Online Safety Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Fox of Buckley]

4: Clause 3, page 3, line 17, leave out paragraphs (a) and (b) and insert “the service has at least one million monthly United Kingdom users.”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment replaces the two tests currently set out in subsection (5) of clause 3, relating to a service’s links with the United Kingdom, with a requirement that the service have at least a million monthly United Kingdom users.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 4, I will also speak to Amendments 6 to 8 and 12 and consequential Amendments 288 and 305, largely grouped under the heading “exemptions”. In this group I am also particularly sympathetic to Amendment 9 in the names of the noble Lords, Moylan and Lord Vaizey, and I will leave them to motivate that. I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, an explanation for his Amendment 9A.

Last Wednesday we discussed the purposes of the Bill, and there was much agreement across the Chamber on one issue at least: that we need to stay focused and make sure that an already highly complex piece of legislation does not become even more unwieldy. My concern in general is that the Bill already suffers throughout from being overly broad in its aims, resulting in restricting the online experience and expressions of everyone. This series of amendments is about trying to rein in the scope, allowing us to focus on clear targets rather than a one-size-fits-all Bill that sweeps all in its wake with perhaps unintended and damaging consequences.

The Bill creates an extraordinary set of regulatory burdens on tens of thousands of British businesses, micro-communities and tech platforms, no matter the size. The impact assessment claims that 25,000 businesses are in scope, and that is considered a conservative estimate. This implies that an extraordinary range of platforms, from Mumsnet and Wikipedia to whisky-tasting forums and Reddit, will be caught up in this Bill. Can we find a way of removing the smaller platforms from scope? It will destroy too many of them if they have to comply with the regulatory burden created with huge Silicon Valley behemoths in mind.

Let us consider some of the regulatory duties that these entities are expected to comply with. They will need to undertake extensive assessments that must be repeated whenever a product changes. They will need to proactively remove certain types of content, involving assessing the risk of users encountering each type of illegal content, the speed of dissemination and functionality, the design of the platform and the nature and severity of the risk of harms presented to individual users. This will mean assessing their user base and implementing what are effectively surveillance systems to monitor all activity on their platforms.

Let us consider what a phrase such as “prevent from encountering” would mean to a web host such as Wikipedia. It would mean that it would need to scan and proactively analyse millions of edits across 250 languages for illegality under UK-specific law and then block content in defiance of the wishes of its own user community. There is much more, of course. Rest assured, Ofcom’s guidance and risk assessment will, over time, increase the regulatory complexity and the burdens involved.

Those technological challenges do not even consider the mountain of paperwork and administrative obligations that will be hugely costly and time consuming. All that might be achievable, if onerous, for larger platforms. But for smaller ones it could prove a significant problem, with SMEs and organisations working with a public benefit remit particularly vulnerable. Platforms with the largest profits and the most staff dedicated to compliance will, as a consequence, dominate at the expense of start-ups, small companies and community-run platforms.

No doubt the Government and the Minister will assure us that the duties are not so onerous and that they are manageable and proportionate. The impact assessment estimates that implementing the Bill will cost businesses £2.5 billion over the first 10 years, but all the commentators I have read think this is likely to be a substantial underestimate, especially when we are told in the same impact assessment that the legal advice is estimated to cost £39.23 per hour. I do not know what lawyers the Government hang out with, but they appear not to have a clue about the going rate for specialist law firms.

Also, what about the internal staff time? Again, the impact assessment assumes that staff will require only 30 minutes to familiarise themselves with the requirements of the legislation and 90 minutes to read, assess and change the terms and conditions in response to the requirements. Is this remotely serious? Even working through the groups of amendments has taken me hours. It has been like doing one of those 1,000-piece jigsaws, but at least at the end of those you get to see the complete picture. Instead, I felt as though somebody had come in and thrown all the pieces into the air again. I was as confused as ever.

If dealing with groups of amendments to this Bill is complex, that is nothing on the Bill itself, which is dense and often impenetrable. Last week, the Minister helpfully kept telling us to read the Explanatory Notes. I have done that several times and I am still in a muddle, yet somehow the staff of small tech companies will conquer all this and the associated regulatory changes in an hour and a half.

Many fear that this will replicate the worst horrors of GDPR, which, according to some estimates, led to an 8% reduction in the profits of smaller firms while it had little or no effect on the profits of large tech companies. That does not even take into account the cost of the near nervous breakdowns that GDPR caused small organisations, as I know from my colleagues at the Academy of Ideas.

These amendments try to tackle this disproportionate burden on smaller platforms—those companies that are, ironically, often useful challenges and antidotes to big tech’s dominance. The amendments would exempt them unless there is a good reason for specific platforms to be in scope. Of course, cutting out those in scope may not appeal to everyone here. From looking at the ever-increasing amendments list, it seems that some noble Lords have an appetite for expanding the number of services the legislation will apply to; we have already heard the discussion about app stores and online gaming. But we should note that the Government have carved out other exemptions for certain services that are excluded from the new regulatory system. They have not included emails, SMS messages, one-to-one oral communications and so on. I am suggesting some extra exemptions and that we remove services with fewer than 1 million monthly UK users. Ofcom would have the power to issue the provider with a notice bringing them into scope, but only based on reasonable grounds, having identified a safety risk and with 30 days’ notice.

If we do not tackle this, I fear that there is a substantial, serious and meaningful risk that smaller platforms based outside and inside the UK will become inaccessible to British users. It is notable that over 1,000 US news websites blocked European users during the EU’s introduction of GDPR, if noble Lords remember. Will there be a similar response to this law? What, for example, will the US search engine DuckDuckGo conclude? The search engine emphasises privacy and refuses to gather information on its users, meaning that it will be unable to fulfil the duties contained in the Bill of identifying or tailoring search results to users based on their age. Are we happy for it to go?

I fear that this Bill will reduce the number of tech platforms operating in the UK. This is anti-competitive. I do not say that because I have a particular commitment to competition and the free market, by the way. I do so because competition is essential and important for users’ choice and empowerment, and for free speech—something I fear the Bill is threatening. Indeed, the Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee’s extensive inquiry into the implications of giving large tech companies what is effectively a monopoly on defining which speech is free concluded:

“Increasing competition is crucial to promoting freedom of expression online. In a more competitive market, platforms would have to be more responsive to users’ concerns about freedom of expression and other rights”.


That is right. If users are concerned that a platform is failing to uphold their freedom of expression, they can join a different platform with greater ease if there is a wide choice. Conversely, users who are concerned that they do not want to view certain types of material would be more easily able to choose another platform that proscribes said material in its terms and conditions.

I beg to move the amendment as a way of defending diversity, choice and innovation—and as a feeble attempt to make the Bill proportionate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Bill creates a substantial new role for Ofcom, but it has already substantially recruited and prepared for the effective carrying out of that new duty. I do not know whether my noble friend was in some of the briefings with officials from Ofcom, but it is very happy to set out directly the ways in which it is already discharging, or preparing to discharge, those duties. The Government have provided it with further resource to enable it to do so. It may be helpful for my noble friend to have some of those discussions directly with the regulator, but we are confident that it is ready to discharge its duties, as set out in the Bill.

I was about to say that we have already had a bit of discussion on Wikipedia. I am conscious that we are going to touch on it again in the debate on the next group of amendments so, at the risk of being marked down for repetition, which is a black mark on that platform, I shall not pre-empt what I will say shortly. But I emphasise that the Bill does not impose prescriptive, one-size-fits-all duties on services. The codes of practice from Ofcom will set out a range of measures that are appropriate for different types of services in scope. Companies can follow their own routes to compliance, so long as they are confident that they are effectively managing risks associated with legal content and, where relevant, harm to children. That will ensure that services that already use community moderation effectively can continue to do so—such as Wikipedia, which successfully uses that to moderate content. As I say, we will touch on that more in the debate on the next group.

Amendment 9, in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan, is designed to exempt small and medium sized-enterprises working to benefit the public from the scope of the Bill. Again, I am sympathetic to the objective of ensuring that the Bill does not impose undue burdens on small businesses, and particularly that it should not inhibit services from providing valuable content of public benefit, but I do not think it would be feasible to exempt service providers deemed to be

“working to benefit the public”.

I appreciate that this is a probing amendment, but the wording that my noble friend has alighted on highlights the difficulties of finding something suitably precise and not contestable. It would be challenging to identify which services should qualify for such an exemption.

Taking small services out of scope would significantly undermine the framework established by the Bill, as we know that many smaller services host illegal content and pose a threat to children. Again, let me reassure noble Lords that the Bill has been designed to avoid disproportionate or unnecessary regulatory burdens on small and low-risk services. It will not impose a disproportionate burden on services or impede users’ access to value content on smaller services.

Amendment 9A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, is designed to exempt “sector specific search services” from the scope of the Bill, as the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, explained. Again, I am sympathetic to the intention here of ensuring that the Bill does not impose a disproportionate burden on services, but this is another amendment that is not needed as it would exempt search services that may pose a significant risk of harm to children, or because of illegal content on them. The amendment aims to exempt specialised search services—that is, those that allow users to

“search for … products or services … in a particular sector”.

It would exempt specialised search services that could cause harm to children or host illegal content—for example, pornographic search services or commercial search services that could facilitate online fraud. I know the noble Lord would not want to see that.

The regulatory duties apply only where there is a significant risk of harm and the scope has been designed to exclude low-risk search services. The duties therefore do not apply to search engines that search a single database or website, for example those of many retailers or other commercial websites. Even where a search service is in scope, the duties on services are proportionate to the risk of harm that they pose to users, as well as to a company’s size and capacity. Low-risk services, for example, will have minimal duties. Ofcom will ensure that these services can quickly and easily comply by publishing risk profiles for low-risk services, enabling them easily to understand their risk levels and, if necessary, take steps to mitigate them.

The noble Lord, Lord McCrea, asked some questions about the 200 most popular pornographic websites. If I may, I will respond to the questions he posed, along with others that I am sure will come in the debate on the fifth group, when we debate the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, because that will take us on to the same territory.

I hope that provides some assurance to my noble friend Lord Moylan, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and others, and that they will be willing not to press their amendments in this group.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank people for such a wide-ranging and interesting set of contributions. I take comfort from the fact that so many people understood what the amendments were trying to do, even if they did not fully succeed in that. I thought it was quite interesting that in the first debate the noble Lord, Lord Allan of Hallam, said that he might be a bit isolated on the apps, but I actually agreed with him—which might not do his reputation any good. However, when he said that, I thought, “Welcome to my world”, so I am quite pleased that this has not all been shot down in flames before we started. My amendment really was a serious attempt to tackle something that is a real problem.

The Minister says that the Bill is designed to avoid disproportionate burdens on services. All I can say is, “Sack the designer”. It is absolutely going to have a disproportionate burden on a wide range of small services, which will not be able to cope, and that is why so many of them are worried about it. Some 80% of the companies that will be caught up in this red tape are small and micro-businesses. I will come to the small business point in a moment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, warned us that small tech businesses become big tech businesses. As far as I am concerned, that is a success story—it is what I want; is it not what we all want? Personally, I think economic development and growth is a positive thing—I do not want them to fail. However, I do not think it will ever happen; I do not think that small tech businesses will ever grow into big tech businesses if they face a disproportionate burden in the regulatory sense, as I have tried to describe. That is what I am worried about, and it is not a positive thing to be celebrated.

I stress that it is not small tech and big tech. There are also community sites, based on collective moderation. Wikipedia has had a lot of discussion here. For a Bill that stresses that it wants to empower users, we should think about what it means when these user-moderated community sites are telling us that they will not be able to carry on and get through. That is what they are saying. It was interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said that he relies on Wikipedia—many of us do, although please do not believe what it says about me. There are all of these things, but then there was a feeling that, well, Reddit is a bit dodgy. The Bill is not meant to be deciding which ones to trust in quite that way, or people’s tastes.

I was struck that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said that small is not safe, and used the incel example. I am not emphasising that small is safe; I am saying that the small entities will not survive this process. That is my fear. I do not mean that the big ones are nasty and dangerous and the small ones are cosy, lovely and Wikipedia-like. I am suggesting that smaller entities will not be able to survive the regulatory onslaught. That is the main reason I raised this.

The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, said that these entities can cause great harm. I am worried about a culture of fear, in which we demonise tens of thousands of innocent tech businesses and communities and end up destroying them when we do not intend to. I tried to put in the amendment an ability for Ofcom, if there are problematic sites that are risky, to deal with them. As the Minister kept saying, low-risk search engines have been exempted. I am suggesting that low-risk small and micro-businesses are exempted, which is the majority of them. That is what I am suggesting, rather than that we assume they are all guilty and then they have to get exempted.

Interestingly, the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, asked how many pornography sites are in scope and which pornographic websites have a million or fewer users. I am glad I do not know the answer to that, otherwise people might wonder why I did. The point is that there are always going to be sites that are threatening or a risk to children, as we are discussing. But we must always bear in mind—this was the important point that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, made—that in our absolute determination to protect children via this Bill we do not unintendedly damage society as a whole. Adult access to free speech, for example, is one of my concerns, as are businesses and so on. We should not have that as an outcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, as might be expected, I will speak against Amendment 26 and will explain why.

The children’s charity Barnardo’s—here I declare an interest as vice-president—has said, as has been said several times before, that children are coming across pornographic content from as young as seven. Often they stumble across the content accidentally, unwittingly searching for terms such as “sex” or “porn”, without knowing what they mean. The impact that this is having on children is huge. It is harming their mental health and distorting their perception of healthy sexual relationships and consent. That will go with them into adulthood.

Age verification for pornography and age assurance to protect children from other harms are crucial to protect children from this content. In the offline world, children are rightly not allowed to buy pornographic DVDs in sex shops but online they can access this content at the click of a button. This is why I will be supporting the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and am fully supportive of their age assurance and age verification schedule.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, to go back not just to the age question, the noble Lord, Lord Allan of Hallam, reminded us that community-led moderation is not just Wikipedia. What I tried to hint at earlier is that that is one of the most interesting, democratic aspects of the online world, which we should protect.

We often boast that we are a self-regulating House and that that makes us somehow somewhat superior to up the road—we are all so mature because we self-regulate; people do behave badly but we decide. It is a lesson in democracy that you have a self-regulating House, and there are parts of the online world that self-regulate. Unless we think that the citizens of the UK are less civilised than Members of the House of Lords, which I would refute, we should say that it is positive that there are self-moderating, self-regulating online sites. If you can say something and people can object and have a discussion about it, and things can be taken down, to me that is the way we should deal with speech that is inappropriate or wrong. The bulk of these amendments—I cannot remember how many there are now—are right.

I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said he could not understand why this grouping had happened, which is what I said earlier. I had gone through a number of groupings thinking: “What is that doing there? Am I missing something? Why is that in that place?” I think we will come back to the age verification debate and discussion.

One thing to note is that one of the reasons organisations such as Wikipedia would be concerned about age verification—and they are—is anonymity. It is something we have to consider. What is going to happen to anonymity? It is so important for journalists, civil liberty activists and whistleblowers. Many Wikipedia editors are anonymised, maybe because they are politically editing sites on controversial issues. Imagine being a Wikipedia editor from Russia at the moment—you would not want to have to say who you are. We will come back to it but it is important to understand that Amendment 26, and those who are saying that we should look at the question of age verification, are not doing so because they do not care about children and are not interested in protecting them. However, the dilemmas of any age-gating or age verification for adult civil liberties have to be considered. We have to worry that, because of an emphasis on checking age, some websites will decide to sanitise what they allow to be published to make it suitable for children, just in case they come across it. Again, that will have a detrimental impact on adult access to all knowledge.

These will be controversial issues, and we will come back to them, but it is good to have started the discussion.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a very strange debate. It has been the tail end of the last session and a trailer for a much bigger debate coming down the track. It was very odd.

We do not want to see everything behind an age-gating barrier, so I agree with my noble friend. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, reminded us, it is all about the risk profile, and that then leads to the kind of risk assessment that a platform is going to be required to carry out. There is a logic to the way that the Bill is going to operate.

When you look at Clause 11(3), you see that it is not disproportionate. It deals with “primary priority content”. This is not specified in the Bill but it is self-harm and pornography—major content that needs age-gating. Of course we need to have the principles for age assurance inserted into the Bill as well, and of course it will be subject to debate as we go forward.

There is technology to carry out age verification which is far more sophisticated than it ever was, so I very much look forward to that debate. We started that process in Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act. I was described as an internet villain for believing in age verification. I have not changed my view, but the debate will be very interesting. As regards the tail-end of the previous debate, of course we are sympathetic on these Benches to the Wikipedia case. As we said on the last group, I very much hope that we will find a way, whether it is in Schedule 1 or in another way, of making sure that Wikipedia is not affected overly by this—maybe the risk profile that is drawn up by Ofcom will make sure that Wikipedia is not unduly impacted.