Online Safety Bill

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

That is right. What is interesting about that useful intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, is that that kind of gets search off the hook in respect of gambling. You are okay to follow the link from the search engine, but then you are age-gated at the point of the content. Clearly, with thumbnail images and so on in search, we need something better than that. The Bill requires something better than that already; should we go further? My question to the Minister is whether this could be similar to the discussion we had with the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, around non-mandatory codes and alternative methods. I thought that the Minister’s response in that case was quite helpful.

Could it be that if Part 3 and category 2A services chose to use age verification, they could be certain that they are compliant with their duties to protect children from pornographic and equivalent harmful content, but if they chose age-assurance techniques, it would then be on them to show Ofcom evidence of how that alternative method would still provide the equivalent protection? That would leave the flexibility of age assurance; it would not require age verification but would still set the same bar. I merely offer that in an attempt to be helpful to the Minister, in the spirit of where the Joint Committee and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, were coming from. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, can I ask him whether his comments make it even more important that we have a clear and unambiguous definition of age assurance and age verification in the Bill?

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I would not want to disagree with the noble Baroness for a moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I understand that, for legislation to have any meaning, it has to have some teeth and you have to be able to enforce it; otherwise, it is a waste of time, especially with something as important as the legislation that we are discussing here.

I am a bit troubled by a number of the themes in these amendments and I therefore want to ask some questions. I saw that the Government had tabled these amendments on senior manager liability, then I read amendments from both the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and the Labour Party, the Opposition. It seemed to me that even more people would be held liable and responsible as a result. I suppose I have a dread that—even with the supply chain amendment—this means that lots of people are going to be sacked. It seems to me that this might spiral dangerously out of control and everybody could get caught up in a kind of blame game.

I appreciate that I might not have understood, so this is a genuine attempt to do so. I am concerned that these new amendments will force senior managers and, indeed, officers and staff to take an extremely risk-averse approach to content moderation. They now have not only to cover their own backs but to avoid jail. One of my concerns has always been that this will lead to the over-removal of legal speech, and more censorship, so that is a question I would like to ask.

I also want to know how noble Lords think this will lie in relation to the UK being a science and technology superpower. Understandably, some people have argued that these amendments are making the UK a hostile environment for digital investment, and there is something to be balanced up there. Is there a risk that this will lead to the withdrawal of services from the UK? Will it make working for these companies unattractive to British staff? We have already heard that Jimmy Wales has vowed that the Wikimedia foundation will not scrutinise posts in the way demanded by the Bill. Is he going to be thrown in prison, or will Wikipedia pull out? How do we get the balance right?

What is the criminal offence that has a threat of a prison sentence? I might have misunderstood, but a technology company manager could fail to prevent a child or young person encountering legal but none the less allegedly harmful speech, be considered in breach of these amendments and get sent to prison. We have to be very careful that we understand what this harmful speech is, as we discussed previously. The threshold for harm, which encompasses physical and psychological harm, is vast and could mean people going to prison without the precise criminal offence being clear. We talked previously about VPNs. If a tech savvy 17-year-old uses a VPN and accesses some of this harmful material, will someone potentially be criminally liable for that young person getting around the law, find themselves accused of dereliction of duty and become a criminal?

My final question is on penalties. When I was looking at this Bill originally and heard about the eye-watering fines that some Silicon Valley companies might face, I thought, “That will destroy them”. Of course, to them it is the mere blink of an eye, and I do get that. This indicates to me, given the endless conversations we have had on whether size matters, that in this instance size does matter. The same kind of liabilities will be imposed not just on the big Silicon Valley monsters that can bear these fines, but on Mumsnet—or am I missing something? Mumsnet might not be the correct example, but could not smaller platforms face similar liabilities if a young person inadvertently encounters harmful material? It is not all malign people trying to do this; my unintended consequence argument is that I do not want to create criminals when a crime is not really being committed. It is a moral dilemma, and I do understand the issue of enforcement.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

I rise very much to support the comments of my noble friend Lord Bethell and, like him, to thank the Minister for bringing forward the government amendments. I will try to address some of the comments the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has just made.

One must view this as an exercise in working out how one drives culture change in some of the biggest and most powerful organisations in the world. Culture change is really hard. It is hard enough in a company of 10 people, let alone in a company with hundreds of thousands of employees across the world that has more money than a single country. That is what this Bill requires these enormous companies to do: to change the way they operate when they are looking at an inevitably congested, contested technology pipeline, by which I mean—to translate that out of tech speak—they have more work to do than even they can cope with. Every technology company, big or small, always has this problem: more good ideas than their technologists can cope with. They have to prioritise what to fix and what to implement. For the last 15 years, digital companies have prioritised things that drive income, but not the safety of our children. That requires a culture change from the top of the company.