Lords, and possibly a second in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, would like to know the answer to the question. I see a Minister from the business department sitting on the Front Bench with my noble friend. This is a bit like throwing a hand grenade into a business headquarters, walking away and saying, “It was nothing to do with me”. You have to imagine what the position is like for the business.
We had a very important amendment from my noble friend Lady Buscombe. I think we all sympathise with the type of abuse that she is talking about—not only its personal effects but its deliberate business effects, the deliberate attempt to destroy businesses. I say only that my reading of her Amendment 106 is that it seeks to impose on Ofcom an objective to prevent harm, essentially, arising from offences under Clauses 160 and 162 of the Bill committed by unverified or anonymous users. Surely what she would want to say is that, irrespective of verification and anonymity, one would want action taken against this sort of deliberate attempt to undermine and destroy businesses. While I have every sympathy with her amendment, I am not entirely sure that it relates to the question of anonymity and verification.
Apart from that, there were in a sense two debates going on in parallel in our deliberations. One was to do with anonymity. On that question, I think the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, put the matter very well: in the end, you have to come down on one side or the other. My personal view, with some reluctance, is that I have come down on the same side as the Government, the noble Lord and others. I think we should not ban anonymity because there are costs and risks to doing so, however satisfying it would be to be able to expose and sue some of the people who say terrible and untrue things about one another on social media.
The more important debate was not about anonymity as such but about verification. We had the following questions, which I am afraid I do not think were satisfactorily answered. What is verification? What does it mean? Can we define what verification is? Is it too expensive? Implicitly, should it be available for free? Is there an obligation for it to be free or do the paid-for services count, and what happens if they are so expensive that one cannot reasonably afford them? Is it real, in the sense that the verification processes devised by the various platforms genuinely provide verification? Various other questions like that came up but I do not think that any of them was answered.
I hate to say this as it sounds a little harsh about a Government whom I so ardently support, but the truth is that the triple shield, also referred to as a three-legged stool in our debate, was hastily cobbled together to make up for the absence of legal but harmful, but it is wonky; it is not working, it is full of holes and it is not fit for purpose. Whatever the Minister says today, there has to be a rethink before he comes back to discuss these matters at the next stage of the Bill. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would bring this subsection into line with subsection (3) by requiring that the systems or processes available to users for the purposes described in subsections (7)(a) and (7)(b) should be effective.
(a) is an individual, whether in the United Kingdom or outside it, and(b) has not verified their identity to the provider of a service;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment makes it clear that the term “non-verified user” in clause 12 (user empowerment duties) refers to individuals and includes users outside the United Kingdom.
“Adult risk assessment duties
(1) This section sets out the duties about risk assessments in respect of adult users which apply in relation to Category 1 services.(2) A duty to carry out a suitable and sufficient adults’ risk assessment.(3) A duty to take appropriate steps to keep an adults’ risk assessment up to date, including when OFCOM make any significant change to a risk profile that relates to services of the kind in question.(4) Before making any significant change to any aspect of a service’s design or operation, a duty to carry out a further suitable and sufficient adults’ risk assessment relating to the impacts of that proposed change.(5) An “adults’ risk assessment” of a service of a particular kind means an assessment of the following matters, taking into account the risk profile that relates to services of that kind—(a) the user base;(b) the level of risk of adults who are users of the service encountering, by means of the service, each kind of content specified in section 12(10) to (12), taking into account (in particular) algorithms used by the service, and how easily, quickly and widely content may be disseminated by means of the service;(c) the level of risk of functionalities of the service, including user empowerment tools, which facilitate the presence, identification, dissemination, and likelihood of users encountering or being alerted to, content specified in section 12(10) to (12);(d) the extent to which user empowerment tools might result in interference with users’ right to freedom of expression within the law (see section 18);(e) how the design and operation of the service (including the business model, governance, use of proactive technology, measures to promote users’ media literacy and safe use of the service, and other systems and processes) may reduce or increase the risks identified.”Member’s explanatory statement
This and other amendments in the name of Baroness Stowell relate to risk assessments for adults in relation to platforms’ new duties to provide user empowerment tools. They would require platforms to provide public risk assessments in their terms of service and be transparent about the effect of user empowerment tools on users’ freedom of expression.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, in introducing this group, I will speak directly to the three amendments in my name—Amendments 46, 47 and 64. I will also make some general remarks about the issue of freedom of speech and of expression, which is the theme of this group. I will come to these in a moment.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, said earlier that I had taken my amendments out of a different group— I hope from my introductory remarks that it will be clear why—but, in doing so, I did not realise that I would end up opening on this group. I offer my apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, for usurping his position in getting us started.
I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Bull and Lady Featherstone, for adding their names. The amendments represent the position of the Communications and Digital Select Committee of your Lordships’ House. In proposing them, I do so with that authority. My co-signatories are a recent and a current member. I should add sincere apologies from the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for not being here this evening. If she is watching, I send her my very best wishes.
When my noble friend Lord Gilbert of Panteg was its chair, the committee carried out an inquiry into freedom of speech online. This has already been remarked on this evening. At part of that inquiry, the committee concluded that the Government’s proposals in the then draft Bill—which may have just been a White Paper at that time—for content described as legal but harmful were detrimental to freedom of speech. It called for changes. Since then, as we know, the Government have dropped legal but harmful and instead introduced new user empowerment tools for adults to filter out harmful content. As we heard in earlier groups this evening, these would allow people to turn off or on content about subjects such as eating disorders and self-harm.
Some members of our committee might favour enhanced protection for adults. Indeed, some of my colleagues have already spoken in support of amendments to this end in other groups. Earlier this year, when the committee looked at the Bill as it had been reintroduced to Parliament, we agreed that, as things stood, these new user empowerment tools were a threat to freedom of speech. Whatever one’s views, there is no way of judging their impact or effectiveness—whether good or bad.
As we have heard already this evening, the Government have dropped the requirement for platforms to provide a public risk assessment of how these tools would work and their impact on freedom of speech. To be clear, for these user empowerment tools to be effective, the platforms will have to identify the content that users can switch off. This gives the platforms great power over what is deemed harmful to adults. Amendments 46, 47 and 64 are about ensuring that tech platforms are transparent about how they balance the principles of privacy, safety and freedom of speech for adults. These amendments would require platforms to undertake a risk assessment and publish a summary in their terms of service. This would involve them being clear about the effect of user empowerment tools on the users’ freedom of expression. Without such assessments, there is a risk that platforms would do either too much or too little. It would be very difficult to find out how they are filtering content and on what basis, and how they are addressing the twin imperatives of ensuring online safety without unduly affecting free speech.
To be clear, these amendments, unlike amendments in earlier groups, are neither about seeking to provide greater protection to adults nor about trying to reopen or revisit the question of legal but harmful. They are about ensuring transparency to give all users confidence about how platforms are striking the right balance. While their purpose is to safeguard freedom of speech, they would also bring benefits to those adults who wanted to opt in to the user empowerment tool because they would be able to assess what it was they were choosing not to see.
It is because of their twin benefits—indeed, their benefit to everyone—that we decided formally, as a committee, to recommend these amendments to the Government and for debate by your Lordships’ House. That said, the debate earlier suggests support for a different approach to enhancing protection for adults, and we may discover through this debate a preference for other amendments in this group to protect freedom of speech—but that is why we have brought these amendments forward.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I have slightly abused my position because, as the noble Baroness has just said, this is a rather oddly constructed group. My amendments, which carve great chunks out of the Bill—or would do if I get away with it—do not quite point in the same direction as the very good speech the noble Baroness made, representing of course the view of the committee that she chairs so brilliantly. She also picked out one or two points of her own, which we also want to debate. It therefore might be easier if I just explain what I was trying to do in my amendments; then I will sit down and let the debate go, and maybe come back to pick up one or two threads at the end.
In previous Bills—and I have seen a lot of them—people who stand up and move clause stand part debates usually have a deeper and more worrying purpose behind the proposition. Either they have not read the Bill and are just trying to wing it, or they have a plan that is so complex and deep that it would probably need another whole Bill to sort it out. This is neither of those approaches; it is done because I want to represent the views mainly of the Joint Committee. We had quite a lot of debate in that committee about this area, beginning with the question about why the Bill—or the White Paper or draft Bill, at that stage—used the term “democratic importance” when many people would have used the parallel term “public interest” to try to reflect the need to ensure that matters which are of public good take place as a result of publication, or discussion and debate, or on online platforms. I am very grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Black, is able to be with us today. I am sure he will recall those debates, and hopefully he will make a comment on some of the work—and other members of the committee are also present.
To be clear, the question of whether Clauses 13, 14, 15 and 18 should stand part of the Bills is meant to release space for a new clause in Amendment 48. It is basically designed to try to focus the actions that are going to be taken by the Bill, and subsequently by the regulator, to ensure that the social media companies that are affected by, or in scope of, the Bill use, as a focus, some of the issues mainly related to “not taking down” and providing an appeal mechanism for journalistic material, whether that is provided by recognised news publishers or some other form of words that we can use, or it is done by recognised journalists. “Contentious” is an overused word, but all these terms are difficult to square away and be happy with, and therefore we should have the debate and perhaps reflect on that later when we come back to it.
The committee spent quite a lot of time on this, and there are two things that exercised our minds when we were working on this area. First, if one uses “content of democratic importance”, although it is in many ways quite a clever use of words to reflect a sensibility that you want to have an open and well-founded debate about matters which affect the health of our democracy, it can be read as being quite limiting. It is very hard to express—I am arguing against myself here—in the words of a piece of legislation what it is we are trying to get down to, but, during the committee’s recommendations, we received evidence that the definition of content of democratic importance was wider, or more capable of being interpreted as wider, than the scope the Government seem to have indicated. So there is both a good side and a bad side to this. If we are talking about content which is, or appears to be, specifically intended to contribute to the democratic political debate of the United Kingdom, or a part or area of the United Kingdom, we have got to ask the Minister to put on the record that this also inclusive of matters which perhaps initially do not appear necessarily to be part of it, but include public health, crime, justice, the environment, professional malpractice, the activities of large corporations and the hypocrisy of public figures when that occurs. I am not suggesting this is what we should be doing all the time, but these are things we often read about in our papers, and much the better off we are for it. However, if these things are not inclusive and not well rooted in the phrase “content of democratic importance”, it is up to the Government to come forward with a better way of expressing that, or perhaps in debate we can find it together.
I have some narrow questions. Are we agreed that what is currently in the Bill is intended specifically to contribute to democratic political debate, and is anything more needed to be said or done in order to make sure that happens? Secondly, the breadth of democratic political debate is obviously important; are there any issues here that are going to trip us up later when the Government come back and say, “Well, that wasn’t what we meant at all, and that doesn’t get covered, and therefore that stuff can be taken down, and that stuff there doesn’t have to be subject to repeal”? Are there contexts and subjects which we need to talk about? This is a long way into the question of content of democratic importance being similar or limited to matters that one recognises as relating to public interest. I think there is a case to be argued for the replacement of what is currently in the Bill with a way of trying to get closer to what we now recognise as being the standard form of debate and discussion when matters, which either the Government of the day or people individually do not like, get taken up and made the subject of legal discussion, because we do have discussions about whether or not it is in the public interest.
We probably do not know what that means. Therefore, a third part of my argument is that perhaps this is the point at which we try to define this, even though that might cause a lot of reaction from those currently in the press. In a sense, it is a question that needs to be resolved. Maybe this is or is not the right time to do that. Are the Government on the same page as the Joint Committee on this? Do they have an alternative and is this what they are trying to get across in the Bill?
Can we have a debate and discussion in relation to those things, making it clear that we want something in the Bill ensuring that vibrant political debate—the sort of things the noble Baroness was talking about on freedom of expression, but in a broader sense covering all the things that matter to the body politic, the people of this country—is not excluded by the Bill? That was the reason for putting down a raft of rather aggressive amendments. I hope it has been made clear that that was the case. I have other things that I would like to come back to, but I will probably do that towards the end of the debate. I hope that has been helpful.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, to which I have added my name. As we heard, the amendments originally sat in a different group, on the treatment of legal content accessed by adults. Noble Lords will be aware from my previous comments that my primary focus for the Bill has been on the absence of adequate provisions for the protection of adults, particularly those who are most vulnerable. These concerns underpin the brief remarks I will make.
The fundamental challenge at the heart of the Bill is the need to balance protection with the right to freedom of expression. The challenge, of course, is how. The noble Baroness’s amendments seek to find that balance. They go beyond the requirements on transparency reporting in Clause 68 in several ways. Amendment 46 would provide a duty for category 1 services to maintain an up-to-date document for users of the service, ensuring that users understand the risks they face and how, for instance, user empowerment tools can be used to help mitigate these risks. It also provides a duty for category 1 services to update their risk assessments before making any “significant change” to the design or operation of their service. This would force category 1 services to consider the impact of changes on users’ safety and make users aware of changes before they happen, so that they can take any steps necessary to protect themselves and prepare for them. Amendment 47 provides additional transparency by providing a duty for category 1 services to release a public statement of the findings of the most recent risk assessment, which includes any impact on freedom of expression.
The grouping of these amendments is an indication, if any of us were in doubt, of the complexity of balancing the rights of one group against the rights of another. Regardless of the groupings, I hope that the Minister takes note of the breadth and depth of concerns, as well as the willingness across all sides of the Committee to work together on a solution to this important issue.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 51, which is also in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord McNally. I have done so because I think Clause 15 is too broad and too vague. I declare an interest, having been a journalist for my entire career. I am currently a series producer of a series of programmes on Ukraine.
This clause allows journalism on the internet to be defined simply as the dissemination of information, which surely covers all posts on the internet. Anyone can claim that they are a journalist if that is the definition. My concern is that it will make a nonsense of the Bill if all content is covered as journalism.
I support the aims behind the clause to protect journalism in line with Article 10. However, I am also aware of the second part of Article 10, which warns that freedom of speech must be balanced by duties and responsibilities in a democratic society. This amendment aims to hone the definition of journalism to that which is in the public interest. In doing so, I hope it will respond to the demands of the second part of Article 10.
It has never been more important to create this definition of journalism in the public interest. We are seeing legacy journalism of newspapers and linear television being supplanted by digital journalism. Both legacy and new journalism need to be protected. This can be a single citizen journalist, or an organisation like Bellingcat, which draws on millions of digital datapoints to create astonishing digital journalism to prove things such as that Russian separatist fighters shot down flight MH17 over Ukraine.
The Government’s view is that the definition of “in the public interest” is too vague to be useful to tech platforms when they are systematically filtering through possible journalistic content that needs to be protected. I do not agree. The term “public interest” is well known to the courts from the Defamation Act 2013. The law covers the motivation of a journalist, but does not go on to define the content of journalism to prove that it is in the public interest.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, at the beginning of Committee, I promised that I would speak only twice, and this is the second time. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I stray from the group sometimes, but I will be as disciplined as I can. I will speak to Amendments 57 and 62, which the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, and I tabled. As others have said, the noble Baroness sends her apologies; sadly, she has fractured her spine, and I am sure we all wish her a speedy recovery. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has kindly added her name to these amendments.
As I have said, in a previous role, as a research director of a think tank—I refer noble Lords to my registered interests—I became interested in the phenomenon of unintended consequences. As an aside, it is sometimes known as the cobra effect, after an incident during the colonial rule of India, when a British administrator of Delhi devised a cunning plan to rid the city of dangerous snakes. It was simple: he would pay local residents a bounty for each cobra skin delivered. What could possibly go wrong? Never slow to exploit an opportunity, enterprising locals started to farm cobras as a way of earning extra cash. Eventually, the authorities grew wise to this, and the payments stopped. As a result, the locals realised that the snakes were now worthless and released them into the wild, leading to an increase, rather than a decrease, in the population of cobras.
As with the cobra effect, there have been many similar incidents of well-intentioned acts that have unintentionally made things worse. So, as we try to create a safer online space for our citizens, especially children and vulnerable adults, we should try to be as alert as we can to unintended consequences. An example is encrypted messages, which I discussed in a previous group. When we seek access to encrypted messages in the name of protecting children in this country, we should be aware that such technology could lead to dissidents living under totalitarian regimes in other countries being compromised or even murdered, with a devastating impact on their children.
We should also make sure that we do not unintentionally erode the fundamental rights and freedoms that underpin our democracy, and that so many people have struggled for over the centuries. I recognise that some noble Lords may say that that is applicable to other Bills, but I want to focus specifically on the implications for this Bill. In our haste to protect, we may create a digital environment and marketplace that stifles investment and freedom of expression, disproportionately impacting marginalised communities and cultivating an atmosphere of surveillance. The amendments the noble Baroness and I have tabled are designed to prevent such outcomes. They seek to strike a balance between regulating for a safer internet and preserving our democratic values. As many noble Lords have rightly said, all these issues will involve trade-offs; we may disagree, but I hope we will have had an informed debate, regardless of which side of the argument we are on.
We should explicitly outline the duties that service providers and regulators have with respect to these rights and freedoms. Amendment 57 focuses on safe- guarding specific fundamental rights and freedoms for users of regulated user-to-user services, including the protection of our most basic human rights. We believe that, by explicitly stating these duties, rather than hoping that they are somehow implied, we will create a more comprehensive framework for service providers to follow, ensuring that their safety policies and procedures do not undermine the essential rights of users, with specific reference to
“users with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010”.
Amendment 62 focuses on the role of Ofcom in mitigating risks to freedom of expression. I recognise that there are other amendments in this group on that issue. It is our responsibility to ensure that the providers of regulated user-to-user services are held accountable for their content moderation and recommender systems, to ensure they do not violate our freedoms.
I want this Bill to be a workable Bill. As I have previously said, I support the intention behind it to protect children and vulnerable adults, but as I have said many times, we should also be open about the trade-off between security and protection on the one hand, and freedom of expression on the other. My fear is that, without these amendments, we risk leaving our citizens vulnerable to the unintended consequences of overzealous content moderation, biased algorithms and opaque decision-making processes. We should shine a light on and bring transparency to our new processes, and perhaps help guide them by being explicit about those elements of freedom of speech we wish to preserve.
It is our duty to ensure that the Online Safety Bill not only protects our citizens from harm but safeguards the principles that form the foundation of a free and open society. With these amendments, we hope to transcend partisan divides and to fortify the essence of our democracy. I hope that we can work together to create an online environment that is safe, inclusive and respectful of the rights and freedoms that the people of this country cherish. I hope that other noble Lords will support these amendments, and, ever the optimist, that my noble friend the Minister will consider adopting them.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, who explained well why I put my name to the amendments. I extend my regards to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone; I was looking forward to hearing her remarks, and I hope that she is well.
I am interested in free speech; it is sort of my thing. I am interested in how we can achieve a balance and enhance the free speech rights of the citizens of this country through the Bill—it is what I have tried to do with the amendments I have supported—which I fear might be undermined by it.
I have a number of amendments in this group. Amendment 49 and the consequential Amendments 50 and 156 would require providers to include in their terms of service
“by what method content present on the service is to be identified as content of democratic importance”,
and bring Clause 13 in line with Clauses 14 and 15 by ensuring an enhanced focus on the democratic issue.
Amendment 53A would provide that notification is given
“to any user whose content has been removed or restricted”.
It is especially important that the nature of the restriction in place be made clear, evidenced and justified in the name of transparency and—a key point—that the user be informed of how to appeal such decisions.
Amendment 61 in my name calls for services to have
“proportionate systems, processes and policies designed to ensure that as great a weight is given to users’ right to freedom of expression ... as to safety when making decisions”
about whether to take down or restrict users access to the online world, and
“whether to take action against a user generating, uploading or sharing content”.
In other words, it is all about applying a more robust duty to category 1 service providers and emphasising the importance of protecting
“a wide diversity of political, social, religious and philosophical opinion”
online.
I give credit to the Government, in that Clause 18 constitutes an attempt by them in some way to balance the damage to individual rights to freedom of expression and privacy as a result of the Bill, but I worry that it is a weak duty. Unlike operational safety duties, which compel companies proactively to prevent or minimise so-called harm in the way we have discussed, there is no such attempt to insist that freedom of speech be given the same regard or importance. In fact, there are worries that the text of the Bill has downgraded speech and privacy rights, which the Open Rights Group says
“are considered little more than a contractual matter”.
There has certainly been a lot of mention of free speech in the debates we have had so far in Committee, yet I am not convinced that the Bill gives it enough credit, which is why I support the explicit reference to it by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall.
I have a lot of sympathy with the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, seeking to replace Clauses 13, 14, 15 and 18 with a single comprehensive duty, because in some ways we are scratching around. That made some sense to me and I would be very interested to hear more about how that might work. Clauses 13, 14, 15 and 18 state that service providers must have regard to the importance of protecting users’ rights to freedom of expression in relation to
“content of democratic importance ... publisher content ... journalistic content”.
The very existence of those clauses, and the fact that we even need those amendments, is an admission by the Government that elsewhere, free speech is a downgraded virtue. We need these carve-outs to protect these things, because the rest of the Bill threatens free speech, which has been my worry from the start.
My Amendment 49 is a response to the Bill’s focus on protecting “content of democratic importance”. I was delighted that this was included, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, has raised a lot of the questions I was asking. I am concerned that it is rather vaguely drawn, and too narrow and technocratic—politics with a big “P”, rather than in the broader sense. There is a lot that I would consider democratically important that other people might see, especially given today’s discussion, as harmful or dangerous. Certainly, the definition should be as broad as possible, so my amendment seeks to write that down, saying that it should include
“political, social, religious and philosophical opinion”.
That is my attempt to broaden it out. It is not perfect, I am sure, but that is the intention.
I am also keen to understand why Clauses 14 and 15, which give special protection to news publisher and journalistic content, have enhanced provisions, including an expedited appeals process for the reinstatement of removed materials, but those duties are much weaker—they do not exist—in Clause 13, which deals with content of democratic importance. In my amendment, I have suggested that they are levelled up.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, my Amendment 63 is about the meaning of words. It was an interesting feature of the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, which we have just had the pleasure of listening to, that she slipped from time to time from the phrase “freedom of expression” to “freedom of speech”. That is not a criticism; it is very easy for one to treat these expressions as meaning the same thing. Others in this debate have done the same thing. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, used “freedom of speech” sometimes, as well as “freedom of expression”. It is not a criticism; it is just a fact that we tend to treat the two the same.
However, the Government in Clause 18 have chosen to use the words
“freedom of expression within the law”.
My amendment draws attention to that feature. If we work our way through Clause 18, its purpose is to set out the duties about freedom of expression and privacy that are to apply in relation to the user-to-user services referred to in that clause. Clause 18(2) imposes on those providing user-to-user services
“a duty to have particular regard to the importance of protecting users’ right to freedom of expression within the law”
when deciding on and implementing safety measures and policies. Clause 18(8) provides a definition of the phrase “safety measures and policies”, which
“means measures and policies designed to secure compliance with any of the duties set out”
in previous clauses of the Bill. These extend to illegal content, to children’s online safety, to user empowerment, to content reporting relating to illegal content and content that is likely to be harmful to children, and to complaints procedures. So a balance has to be struck between giving effect to the right to freedom of expression within the law and performing the important duties referred to in the clause. As Clause 18(4) explains, when decisions are being taken about the safety measures and policies that are to be introduced or applied, there must be an assessment of the impact that they would have on the user’s right to freedom of expression within the law.
My amendment was prompted by a point made by the Constitution Committee, of which I am a member, in its report on the Bill. It suggested that the House might wish to consider whether, in the interests of legal certainty, the expression “freedom of expression” should also be defined for the purposes of this clause.
The committee referred to the fact that in its report on the on the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, it recommended that that Bill should define the expression “freedom of speech”, which is what that Bill was talking about, by referring to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I raised this issue by proposing an amendment to that effect in Committee on that Bill. On Report, a government amendment to achieve that was agreed to and, in due course, it was also agreed by the House of Commons. My Amendment 63 adopts the same wording as that used in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, and I suggest that it should be adopted here, too, in the interests of consistency and to provide the desirable element of legal certainty.
Although it appears in a different group, I think it is worth referring to Amendment 58 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie, and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. It proposes the insertion of the words
“as defined under the Human Rights Act 1998 and its application to the United Kingdom”,
so it is making the same point and an additional one, which is this. We have to be very careful in this Bill to recognise that it extends to all parts of the United Kingdom, particularly in regard to the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland is very active in promoting legislation dealing with matters of this kind, and it is rather important that we should define in the Bill what is meant by
“freedom of expression within the law”
in its application throughout the United Kingdom, lest there should be any doubt as to what it might mean in the other parts of this country—particularly, if I may say so, with regard to Scotland. The noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, may say more about this at this stage, although her amendment is in a different group, because it is very pertinent to the point I am trying to make about the need for a definition in Clause 18.
That is the reasoning behind the amendment, and I come back to the interesting feature that one tends to mix the expressions “freedom of speech” and “freedom of expression”, but it is important to anchor exactly why the Government chose to use the words
“freedom of expression within the law”
for the purposes of this clause.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I hung back in the hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, would speak before me, because I suspected that his remarks would help elucidate my amendments, as I believe they have. I have a large number of amendments in this group, but all of them, with one exception, work together as, effectively, a single amendment. They are Amendments 101, 102, 109, 112, 116, 121, 191 and 220. The exception is Amendment 294, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, alluded and to which I shall return in a moment.
Taking that larger group of amendments first, I can describe their effect relatively briefly. In the Bill, there are requirements on services to consider how their practices affect freedom of expression, but there is no equivalent explicit duty on the regulator, Ofcom, to have regard to freedom of expression.
These amendments, taken together, would require Ofcom to
“have special regard to freedom of expression”
within the law when designing codes of practice, writing guidance and undertaking enforcement action. They would insert a new clause requiring Ofcom to have special regard to rights to freedom of expression within the law in preparing a code of practice; they would also require Ofcom, when submitting a draft code to the Secretary of State, to submit a statement setting out it had complied with the duty imposed by that new requirement; and they would require the Secretary of State to submit that statement to Parliament when laying a draft code before Parliament. They would impose similar obligations on Ofcom and the Secretary of State when making amendments to codes that might be made later. Finally, they would have a similar effect relating to guidance issued by Ofcom.
It is so glaringly obvious that Ofcom should be under this duty that it must be a mere omission that the balancing, corresponding duty has not been placed on it that has been placed on the providers. I would hope, though experience so far in Committee does not lead me to expect, that my noble friend would accept this, and that it would pass relatively uncontroversially.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, this is my first opportunity to speak in Committee on this important Bill, but I have followed it very closely, and the spirit in which constructive debate has been conducted has been genuinely exemplary. In many ways, it mirrors the manner in which the Joint Committee, on which I had the privilege to serve with other noble Lords, was conducted, and its report rightly has influenced our proceedings in so many ways. I declare an interest as deputy chairman of Telegraph Media Group, which is a member of the News Media Association, and a director of the Regulatory Funding Company, and note my other interests as set out in the register.
I will avoid the temptation to ruminate philosophically, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, entertained us by doing. I will speak to Amendment 48, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and the other amendments which impact on the definition of “recognised news publisher”. As the noble Lord said, his amendments are pretty robust in what they seek to achieve, but I am very pleased that he has tabled them, because it is important that we have a debate about how the Bill impacts on freedom of expression—I use that phrase advisedly—and press and media freedom. The noble Lord’s aims are laudable but do not quite deliver what he intends.
I will explain why it is important that Clauses 13 and 14 stand part of the Bill, and without amendments of the sort proposed. The Joint Committee considered this issue in some detail and supported the inclusion of the news publisher content exemption. These clauses are crucial to the whole architecture of the Bill because they protect news publishers from being dragged into an onerous regime of statutory content control. The press—these clauses cover the broadcasters too—have not been subject to any form of statutory regulation since the end of the 17th century. That is what we understand by press freedom: that the state and its institutions do not have a role in controlling or censoring comment. Clauses 13 and 14 protect that position and ensure that the media, which is of course subject to rigorous independent standard codes as well as to criminal and civil law, does not become part of a system of state regulation by the back door because of its websites and digital products.
That is what is at the heart of these clauses. However, it is not a carte blanche exemption without caveats. As the Joint Committee looked at, and as we have heard, to qualify for it, publishers must meet stringent criteria, as set out in Clause 50, which include being subject to standards codes, having legal responsibility for material published, having effective policies to handle complaints, and so on. It is exactly the same tough definition as was set out in the National Security Bill, which noble Lords across the House supported when it was on Report here.
Without such clear definitions, alongside requirements not to take down or restrict access to trusted news sources without notification, opaque algorithms conjured up in Silicon Valley would end up restricting the access of UK citizens to news, with scant meaningful scope for reinstating it given the short shelf life of news. Ultimately, that would have a profound impact on the public’s right to access news, something which the noble Baroness rightly highlighted. That is why the Joint Committee recommended, at paragraph 304 of its report, that the Bill was
“strengthened to include a requirement that news publisher content should not be moderated, restricted or removed unless it is content the publication of which clearly constitutes a criminal offence, or which has been found to be unlawful by order of a court within the appropriate jurisdiction”.
The Government listened to that concern that the platforms would put themselves in the position of censor on issues of democratic importance, and quite rightly amended the draft Bill to deal with that point. Without it, instead of trusted, curated, regulated news comment, from the BBC to the Guardian to the Manchester Evening News, news would end up being filtered by Google and Facebook. That would be a crushing blow to free speech, to which all noble Lords are absolutely committed.
So, instead of these clauses acting as a bulwark against disinformation by protecting content of democratic importance, they would weaken the position of trusted news providers by introducing too much ambiguity into the system. As we all know, ambiguity brings with it legal challenge and constant controversy. This is especially so given that the exemptions that we are talking about already exist in statute elsewhere, which would cause endless confusion.
I understand the rationale behind many of the amendments, but I fear they would not work in practice. Free speech—and again I use the words advisedly—is a very delicate bloom, which can easily be swept away by badly drafted, uncertain or opaque laws. Its protection needs certainty, which is what the Bill, as it stands, provides. A general catch-all clause would be subject, I fear, to endless argument with the platforms, which are well known for such tactics and for endless legal wrangling.
I noted the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, in his superb speech on the opening day in Committee, when he said that one issue with the Bill is that it
“is very difficult to understand, in part because of its innate complexity and in part because it has been revised so often”. [Official Report, 19/4/23; col. 700.]
He added, in a welcome panegyric to clarity and concision, that given that it is a long and complex Bill, why would we add to it? I agree absolutely with him, but those are arguments for not changing the Bill in the way he proposes. I believe the existing provisions are clear and precise, practical and carefully calibrated. They do not leave room for doubt, and protect media freedom, investigative journalism and the citizen’s right to access authoritative news, which is why I support the Bill as it stands.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, given the lateness of the hour, I will make just three very brief points. The first is that I find it really fascinating that the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, come from a completely different perspective, but still demand transparency over what is going on. I fully support the formation that she has found, and I think that in many ways they are better than the other ones which came from the other perspective. But what I urge the Minister to hear is that we all seek transparency over what is going on.
Secondly, in many of the amendments—I think I counted about 14 or 15 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and also of the noble Lord, Lord Kamall—there is absolutely nothing I disagree with. My problem with these amendments really goes back to the debate we had on the first day on Amendment 1, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. He set out the purposes of the Bill, and the Minister gave what was considered by most Members of your Lordships’ House to be the groundwork of a very excellent alternative, in the language of government. It appears, as we go on, that many dozens of amendments could be dropped in favour of this purposive clause, which itself could include reference to human rights, children’s rights, the Equality Act, the importance of freedom of expression under the law, and so on. I urge the Minister to consider the feeling of the House: that the things said at the Dispatch Box to be implicit, again and again, the House requires to be explicit. This is one way we could do it, in short form, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, just urged us.
Thirdly, I do have to speak against Amendment 294. I would be happy to take the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, through dozens of studies that show the psychological impact of online harms: systems that groom users to gamble, that reward them for being online at any cost to their health and well-being, that profile them to offer harmful material, and more of the same whether they ask for it or not, and so on. I am also very happy to put some expert voices at his disposal, but I will just say this: the biggest clue as to why this amendment is wrongheaded is the number of behavioural psychologists that are employed by the tech sector. They are there, trying to get at our behaviours and thoughts; they anticipate our move and actually try to predict and create the next move. That is why we have to have psychological harm in the Bill.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
I will not detain noble Lords very long either. Two things have motivated me to be involved in this Bill. One is protection for vulnerable adults and the second is looking at this legislation with my Scottish head on, because nobody else seems to be looking at it from the perspective of the devolved Administrations.
First, on protection for vulnerable adults, we have already debated the fact that in an earlier iteration of this Bill, there were protections. These have been watered down and we now have the triple shield. Whether they fit here, with the amendment from my noble friend Lady Stowell, or fit earlier, what we are all asking for is the reinstatement of risk assessments. I come at this from a protection of vulnerable groups perspective, but I recognise that others come at it from a freedom of expression perspective. I do not think the Minister has answered my earlier questions. Why have risk assessments been taken out and why are they any threat? It seems to be the will of the debate today that they do nothing but strengthen the transparency and safety aspects of the Bill, wherever they might be put.
I speak with trepidation to Amendment 63 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. I flatter myself that his amendment and mine are trying to do a similar thing. I will speak to my amendment when we come to the group on devolved issues, but I think what both of us are trying to establish is, given that the Bill is relatively quiet on how freedom of expression is defined, how do platforms balance competing rights, particularly in the light of the differences between the devolved Administrations?
The Minister will know that the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 made my brain hurt when trying to work out how this Bill affects it, or how it affects the Bill. What is definitely clear is that there are differences between the devolved Administrations in how freedom of expression is interpreted. I will study the noble and learned Lord’s remarks very carefully in Hansard; I need a little time to think about them. I will listen very carefully to the Minister’s response and I look forward to the later group.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, I too will be very brief. As a member of the Communications and Digital Committee, I just wanted to speak in support of my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston and her extremely powerful speech, which seems like it was quite a long time ago now, but it was not that long. I want to highlight two things. I do not understand how, as a number of noble Lords have said, having risk assessments is a threat to freedom of expression. I think the absolute opposite is the case. They would enhance all the things the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is looking to see in the Bill, just as much as they would enhance the protections that my noble friend, who I always seem to follow in this debate, is looking for.
Like my noble friend, I ask the Minister: why not? When the Government announced the removal of legal but harmful and the creation of user empowerment tools, I remember thinking—in the midst of being quite busy with Covid—“What are user empowerment tools and what are they going to empower me to do?” Without a risk assessment, I do not know how we answer that question. The risk is that we are throwing that question straight to the tech companies to decide for themselves. A risk assessment provides the framework that would enable user empowerment tools to do what I think the Government intend.
Finally, I too will speak against my noble friend Lord Moylan’s Amendment 294 on psychological harm. It is well documented that tech platforms are designed to drive addiction. Addiction can be physiological and psychological. We ignore that at our peril.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to have been part of this debate and to have heard how much we are on common ground. I very much hope that, in particular, the Minister will have listened to the voices on the Conservative Benches that have very powerfully put forward a number of amendments that I think have gained general acceptance across the Committee.
I fully understand the points that the noble Lord, Lord Black, made and why he defends Clause 14. I hope we can have a more granular discussion about the contents of that clause rather than wrap it up on this group of amendments. I do not know whether we will be able to have that on the next group.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, for putting forward her amendment. It is very interesting, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bull and Lady Fraser, said, that we are trying to get to the same sort of mechanisms of risk assessment, perhaps out of different motives, but we are broadly along the same lines and want to see them for adult services. We want to know from the Minister why we cannot achieve that, basically. I am sure we could come to some agreement between us as to whether user empowerment tools or terms of service are the most appropriate way of doing it.
We need to thank the committee that the noble Baroness chairs for having followed up on the letter to the Secretary of State for DCMS, as was, on 30 January. It is good to see a Select Committee using its influence to go forward in this way.
The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, and supported by my noble friend Lady Featherstone—I am sorry she is unable to be here today, as he said—are important. They would broaden out consideration in exactly the right kind of way.
However, dare I say it, probably the most important amendment in this group is Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. Apart from the Clause 14 stand part notice, it is pretty much bang on where the Joint Committee got to. He was remarkably tactful in not going into any detail on the Government’s response to that committee. I will not read it out because of the lateness of the hour, but the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, got pretty close to puncturing the Government’s case that there is no proper definition of public interest. It is quite clear that there is a perfectly respectable definition in the Human Rights Act 1998 and, as the noble Viscount said, in the Defamation Act 2013, which would be quite fit for purpose. I do not quite know why the Government responded as they did at paragraph 251. I very much hope that the Minister will have another look at that.
The amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, which has the very respectable support of Justice, is also entirely apposite. I very much hope that the Government will take a good look at that.
Finally, and extraordinarily, I have quite a lot of sympathy with the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. It was all going so well until we got to Amendment 294; up to that point I think he had support from across the House, because placing that kind of duty on Ofcom would be a positive way forward.
As I say, getting a clause of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has put forward, with that public interest content point and with an umbrella duty on freedom of expression, allied to the definition from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, would really get us somewhere.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
Lawyers—don’t you love them? How on earth are we supposed to unscramble that at this time of night? It was good to have my kinsman, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, back in our debates. We were remarking only a few days ago that we had not seen enough lawyers in the House in these debates. One appears, and light appears. It is a marvellous experience.
I thank the Committee for listening to my earlier introductory remarks; I hope they helped to untangle some of the issues. The noble Lord, Lord Black, made it clear that the press are happy with what is in the current draft. There could be some changes, and we have heard a number of examples of ways in which one might either top or tail what there is.
There was one question that perhaps he could have come back on, and maybe he will, as I have raised it separately with the department before. I agree with a lot of what he said, but it applies to a lot more than just news publishers. Quality journalism more generally enhances and restores our faith in public services in so many ways. Why is it only the news? Is there a way in which we could broaden that? If there is not this time round, perhaps that is something we need to pick up later.
As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has said, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, made a very strong and clear case for trying to think again about what journalism does in the public realm and making sure that the Bill at least carries that forward, even if it does not deal with some of the issues that he raised.
We have had a number of other good contributions about how to capture some of the good ideas that were flying around in this debate and keep them in the foreground so that the Bill is enhanced. But I think it is time that the Minister gave us his answers.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I join noble Lords who have sent good wishes for a speedy recovery to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone.
Amendments 46, 47 and 64, in the name of my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston, seek to require platforms to assess the risk of, and set terms for, content currently set out in Clause 12. Additionally, the amendments seek to place duties on services to assess risks to freedom of expression resulting from user empowerment tools. Category 1 platforms are already required to assess the impact on free expression of their safety policies, including user empowerment tools; to keep that assessment up to date; to publish it; and to demonstrate the positive steps they have taken in response to the impact assessment in a publicly available statement.
Amendments 48 and 100, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, seek to introduce a stand-alone duty on category 1 services to protect freedom of expression, with an accompanying code of practice. Amendments 49, 50, 53A, 61 and 156, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, seek to amend the Bill’s Clause 17 and Clause 18 duties and clarify duties on content of democratic importance.
All in-scope services must already consider and implement safeguards for freedom of expression when fulfilling their duties. Category 1 services will need to be clear what content is acceptable on their services and how they will treat it, including when removing or restricting access to it, and that they will enforce the rules consistently. In setting these terms of service, they must adopt clear policies designed to protect journalistic and democratic content. That will ensure that the most important types of content benefit from additional protections while guarding against the arbitrary removal of any content. Users will be able to access effective appeal mechanisms if content is unfairly removed. That marks a considerable improvement on the status quo.
Requiring all user-to-user services to justify why they are removing or restricting each individual piece of content, as Amendment 53A would do, would be disproportionately burdensome on companies, particularly small and medium-sized ones. It would also duplicate some of the provisions I have previously outlined. Separately, as private entities, service providers have their own freedom of expression rights. This means that platforms are free to decide what content should or should not be on their website, within the bounds of the law. The Bill should not mandate providers to carry or to remove certain types of speech or content. Accordingly, we do not think it would be appropriate to require providers to ensure that free speech is not infringed, as suggested in Amendment 48.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
Why would it not be possible for us to try to define what the public interest might be, and not leave it to the platforms to do so?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I ask the noble Viscount to bear with me. I will come on to this a bit later. I do not think it is for category 1 platforms to do so.
We have introduced Clause 15 to reduce the powers that the major technology companies have over what journalism is made available to UK users. Accordingly, Clause 15 requires category 1 providers to set clear terms of service which explain how they take the importance of journalistic content into account when making their moderation decisions. These duties will not stop platforms removing journalistic content. Platforms have the flexibility to set their own journalism policies, but they must enforce them consistently. They will not be able to remove journalistic content arbitrarily. This will ensure that platforms give all users of journalism due process when making content moderation decisions. Amendment 51 would mean that, where platforms subjectively reached a decision that journalism was not conducive to the public good, they would not have to give it due process. Platforms could continue to treat important journalistic content arbitrarily where they decided that this content was not in the public interest of the UK.
In his first remarks on this group the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, engaged with the question of how companies will identify content of democratic importance, which is content that seeks to contribute to democratic political debate in the UK at a national and local level. It will be broad enough to cover all political debates, including grass-roots campaigns and smaller parties. While platforms will have some discretion about what their policies in this area are, the policies will need to ensure that platforms are balancing the importance of protecting democratic content with their safety duties. For example, platforms will need to consider whether the public interest in seeing some types of content outweighs the potential harm it could cause. This will require companies to set out in their terms of service how they will treat different types of content and the systems and processes they have in place to protect such content.
Amendments 57 and 62, in the name of my noble friend Lord Kamall, seek to impose new duties on companies to protect a broader range of users’ rights, as well as to pay particular attention to the freedom of expression of users with protected characteristics. As previously set out, services will have duties to safeguard the freedom of expression of all users, regardless of their characteristics. Moreover, UK providers have existing duties under the Equality Act 2010 not to discriminate against people with characteristics which are protected in that Act. Given the range of rights included in Amendment 57, it is not clear what this would require from service providers in practice, and their relevance to service providers would likely vary between different rights.
Amendment 60, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and Amendment 88, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, probe whether references to privacy law in Clauses 18 and 28 include Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That convention applies to member states which are signatories. Article 8(1) requires signatories to ensure the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence, subject to limited derogations that must be in accordance with the law and necessary in a democratic society. The obligations flowing from Article 8 do not apply to individuals or to private companies and it would not make sense for these obligations to be applied in this way, given that states which are signatories will need to decide under Article 8(2) which restrictions on the Article 8(1) right they need to impose. It would not be appropriate or possible for private companies to make decisions on such restrictions.
Providers will, however, need to comply with all UK statutory and common-law provisions relating to privacy, and must therefore implement safeguards for user privacy when meeting their safety duties. More broadly, Ofcom is bound by the Human Rights Act 1998 and must therefore uphold Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights when implementing the Bill’s regime.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
It is so complicated that the Minister is almost enticing me to stand up and ask about it. Let us just get that right: the reference to the Article 8 powers exists and applies to those bodies in the UK to which such equivalent legislation applies, so that ties us into Ofcom. Companies cannot be affected by it because it is a public duty, not a private duty, but am I then allowed to walk all the way around the circle? At the end, can Ofcom look back at the companies to establish whether, in Ofcom’s eyes, its requirements in relation to its obligations under Article 8 have or have not taken place? It is a sort of transparent, backward-reflecting view rather than a proactive proposition. That seems a complicated way of saying, “Why don’t you behave in accordance with Article 8?”
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Yes, Ofcom, which is bound by it through the Human Rights Act 1998, can ask those questions and make that assessment of the companies, but it would not be right for private companies to be bound by something to which it is not appropriate for companies to be signatories. Ofcom will be looking at these questions but the duty rests on it, as bound by the Human Rights Act.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
It is late at night and this is slightly tedious, but in the worst of all possible circumstances, Ofcom would be looking at what happened over the last year in relation to its codes of practice and assertions about a particular company. Ofcom is then in trouble because it has not discharged its Article 8 obligations, so who gets to exercise a whip on whom? Sorry, whips are probably the wrong things to use, but you see where I am coming from. All that is left is for the Secretary of State, but probably it would effectively be Parliament, to say to Ofcom, “You’ve failed”. That does not seem a very satisfactory solution.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Platforms will be guided by Ofcom in taking measures to comply with their duties which are recommended in Ofcom’s codes, and which contain safeguards for privacy, including ones based on the European Convention on Human Rights and the rights therein. Paragraph 10(2)(b) of Schedule 4 requires Ofcom to ensure that measures, which it describes in the code of practice, are designed in light of the importance of protecting the privacy of users. Clause 42(2) and (3) provides that platforms will be treated as complying with the privacy duties set out at Clause 18(2) and Clause 28(2), if they take the recommended measures that Ofcom sets out in the codes.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
It worked. In seriousness, we will both consult the record and, if the noble Lord wants more, I am very happy to set it out in writing.
Amendment 63 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, seeks to clarify that “freedom of expression” in Clause 18 refers to the
“freedom to impart ideas, opinions or information”,
as referred to in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I think I too have been guilty of using the phrases “freedom of speech” and “freedom of expression” as though they were interchangeable. Freedom of expression, within the law, is intended to encompass all the freedom of expression rights arising from UK law, including under common law. The rights to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights include both the rights to impart ideas, opinions and information, but also the right to receive such ideas, opinions and information. Any revised definition of freedom of expression to be included in the Bill should refer to both aspects of the Article 10 definition, given the importance for both children and adults of receiving information via the internet. We recognise the importance of clarity in relation to the duties set out in Clauses 18 and 28, and we are very grateful to the noble and learned Lord for proposing this amendment, and for the experience he brings to bear on behalf of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill and the Online Safety Bill serve very different purposes, but I am happy to say that the Bill team and I will consider this amendment closely between now and Report.
Amendments 101, 102, 109, 112, 116, 121, 191 and 220, in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan, seek to require Ofcom to have special regard to the importance of protecting freedom of expression when exercising its enforcement duties, and when drafting or amending codes of practice or guidance. Ofcom must already ensure that it protects freedom of expression when overseeing the Bill, because it is bound by the Human Rights Act, as I say. It also has specific duties to ensure that it is clear about how it is protecting freedom of expression when exercising its duties, including when developing codes of practice.
My noble friend’s Amendment 294 seeks to remove “psychological” from the definition of harm in the Bill. It is worth being clear that the definition of harm is used in the Bill as part of the illegal and child safety duties. There is no definition of harm, psychological or otherwise, with regard to adults, given that the definition of content which is harmful to adults was removed from the Bill in another place. With regard to children, I agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. It is important that psychological harm is captured in the Bill’s child safety duties, given the significant impact that such content can have on young minds.
I invite my noble friend and others not to press their amendments in this group.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, your Lordships will want me to be brief, bearing in mind the time. I am very grateful for the support I received from my noble friends Lady Harding and Lady Fraser and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Bull, for the amendments I tabled. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for the detail she added to my description of the amendments. I can always rely on the noble Baroness to colour in my rather broad-brush approach to these sorts of things.
I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, made his remarks at the beginning of the debate. That was very helpful in setting the context that followed. We have heard a basic theme come through from your Lordships: a lack of certainty that the Government have struck the right balance between privacy protection and freedom of expression. I never stop learning in your Lordships’ House. I was very pleased to learn from the new Milton—my noble friend Lord Moylan—that freedom of expression is a fundamental right. Therefore, the balance between that and the other things in the Bill needs to be considered in a way I had not thought of before.
What is clear is that there is a lack of confidence from all noble Lords—irrespective of the direction they are coming from in their contributions to this and earlier debates— either that the balance has been properly struck or that some of the clauses seeking to address freedom of speech in the Bill are doing so in a way that will deliver the outcome and overall purpose of this legislation as brought forward by the Government.
I will make a couple of other points. My noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendments about the power of Ofcom in this context were particularly interesting. I have some sympathy for what he was arguing. As I said earlier, the question of power and the distribution of it between the various parties involved in this new regime will be one we will look at in broad terms certainly in later groups.
On the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on Clauses 13, 14 and so on and the protections and provisions for news media, I tend towards the position of my noble friend Lord Black, against what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, argued. As I said at the beginning, I am concerned about the censorship of our news organisations by the tech firms. But I also see his argument, and that of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, that it is not just our traditional legacy media that provides quality journalism now—that is an important issue for us to address.
I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his round-up and concluding remarks. Although it is heartening to hear that he and the Bill team will consider the amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, in this group, we are looking—in the various debates today, for sure—for a little more responsiveness and willingness to consider movement by the Government on various matters. I hope that he is able to give us more encouraging signs of this, as we proceed through Committee and before we get to further discussions with him—I hope—outside the Chamber before Report. With that, I of course withdraw my amendment.
“(5A) In determining what is proportionate for the purposes of subsection (2), the size and capacity of the provider of a service, in particular, is relevant.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment indicates that the size and capacity of a provider is important in construing the reference to “proportionate systems and processes” in clause 13 (duties to protect content of democratic importance).