Online Safety Bill

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, as we discussed in Committee, the Bill contains strong protection for women and girls and places duties on services to tackle and limit the kinds of offences and online abuse that we know disproportionately affect them. His Majesty’s Government are committed to ensuring that women and girls are protected online as well as offline. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes for the thoughtful and constructive way in which she has approached ensuring that the provisions in the Bill are as robust as possible.

It is with my noble friend’s support that I am therefore pleased to move government Amendment 152. This will create a new clause requiring Ofcom to produce guidance that summarises, in one clear place, measures that can be taken to tackle the abuse that women and girls disproportionately face online. This guidance will relate to regulated user-to-user and search services and will cover content regulated under the Bill’s frame- work. Crucially, it will summarise the measures in the Clause 36 codes for Part 3 duties, namely the illegal and child safety duties. It will also include a summary of platforms’ relevant Part 4 duties—for example, relevant terms of service and reporting provisions. This will provide a one-stop shop for providers.

Providers that adhere to the codes of practice will continue to be compliant with the duties. However, this guidance will ensure that it is easy and clear for platforms to implement holistic and effective protections for women and girls across their various duties. Any company that says it is serious about protecting women and girls online will, I am sure, refer to this guidance when implementing protections for its users.

Ofcom will have the flexibility to shape the guidance in a way it deems most effective in protecting women and girls online. However, as outlined in this amendment, we expect that it will include examples of best practice for assessing risks of harm to women and girls from content and activity, and how providers can reduce these risks and emphasise provisions in the codes of practice that are particularly relevant to the protection of women and girls.

To ensure that this guidance is effective and makes a difference, the amendment creates a requirement on Ofcom to consult the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner, among other people or organisations it considers appropriate, when it creates this guidance. Much like the codes of practice, this will ensure that the views and voices of experts on the issue, and of women, girls and victims, are reflected. This amendment will also require Ofcom to publish this guidance.

I am grateful to all the organisations that have worked with us and with my noble friend Lady Morgan to get to this point. I hope your Lordships will accept the amendment. I beg to move.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to this amendment; I know that the House is keen to get on to other business today. I very much welcome the amendment that the Government have tabled. My noble friend the Minister has always said that they want to keep women and girls safe online. As has been referred to elsewhere, the importance of making our digital streets safer cannot be overestimated.

As my noble friend said, women and girls experience a disproportionate level of abuse online. That is now recognised in this amendment, although this is only the start, not the end, of the matter. I thank my noble friend and the Secretary of State for their engagement on this issue. I thank the chief executive and the chair of Ofcom. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who I know cannot be here today, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, who signed the original amendment that we discussed in Committee.

My noble friend has already talked about the campaigners outside the Chamber who wanted there to be specific mention of women and girls in the Bill. I thank Refuge, the 100,000 people who signed the End Violence Against Women coalition’s petition, BT, Glitch, Carnegie UK, Professor Lorna Woods, the NSPCC and many others who made the case for this amendment.

As my noble friend said, this is Ofcom guidance. It is not necessarily a code of practice, but it is still very welcome because it is broader than just the specific offences that the Government have legislated on, which I also welcome. As he said, this puts all the things that companies, platforms and search engines should be doing to protect women and girls online in one specific place. My noble friend mentioned holistic protection, which is very important.

There is no offline/online distinction these days. Women and girls should feel safe everywhere. I also want to say, because I know that my noble friend has had a letter, that this is not about saying that men and boys should not be safe online; it is about recognising the disproportionate levels of abuse that women and girls suffer.

I welcome the fact that, in producing this guidance, Ofcom will have to consult with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner and more widely. I look forward, as I am sure do all the organisations I just mentioned, to working with Ofcom on the first set of guidance that it will produce. It gives me great pleasure to have signed the amendment and to support its introduction.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I know that we do not have long and I do not want to be churlish. I am not that keen on this amendment, but I want to ask a question in relation to it.

I am concerned that there should be no conflation in the best practice guidance between the actual, practical problems of, for example, victims of domestic abuse being stalked online, which is a threat to their safety, or threatened with physical violence—I understand that—and abuse. Abuse is horrible to be on the receiving end of, but it is important for freedom of thought and freedom of speech that we do not make no distinction between words and action. It is important not to overreact or frighten young women by saying that being shouted at is the same as being physically abused.