Online Safety Bill

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th May 2023 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, His Majesty’s Government are committed to defending the invaluable role of our free media. We are clear that our online safety legislation must protect the vital role of the press in providing people with reliable and accurate information. That is why this Bill includes strong protections for recognised news publishers. The Bill does not impose new duties on news publishers’ content, which is exempt from the Bill’s safety duties. In addition, the Bill includes strong safeguards for news publisher content, set out in Clause 14. In order to benefit from these protections, publishers will have to meet a set of stringent criteria, set out in Clause 50.

I am aware of concerns in your Lordships’ House and another place that the definition of news publishers is too broad and that these protections could therefore create a loophole to be exploited. That is why the Government are bringing forward amendments to the definition of “recognised news publisher” to ensure that sanctioned entities cannot benefit from these protections. I will shortly explain these protections in detail but I would like to be clear that narrowing the definition any further would pose a critical risk to our commitment to self-regulation of the press. We do not want to create requirements which would in effect put Ofcom in the position of a press regulator. We believe that the criteria set out in Clause 50 are already strong, and we have taken significant care to ensure that established news publishers are captured, while limiting the opportunity for bad actors to benefit. 

Government Amendments 126A and 127A propose changes to the criteria for recognised news publishers. These criteria already exclude any entity that is a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000 or the purpose of which is to support a proscribed organisation under that Act. We are clear that sanctioned news outlets such as RT, formerly Russia Today, must not benefit from these protections either. The amendments we are tabling today will therefore tighten the recognised news publisher criteria further by excluding entities that have been designated for sanctions imposed by both His Majesty’s Government and the United Nations Security Council. I hope noble Lords will accept these amendments, in order to ensure that content from publishers which pose a security threat to this country cannot benefit from protections designed to defend a free press.

In addition, the Government have also tabled amendments 50B, 50C, 50D, 127B, 127C and 283A, which are aimed at ensuring that the protections for news publishers in Clause 14 are workable and do not have unforeseen consequences for the operation of category 1 services. Clause 14 gives category 1 platforms a duty to notify recognised news publishers and offer a right of appeal before taking action against any of their content or accounts.

Clause 14 sets out the circumstances in which companies must offer news publishers an appeal. As drafted, it states that platforms must offer this before they take down news publisher content, before they restrict users’ access to such content or where they propose to “take any other action” in relation to publisher content. Platforms must also offer an appeal if they propose to take action against a registered news publisher’s account by giving them a warning, suspending or banning them from using a service or in any way restricting their ability to use a service.

These amendments provide greater clarity about what constitutes “taking action” in relation to news publisher content, and therefore when category 1 services must offer an appeal. They make it clear that a platform must offer this before they take down such content, add a warning label or take any other action against content in line with any terms of service that allow or prohibit content. This will ensure that platforms are not required to offer publishers a right of appeal every time they propose to carry out routine content curation and similar routine actions. That would be unworkable for platforms and would be likely to inhibit the effectiveness of the appeal process.

As noble Lords know, the Bill has a strong focus on user empowerment and enabling users to take control of their online experience. The Government have therefore tabled amendments to Clause 52 to ensure that providers are required only to offer publishers a right of appeal in relation to their own moderation decisions, not where a user has voluntarily chosen not to view certain types of content. For example, if a user has epilepsy and has opted not to view photo-sensitive content, platforms will not be required to offer publishers a right of appeal before restricting that content for the user in question.

In addition, to ensure that the Bill maintains strong protections for children, the amendments make it clear that platforms are not required to offer news publishers an appeal before applying warning labels to content viewed by children. The amendments also make it clear that platforms would be in breach of the legislation if they applied warning labels to content encountered by adults without first offering news publishers an appeal, but in order to ensure that the Bill maintains strong protections for children, that does not apply to warning labels on content encountered by children. I beg to move.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the amendments the Government have tabled, but I ask the Minister to clarify the effect of Amendment 50E. I declare an interest as chair of the Communications and Digital Select Committee, which has discussed Amendment 50E and the labelling of content for children with the news media organisations. This is a very technical issue, but from what my noble friend was just saying, it seems that content that would qualify for labelling for child protection purposes, and which therefore does not qualify for a right of appeal before the content is so labelled, is not content that would normally be encountered by adults but might happen to appeal to children. I would like to be clear that we are not giving the platforms scope for adding labels to content that they ought not to be adding labels to. That aside, as I say, I am grateful to my noble friend for these amendments.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, I have no major objection and support the Government’s amendments. In a sense the Minister got his retaliation in first, because we will have a much more substantial debate on the scope of Clause 14. At this point I welcome any restriction on Clause 14 in the way that the Minister has stated.

Yet to come we have the whole issue of whether an unregulated recognised news publisher, effectively unregulated by the PRP’s arrangements, should be entitled to complete freedom in terms of below-the-line content, where there is no moderation and it does not have what qualifies as independent regulation. Some debates are coming down the track and—just kicking the tyres on the Minister’s amendments—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, made a fair point, which I hope the Minister will answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry; in my enthusiasm to get this day of Committee off to a swift start, I perhaps rattled through that rather quickly. On Amendment 50E, which my noble friend Lady Stowell asked about, I make clear that platforms will be in breach of their duties if, without applying the protection, they add warning labels to news publishers’ content that they know will be seen by adult users, regardless of whether that content particularly appeals to children.

As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others noted, we will return to some of the underlying principles later on, but the Government have laid these amendments to clarify category 1 platforms’ duties to protect recognised news publishers’ content. They take some publishers out of scope of the protections and make it clearer that category 1 platforms will have only to offer news publishers an appeal before taking punitive actions against their content.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asked about how we define “recognised news publisher”. I am conscious that we will debate this more in later groups, but Clause 50 sets out a range of criteria that an organisation must meet to qualify as a recognised news publisher. These include the organisation’s “principal purpose” being the publication of news, it being subject to a “standards code” and its content being “created by different persons”. The protections for organisations are focused on publishers whose primary purpose is reporting on news and current affairs, recognising the importance of that in a democratic society. I am grateful to noble Lords for their support.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

What my noble friend said is absolutely fine with me, and I thank him very much for it. It might be worth letting the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, know that Amendment 127 has now been moved to the group that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referred to. I thought it was worth offering that comfort to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

To be continued.