Online Safety Bill

Debate between Jess Phillips and Jeremy Wright

Report stage
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

This has been quite topical this week. When we have things on any platform that is on our television, people absolutely have to have signed forms to say that they are a willing participant. It is completely regular within all other broadcast media that people sign consent forms and that people’s images are not allowed to be used without their consent.

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

Yes, I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that useful addition to this debate, but it tends to clarify the point I was seeking to clarify, which is whether or not what the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North has in mind is to ensure that a platform would be expected to make use of those mechanisms that already exist in order to satisfy itself of the things that she rightly asks it to be satisfied of or whether something beyond that would be required to meet her threshold. If it is the former, that is manageable for platforms and perfectly reasonable for us to expect of them. If it is the latter, we need to understand a little more clearly how she expects a platform to achieve that greater assurance. If it is that, she makes an interesting point.

Finally, let me come to amendment 56, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie). Again, I have a practical concern. He seeks to ensure that the pornographic content is “taken as a whole”, but I think it is worth remembering why we have included pornographic content in the context of this Bill. We have done it to ensure that children are not exposed to this content online and that where platforms are capable of preventing that from happening, that is exactly what they do. There is a risk that if we take this content as a whole, it is perfectly conceivable that there may be content online that is four hours long, only 10 minutes of which is pornographic in nature. It does not seem to me that that in any way diminishes our requirement of a platform to ensure that children do not see those 10 minutes of pornographic content.