Online Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Oxford and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Report stage
Thursday 6th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I also speak in support of Amendments to 281, 281A and 281B, to which I have added my name, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Russell. He and, as ever, the noble Baroness Kidron, have spoken eloquently, I am not going to spend much time on these amendments but I wanted to emphasise Amendment 281A.

In the old world of direct marketing—I am old enough to remember that when I was a marketing director it was about sending magazines, leaflets and letters—one spent all of one’s time working out how to build loyalty: how to get people to engage longer as a result of one’s marketing communication. In the modern digital world, that dwell time has been transformed into a whole behavioural science of its own. It has developed a whole set of tools. Today, we have been using the word “activity” at the beginning of the Bill in the new Clause 1 but also “features” and “functionality”. The reason why Amendment 281A is important is that there is a danger that the Bill keeps returning to being just about content. Even in Clause 208 on functionality, almost every item in subsection (2) mentions content, whereas Amendment 281A tries to spell out the elements of addiction-driving functionality that we know exist today.

I am certain that brilliant people will invent some more but we know that these ones exist today. I really think that we need to put them in the Bill to help everyone understand what we mean because we have spent days on this Bill—some of us have spent years, if not decades, on this issue—yet we still keep getting trapped in going straight back to content. That is another reason why I think it is so important that we get some of these functionalities in the Bill. I very much hope that, if he cannot accept the amendment today, my noble friend the Minister will go back, reflect and work out how we could capture these specific functionalities before it is too late.

I speak briefly on Amendments 28 to 30. There is unanimity of desire here to make sure that organisations such as Wikipedia and Streetmap are not captured. Personally, I am very taken—as I often am—by the approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. We need to focus on risk rather than using individual examples, however admirable they are today. If Wikipedia chose to put on some form of auto-scroll, the risk of that service would go up; I am not suggesting that Wikipedia is going to do so today but, in the digital world, we should not assume that, just because organisations are charities or devoted to the public good, they cannot inadvertently cause harm. We do not make that assumption in the physical world either. Charities that put on physical events have to do physical risk assessments. I absolutely think that we should hold all organisations to that same standard. However, viewed through the prism of risk, Wikipedia—brilliant as it is—does not have a risk for child safety and therefore should not be captured by the Bill.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, I broadly support all the amendments in this group but I will focus on the three amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and others; I am grateful for their clear exposition of why these amendments are important. I draw particular attention to Amendment 281A and its helpful list of functions that are considered to be harmful and to encourage addiction.

There is a very important dimension to this Bill, whose object, as we have now established, is to encourage safety by design. An important aspect of it is cleaning up, and setting right, 20 years or more of tech development that has not been safe by design and has in fact been found to be harmful by way of design. As the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, just said, in many conversations and in talking to people about the Bill, one of the hardest things to communicate and get across is that this is about not only content but functionality. Amendment 281A provides a useful summary of the things that we know about in terms of the functions that cause harm. I add my voice to those encouraging the Minister and the Government to take careful note of it and to capture this list in the text of the Bill in some way so that this clean-up operation can be about not only content for the future but functionality and can underline the objectives that we have set for the Bill this afternoon.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Oxford and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, on day eight of Committee, I feel that we have all found our role. Each of us has spoken in a similar vein on a number of amendments, so I will try to be brief. As the noble Lord, Lord Allan, has spoken from his experience, I will once again reference my experience as the chief executive, for seven years, of a business regulated by Ofcom; as the chair of a regulator; and as someone who sat on the court of, arguably, the most independent of independent regulators, the Bank of England, for eight years.

I speak in support of the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Stowell, because, as a member of the Communications and Digital Committee, my experience, both of being regulated and as a regulator, is that independent regulators might be independent in name—they might even be independent in statute—but they exist in the political soup. It is tempting to think that they are a sort of granite island, completely immovable in the political soup, but they are more like a boat bobbing along in the turbulence of politics.

As the noble Lord, Lord Allan, has just described, they are influenced both overtly and subtly by the regulated companies themselves—I am sure we have both played that game—by politicians on all sides, and by the Government. We have played these roles a number of times in the last eight days; however, this is one of the most important groups of amendments, if we are to send the Bill back in a shape that will really make the difference that we want it to. This group of amendments challenges whether we have the right assignment of responsibility between Parliament, the regulator, government, the regulated and citizens.

It is interesting that we—every speaker so far—are all united that the Bill, as it currently stands, does not get that right. To explain why I think that, I will dwell on Amendment 114 in the name of my noble friend Lady Stowell. The amendment would remove the Secretary of State’s ability to direct Ofcom to modify a draft of the code of practice “for reasons of public policy”. It leaves open the ability to direct in the cases of terrorism, child sexual abuse, national security or public safety, but it stops the Secretary of State directing with regard to public policy. The reason I think that is so important is that, while tech companies are not wicked and evil, they have singularly failed to put internet safety, particularly child internet safety, high enough up their pecking order compared with delivering for their customers and shareholders. I do not see how a Secretary of State will be any better at that.

Arguably, the pressures on a Secretary of State are much greater than the pressures on the chief executives of tech companies. Secretaries of State will feel those pressures from the tech companies and their constituents lobbying them, and they will want to intervene and feel that they should. They will then push that bobbing boat of the independent regulator towards whichever shore they feel they need to in the moment—but that is not the way you protect people. That is not the way that we treat health and safety in the physical world. We do not say, “Well, maybe economics is more important than building a building that’s not going to fall down if we have a hurricane”. We say that we need to build safe buildings. Some 200 years ago, we were having the same debates about the physical world in this place; we were debating whether you needed to protect children working in factories, and the consequences for the economics. Well, how awful it is to say that today. That is the reality of what we are saying in the Bill now: that we are giving the Secretary of State the power to claim that the economic priority is greater than protecting children online.

I am starting to sound very emotional because at the heart of this is the suggestion that we are not taking the harms seriously enough. If we really think that we should be giving the Secretary of State the freedom to direct the regulator in such a broad way, we are diminishing the seriousness of the Bill. That is why I wholeheartedly welcome the remark from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that he intends to bring this back with the full force of all of us across all sides of the Committee, if we do not hear some encouraging words from my noble friend the Minister.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, it is pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, whose very powerful speech took us to the heart of the principles behind these amendments. I will add my voice, very briefly, to support the amendments for all the key reasons given. The regulator needs to be independent of the Secretary of State and seen to be so. That is the understandable view of the regulator itself, Ofcom; it was the view of the scrutiny committee; and it appears to be the view of all sides and all speakers in this debate. I am also very supportive of the various points made in favour of the principle of proper parliamentary scrutiny of the regulator going forward.

One of the key hopes for the Bill, which I think we all share, is that it will help set the tone for the future global conversation about the regulation of social media and other channels. The Government’s own impact assessment on the Bill details parallel laws under consideration in the EU, France, Australia, Germany and Ireland, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, referred to standards set by UNESCO. The standards set in the OSB at this point will therefore be a benchmark across the world. I urge the Government to set that benchmark at the highest possible level for the independence and parliamentary oversight of the regulator.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Oxford and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow other noble Lords who have spoken. I too support this key first amendment. Clarity of purpose is essential in any endeavour. The amendment overall sets out the Bill’s aims and enhances what will be vital legislation for the world, I hope, as well as for the United Kingdom. The Government have the very welcome ambition of making Britain the safest country in the world to go online. The OSB is a giant step in that direction.

As has been said, there has been remarkable consensus across the Committee on what further measures may still be needed to improve the Bill and on this first amendment, setting out these seven key purposes. Noble Lords may be aware that in the Christian tradition the number seven is significant: in the medieval period the Church taught the dangers of the seven deadly sins, the merits of the seven virtues and the seven acts of mercy. Please speak to me later if a refresher course is needed.

Amendment 1 identifies seven deadly dangers—I think they are really deadly. They are key risks which we all acknowledge are unwelcome and destructive companions of the new technologies which bring so many benefits: risks to public health or national security; the risk of serious harm to children; the risk of new developments and technologies not currently in scope; the disproportionate risk to those who manifest one or more protected characteristics; risks that occur through poor design; risks to freedom of expression and privacy; and risks that come with low transparency and low accountability. Safety and security are surely one of the primary duties of government, especially the safety and security of children and the vulnerable. There is much that is good and helpful in new technology but much that can be oppressive and destructive. These seven risks are real and present dangers. The Bill is needed because of actual and devastating harm caused to people and communities.

As we have heard, we are living through a period of rapid acceleration in the development of AI. Two days ago, CBS broadcast a remarkable documentary on the latest breakthroughs by Google and Microsoft. The legislation we craft in these weeks needs future-proofing. That can happen only through a clear articulation of purpose so that the framework provided by the Bill continues to evolve under the stewardship of the Secretary of State and of Ofcom.

I have been in dialogue over the past five years with tech companies in a variety of contexts and I have seen a variety of approaches, from the highly responsible in some companies to the frankly cavalier. Good practice, especially in design, needs stronger regulation to become uniform. I really enjoyed the analogy from the noble Lord, Lord Allan, a few minutes ago. We would not tolerate for a moment design and safety standards in aeroplanes, cars or washing machines which had the capacity to cause harm to people, least of all to children. We should not tolerate lesser standards in our algorithms and technologies.

There is no map for the future of technology and its use, even over the rest of this decade, but this amendment provides a compass—a fixed point for navigation in the future, for which future generations will thank this Government and this House. These seven deadly dangers need to be stated clearly in the Bill and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, to be a North Star for both the Secretary of State and Ofcom. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I too support this amendment. I was at a dinner last night in the City for a group of tech founders and investors—about 500 people in a big hotel ballroom, all focused on driving the sort of positive technology growth in this country that I think everyone wants to see. The guest speaker runs a large UK tech business. He commented in his speech that tech companies need to engage with government because—he said this as if it was a revelation—all Governments turned out not to speak with one voice and that understanding what was required of tech companies by Governments is not always easy. Business needs clarity, and anyone who has run a large or small business knows that it is not really the clarity in the detail that matters but the clarity of purpose that enables you to lead change, because then your people understand why they need to change, and if they understand why, then in each of the micro-decisions they take each day they can adjust those decisions to fit with the intent behind your purpose. That is why this amendment is so important.

I have worked in this space of online safety for more than a decade, both as a technology leader and in this House. I genuinely do not believe that business is wicked and evil, but what it lacks is clear direction. The Bill is so important in setting those guardrails that if we do not make its purpose clear, we should not be surprised if the very businesses which really do want Governments to be clear do not know what we intend.

I suspect that my noble friend the Minister might object to this amendment and say that it is already in the Bill. As others have already said, I actually hope it is. If it is not, we have a different problem. The point of an upfront summary of purpose is to do precisely that: to summarise what is in what a number of noble Lords have already said is a very complicated Bill. The easier and clearer we can make it for every stakeholder to engage in the Bill, the better. If alternatively my noble friend the Minister objects to the detailed wording of this amendment, I argue that that simply makes getting this amendment right even more important. If the four noble Lords, who know far more about this subject than I will ever do in a lifetime, and the joint scrutiny committee, which has done such an outstanding job at working through this, have got the purposes of the Bill wrong, then what hope for the rest of us, let alone those business leaders trying to interpret what the Government want?

That is why it is so important that we put the purposes of the Bill absolutely at the front of the Bill, as in this amendment. If we have misunderstood that in the wording, I urge my noble friend the Minister to come back with wording on Report that truly encapsulates what the Government want.