Online Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Allan of Hallam and Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

I appreciate the intervention by the noble Baroness; I hope through this grit we may conjure up a pearl of some sort. The original concept of the Bill, as championed by the noble Baroness, would have been a generalised set of duties of care which could have stretched much more broadly. It has evolved in a particular direction and become ever more specific and tailored to those three services: user-to-user, search, and pornography services. Having arrived at that point, it is difficult to then open it back up and stretch it to reach other forms of service.

My intention in intervening in this debate is to raise some of those concerns because I think they are legitimate. I may be at the more sceptical end of the political world, but I am at the more regulation-friendly end of the tech community. This is said in a spirit of trying to create a Bill that will actually work. I have done the work, and I know how hard Ofcom’s job will be. That sums up what I am trying to say: my concern is that we should not give Ofcom an impossible job. We have defined something quite tight—many people still object to it, think it is too loose and do not agree with it—but I think we have something reasonably workable. I am concerned that, however tempting it is, by re-opening Pandora’s box we may end up creating something less workable.

That does not mean we should forget about app stores and non-user-to-user content, but we need to think of a way of dealing with those which does not necessarily just roll over the mechanism we have created in the Online Safety Bill to other forms of application.

[Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)]

I strongly support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, because I want to see this Bill implemented but strengthened in order to fulfil the admirable intention that children must be safe wherever they are online. This will not be the case unless child safety duties are applicable in all digital environments likely to be accessed by children. This is not overly ambitious or unrealistic; the platforms need clarity as to these new responsibilities and Ofcom must be properly empowered to enforce the rules without worrying about endless legal challenges. These amendments will give that much-needed clarity in this complex area.

As the Joint Committee recommended, this regulatory alignment would simplify compliance with businesses while giving greater clarity to people who use the service and greater protection for children. It would give confidence to parents and children that they need not work out if they are in a regulated or unregulated service while online. The Government promised that the onus for keeping young people safe online would sit squarely on the tech companies’ shoulders.

Without these amendments, there is a real danger that a loophole will remain whereby some services, even those that are known to harm, are exempt, leaving thousands of children exposed to harm. They would also help to future-proof the Bill. For example, some parts of the metaverse as yet undeveloped may be out of scope, but already specialist police units have raised concerns that abuse rooms, limited to one user, are being used to practise violence and sexual violence against women and girls.

We can and must make this good Bill even better and support all the amendments in this group.