Online Safety Bill

Baroness Buscombe Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Lords Chamber

Debate on Amendment 38 resumed.

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

My Lords, before we continue this debate, I want to understand why we have changed the system so that we break part way through a group of amendments. I am sorry, but I think this is very poor. It is definitely a retrograde step. Why are we doing it? I have never experienced this before. I have sat here and waited for the amendment I have just spoken to. We have now had a break; it has broken the momentum of that group. It was even worse last week, because we broke for several days half way through the debate on an amendment. This is unheard of in my memory of 25 years in this House. Can my noble friend the Minister explain who made this decision, and how this has changed?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

I have not had as long in your Lordships’ House, but this is not unprecedented, in my experience. These decisions are taken by the usual channels; I will certainly feed that back through my noble friend. One of the difficulties, of course, is that because there are no speaking limits on legislation and we do not know how many people want to speak on each amendment, the length of each group can be variable, so I think this is for the easier arrangement of dinner-break business. Also, for the dietary planning of those of us who speak on every group, it is useful to have some certainty, but I do appreciate my noble friend’s point.

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

Okay; I thank my noble friend for his response. However, I would just say that we never would have broken like that, before 7.30 pm. I will leave it at that, but I will have a word with the usual channels.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 141 and 303 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. Before I do, I mention in passing how delighted I was to see Amendment 40, which carries the names of the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—may there be many more like that.

I am concerned that without Amendments 141 and 303, the concept of “verified” is not really something that the law can take seriously. I want to ask the Minister two rather technical questions. First, how confident can the Government and Ofcom be that with the current wording, Ofcom could form an assessment of whether Twitter’s current “verified by blue” system satisfies the duty in terms of robustness? If it does not, does Ofcom have the power to send it back to the drawing board? I am sure noble Lords understand why I raise this: we have recently seen “verified by blue” ticks successfully bought by accounts impersonating Martin Lewis, US Senators and Putin propagandists. My concern is that in the absence of a definition of verification in the Bill such as the one proposed in Amendments 141 and 303, where in the current wording does Ofcom have the authority to say that “verified by blue” does not satisfy the user verification duty?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I would like to ask him whether, when the Joint Committee was having its deliberations, it ever considered, in addition to people’s feelings and hurt, their livelihoods.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

Of course. I think we looked at it in the round and thought that stripping away anonymity could in many circumstances be detrimental to those, for instance, working in hostile regimes or regimes where human rights were under risk. We considered a whole range of things, and the whole question about whether you should allow anonymity is subject to those kinds of human rights considerations.

I take the noble Baroness’s point about business, but you have to weigh up these issues, and we came around the other side.

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

Does the noble Lord not think that many people watching and listening to this will be thinking, “So people in far-off regimes are far more important than I am—I who live, work and strive in this country”? That is an issue that I think was lacking through the whole process and the several years that this Bill has been discussed. Beyond being hurt, people are losing their livelihoods.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I entirely understand what the noble Baroness is saying, and I know that she feels particularly strongly about these issues given her experiences. The whole Bill is about trying to weigh up different aspects—we are on day 5 now, and this has been very much the tenor of what we are trying to talk about in terms of balance.