Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Morgan of Cotes

Report stage
Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to this amendment; I know that the House is keen to get on to other business today. I very much welcome the amendment that the Government have tabled. My noble friend the Minister has always said that they want to keep women and girls safe online. As has been referred to elsewhere, the importance of making our digital streets safer cannot be overestimated.

As my noble friend said, women and girls experience a disproportionate level of abuse online. That is now recognised in this amendment, although this is only the start, not the end, of the matter. I thank my noble friend and the Secretary of State for their engagement on this issue. I thank the chief executive and the chair of Ofcom. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who I know cannot be here today, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, who signed the original amendment that we discussed in Committee.

My noble friend has already talked about the campaigners outside the Chamber who wanted there to be specific mention of women and girls in the Bill. I thank Refuge, the 100,000 people who signed the End Violence Against Women coalition’s petition, BT, Glitch, Carnegie UK, Professor Lorna Woods, the NSPCC and many others who made the case for this amendment.

As my noble friend said, this is Ofcom guidance. It is not necessarily a code of practice, but it is still very welcome because it is broader than just the specific offences that the Government have legislated on, which I also welcome. As he said, this puts all the things that companies, platforms and search engines should be doing to protect women and girls online in one specific place. My noble friend mentioned holistic protection, which is very important.

There is no offline/online distinction these days. Women and girls should feel safe everywhere. I also want to say, because I know that my noble friend has had a letter, that this is not about saying that men and boys should not be safe online; it is about recognising the disproportionate levels of abuse that women and girls suffer.

I welcome the fact that, in producing this guidance, Ofcom will have to consult with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner and more widely. I look forward, as I am sure do all the organisations I just mentioned, to working with Ofcom on the first set of guidance that it will produce. It gives me great pleasure to have signed the amendment and to support its introduction.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I know that we do not have long and I do not want to be churlish. I am not that keen on this amendment, but I want to ask a question in relation to it.

I am concerned that there should be no conflation in the best practice guidance between the actual, practical problems of, for example, victims of domestic abuse being stalked online, which is a threat to their safety, or threatened with physical violence—I understand that—and abuse. Abuse is horrible to be on the receiving end of, but it is important for freedom of thought and freedom of speech that we do not make no distinction between words and action. It is important not to overreact or frighten young women by saying that being shouted at is the same as being physically abused.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Morgan of Cotes

Report stage
Thursday 6th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, I welcome the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Allan, and his motivation, because I am concerned that, throughout the Bill, the wrong targets are being caught up. I was grateful to hear his recognition that people who talk about their problems with self-harm could end up being targeted, which nobody would ever intend. These things need to be taken seriously.

In that sense, I was slightly concerned about the motivation of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, in the “reckless” amendment. The argument was that the recklessness standard is easier to prove. I am always worried about things that make it easier to prosecute someone, rather than there being a just reason for that prosecution. As we know, those involved in sending these images are often immature and very foolish young men. I am concerned about lowering the threshold at which we criminalise them—potentially destroying their lives, by the way, because if you have a criminal record it is not good—even though I in no way tolerate what they are doing and it is obviously important that we take that on.

There is a danger that this law will become a mechanism through which people try to resolve a whole range of social problems—which brings me on to responding to the speech just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. I continue to be concerned about the question of trying to criminalise indirect threats. The point about somebody who sends a direct threat is that we can at least see the connection between that direct threat and the possibility of action. It is the same sort of thing that we have historically considered in relation to incitement. I understand that, where your physical being is threatened by words, physically a practical thing can happen, and that is to be taken very seriously. The problem I have is with the indirect threat from somebody who says, for example, “That smile should be taken of your face. It can be arranged”, or other indirect but incredibly unpleasant comments. There is clearly no link between that and a specific action. It might use violent language but it is indirect: “It could be arranged”, or “I wish it would happen”.

Anyone on social media—I am sure your Lordships all are—will know that I follow very carefully what people from different political parties say about each other. I do not know if you have ever followed the kind of things that are said about the Government and their Ministers, but the threats are not indirect and are often named. In that instance, it is nothing to do with women, but it is pretty violent and vile. By the way, I have also followed what is said about the Opposition Benches, and that can be pretty violent and vile, including language that implies that they wish those people were the subject of quite intense violence—without going into detail. That happens, and I do not approve of it—obviously. I also do not think that pile-ons are pleasant to be on the receiving end of, and I understand how they happen. However, if we criminalise pile-ons on social media, we are openly imposing censorship.

What is worse in my mind is that we are allowing the conflation of words and actions, where what people say or think is the same as acting on it, as the criminal law would see it. We have seen a very dangerous trend recently, which is particularly popular in the endless arguments and disputes over identity politics, where people will say that speech is violence. This has happened to a number of gender-critical feminists, in this instance women, who have gone in good faith to speak at universities, having been invited. They have been told that their speech was indistinguishable from violence and that it made students at the university feel under threat and unsafe and that it was the equivalent of being attacked. But guess what? Once you remove that distinction, the response to that speech can be to use violence, because you cannot tell the difference between them. That has happened around a number of university actions, where speakers and their supporters were physically assaulted by people who said that they were using self-defence against speech that was violent. I get nervous that this is a slippery slope, and we certainly should not go anywhere near it in legislation.

Finally, I agree that we should tackle the culture of people piling on and using this kind of language, but it is a cultural and social question. What we require is moral leadership and courage in the face of it—calling it out, arguing against it and so on. It is wrong to use the law to send messages; it is an abdication of moral leadership and a cop-out, let alone dangerous in what is criminalised. I urge your Lordships to reject those amendments.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 5C and 7A in this group. I welcome the Government’s moves to criminalise cyberflashing. It is something that many have campaigned for in both Houses and outside for many years. I will not repeat the issues so nobly introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and I say yet again that I suspect that the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, is watching, frustrated that she is still not able to take part in these proceedings.

It is worth making the point that, if actions are deemed to be serious enough to require criminalisation and for people potentially to be prosecuted for them, I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to say in his remarks that this whole area of the law will be kept under review. There is no doubt that women and girls’ faith in the criminal justice system, both law enforcement and the Crown Prosecution Service, is already very low. If we trumpet the fact that this offence has been introduced, and then there are no prosecutions because the hurdles have not been reached, that is even worse than not introducing the offence in the first place. So I hope very much that this will be kept under review, and no doubt there will be opportunities to return to it in the future.

I do not want to get into the broader debate that we have just heard, because we could be here for a very long time, but I would just say to the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Fox, that we will debate this in future days on Report and there will be specific protection and mention of women and girls on the face of the Bill—assuming, of course, that Amendment 152 is approved by this House. The guidance might not use the words that have been talked about, but the point is that that is the place to have the debate—led by the regulator with appropriate public consultation—about the gendered nature of abuse that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, has so eloquently set out. I hope that will also be a big step forward in these matters.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how this area of law will be kept under review.