Online Safety Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I pay tribute to my noble friend for his work on this Bill while in office. I saw him at this Dispatch Box answering questions that reflected your Lordships’ eagerness to receive it and begin that scrutiny work. He is tempting me to stray into debates on the Bill itself, which we will have plenty of time for when it comes forward. As I say, the strongest protections in the Bill are for children and nothing in the Bill is designed to harm freedom of expression. The Bill holds those in balance, but I know that is one area that noble Lords will want to scrutinise during the Bill’s passage.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, has the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, not precisely made the point by pointing out that what we need to do now is talk about the Bill? We are prevented from talking about the Bill for reasons that may be clear to a number of your Lordships but are certainly not clear to me. Is it not time that we get a chance to have the discussions implied in the question from the noble Lord, Lord Kamall? Although Molly Russell was the most—how can one say it? The noble Lord used the word “heartbreaking”—example put before us recently, there have been many others and there will be many more before the Bill gets on to the statute book.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right. There have been too many such cases, and we want to get this legislation on to the statute book to prevent as many of those preventable harms as we are able to. I too want to have that debate to continue the scrutiny in your Lordships’ House, but it is important that the other place concludes that before we are able to do so. I hope that it will be engaged in that very swiftly and that the Bill will soon be before your Lordships.