Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Report stage
Wednesday 19th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, as I was eagerly anticipating, government Amendments 238A and 238D seek to change the parliamentary process for laying the first regulations specifying the category 1 threshold conditions from the negative to the affirmative procedure. I am pleased to bring forward this change in response to the recommendation of your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

The change will ensure that there are adequate levels of parliamentary scrutiny of the first regulations specifying the category 1 threshold conditions. This is appropriate given that the categorisation of category 1 services will lead to the most substantial duties on the largest and most influential services. As noble Lords are aware, these include the duties on user empowerment, user identity verification, journalistic and news publisher content, content of democratic importance, and fraudulent advertising.

Category 2A services will have only additional transparency and fraudulent advertising duties, and category 2B services will be subject only to additional transparency reporting duties. The burden of these duties is significantly less than the additional category 1 duties, and we have therefore retained the use of the negative resolution procedure for these regulations, as they require less parliamentary scrutiny.

Future changes to the category 1 threshold conditions will also use the negative procedure. This will ensure that the regime remains agile in responding to change, which I know was of particular concern to noble Lords when we debated the categorisation group in Committee. Keeping the negative procedure for such subsequent uses will avoid the risk of future changes being subject to delays because of parliamentary scheduling. I beg to move.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 245. I would like to thank my noble friend the Minister, and also the Minister on leave, for the conversations that I have had with them about this amendment and related issues. As we have already heard, the platform categorisation is extremely important. So far, much of it is unknown, including which sites are actually going to be in which categories. For example, we have not yet seen any proposed secondary regulations. As my noble friend has just outlined, special duties apply, especially for those sites within category 1—user empowerment in particular, but also other duties relating to content and fraudulent advertisements.

Clause 85 and Schedule 11 set out the thresholds for determining which sites will be in category 1, category 2A or category 2B. I am very mindful of the exhortation of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, about being brief, but it is amazing how much you have to say about one word to explain this amendment. This amendment proposes to change an “and” to an “or” in relation to determining which sites would fall within category 1. It would move from a test of size “and” functionality to a test of size “or” functionality. This would give Ofcom more flexibility to decide which platforms really need category 1 designation. Category 1 should not be decided just on size; it should also be possible to determine it on the basis of functionality.

Functionality is defined in the Bill in Clause 208. We will get to those amendments shortly, but there is no doubt from what the Government have already conceded, or agreed with those of us who have been campaigning passionately on the Bill for a number of years, that functionality can make a platform harmful. It is perfectly possible to have small platforms that both carry highly harmful content and themselves become harmful in the way that they are designed. We have heard many examples and I will not detain the House with them, but I draw attention to two particular sites which capture how broad this is. The perpetrators of offline hate crimes are often linked to these small platforms. For example, the perpetrator of the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting had an online presence on the right-wing extremist social network Gab. In the UK, Jake Davison, the self-proclaimed incel who killed five people in Plymouth in 2021, frequented smaller incel forums after he was banned from Reddit in the days leading up to the mass shooting.

I also want to share with noble Lords an email that I received just this week from a family who had been to see their Member of Parliament, Matt Rodda MP, and also the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who I know is very regretful that she cannot be here today. I thank Victoria and Jean Eustace for sharing the story of their sister and daughter. Victoria wrote: “I am writing to you regarding the Online Safety Bill, as my family and I are concerned it will not sufficiently protect vulnerable adults from harm. My sister, Zoe Lyalle, killed herself on 26 May 2020, having been pointed towards a method using an online forum called Sanctioned Suicide. Zoe was 18 years old at the time of her death and as such technically an adult, but she was autistic, so she was emotionally less mature than many 18 year- olds. She found it difficult to critically analyse written content”. She says that “The forum in question is not large and states on its face that it does not encourage suicide, although its content does just that”. The next part I was even more shocked about: “Since Zoe’s death, we have accessed her email account. The forum continues to email Zoe, providing her with updates on content she may have missed while away from the site, as well as requesting donations. One recent email included a link to a thread on the forum containing tips on how best to use the precise method that Zoe had employed”.

In her note to me, the Minister on leave said that she wanted to catch some of the platforms we are talking about with outsized influence. In my reply, I said that those sites on which people are encouraged to take their own lives or become radicalised and therefore take the harms they are seeing online into the real world undoubtedly exercise influence and should be tackled.

It is also perfectly possible for us to have large but safe platforms. I know that my noble friend Lord Moylan may want to discuss this in relation to sites that he has talked about already on this Bill. The risk of the current drafting is a flight of users from these large platforms, newly categorised as category 1, to the small, non-category 1 platforms. What if a platform becomes extremely harmful very quickly? How will it be recategorised speedily but fairly and involving parliamentary oversight?

The Government have run a variety of arguments as to why the “and” in the Bill should not become an “or”. They say that it creates legal uncertainty. Every Bill creates legal uncertainty; that is why we have an army of extremely highly paid lawyers, not just in this country but around the world. They say that what we are talking about is broader than illegal content or content related to children’s safety, but they have already accepted an earlier amendment on safety by design and, in subsections (10) to (12) of Clause 12, that specific extra protections should be available for content related to

“suicide or an act of deliberate self-injury, or … an eating disorder or behaviours associated with an eating disorder”

or abusive content relating to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or gender reassignment and that:

“Content is within this subsection if it incites hatred against people”.


The Government have already breached some of their own limits on content that is not just illegal or relates to child safety duties. In fact, they have agreed that that content should have enhanced triple-shield protection.

The Government have also said that they want to avoid burdens on small but low-harm platforms. I agree with that, but with an “or” it would be perfectly possible for Ofcom to decide by looking at size or functionality and to exclude those smaller platforms that do not present the harm we all care about. The Minister may also offer me a review of categorisation; however, it is a review of the tiers of categorisation and not the sites within the categories, which I think many of us will have views on over the years.

I come to what we should do on this final day of Report. I am very thankful to those who have had many conversations on this, but there is a fundamental difference of opinion in this House on these matters. We will talk about functionality shortly and I am mindful of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee’s recommendation that this legislation should adopt

“a more nuanced approach, based not just on size and high-level functionality, but factors such as risk, reach, user base, safety performance, and business model”.

There should be other factors. Ofcom should have the ability to decide whether it takes one factor or another, and not have a series of all the thresholds to be passed, to give it the maximum flexibility. I will listen very carefully to what my noble friend the Minister and other noble Lords say, but at this moment I intend to test the opinion of the House on this amendment.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Report stage
Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, as we discussed in Committee, the Bill contains strong protection for women and girls and places duties on services to tackle and limit the kinds of offences and online abuse that we know disproportionately affect them. His Majesty’s Government are committed to ensuring that women and girls are protected online as well as offline. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes for the thoughtful and constructive way in which she has approached ensuring that the provisions in the Bill are as robust as possible.

It is with my noble friend’s support that I am therefore pleased to move government Amendment 152. This will create a new clause requiring Ofcom to produce guidance that summarises, in one clear place, measures that can be taken to tackle the abuse that women and girls disproportionately face online. This guidance will relate to regulated user-to-user and search services and will cover content regulated under the Bill’s frame- work. Crucially, it will summarise the measures in the Clause 36 codes for Part 3 duties, namely the illegal and child safety duties. It will also include a summary of platforms’ relevant Part 4 duties—for example, relevant terms of service and reporting provisions. This will provide a one-stop shop for providers.

Providers that adhere to the codes of practice will continue to be compliant with the duties. However, this guidance will ensure that it is easy and clear for platforms to implement holistic and effective protections for women and girls across their various duties. Any company that says it is serious about protecting women and girls online will, I am sure, refer to this guidance when implementing protections for its users.

Ofcom will have the flexibility to shape the guidance in a way it deems most effective in protecting women and girls online. However, as outlined in this amendment, we expect that it will include examples of best practice for assessing risks of harm to women and girls from content and activity, and how providers can reduce these risks and emphasise provisions in the codes of practice that are particularly relevant to the protection of women and girls.

To ensure that this guidance is effective and makes a difference, the amendment creates a requirement on Ofcom to consult the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner, among other people or organisations it considers appropriate, when it creates this guidance. Much like the codes of practice, this will ensure that the views and voices of experts on the issue, and of women, girls and victims, are reflected. This amendment will also require Ofcom to publish this guidance.

I am grateful to all the organisations that have worked with us and with my noble friend Lady Morgan to get to this point. I hope your Lordships will accept the amendment. I beg to move.

[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.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage
Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

In the response I gave, I said that we are making the risk assessment that the riskiest behaviour is illegal content and content which presents a harm to children. That is the assessment and the approach taken in the Bill. In relation to other content which is legal and for adults to choose how they encounter it, there are protections in the Bill to enforce terms of service and empower users to curate their own experience online, but that assessment is made by adult users within the law.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords who spoke in this short but important debate. As we heard, some issues relating to risk and harm have been returned to and will no doubt be again, and we note the impact of the absence of legal but harmful as a concept. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, was very sad that she could not be here this afternoon due to another engagement.

I will not keep the House much longer. I particularly noted the noble Baroness’s point that there should not be, and is not, a direct relationship between the size of the platform and its ability to cause harm. There is a balance to be struck between the regulatory burden placed on platforms versus the health and well-being of those who are using them. As I have said before, I am not sure that we have always got that particular balance right in the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Allan, was very constructive: it has to be a good thing if we are now beginning to think about the Bill’s implementation, although we have not quite reached the end and I do not want to prejudge any further stages, in the sense that we are now thinking about how this would work. Of course, he is right to say that some of these platforms have no intention of complying with these rules at all. Ofcom and the Government will have to work out what to do about that.

Ultimately, the Government of the day—whoever it might be—will want the powers to be able to say that a small platform is deeply harmful in terms of its content and reach. When the Bill has been passed, there will be pressure at some point in the future on a platform that is broadcasting or distributing or amplifying content that is deeply harmful. Although I will withdraw the amendment today, my noble friend’s offer of further conversations, and more detail on categorisation and of any review of the platforms as categorised as category 1, 2 and beyond, would be very helpful in due course. I beg leave to withdraw.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I will certainly do so. It requires flicking through a number of amendments and cross-referencing them with provisions in the Bill. I will certainly do that in slower time and respond.

We think that the Law Commission, which looked at all these issues, including, I think, the questions put by the noble Lord, has done that well. We were satisfied with it. I thought its briefing with Professor Penney Lewis was useful in exploring those issues. We are confident that the offence as drafted is the appropriate one.

My noble friend Lady Morgan and others asked why both the Law Commission and the Government are taking a different approach in relation to intimate image abuse and to cyberflashing. We are taking action to criminalise both, but the Law Commission recommended different approaches in how to criminalise that behaviour to take into account the different actions of the perpetrator in each scenario. Sharing an intimate image of a person without their consent is ipso facto wrongful, as it is a violation of their bodily privacy and sexual autonomy. Sending a genital image is not ipso facto wrongful, as it does not always constitute a sexual intrusion, so greater additional culpability is required for that offence. To give an example, sending a photograph of a naked protestor, even without the consent of the recipient, is not always harmful. Although levels of harm resulting from behaviours may be the same and cause the same levels of stress, the criminal law must consider whether the perpetrator’s behaviour was sufficiently culpable for an offence to have been committed. That is why we think the intent approach is best for cyberflashing but have taken a different approach in relation to intimate image abuse.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that explanation, which is very helpful and there is a lot in his reply so far that we will have to bottom out. Is he able to shed any light at all on when we might see the drafting of the intimate image abuse wording because that would be helpful in resolving some of the issues we have been debating?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I cannot give a precise date. The Committee knows the dates for this Committee are a moveable feast, but we have been having fruitful discussions on some of the issues we have already discussed—we had one yesterday with my noble friend. I appreciate the point she is making about wanting to see the drafting in good time before Report so that we can have a well thought through debate on it. I will certainly reiterate that to the usual channels and to others.

Amendment 271 additionally seeks to require companies in scope to provide systems which enable users to report incidents of cyberflashing to platforms. Clauses 16 and 26 already require companies to set up systems and processes which allow users easily to report illegal content, and this will include cyberflashing. This amendment therefore duplicates the existing requirement set out in the Bill. Amendment 271 also requires in scope companies to report cyberflashing content to the Crown Prosecution Service. The Bill does not place requirements on in scope companies to report discovery of illegal content online, other than in the instances of child exploitation and abuse, reflecting the seriousness of that crime and the less subjective nature of the content that is being reported in those scenarios.

The Bill, which has been developed in consultation with our partners in law enforcement, aims to prevent and reduce the proliferation of illegal content and activity in the first place and the resulting harm this causes to so many. While the Bill does not place any specific responsibilities on policing, our policing partners are considering how best to respond to the growing threat of online offences, as my noble friend Lady Morgan noted, in relation to the publication last week of the Strategic Threat and Risk Assessment on Violence Against Women and Girls. Policing partners will be working closely with Ofcom to explore the operational impact of the Bill and make sure it is protecting women and girls in the way we all want it to.

I hope that helps noble Lords on the issues set out in these amendments. I am grateful for the support for the government amendment in my name and hope that noble Lords will be content not to move theirs at this juncture.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, protecting women and girls is a priority for His Majesty’s Government, at home, on our streets and online. This Bill will provide vital protections for women and girls, ensuring that companies take action to improve their safety online and protect their freedom of expression so that they can continue to play their part online, as well as offline, in our society.

On Amendments 94 and 304, tabled by my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes, I want to be unequivocal: all service providers must understand the systemic risks facing women and girls through their illegal content and child safety risk assessments. They must then put in place measures that manage and mitigate these risks. Ofcom’s codes of practice will set out how companies can comply with their duties in the Bill.

I assure noble Lords that the codes will cover protections against violence against women and girls. In accordance with the safety duties, the codes will set out how companies should tackle illegal content and activity confronting women and girls online. This includes the several crimes that we have listed as priority offences, which we know are predominantly perpetrated against women and girls. The codes will also cover how companies should tackle harmful online behaviour and content towards girls.

Companies will be required to implement systems and processes designed to prevent people encountering priority illegal content and minimise the length of time for which any such content is present. In addition, Ofcom will be required to carry out broad consultation when drafting codes of practice to harness expert opinions on how companies can address the most serious online risks, including those facing women and girls. Many of the examples that noble Lords gave in their speeches are indeed reprehensible. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, talked about rape threats and threats of violence. These, of course, are examples of priority illegal content and companies will have to remove and prevent them.

My noble friend Lady Morgan suggested that the Bill misses out the specific course of conduct that offences in this area can have. Clause 9 contains provisions to ensure that services

“mitigate and manage the risk of the service being used for the commission or facilitation of”

an offence. This would capture patterns of behaviour. In addition, Schedule 7 contains several course of conduct offences, including controlling and coercive behaviour, and harassment. The codes will set out how companies must tackle these offences where this content contributes to a course of conduct that might lead to these offences.

To ensure that women’s and girls’ voices are heard in all this, the Bill will, as the right reverend Prelate noted, make it a statutory requirement for Ofcom to consult the Victims’ Commissioner and the domestic abuse commissioner about the formation of the codes of practice. As outlined, the existing illegal content, child safety and child sexual abuse and exploitation codes will already cover protections for women and girls. Creating a separate code dealing specifically with violence against women and girls would mean transposing or duplicating measures from these in a separate code.

In its recent communication to your Lordships, Ofcom stated that it will be consulting quickly on the draft illegal content and child sexual abuse and exploitation codes, and has been clear that it has already started the preparatory work for these. If Ofcom were required to create a separate code on violence against women and girls this preparatory work would need to be revised, with the inevitable consequence of slowing down the implementation of these vital protections.

An additional stand-alone code would also be duplicative and could cause problems with interpretation and uncertainty for Ofcom and providers. Linked to this, the simpler the approach to the codes, the higher the rates of compliance are likely to be. The more codes there are covering specific single duties, the more complicated it will be for providers, which will have to refer to multiple different codes, and the harder for businesses to put in place the right protections for users. Noble Lords have said repeatedly that this is a complex Bill, and this is an area where I suggest we should not make it more complex still.

As the Bill is currently drafted, Ofcom is able to draft codes in a way that addresses a range of interrelated risks affecting different groups of users, such as people affected in more than one way; a number of noble Lords dealt with that in their contributions. For example, combining the measures that companies can take to tackle illegal content targeting women and girls with the measures they can take to tackle racist abuse online could ensure a more comprehensive and effective approach that recognises the point, which a number of noble Lords made, that people with more than one protected characteristic under the Equality Act may be at compound risk of harm. If the Bill stipulated that Ofcom separate the offences that disproportionately affect women and girls from other offences in Schedule 7, this comprehensive approach to tackling violence against women and girls online could be lost.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

Could my noble friend the Minister confirm something? I am getting rather confused by what he is saying. Is it the case that there will be just one mega code of practice to deal with every single problem, or will there be lots of different codes of practice to deal with the problems? I am sure the tech platforms will have sufficient people to be able to deal with them. My understanding is that Ofcom said that, while the Bill might not mandate a code of practice on violence against women and girls, it would in due course be happy to look at it. Is that right, or is my noble friend the Minister saying that Ofcom will never produce a code of practice on violence against women and girls?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

It is up to Ofcom to decide how to set the codes out. What I am saying is that the codes deal with specific categories of threat or problem—illegal content, child safety content, child sexual abuse and exploitation—rather than with specific audiences who are affected by these sorts of problems. There is a circularity here in some of the criticism that we are not reflecting the fact that there are compound harms to people affected in more than one way and then saying that we should have a separate code dealing with one particular group of people because of one particular characteristic. We are trying to deal with categories of harm that we know disproportionately affect women and girls but which of course could affect others, as the noble Baroness rightly noted. Amendment 304—

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

There are no codes designed for Jewish people, Muslim people or people of colour, even though we know that they are disproportionately affected by some of these harms as well. The approach taken is to tackle the problems, which we know disproportionately affect all of those groups of people and many more, by focusing on the harms rather than the recipients of the harm.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

Can I check something with my noble friend? This is where the illogicality is. The Government have mandated in the Strategic Policing Requirement that violence against women and girls is a national threat. I do not disagree with him that other groups of people will absolutely suffer abuse and online violence, but the Government themselves have said that violence against women and girls is a national threat. I understand that my noble friend has the speaking notes, the brief and everything else, so I am not sure how far we will get on this tonight, but, given the Home Office stance on it, I think that to say that this is not a specific threat would be a mistake.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

With respect, I do not think that that is a perfect comparison. The Strategic Policing Requirement is an operational policing document intended for chief constables and police and crime commissioners in the important work that they do, to make sure they have due regard for national threats as identified by the Home Secretary. It is not something designed for commercial technology companies. The approach we are taking in the Bill is to address harms that can affect all people and which we know disproportionately affect women and girls, and harms that we know disproportionately affect other groups of people as well.

We have made changes to the Bill: the consultation with the Victims’ Commissioner and the domestic abuse commissioner, the introduction of specific offences to deal with cyber-flashing and other sorts of particular harms, which we know disproportionately affect women and girls. We are taking an approach throughout the work of the Bill to reflect those harms and to deal with them. Because of that, respectfully, I do not think we need a specific code of practice for any particular group of people, however large and however disproportionately they are affected. I will say a bit more about our approach. I have said throughout, including at Second Reading, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has been very clear in another place as well, that the voices of women and girls have been heard very strongly and have influenced the approach that we have taken in the Bill. I am very happy to keep talking to noble Lords about it, but I do not think that the code my noble friend sets out is the right way to go about solving this issue.

Amendment 304 seeks to adopt the Istanbul convention definition of violence against women and girls. The Government are already compliant with the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, which was ratified last year. However, we are unable to include the convention’s definition of violence against women and girls in the Bill, as it extends to legal content and activity that is not in scope of the Bill as drafted. Using that definition would therefore cause legal uncertainty for companies. It would not be appropriate for the Government to require companies to remove legal content accessed by adults who choose to access it. Instead, as noble Lords know, the Government have brought in new duties to improve services’ transparency and accountability.

Amendment 104 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, seeks to require user-to-user services to provide a higher standard of protection for women, girls and vulnerable adults than for other adults. The Bill already places duties on service providers and Ofcom to prioritise responding to content and activity that presents the highest risk of harm to users. This includes users who are particularly affected by online abuse, such as women, girls and vulnerable adults. In overseeing the framework, Ofcom must ensure that there are adequate protections for those who are most vulnerable to harm online. In doing so, Ofcom will be guided by its existing duties under the Communications Act, which requires it to have regard when performing its duties to the

“vulnerability of children and of others whose circumstances appear to OFCOM to put them in need of special protection”.

The Bill also amends Ofcom’s general duties under the Communications Act to require that Ofcom, when carrying out its functions, considers the risks that all members of the public face online, and ensures that they are adequately protected from harm. This will form part of Ofcom’s principal duty and will apply to the way that Ofcom performs all its functions, including when producing codes of practice.

In addition, providers’ illegal content and child safety risk assessment duties, as well as Ofcom’s sectoral risk assessment duties, require them to understand the risk of harm to users on their services. In doing so, they must consider the user base. This will ensure that services identify any specific risks facing women, girls or other vulnerable groups of people.

As I have mentioned, the Bill will require companies to prioritise responding to online activity that poses the greatest risk of harm, including where this is linked to vulnerability. Vulnerability is very broad. The threshold at which somebody may arguably become vulnerable is subjective, context-dependent and maybe temporary. The majority of UK adult users could be defined as vulnerable in particular circumstances. In practice, this would be very challenging for Ofcom to interpret if it were added to the safety objectives in this way. The existing approach allows greater flexibility so that companies and Ofcom can focus on the greatest threats to different groups of people at any given time. This allows the Bill to adapt to and keep pace with changing risk patterns that may affect different groups of people.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We will discuss this when it comes to the definition of content in the Bill, which covers features. I was struck by the speech by the right reverend Prelate about the difference between what people encounter online, and the analogy used by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about a bookshop. Social media is of a different scale and has different features which make that analogy not a clean or easy one. We will debate in other groups the accumulated threat of features such as algorithms, if the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, will allow me to go into greater detail then, but I certainly take the points made by both the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in their contributions.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend very much indeed, and thank all noble Lords who have taken part. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, this has been an important debate—they are all important, of course—but I think this has really got to the heart of parts of the Bill, parts of why it has been proposed in the first place, and some choices the Government made in their drafting and the changes they have made to the Bill. The right reverend Prelate reminded us, as Bishops always do, of the bigger picture, and he was quite right to do so. There is no equality of arms, as he put it, between most of us as internet users and these enormous companies that are changing, and have changed, our society. My noble friend was right—and I was going to pick up on it too—that the bookshop example given by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is, I am afraid, totally misguided. I love bookshops; the point is that I can choose to walk into one or not. If I do not walk into a bookshop, I do not see the books promoting some of the content we have discussed today. If they spill out on to the street where I trip over them, I cannot ignore them. This would be even harder if I were a vulnerable person, as we are going to discuss.

Noble Lords said that this is not a debate about content or freedom of expression, but that it is about features; I think that is right. However, it is a debate about choice, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said. I am grateful to each of those noble Lords who supported my amendments; we have had a good debate on both sets of amendments, which are similar. But as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, said, some of the content we are discussing, particularly in subsection (10), relating to suicide, pro-self-harm and pro-anorexia content, has literal life or death repercussions. To those noble Lords, and those outside this House, who seem to think we should not worry and should allow a total free-for-all, I say that we are doing so, in that the Government, in choosing not to adopt such amendments, are making an active choice. I am afraid the Government are condoning the serving up of insidious, deliberately harmful and deliberately dangerous content to our society, to younger people and vulnerable adults. The Minister and the Government would be better off if they said, “That is the choice that we have made”. I find it a really troubling choice because, as many noble Lords will know, I was involved in this Bill a number of years ago—there has been a certain turnover of Culture Secretaries in the last couple of years, and I was one of them. I find the Government’s choice troubling, but it has been made. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, we are treating children differently from how we are treating adults. As drafted, there is a cliff edge at the age of 18. As a society, we should say that there are vulnerabilities among adults, as we do in many walks of life; and exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, so powerfully said, there are times when we as a House, as a Parliament, as a society and as a state, should say we want to protect people. There is an offer here in both sets of amendments—I am not precious about which ones we choose—to have that protection.

I will of course withdraw the amendment today, because that is the convention of the House, but I ask my noble friend to reflect on the strength of feeling expressed by the House on this today; I think the Whip on the Bench will report as well. I am certain we will return to this on Report, probably with a unified set of amendments. In the algorithmic debate we will return to, the Government will have to explain, in words of one syllable, to those outside this House who worry about the vulnerable they work with or look after, about the choice that the Government have made in not offering protections when they could have done, in relation to these enormously powerful platforms and the insidious content they serve up repeatedly.

Suicide: Online Products

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to address online retailers’ algorithmic recommendations for products that can be used for the purposes of suicide.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

Her Majesty’s Government recognise the gravity of this issue and are investing in suicide prevention through the NHS long-term plan. The Advertising Standards Authority already regulates adverts containing references to suicide. The Government are considering how to tackle illegal and legal consumer harms associated with the contents, targeting and placement of online advertising through the online advertising programme. The consultation closed on 8 June and will help us determine how to tackle such harms.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

As my noble friend knows, I am a great supporter of the forthcoming Online Safety Bill but, as we have discussed, it will not regulate all harmful content online. When a particular well-known suicide manual is searched for on Amazon, the site’s algorithmic recommendations then specifically suggest material that can be used, or easily assembled, into a device intended to take one’s own life. If this is not to be regulated as harmful content under the Online Safety Bill, how can this sort of harm be regulated? It is broader than just advertising. Has my noble friend discussed this with Ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care?

UCAS End of Cycle Report 2019

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right that we need to increase aspiration for people at all levels, and our reforms to the national curriculum have been about equipping people with a knowledge-rich curriculum that will carry them as far as their talents can, whatever route they wish to pursue after the age of 18.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s levelling-up commitments are rightly not just about regional growth but about people. Does the Minister agree that improving educational outcomes for poor white boys should be a specific part of the levelling-up commitments and a measurable part of those commitments?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

First, I pay tribute to the work my noble friend did as Education Secretary to increase opportunity and drive up standards. Levelling up means setting the highest standards for all pupils and ensuring that they are helped to achieve their full potential, regardless of their background or location. We want schools to address the needs of every individual pupil using the resources available to them, including the pupil premium. As she knows, the disadvantaged white pupil cohort is the largest such group in our schools, so attracts the most pupil premium.