Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Baroness Kidron

Report stage
Thursday 6th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I understand that, as this is a new stage of the Bill, I have to declare my interests: I am the chair of 5Rights Foundation, a charity that works around technology and children; I am a fellow at the computer science department at Oxford University; I run the Digital Futures Commission, in conjunction with the 5Rights Foundation and the London School of Economics; I am a commissioner on the Broadband Commission; I am an adviser for the AI ethics institute; and I am involved in Born in Bradford and the Lancet commission, and I work with a broad number of civil society organisations.

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[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I also welcome these amendments and want to pay tribute to Maria Miller in the other place for her work on this issue. It has been extraordinary. I too was going to raise the issue of the definition of “photograph”, so perhaps the Minister could say or, even better, put it in the Bill. It does extend to those other contexts.

My main point is about children. We do not want to criminalise children, but this is pervasive among under-18s. I do want to make the distinction between those under-18s who intentionally harm another under-18 and have to be responsible for what they have done in the meaning of the law as the Minister set it out, and those who are under the incredible pressure—I do not mean coercion, because that is another out-clause—of oversharing that is inherent in the design of many of these services. That is an issue I am sure we are going to come back to later today. I would love to hear the Minister say something about the Government’s intention from the Dispatch Box: that it is preventive first and there is a balance between education and punishment for under-18s who find themselves unavoidably in this situation.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

Very briefly, before I speak to these amendments, I want to welcome them. Having spoken to and introduced some of the threats of sharing intimate images under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, I think it is really welcome that everything has been brought together in one place. Again, I pay tribute to the work of Dame Maria Miller and many others outside who have raised these as issues. I also want to pay tribute to the Ministry of Justice Minister Edward Argar, who has also worked with my noble friend the Minister on this.

I have one specific question. The Minister did mention this in his remarks, but could he be absolutely clear that these amendments do not mention specifically the lifetime anonymity of claimants and the special measures in relation to giving evidence that apply to witnesses. That came up in the last group of amendments as well. Because they are not actually in this drafting, it would be helpful if he could put on record the relationship with the provisions in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. I know that would be appreciated by campaigners.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Baroness Kidron

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 218JA, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Allan. My name is attached to it online but has not made it on to the printed version. He introduced it so ably and comprehensively that I will not say much more, but I will be more direct with my noble friend the Minister.

This amendment would remove Clause 133(11). The noble Lord, Lord Allan, mentioned that BT has raised with us—I am sure that others have too—that the subsection gives examples of access facilities, such as ISPs and application stores. However, as the noble Lord said, there are other ways that services could use operating systems, browsers and VPNs to evade these access restriction orders. While it is convention for me to say that I would support this amendment should it be moved at a later stage, this is one of those issues that my noble friend the Minister could take off the table this afternoon—he has had letters about it to which there have not necessarily been replies—just by saying that subsection (11) does not give the whole picture, that there are other services and that it is misleading to give just these examples. Will he clarify at the Dispatch Box and on the record, for the benefit of everyone using the Bill now and in future, what broader services are caught? We could then take the issue off the table on this 10th day of Committee.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I will be even more direct than the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and seek some confirmation. I understood from our various briefings in Committee that, where content is illegal, it is illegal anywhere in the digital world—it is not restricted simply to user to user, search and Part 5. Can the Minister say whether I have understood that correctly? If I have, will he confirm that Ofcom will be able to use its disruption powers on a service out of scope, as it were, such as a blog or a game with no user-to-user aspect, if it were found to be persistently hosting illegal content?

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Baroness Kidron

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I shall speak briefly to Amendments 220E and 226. On Amendment 220E, I say simply that nothing should be left to chance on IWF. No warm words or good intentions replace the requirement for its work to be seamlessly and formally integrated into the OSB regime. I put on record the extraordinary debt that every one of us owes to those who work on the front line of child sexual abuse. I know from my own work how the images linger. We should all do all that we can to support those who spend every day chasing down predators and finding and supporting victims and survivors. I very much hope that, in his response, the Minister will agree to sit down with the IWF, colleagues from Ofcom and the noble Lords who tabled the amendment and commit to finding a language that will give the IWF the reassurance it craves.

More generally, I raise the issue of why the Government did not accept the pre-legislative committee’s recommendation that the Bill provide a framework for how bodies will work together, including when and how they will share powers, take joint action and conduct joint investigations. I have a lot of sympathy with the Digital Regulation Co-operation Forum in its desire to remain an informal body, but that is quite different from the formal power to share sensitive data and undertake joint action or investigation.

If history repeats itself, enforcing the law will take many years and very likely will cost a great deal of money and require expertise that it makes no sense for Ofcom to reproduce. It seems obvious that it should have the power to co-designate efficiently and effectively. I was listening to the Minister when he set out his amendment, and he went through the process that Ofcom has, but it did not seem to quite meet the “efficiently and effectively” model. I should be interested to know why there is not more emphasis on co-regulation in general and the sharing of powers in particular.

In the spirit of the evening, I turn to Amendment 226 and make some comments before the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, has outlined the amendment, so I beg her indulgence on that. I want to support and credit the NSPCC for its work in gathering the entire child rights community behind it. Selfishly, I have my own early warning system, in the form of the 5Rights youth advisory group, made up of the GYG—gifted young generation—from Gravesend. It tells us frequently exactly what it does not like and does like about the online world. More importantly, it reveals very early on in our interactions the features or language associated with emerging harms.

Because of the lateness of the hour, I will not give your Lordships all the quotes, but capturing and reflecting children’s insight and voices is a key part of future-proofing. It allows us to anticipate new harms and, where new features pop up that are having a positive or negative impact, it is quite normal to ask the user groups how they are experiencing those features and that language themselves. That is quite normal across all consumer groups so, if this is a children’s Bill, why are children not included in this way?

In the work that I do with companies, they often ask what emerging trends we are seeing. For example, they actually say that they will accept any additions to the list of search words that can lead to self-harm content, or “What do we know about the emoji language that is happening now that was not happening last week?” I am always surprised at their surprise when we say that a particular feature is causing anxiety for children. Rather than being hostile, their response is almost always, “I have never thought about it that way before”. That is the value of consulting your consumer—in this case, children.

I acknowledge what the Minister said and I welcome the statutory consultees—the Children’s Commissioner, the Victims’ Commissioner and so on. It is a very welcome addition, but this role is narrowly focused on the codes of practice at the very start of the regulatory cycle, rather than the regulatory system as a whole. It does not include the wider experience of those organisations that deal with children in real time, such as South West Grid for Learning or the NSPCC, or the research work done by 5Rights, academics across the university sector or research partners such as Revealing Reality—ongoing, real-time information and understanding of children’s perspectives on their experience.

Likewise, super-complaints and Ofcom’s enforcement powers are what happen after harms take place. I believe that we are all united in thinking that the real objective of the exercise is to prevent harm. That means including children’s voices not only because it is their right but because, so often in my experience, they know exactly what needs to happen, if only we would listen.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I speak mainly to support Amendment 220E, to which I have added my name. I am also delighted to support government Amendment 98A and I entirely agree with the statutory consultees listed there. I will make a brief contribution to support the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who introduced Amendment 220E. I thank the chief executive at Ofcom for the discussions that we have had on the designation and the Minister for the reply he sent me on this issue.

I have a slight feeling that we are dancing on the head of a pin a little, as we know that we have an absolutely world-leading organisation in the form of the Internet Watch Foundation. It plays an internationally respected role in tackling child sexual abuse. We should be, and I think we are, very proud to have it in the United Kingdom, and the Government want to enhance and further build on the best practice that we have seen. As we have already heard and all know, this Bill has been a very long time in coming and organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation, which are pretty certain because of their expertise and the good work they have done already, should be designated.

However, without knowing that and without having a strong steer of support from the Minister, it becomes harder for them to operate, as they are in a vacuum. Things such as funding and partnership working become harder and harder, as well, which is what I mean by dancing on the head of a pin—unless the Minister says something about another organisation.

The IWF was founded in 1996, when 18% of the world’s known child sexual abuse material was hosted in the UK. Today that figure is less than 1% and has been since 2003, thanks to the work of the IWF’s analysts and the partnership approach the IWF takes. We should say thank you to those who are at the front line of the grimmest material imaginable and who do this to keep our internet safe.

I mentioned, in the previous group, the IWF’s research on girls. It says that it has seen more girls appearing in this type of imagery. Girls now appear in 96% of the imagery it removes from the internet, up almost 30 percentage points from a decade ago. That is another good reason why we want the internet and online to be a safe place for women and girls. As I say, any delay in establishing the role and responsibility of an expert organisation such as the IWF in working with Ofcom risks leaving a vacuum in which the risk is to children. That is really the ultimate thing; if there is a vacuum left and the IWF is not certain about its position, then what happens is that the children who are harmed most by this awful material are the ones who are not being protected. I do not think that is what anybody wants to see, however much we might argue about whether an order should be passed by Parliament or by Ofcom.

Digital Inclusion

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Baroness Kidron

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

I thank my noble friend; he is absolutely right. My department has launched a digital inclusion innovation fund, designed to tackle digital exclusion among older and disabled people, and I have just talked about the qualifications. What he also hinted at is that, for many people, it is a case of simply finding it difficult to go online or to complete government forms. We want to make sure that there is support available; for example, in our network of around 3,000 libraries, in accessible locations, there are trained staff and volunteers and assisted access to a wide range of digital public services.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I add my welcome to those of others to the Secretary of State and refer the House to my interests in the register. Does she agree that inclusion is about more than getting the greatest number of people online as quickly as possible, and depends on the digital environment being designed in a way that respects the needs and rights of users, be they women in public life, vulnerable users, or children and young people? In particular, can she take the opportunity of welcoming the age-appropriate design code, published by the ICO yesterday, and tell the House when she expects to lay it before Parliament?

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

I thank the noble Baroness. She and I had a brief conversation recently about some of these issues, and I look forward to discussing this further with her. She is absolutely right to say that the digital and tech environment is very exciting, but that it of course brings new challenges, not just about the new technology itself but about behaviours online. That is why the Government will legislate following the online harms White Paper and will develop further legislation. I welcome the publication yesterday by the Information Commissioner’s Office of the age-appropriate design code, and I hope that all parliamentarians will have the opportunity to take note of it.