Asked by: Andrew Gwynne (Independent - Gorton and Denton)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to tackle health misinformation.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Under the Online Safety Act, companies must remove illegal health mis- and disinformation content if they become aware of it on their services. This includes content amounting to the False Communications offence, capturing communications where the sender knows information to be false but sends it intending to cause significant harm: such as encouraging drinking bleach to cure flu. If a service is likely to be accessed by children, it will have to protect them from encountering harmful health mis- and disinformation.
The Act will also require large platforms to remove health misinformation if it’s prohibited in their terms of service.