Asked by: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government how man (1) companies have been prosecuted, and (2) fines have been issued, under the provisions of the Online Safety Act 2023.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Technology Secretary has repeatedly been clear that Government fully supports Ofcom using the full force of the powers that it has been given by Parliament.
Ofcom, the independent regulator for online safety, publishes details of its enforcement action on its website. In total, it has opened investigation into 94 sites since compliance became enforceable, including issuing 8 fines to 5 providers (totalling £2m) one of which has been paid, one is being appealed and the remainder remain within the deadline for payment.
Asked by: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the value of advertising revenue to websites hosting illegal content, as set out in the recent report by Adalytics.
Answered by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
The government continually assesses the impact of online services’ activities on UK citizens from a wide range of sources.
The Online Safety Act establishes a new regulatory regime for online services including platforms and search engines. It gives these services duties to tackle illegal content and protect children from harmful content. Ofcom is the regulator for this regime. It has strong enforcement powers if platforms fail to comply. These include business disruption measures. Through these powers, third-party service providers can be required, with court approval, to withdraw services from a non-compliant platform. For example, this could include a requirement on advertising services to withdraw from a particular non-compliant platform.