Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Baroness Kidron

Report stage
Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I reiterate what the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, has said and thank him for our various discussions between Committee and Report, particularly on this set of amendments to do with age verification. I also welcome the Government’s responsiveness to the concerns raised in Committee. I welcome these amendments, which are a step forward.

In Committee, I was arguing that there should be a level playing field for regulating any online platform with pornographic content, whether it falls under Part 3 or Part 5 of the Bill. I welcome the Government’s significant changes to Clauses 11 and 72 to ensure that robust age verification or estimation must be used and that standards are consistent across the Bill.

I have a few minor concerns that I wish to highlight. I am thoughtful about whether enough is required of search services in preventing young people from accessing pornography in Clause 25. I recognise the Government believe they have satisfied the need. I fear they may have done enough in the short term, but there is a real concern that this clause is not sufficiently future-proofed. Of course, only time will tell. Maybe the Minister could advise us further in that particular regard.

In Committee, I also argued that the duties in respect of pornography in Parts 3 and 5 must come into effect at the same time. I welcome the government commitment to placing a timeframe for the codes of practice and guidance on the face of the Bill through amendments including Amendment 230. I hope that the Minister will reassure us today that it is the Government’s intention that the duties in Clauses 11 and 72 will come into effect at the same time. Subsection (3) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 271 specifically states that the duties could come into effect at different times, which leaves a loophole for pornography to be regulated differently, even if only for a short time, between Part 3 and Part 5 services. This would be extremely regrettable.

I would also like to reiterate what I said last Thursday, in case the Minister missed my contribution when he intervened on me. I say once again that I commend the Minister for the announcement of the review of the regulation, legislation and enforcement of pornography offences, which I think was this time last week. I once again ask the Minister: will he set out a timetable for publishing the terms of reference and details of how this review will take place? If he cannot set out that timetable today, will he write to your Lordships setting out the timetable before the Recess, and ensure a copy is placed in the Library?

Finally, all of us across the House have benefited from the expertise of expert organisations as we have considered this Bill. I repeat my request to the Minister that he consider establishing an external reference group to support the review, consisting of those NGOs with particular and dedicated expertise. Such groups would have much to add to the process—they have much learning and advice, and there is much assistance there to the Government in that regard.

Once again, I thank the Minister for listening and responding. I look forward to seeing the protections for children set out in these amendments implemented. I shall watch implementation very closely, and I trust and hope that the regulator will take robust action once the codes of practice and guidance are published. Children above all will benefit from a safer internet.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the government amendments in this group, which set out the important role that age assurance will play in the online safety regime. I particularly welcome Amendment 210, which states that companies must employ systems that are “highly effective” at correctly determining whether a particular user is a child to prevent access to pornography, and Amendment 124, which sets out in a code of practice principles which must be followed when implementing age assurance—principles that ensure alignment of standards and protections with the ICO’s age appropriate design code and include, among other things, that age assurance systems should be easy to use, proportionate to the risk and easy to understand, including to those with protected characteristics, as well as aiming to be interoperable. The code is a first step from current practice, in which age verification is opaque, used to further profile children and related adults and highly ineffective, to a world in which children are offered age-appropriate services by design and default.

I pay tribute again to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and I associate myself with the broad set of thanks that the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, gave in his opening speech. I also thank colleagues across your Lordships’ House and the other place for supporting this cause with such clarity of purpose. On this matter, I believe that the UK is world-beating, and it will be a testament to all those involved to see the UK’s age verification and estimation laws built on a foundation of transparency and trust so that those impacted feel confident in using them—and we ensure their role in delivering the online world that children and young people deserve.

I have a number of specific questions about government Amendment 38 and Amendment 39. I would be grateful if the Minister were able to answer them from the Dispatch Box and in doing so give a clear sign of the Government’s intent. I will also speak briefly to Amendments 125 and 217 in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, as well as Amendment 184 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. All three amendments address privacy.

Government Amendment 38, to which I have added my name, offers exemptions in new subsections (3A) and (3B) that mean that a regulated company need not use age verification or estimation to prevent access to primary priority content if they already prevent it by means of its terms of service. First, I ask the Minister to confirm that these exemptions apply only if a service effectively upholds its terms of service on a routine basis, and that failure to do so would trigger enforcement action and/or an instruction from Ofcom to apply age assurance.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Baroness Kidron

Report stage
Thursday 6th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that. In conclusion, I hope he will reflect on those issues and come back, maybe at the end of the next group. I remind the House that in February the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, in its inquiry on pornography, recommended that the regulation of pornography should be consistent across all online platforms and between the online and offline spheres. I hope we can incorporate the voices I have already mentioned in the NGO sphere in order to assist the Government and both Houses in ensuring that we regulate the online platforms and that children are protected from any harms that may arise.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 174 in my name and then more broadly to this group—I note that the Minister got his defence in early.

On the question of misinformation and disinformation, I recognise what he said and I suppose that, in my delight at hearing the words “misinformation and disinformation”, I misunderstood to some degree what he was offering at the Dispatch Box, but I make the point that this poses an enormous risk to children. As an example, children are the fastest-growing group of far-right believers/activists online, and there are many areas in which we are going to see an exponential growth in misinformation and disinformation as large language models become the norm. So I ask him, in a tentative manner, to look at that.

On the other issue, I have to push back at the Minister’s explanation. Content classification around sexual content is a well-established norm. The BBFC does it and has done it for a very long time. There is an absolute understanding that what is suitable for a U, a PG, a 12 or a 12A are different things, and that as children’s capacities evolve, as they get older, there are things that are more suitable for older children, including, indeed, stronger portrayals of sexual behaviour as the age category rises. So I cannot accept that this opens a new can of worms: this is something that we have been doing for many, many years.

I think it is a bit wrongheaded to imagine that if we “solve” the porn problem, we have solved the problem—because there is still sexualisation and the commercialisation of sex. Now, if you say something about feet to a child, they start to giggle uproariously because, in internet language, you get paid for taking pictures of feet and giving them to strange people. There are such detailed and different areas that companies should be looking at. This amendment in my name and the names of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, should be taken very seriously. It is not new ground, so I would ask the Minister to reconsider it.

More broadly, the Minister will have noticed that I liberally added my name to the amendments he has brought forward to meet some of the issues we raised in Committee, and I have not added my name to the schedule of harms. I want to be nuanced about this and say I am grateful to the Government for putting them in the Bill, I am grateful that the content harms have been discussed in this Chamber and not left for secondary legislation, and I am grateful for all the conversations around this. However, harm cannot be defined only as content, and the last grouping got to the core of the issue in the House. Even when the Minister was setting out this amendment, he acknowledged that the increase in harm to users may be systemic and by design. In his explanation, he used the word “harm”; in the Bill, it always manifests as “harmful content”.

While the systemic risk of increasing the presence of harmful content is consistently within the Bill, which is excellent, the concept that the design of service may in and of itself be harmful is absent. In failing to do that, the Government, and therefore the Bill, have missed the bull’s-eye. The bull’s-eye is what is particular about this method of communication that creates harm—and what is particular are the features, functionalities and design. I draw noble Lords back to the debate about Wikipedia. It is not that we all love Wikipedia adoringly; it is that it does not pursue a system of design for commercial purposes that entraps people within its grasp. Those are the harms we are trying to get at. I am grateful for the conversations I have had, and I look forward to some more. I have laid down some other amendments for Monday and beyond that would, I hope, deal with this—but until that time, I am afraid this is an incomplete picture.