Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Merron and Baroness Benjamin

Report stage
Wednesday 19th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I want to say “Hallelujah”. With this Bill, we have reached a landmark moment after the disappointments and obstacles that we have had over the last six years. It has been a marathon but we are now in the final straight with the finishing line in sight, after the extraordinary efforts by noble Lords on all sides of the House. I thank the Secretary of State for her commitment to this ground-breaking Bill, and the Minister and his officials for the effort they have put into it. The Minister is one of my “Play School” babies, who has done his utmost to make a difference in changing the online world. That makes me very happy.

We know that the eyes of the world are watching us because legislators around the world are looking for ways to extend the rule of law into the online world, which has become the Wild West of the 21st century, so it is critical that in our haste to reach the finishing post we do not neglect the question of enforcement. That is why I have put my name to Amendment 268C in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Weir: without ensuring that Ofcom is given effective powers for this task of unprecedented scale, the Bill we are passing may yet become a paper tiger.

The impact assessment for the Bill estimated that 25,000 websites would be in scope. Only last week, in an encouraging report by the National Audit Office on Ofcom’s readiness, we learned that the regulator’s own research has increased that estimate to 100,000, and the figure could be significantly higher. The report went on to point out that the great majority of those websites will be based overseas and will not have been regulated by Ofcom before.

The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, raised his concerns on the final day of Committee, seeking to amend the Bill to make it clear that Ofcom could take a schedule of a thousand sites to court and get them all blocked in one go. I was reassured when the Minister repeated the undertaking given by his counterpart in Committee in the other place that the Civil Procedure Rules already allow such multiparty claims. Will the Minister clarify once again that such enforcement at scale is possible and would not expose Ofcom to judicial review? That would give me peace of mind.

The question that remains for many is whether Ofcom will act promptly enough when children are at risk. I am being cautious because my experience in this area with regulators has led me not to assume that simply because this Parliament passes a law, it will be implemented. We all know the sorry tale of the Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act, when Ministers took it upon themselves not to decide when it should come into force, but to ask whether it should at all. When they announced that that should be never, the High Court took a dim view and allowed judicial review to proceed. Interestingly, the repeal of Part 3 and the clauses that replaced it may not have featured in this Bill were it not for that case—I always say that everything always happens for a reason. The amendment is a reminder to Ofcom that Parliament expects it to act, and to do so from the day when the law comes into force, not after a year’s grace period, six months or more of monitoring or a similar period of supervision before it contemplates any form of enforcement.

Many of the sites we are dealing with will not comply because this is the law; they will do so only when the business case makes compliance cheaper than the consequences of non-compliance, so this amendment is a gentle but necessary provision. If for any reason Ofcom does not think that exposing a significant number of children in this country to suicide, health harm, eating disorder or pornographic content—which is a universal plague—merits action, it will need to write a letter to the Secretary of State explaining why.

We have come too far to risk the Bill not being implemented in the most robust way, so I hope my noble friends will join me in supporting this belt-and-braces amendment. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, we welcome the government amendments in this group to bring child sexual exploitation and abuse failures into the scope of the senior manager liability and enforcement regime but consider that they do not go far enough. On the government amendments, I have a question for the Minister about whether, through Clause 122, it would be possible to require a company that was subject to action to do some media literacy as part of its harm reduction; in other words, would it be possible for Ofcom to use its media literacy powers as part of the enforcement process? I offer that as a helpful suggestion.

We share the concerns expressed previously by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, about the scope of the senior manager liability regime, which does not cover all the child safety duties in the Bill. We consider that Amendment 268, in the name of my noble friend Lord Stevenson, would provide greater flexibility, giving the possibility of expanding the list of duties covered in the future. I have a couple of brief questions to add to my first question. Will the Minister comment on how the operation of the senior manager liability regime will be kept under review? This has, of course, been something of a contentious issue in the other place, so could the Minister perhaps tell your Lordships’ House how confident he is that the current position is supported there? I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Baroness Merron and Baroness Benjamin

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 220E in the names of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes. I also support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and Amendment 226, which deals with children’s mental health.

I have spoken on numerous occasions in this place about the devastating impact child sexual abuse has and how it robs children of their childhoods. I am sure everyone here will agree that every child has the right to a childhood free of sexual exploitation and abuse. That is why I am so passionate about protecting children from some of the most shocking and obscene harm you can imagine. In the case of this amendment and child sexual abuse, we are specifically talking about crimes against children.

The Internet Watch Foundation is an organisation I am proud to support as one of its parliamentary champions, because its staff are guardian angels who work tirelessly beyond the call of duty to protect children. In April 2019, I was honoured to host the IWF’s annual report here in Parliament. I was profoundly shocked and horrified by what I heard that day and in my continued interactions with the IWF.

That day, the IWF told the story of a little girl called Olivia. Olivia was just three years old when IWF analysts saw her. She was a little girl, with big green eyes and golden-brown hair. She was photographed and filmed in a domestic setting. This could have been any bedroom or bathroom anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. Sadly, it was her home and she was with somebody she trusted. She was in the hands of someone who should have been there to look after her and nurture her. Instead, she was subjected to the most appalling sexual abuse over several years.

The team at the IWF have seen Olivia grow up in these images. They have seen her be repeatedly raped, and the torture she was subjected to. They tracked how often they saw Olivia’s images and videos over a three-month period. She appeared 347 times. On average that is five times every single day. In three in five of those images, she was being raped and tortured. Her imagery has also been identified as being distributed on commercial websites, where people are profiting from this appalling abuse.

I am happy to say that Olivia, thankfully, was rescued by law enforcement in 2013 at the age of eight, five years after her abuse began. Her physical abuse ended when the man who stole her childhood was imprisoned, but those images remain in circulation to this day. We know from speaking with adult survivors who have experienced revictimisation that it is the mental torture that blights lives and has an impact on their ability to leave their abuse in the past.

This Bill is supposed to help children like Olivia—and believe you me, she is just one of many, many children. The scale of these images in circulation is deeply worrying. In 2022, the IWF removed a record number of 255,000 web pages containing images of the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. Each one of these web pages can contain anything from one individual image of a child like Olivia, to thousands.

The IWF’s work is vital in removing millions of images from the internet each and every year, day in, day out. These guardian angels work tirelessly to stop this. As its CEO Susie Hargreaves often tells me, the world would be a much better place if the IWF did not have to exist, because this would mean that children were not suffering from sexual abuse or having such content spread online. But sadly, there is a need for the IWF. In fact, it is absolutely vital to the online safety landscape in the UK. As yet, this Bill does not go anywhere near far enough in recognising the important contribution the IWF has to make in implementing this legislation.

Victims of sexual abuse rely upon the IWF to protect and fight for them, safe in the knowledge that the IWF is on their side, working tirelessly to prevent millions of people potentially stumbling across their images and videos. This amendment is so important because, as my noble friend said, any delay to establishing roles and responsibilities of organisations like the IWF in working with Ofcom under the regulator regime risks leaving a vacuum in which the risks to children like Olivia will only increase further.

I urge the Government to take action to ensure that Ofcom clarifies how it intends to work with the Internet Watch Foundation and acknowledges the important part it has to play. We are months away from the Bill finally receiving Royal Assent. For children like Olivia, it cannot come soon enough; but it will not work as well as it could without the involvement of the Internet Watch Foundation. Let us make sure that we get this right and safeguard our children by accepting this amendment.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, observed, we have approached this group in an interesting way, having already heard the Minister’s feelings about the amendment. As I always think, forewarned is forearmed—so at least we know our starting point, and I am sure the Minister has listened to the debate and is reflecting.

I start by welcoming government Amendment 98A. We certainly value the work of various commissioners, but this amendment does not provide for what I would call a comprehensive duty. It needs supplementing by other approaches, and these are provided for by the amendments in this group.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan, Lady Benjamin and Lady Kidron, and my noble friend Lady Healy and others, have made a powerful case for the Internet Watch Foundation being the designated expert body. I too wish to pay tribute to those who tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse. They do it on behalf of all of us, but most notably the children they seek to protect, and their work is nothing short of an act of service.

Amendment 220E is in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. Despite the recommendation by the Joint Committee that scrutinised the draft Bill in December 2021 for the Internet Watch Foundation’s role in the future regulatory landscape to be clearly identified within the timescale set, it would require a role to be agreed with Ofcom, which has not yet happened. Perhaps the Minister can give the Committee some sense of where he feels Ofcom is in respect of the inclusion of the Internet Watch Foundation.