Online Safety Bill

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I shall speak briefly to Amendments 220E and 226. On Amendment 220E, I say simply that nothing should be left to chance on IWF. No warm words or good intentions replace the requirement for its work to be seamlessly and formally integrated into the OSB regime. I put on record the extraordinary debt that every one of us owes to those who work on the front line of child sexual abuse. I know from my own work how the images linger. We should all do all that we can to support those who spend every day chasing down predators and finding and supporting victims and survivors. I very much hope that, in his response, the Minister will agree to sit down with the IWF, colleagues from Ofcom and the noble Lords who tabled the amendment and commit to finding a language that will give the IWF the reassurance it craves.

More generally, I raise the issue of why the Government did not accept the pre-legislative committee’s recommendation that the Bill provide a framework for how bodies will work together, including when and how they will share powers, take joint action and conduct joint investigations. I have a lot of sympathy with the Digital Regulation Co-operation Forum in its desire to remain an informal body, but that is quite different from the formal power to share sensitive data and undertake joint action or investigation.

If history repeats itself, enforcing the law will take many years and very likely will cost a great deal of money and require expertise that it makes no sense for Ofcom to reproduce. It seems obvious that it should have the power to co-designate efficiently and effectively. I was listening to the Minister when he set out his amendment, and he went through the process that Ofcom has, but it did not seem to quite meet the “efficiently and effectively” model. I should be interested to know why there is not more emphasis on co-regulation in general and the sharing of powers in particular.

In the spirit of the evening, I turn to Amendment 226 and make some comments before the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, has outlined the amendment, so I beg her indulgence on that. I want to support and credit the NSPCC for its work in gathering the entire child rights community behind it. Selfishly, I have my own early warning system, in the form of the 5Rights youth advisory group, made up of the GYG—gifted young generation—from Gravesend. It tells us frequently exactly what it does not like and does like about the online world. More importantly, it reveals very early on in our interactions the features or language associated with emerging harms.

Because of the lateness of the hour, I will not give your Lordships all the quotes, but capturing and reflecting children’s insight and voices is a key part of future-proofing. It allows us to anticipate new harms and, where new features pop up that are having a positive or negative impact, it is quite normal to ask the user groups how they are experiencing those features and that language themselves. That is quite normal across all consumer groups so, if this is a children’s Bill, why are children not included in this way?

In the work that I do with companies, they often ask what emerging trends we are seeing. For example, they actually say that they will accept any additions to the list of search words that can lead to self-harm content, or “What do we know about the emoji language that is happening now that was not happening last week?” I am always surprised at their surprise when we say that a particular feature is causing anxiety for children. Rather than being hostile, their response is almost always, “I have never thought about it that way before”. That is the value of consulting your consumer—in this case, children.

I acknowledge what the Minister said and I welcome the statutory consultees—the Children’s Commissioner, the Victims’ Commissioner and so on. It is a very welcome addition, but this role is narrowly focused on the codes of practice at the very start of the regulatory cycle, rather than the regulatory system as a whole. It does not include the wider experience of those organisations that deal with children in real time, such as South West Grid for Learning or the NSPCC, or the research work done by 5Rights, academics across the university sector or research partners such as Revealing Reality—ongoing, real-time information and understanding of children’s perspectives on their experience.

Likewise, super-complaints and Ofcom’s enforcement powers are what happen after harms take place. I believe that we are all united in thinking that the real objective of the exercise is to prevent harm. That means including children’s voices not only because it is their right but because, so often in my experience, they know exactly what needs to happen, if only we would listen.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I speak mainly to support Amendment 220E, to which I have added my name. I am also delighted to support government Amendment 98A and I entirely agree with the statutory consultees listed there. I will make a brief contribution to support the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who introduced Amendment 220E. I thank the chief executive at Ofcom for the discussions that we have had on the designation and the Minister for the reply he sent me on this issue.

I have a slight feeling that we are dancing on the head of a pin a little, as we know that we have an absolutely world-leading organisation in the form of the Internet Watch Foundation. It plays an internationally respected role in tackling child sexual abuse. We should be, and I think we are, very proud to have it in the United Kingdom, and the Government want to enhance and further build on the best practice that we have seen. As we have already heard and all know, this Bill has been a very long time in coming and organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation, which are pretty certain because of their expertise and the good work they have done already, should be designated.

However, without knowing that and without having a strong steer of support from the Minister, it becomes harder for them to operate, as they are in a vacuum. Things such as funding and partnership working become harder and harder, as well, which is what I mean by dancing on the head of a pin—unless the Minister says something about another organisation.

The IWF was founded in 1996, when 18% of the world’s known child sexual abuse material was hosted in the UK. Today that figure is less than 1% and has been since 2003, thanks to the work of the IWF’s analysts and the partnership approach the IWF takes. We should say thank you to those who are at the front line of the grimmest material imaginable and who do this to keep our internet safe.

I mentioned, in the previous group, the IWF’s research on girls. It says that it has seen more girls appearing in this type of imagery. Girls now appear in 96% of the imagery it removes from the internet, up almost 30 percentage points from a decade ago. That is another good reason why we want the internet and online to be a safe place for women and girls. As I say, any delay in establishing the role and responsibility of an expert organisation such as the IWF in working with Ofcom risks leaving a vacuum in which the risk is to children. That is really the ultimate thing; if there is a vacuum left and the IWF is not certain about its position, then what happens is that the children who are harmed most by this awful material are the ones who are not being protected. I do not think that is what anybody wants to see, however much we might argue about whether an order should be passed by Parliament or by Ofcom.