Online Safety Bill

Debate between Anna Firth and Paul Scully

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I want to speak briefly about Lords amendments 195 and 153, which would allow Ofcom, coroners and bereaved parents to acquire information and support relating to a child’s use of social media in the event of that child’s tragic death. Specifically, I want to speak about Archie Battersbee, who lived in my constituency but lost his life tragically last year, aged only 12. Archie’s mum, Hollie, was in the Public Gallery at the beginning of the debate, and I hope that she is still present. Hollie found Archie unconscious on the stairs with a ligature around his neck. The brain injury Archie suffered put him into a four-month coma from which, sadly, doctors were unable to save him.

To this day, Hollie believes that Archie may have been taking part in some form of highly dangerous online challenge, but, unable to access Archie’s online data beyond 90 days of his search history, she has been unable to put this devastating question to rest. Like the parents of Molly, Breck, Isaac, Frankie and Sophia, for the last year Hollie has been engaged in a cruel uphill struggle against faceless corporations in her attempt to determine whether her child’s engagement with a digital service contributed to his death. Despite knowing that Archie viewed seven minutes of content and received online messages in the hour and a half prior to his death, she has no way of knowing what may have been said or exactly what he may have viewed, and the question of his online engagement and its potential role in his death remains unsolved.

Lords amendment 195, which will bolster Ofcom’s information-gathering powers, will I hope require a much more humane response from providers in such tragic cases as this. This is vital and much-needed legislation. Had it been in place a year ago, it is highly likely that Hollie could have laid her concerns to rest and perhaps received a pocket of peace in what has been the most traumatic time any parent could possibly imagine.

I also welcome Lords amendment 153, which will mandate the largest providers to put in place a dedicated helpline so that parents who suffer these tragic events will have a direct line and a better way of communicating with social media providers, but the proof of the pudding will obviously be in the eating. I very much hope that social media providers will man that helpline with real people who have the appropriate experience to deal with parents at that tragic time in their lives. I believe that Hollie and the parents of many other children in similar tragic cases will welcome the Government’s amendments that allow Ofcom, coroners and bereaved parents to access their children’s online data via the coroner directing Ofcom.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness Kidron, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) and to the Bereaved Families for Online Safety group, who have done so much fantastic work in sharing their heartrending stories and opening our eyes to what has been necessary to improve the Online Safety Bill. I also, of course, pay tribute to Ian Russell, to Hollie and to all the other bereaved parents for their dedication to raising awareness of this hugely important issue.

If I could just say one last thing, I have been slipped from the Education Committee to attend this debate today and I would like to give an advert for the Committee’s new inquiry, which was launched on Monday, into the effects of screen time on education and wellbeing. This Bill is not the end of the matter—in many ways it is just the beginning—and I urge all Members please to engage with this incredibly important inquiry by the Education Committee.

[Paul Scully]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contribution to the debate today and, indeed, right through the passage of this complex Bill.

First, let me turn to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh). I understand that the intention of his amendments is to restrict the reach of the new online safety regulatory regime in a number of ways. I appreciate his concern to avoid unnecessarily burdensome business, and I am sympathetic to his point that the Bill should not inhibit sectors such as the life sciences sector. I reassure him that such sectors are not the target of this regime and that the new regulatory framework is proportionate, risk-based and pro-innovation.

The framework has been designed to capture a range of services where there is a risk of significant harm to users, and the built-in exemptions and categorisations will ensure it is properly targeted. The alternative would be a narrow scope, which would be more likely to inadvertently exempt risky science or to displace harm on to services that are out of scope. The extensive discussion on this point in both Houses has made it clear that such a position is unlikely to be acceptable.

The amendments to the overarching statement that would change the services in scope would introduce unclear and subjective terms, causing issues of interpretation. The Bill is designed so that low-risk services will have to put in place only proportionate measures that reflect the risk of harm to their users and the service provider’s size and capacity, ensuring that small providers will not be overly burdened unless the level of risk requires it.

The amendment that would ensure Ofcom cannot require the use of a proactive technology that introduces weaknesses or vulnerabilities into a provider’s systems duplicates existing safeguards. It also introduces vague terms that could restrict Ofcom’s ability to require platforms to use the most effective measures to address abhorrent illegal activity.

Ofcom must act proportionately, and it must consider whether a less intrusive measure could achieve the same effect before requiring the use of proactive technology. Ofcom also has duties to protect both privacy and private property, including algorithms and code, under the Human Rights Act 1998.