Online Safety Bill

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nick Fletcher]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution, which deals with what I was going to finish with. It is not enough for the Secretary of State to have to consult Ofcom; there should be public consultation too. I support amendment 55, which my hon. Friend has tabled.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Not too long ago, the tech industry was widely looked up to and the internet was regarded as the way forward for democracy and freedoms. Today that is not the case. Every day we read headlines about data leaks, racist algorithms, online abuse, and social media platforms promoting, and becoming swamped in, misinformation, misogyny and hate. These problems are not simply the fault of those platforms and tech companies; they are the result of a failure to govern technology properly. That has resulted from years of muddled thinking and a failure to bring forward this Bill, and now, a failure to ensure that the Bill is robust enough.

Ministers have talked up the Bill, and I welcome the improvements that were made in Committee. Nevertheless, Ministers had over a decade in which to bring forward proposals, and in that time online crime exploded. Child sexual abuse online has become rife; the dark web provides a location for criminals to run rampant and scams are widespread.

Delay has also allowed disinformation to spread, including state-sponsored propaganda and disinformation, such as from Russia’s current regime. False claims and fake fact checks are going viral. That encourages other groups to adopt such tactics, in an attempt to undermine democracy, from covid deniers to climate change deniers—it is rampant.

Today I shall speak in support of new clause 3, to put violence against women and girls on the face of the Bill. As a female MP, I, along with my colleagues, have faced a torrent of abuse online, attacking me personally and professionally. I have been sent images such as that of a person with a noose around their neck, as well as numerous messages containing antisemitic and misogynistic abuse directed towards both me and my children. It is deeply disturbing, but also unsurprising, that one in five women across the country have been subjected to abuse; I would guess that that figure is actually much higher.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am really sorry to hear about the abuse that the hon. Lady and her family have received. Many women inside and without this Chamber, such as myself, receive terrible abuse on Twitter, including repeated threats to shoot us if we do not shut the f-u-c-k up. Twitter refuses to take down memes of a real human hand pointing a gun at me and other feminists and lesbians, telling us to shut the f-u-c-k up. Does she see the force of my amendment to ensure that Twitter apply its moderation policy evenly across society with regard to all protected characteristics, including sex?

[Anna McMorrin]

The hon. and learned Lady makes a very good point, and that illustrates what I am talking about in my speech—the abuse that women face online. We need this legislation to ensure that tech companies take action.

There is a very dark side to the internet, deeply rooted in misogyny. The End Violence Against Women organisation released statistics last year, stating that 85% of women who experienced online abuse from a partner or ex-partner also received abuse online. According to the latest Office for National Statistics figures, 92% of women who were killed in the year ending March 2021 were killed by men. Just yesterday, a woman was stabbed in the back by a male cyclist in east London, near to where Zara Aleena was murdered just two weeks ago. And in the year 2021, nearly 41,000 women were victims of sexual assault—and those were just the ones who reported it. We know that the actual figure was very much higher. That was the highest number of sexual offences ever recorded within a 12-month period. It is highly unlikely that any of those women will ever see their perpetrator brought to justice, because of the current 1.3% prosecution rate of rape cases. Need I continue?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Collins]

We have had a wide-ranging debate of passion and expert opinion from Members in all parts of the House, which shows the depth of interest in this subject, and the depth of concern that the Bill is delivered and that we make sure we get it right. I speak as someone who only a couple of days ago became the Minister for online safety, although I was previously involved in engaging with the Government on this subject. As I said in my opening remarks, this has been an iterative process, where Members from across the House have worked successfully with the Government to improve the Bill. That is the spirit in which we should complete its stages, both in the Commons and in the Lords, and look at how we operate this regime when it has been created.

I wish to start by addressing remarks made by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), the shadow Minister, and by the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) about violence against women and girls. There is a slight assumption that if the Government do not accept an amendment that writes, “Violence against women and girls” into the priority harms in the Bill, somehow the Bill does not address that issue. I think we would all agree that that is not the case. The provisions on harmful content that is directed at any individual, particularly the new harms offences approved by the Law Commission, do create offences in respect of harm that is likely to lead to actual physical harm or severe psychological harm. As the father of a teenage girl, who was watching earlier but has now gone to do better things, I say that the targeting of young girls, particularly vulnerable ones, with content that is likely to make them more vulnerable is one of the most egregious aspects of the way social media works. It is right that we are looking to address serious levels of self-harm and suicide in the Bill and in the transparency requirements. We are addressing the self-harm and suicide content that falls below the illegal threshold but where a young girl who is vulnerable is being sent content and prompted with content that can make her more vulnerable, could lead her to harm herself or worse. It is absolutely right that that was in the scope of the Bill.

New clause 3, perfectly properly, cites international conventions on violence against women and girls, and how that is defined. At the moment, with the way the Bill is structured, the schedule 7 offences are all based on existing areas of UK law, where there is an existing, clear criminal threshold. Those offences, which are listed extensively, will all apply as priority areas of harm. If there is, through the work of the Law Commission or elsewhere, a clear legal definition of misogyny and violence against women and girls that is not included, I think it should be included within scope. However, if new clause 3 was approved, as tabled, it would be a very different sort of offence, where it would not be as clear where the criminal threshold applied, because it is not cited against existing legislation. My view, and that of the Government, is that existing legislation covers the sorts of offences and breadth of offences that the shadow Minister rightly mentioned, as did other Members. We should continue to look at this—

[Anna McMorrin]

The Minister is not giving accurate information there. Violence against women and girls is defined by article 3 of the Council of Europe convention on preventing violence against women and domestic violence—the Istanbul convention. So there is that definition and it would be valid to put that in the Bill to ensure that all of that is covered.

[Damian Collins]

I was referring to the amendment’s requirement to list that as part of the priority illegal harms. The priority illegal harms set out in the Bill are all based on existing UK Acts of Parliament where there is a clear established criminal threshold—that is the difference. The spirit of what that convention seeks to achieve, which we would support, is reflected in the harm-based offences written into the Bill. The big change in the structure of the Bill since the draft Bill was published—the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill and I pushed for this at the time—is that far more of these offences have been clearly written into the Bill so that it is absolutely clear what they apply to. The new offences proposed by the Law Commission, particularly those relating to self-harm and suicide, are another really important addition. We know what the harms are. We know what we want this Bill to do. The breadth of offences that the hon. Lady and her colleagues have set out is covered in the Bill. But of course as law changes and new offences are put in place, the structure of the Bill, through the inclusion of new schedule 7 on priority offences, gives us the mechanism in the future, through instruments of this House, to add new offences to those primary illegal harms as they occur. I expect that that is what would happen. I believe that the spirit of new clause 3 is reflected in the offences that are written into the Bill.

The hon. Member for Pontypridd mentioned Government new clause 14. It is not true that the Government came up with it out of nowhere. There has been extensive consultation with Ofcom and others. The concern is that some social media companies, and some users of services, may have sought to interpret the criminal threshold as being based on whether a court of law has found that an offence has been committed, and only then might they act. Actually, we want them to pre-empt that, based on a clear understanding of where the legal threshold is. That is how the regulatory codes work. So it is an attempt, not to weaken the provision but to bring clarity to the companies and the regulator over the application.

The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) raised an important point with regard to the Modern Slavery Act. As the Bill has gone along, we have included existing migration offences and trafficking offences. I would be happy to meet him further to discuss that aspect. Serious offences that exist in law should have an application, either as priority harms or as non-priority legal harms, and we should consider how we do that. I do not know whether he intends to press the amendment, but either way, I would be happy to meet him and to discuss this further.

My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull, the Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, raised an important matter with regard to the power of the Secretary of State, which was a common theme raised by several other Members. The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire rightly quoted me, or my Committee’s report, back to me—always a chilling prospect for a politician. I think we have seen significant improvement in the Bill since the draft Bill was published. There was a time when changes to the codes could be made by the negative procedure; now they have to be by a positive vote of both Houses. The Government have recognised that they need to define the exceptional circumstances in which that provision might be used, and to define specifically the areas that are set out. I accept from the Chair of the Select Committee and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam that those things could be interpreted quite broadly—maybe more broadly than people would like—but I believe that progress has been made in setting out those powers.

I would also say that this applies only to the period when the codes of practice are being agreed, before they are laid before Parliament. This is not a general provision. I think sometimes there has been a sense that the Secretary of State can at any time pick up the phone to Ofcom and have it amend the codes. Once the codes are approved by the House they are fixed. The codes do not relate to the duties. The duties are set out in the legislation. This is just the guidance that is given to companies on how they comply. There may well be circumstances in which the Secretary of State might look at those draft codes and say, “Actually, we think Ofcom has given the tech companies too easy a ride here. We expected the legislation to push them further.” Therefore it is understandable that in the draft form the Secretary of State might wish to have the power to raise that question, and not dictate to Ofcom but ask it to come back with amendments.

I take on board the spirit of what Members have said and the interest that the Select Committee has shown. I am happy to continue that dialogue, and obviously the Government will take forward the issues that they set out in the letter that was sent round last week to Members, showing how we seek to bring in that definition.

A number of Members raised the issue of freedom of speech provisions, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) at the end of his excellent speech. We have sought to bring, in the Government amendments, additional clarity to the way the legislation works, so that it is absolutely clear what the priority legal offences are. Where we have transparency requirements, it is absolutely clear what they apply to. The amendment that the Government tabled reflects the work that he and his colleagues have done, setting out that if we are discussing the terms of service of tech companies, it should be perfectly possible for them to say that this is not an area where they intend to take enforcement action and the Bill does not require them to do so.

The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) mentioned Zach’s law. The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire raised that before the Joint Committee. So, too, did my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell); he and the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire are great advocates on that. It is a good example of how a clear offence, something that we all agree to be wrong, can be tackled through this legislation; in this case, a new offence will be created, to prevent the pernicious targeting of people with epilepsy with flashing images.

Finally, in response to the speech by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), I certainly will continue dialogue with the NSPCC on the serious issues that she has raised. Obviously, child protection is foremost in our mind as we consider the legislation. She made some important points about the ability to scan for encrypted images. The Government have recently made further announcements on that, to be reflected as the Bill progresses through the House.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

The Chancellor said that this was an honest Budget which meets the moment. Well, the Chancellor certainly met the moment for his mounting leadership bid, but it was nowhere near what was required to meet the tough realities of my constituents.

This Budget was a lost opportunity to provide security for those in hard-hit and precarious sectors, to provide economic justice to the excluded millions who have gone a year without support and to provide recognition for our protectors or stability for our businesses. There was no recognition for our public sector workers who are at the forefront of the crisis and who we depend on to get us through. It was a Budget with a thin green veneer, not one that will properly finance climate action to protect the health of people and planet, or demonstrate to the world the power of the UK’s example as a climate leader in the year of COP.

The Chancellor said this was a Budget to provide certainty. Well, he should tell that to my constituents who have already lost jobs because businesses had to make tough decisions because they were kept in the dark. The Chancellor chose to time the extension of furlough and business support when it was politically convenient, kicking the can down the road to this autumn for when the Office for Budget Responsibility predicts unemployment to hit a peak and when the universal credit uplift will be stripped away along with the furlough scheme—a frightening cliff edge looming this autumn, one of the Chancellor’s own making.

Today, on International Women’s Day, let us not forget that this pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women, who are more likely to work in low pay and insecure positions. Unpaid carers hit 13 million last year, predominantly women. There was nothing in the Budget for them either. Thank God in Wales for a Welsh Labour Government, who have weaved a stronger safety net throughout the crisis. When the UK Government failed or dithered, they stood up.

This Chancellor is also slashing life-saving support around the world: the aid that builds resilience to the climate crisis and future health challenges. During a pandemic, the Government are pulling back our first response to future crises and hitting the vulnerable hardest, the consequences of which we will feel here at home. The Government are turning their backs. Overseas and here at home, the Government are recklessly playing with people’s lives, pushing people to the brink only to pull them back just a bit. That is not how responsible Governments behave. It is time to do the right thing.

Arts, Culture and Heritage: Support Package

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

We understand that certainty is one of the biggest issues facing our sectors at the moment, and we are doing everything we can to tackle that. In the days ahead, we are hoping to set out a much more fully defined road map, which will help address some of these date issues.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said that this important package will not save every job. Our culture sector is the envy of the world, but it is the people and their talent that make it world leading. We know the show will not go on for many, including many of my constituents in Cardiff North, without direct job support. Why will the Secretary of State not support the thousands of workers in this sector who have been abandoned and excluded from support schemes throughout this crisis? Also, will the Minister tell me when the Welsh Government will be getting this funding—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. From now on, each person can ask one question, not two or three questions—no speeches; just questions, please. Let us have a bit of discipline.

Discrimination in Sport

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Three lines later in my script, I was going to do so, but I am happy to do it now, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right. I think it is hugely significant when the captain of the England cricket team is prepared to stand up against this kind of abuse—because it is abuse, not part of the game of cricket—and call it out in the way that Joe Root did. We should absolutely recognise him for that, just as we should recognise Raheem Sterling, Nicola Adams, Danny Rose and so many other elite athletes for the dignity they have shown in the face of appalling provocation.

Discrimination should never be seen as an occupational hazard. After all, for sportsmen and women, our arenas and stadiums are their place of work, so they cannot be left to deal with this alone. Nor can they be expected just to put up with it in a way that nobody else would be expected to at their place of work.

There has been a widespread debate about the best way to respond to discriminatory abuse from spectators during a match. My view is that, if players decide they want to stay and respond with their skills on the pitch, we should support them in that and have huge respect for their resilience and professionalism. However, I also strongly believe that players at any level should not suffer any disadvantage, penalty or sanction if they choose to make a stand and walk off the pitch. We should respect those decisions, too.

Football has a protocol in place that advises referees to stop, suspend or abandon a match if discriminatory chanting takes place, and it should be followed. Football authorities must also give serious consideration to what sanctions are needed if clubs fail to demonstrate zero tolerance, whether that means significant fines, stadium closures or points deductions.

Partnerships across sport and across civil society are vital if we are to address this issue, because eradicating discrimination from sport is a challenge that affects all fans, all clubs and all governing bodies. The Government are supporting a number of different anti-racism initiatives, including the Premier League’s No Room for Racism, Show Racism the Red Card and Kick It Out campaigns, all of which have achieved much in this area.

We recognise that other forms of discrimination, such as homophobia, antisemitism and sexism, can be prevalent in sport, so we are working with a number of bodies, including Stonewall, Maccabi GB and Women in Football, to ensure that all discriminatory behaviour and cultures are challenged in local, national and international sport. We are bringing together everyone with an interest to discuss a way forward. In February, the Minister for Sport and Civil Society brought together administrators, campaign bodies, fan representatives, players and managers for a landmark summit. It was agreed that there was a number of ways in which improvements could be made, from support for match stewards to improving incident reporting. Only through the combined efforts of local police forces, clubs and stewards will these offences be picked up and dealt with in the appropriate manner. We are planning to announce a series of next steps before the end of the summer.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that there is a role for sports broadcasters to feature more women in sport—as many women as men? That role should be firmly with those broadcasters.

[Jeremy Wright]

I certainly do agree. It is important for more women’s sport to be broadcast. I think that we are taking steps in the right direction. The England-Scotland football match—I am sorry to remind the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) of it; I will not mention the result—was watched by about 10% of our population. It is important for us to get the message across to broadcasters not just that broadcasting women’s sport is the right thing to do but that, if they broadcast it, people will watch it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

This is an independent review. I have asked Euryn Ogwen Williams to look at the issues of remit, governance and funding methods, and it is down to him, as an independent reviewer, to look at those matters.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Welsh is Britain’s oldest indigenous language and, as such, has great cultural, social and historic significance. Based in my constituency, S4C plays a huge role in providing constant opportunities for people to hear and learn Welsh. Will the Secretary of State commit to increasing S4C’s funding to ensure S4C’s digital content is adequately resourced for it to compete on an equal footing with other broadcasters?