Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Gohir and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 124, 126 and 227. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord McNally, for proposing these amendments and I wish them well.

A number of far-right websites already exist across the internet which are capable, with minimal reform, of meeting the requirements to qualify as recognised news publishers and benefit from the exemption. Some of these websites host content from known high-profile racists. These extreme websites feature anti-Semitism, hatred of women and hatred of Muslims. The Centre for Media Monitoring, part of the Muslim Council of Britain, has criticised the Bill’s media exemption. The threat of far-right and anti-Muslim websites arguing that they constitute a news publisher is not only inevitable but very dangerous. As news publishers, they would have the freedom to propagate fake news, disinformation and conspiracy theories about Islam and Muslims.

The thought that UK-based racist outlets would be able to access this exception is horrific enough, but there is also a risk that extremist news websites currently based in the USA and elsewhere around the world will seek to relocate to Britain to benefit from the exemption in future. This is because while the exemption does not require publishers to abide by any specific set of standards, it does require publishers to have a UK office. Perversely, this creates an incentive for an extremist website based the US, for example, from where many of the internationally most popular racially hateful websites currently operate, to establish an office here in the UK. In doing so, it may then be able to post content under the terms of the exemption. Indeed, this exemption risks paving the way for a catastrophic scenario in which, on account of this exemption, the UK becomes less safe. It is critical that the Government listen and engage with these concerns.

Amendment 124 seeks to ensure that newspaper comment sections are properly regulated. Anyone can be a target of hatred in a newspaper comment section, but they are most likely to have Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, racist and misogynistic content. Without the amendment, the Bill’s provisions on the media will endanger those it is intended to protect. These amendments propose a compromise which is the right approach and will ensure that people are protected from abuse while also retaining the media exemption for responsible newspaper publishers. I hope the Government will engage more on these matters and work towards a solution.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I regret that my noble friend Lord Lipsey is unable to be here. I wish him and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, well. I also regret that my noble friend Lord Stevenson is not here to wind up this debate and introduce his Amendment 127. Our inability to future-proof these proceedings means that, rather than talking to the next group, I am talking to this one.

I want to make four principal points. First, the principle of press freedom, as discussed by the noble Lords, Lord Black and Lord Faulks, in particular, is an important one. We do not think that this is the right Bill to reopen those issues. We look forward to the media Bill as the opportunity to discuss these things more fully across the House.

Secondly, I have some concerns about the news publisher exemption. In essence, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, set out, as long as you have a standards code, a complaints process, a UK address and a team of contributors, the exemption applies. That feels a bit loose to me, and it opens up the regime to some abuse. I hear what the noble Baronesses, Lady Gohir and Lady Grey-Thompson, said about how we already see pretty dodgy outfits allowing racist and abusive content to proliferate. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on whether the bar we have at the moment is too low and whether there is some reflection to be done on that.

The third point is on my noble friend Lord Stevenson’s Amendment 127, which essentially says that we should set a threshold around whether complaints are dealt with in a timely manner. In laying that amendment, my noble friend essentially wanted to probe. The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is here, so this is a good chance to have him listen to me say that we think that complaints should be dealt with more swiftly and that the organisation that he chairs could do better at dealing with that.

My fourth comment is about comments, particularly after listening to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about some of the hateful comment that is hidden away inside the comments that news publishers carry. I was very much struck by what she said in respect of some of the systems of virality that are now being adopted by those platforms. There, I think Amendment 227 is tempting. I heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said, and I think I agree that this is better addressed by Parliament.

For me, that just reinforces the need for this Bill, more than any other that I have ever worked on in this place, to have post-legislative scrutiny by Parliament so that we, as a Parliament, can review whether the regime we are setting up is running appropriately. It is such a novel regime, in particular around regulating algorithms and artificial intelligence. It would be an opportunity to see whether, in this case, the systems of virality were creating an amplification of harm away from the editorial function that the news publishers are able to exercise over the comments.

On that basis, and given the hour, I am happy to listen with care to the wise words of the Minister.