Online Harms Consultation

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct to raise that point. Essentially, the criteria will be if the purpose of the website is not in any way related to user-generated content, but that is just a small by-product. I used the example—it might be seen as slightly frivolous, but it is a way to illustrate it—of the online cheese retailer. Many small businesses, which are essentially retail or other activities, may allow reviews and so on. It is perfectly reasonable that we should say from the start that they are not subject to it. In practice, they would not be anyway because they will not fall within the codes of conduct. It is my experience with regulation that the more we can exclude from the beginning, the better, because it removes that worry, which frequently comes from small businesses that have one or two people, not massive compliance departments that can deal with it.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

May I welcome the return of pre-legislative scrutiny? If ever there were an instance that required it, this is certainly it. Can I press the Secretary of State on the duty of care that he has outlined in relation to private messaging? From what he said a few minutes ago to the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), he seems to expect companies such as Facebook to police content and behaviour on apps such as WhatsApp. I do not see how they can do that without undermining the idea of end-to-end encryption, which is very important for people’s privacy and security. How will he do that in practice without relying on technology that has not yet been invented?

[Oliver Dowden]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about privacy. Clearly, if it was up to individuals within those companies to identify content on private channels, that would not be acceptable—that would be a clear breach of privacy. That is why we will rely on technology and AI and so on to identify trends that can be used to spot that kind of thing. I urge him to go along to some of these tech companies and see the advances that they are making, because it is very instructive.

As I said to the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), end-to-end encryption takes a whole other level of challenge. The Home Secretary and I are actively engaging with Facebook, for example, to discourage it from using end-to-end encryption unless it can put appropriate protections in place. Those conversations are ongoing.