Online Safety Bill

Baroness Prashar Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, we are privileged to live in an age of internet technology, which gives us greater access to information and means of communication than at any point in human history. But to get the most out of this online world it must be safe and effectively regulated to counter harm and misinformation. I fully support the Bill. It is a good start, but it needs to be improved in a number of areas.

I begin by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for her tireless work in this area, and for educating and helping us to focus on some of the core and fundamental issues. I will underline some of the amendments she proposes that I intend to support.

As the noble Baroness said, the Bill primarily focuses on user-to-user services and search engines, as defined in Part 2, but harmful content published on websites such as blogs falls outside the Bill’s scope. The noble Baroness’s amendment to include within the Bill’s scope any internet service likely to be accessed by a child is crucial. I strongly support it.

The Bill must also address business models that drive users to this content. As we know, this occurs through platforms, algorithms and push notifications, which amplify and perpetuate access to this content, as illustrated by the tragic death of Molly Russell. I support the noble Baroness’s amendment to Clause 10, which would ensure tough regulation in this area and assessments to tackle drivers of harm, including the design and features of the platform.

Furthermore, online safety should apply not just to children. The 2019 White Paper said that content that actively harmed any user should be tackled. It is deeply regrettable that the Government removed adult safety duties from the Bill, arguing that this would undermine free speech. On the contrary: online safety for all has the potential to enhance free speech, as people can engage on platforms without being exposed to harmful content. I urge the Government to reverse this decision.

The importance of balancing privacy online with the need for public safety is of course crucial. Encrypted messaging services such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp are right to keep private messages confidential, but the Government have argued that there are situations where law enforcement agencies must have access to messages on these platforms. Can the Minister explain how they intend to balance privacy and online safety with regard to encrypted messaging services?

Age-verification regimes need to be strengthened to ensure that children are not exposed to pornography. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, made a very powerful case for that, and I strongly support the amendment which he will bring forward. His proposed amendment, he said, would bring Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act into Part 5 of the Online Safety Bill. As he said, this offers a very neat solution to addressing the significant gap in the Bill, and would make the definition of pornography online consistent with regulation of content in the offline world. I also support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, to Part 4, which would task Ofcom with producing statutory guidance for age assurance. I also support her amendment to Part 7, requiring platforms to provide a point of contact to bereaved families or coroners when they have reason to suspect that a regulated service holds relevant information on a child’s death, and an amendment requiring social media platforms to share information with coroners in cases like Molly Russell’s.

While this Bill is about the online safety of children, this is an opportunity to include online fraud provisions in legislation, which predominantly affect the elderly. We need a regime where law enforcement, financial services and tech platforms collaborate to reduce online fraud. Would the Government be willing to entertain an amendment that encouraged such collaboration, to ensure that user-to-user platforms and search engines are accountable for fraudulent advertising on their platforms?

The Government have signalled that they will put forward an amendment that will classify videos of people crossing the channel which show the activity in a positive light, which I of course support. Can the Minister assure the House that this amendment, intended to target those who encourage people smugglers, will not criminalise those who show sympathy online for asylum seekers?

Finally, civil liberties groups have described social media as a modern town square. To make sure that this town square is used positively, we need robust provisions for media literacy. A new media literacy duty in the draft Bill has been dropped; now it is mentioned only in the context of risk assessment, and there is no active requirement for internet companies to promote media literacy. There is a wide media literacy gap which leaves many at risk of harm. I agree with Full Fact that a stronger media literacy duty should be reinstated with Ofcom in this legislation to produce a statutory strategy.

Finally, this is a fast-changing area, as others have said. While we can improve this Bill, we cannot make it perfect. I therefore strongly urge that a commitment is given by the Government to subject this legislation to post-legislative scrutiny after three years.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness Prashar Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, for once, I am not entirely hostile to all these amendments—hurrah. In fact, I would rather have media literacy and education than regulation; that seems to me the solution to so much of what we have been discussing. But guess what? I have a few anxieties and I shall just raise them so that those who have put forward the arguments can come back to me.

We usually associate media literacy with schools and young people in education. Noble Lords will be delighted to know that I once taught media literacy: that might explain where we are now. It was not a particularly enlightening course for anybody, but it was part of the communications A-level at the time. I am worried about mandating schools how to teach media literacy. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, will know, I worry about adding more to their overcrowded curriculum than they already have on their plate, but I note that the amendments actually expand the notion of being taught literacy to adults, away from just children. I suppose I just have some anxiety about Ofcom becoming the nation’s teacher, presenting users of digital services as though they are hapless and helpless. In other words, I am concerned about an overly paternalistic approach—that we should not be patronising.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, keeps reminding us that content should not be our focus, and that it should be systems. In fact, in practically every discussion we have had, content has been the focus, because that is what will be removed, or not, by how we deal with the systems. That is one of the things that we are struggling with.

Literacy in the systems would certainly be very helpful for everybody. I have an idea—it is not an amendment—that we should send the noble Lord, Lord Allan of Hallam, on a UK tour so that he can explain it to us all; he is not here for this compliment, but every time he spoke in the first week of Committee, I think those of us who were struggling understood what he meant, as he explained complicated and technical matters in a way that was very clear. That is my constructive idea.

Amendment 52A from the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, focuses on content, with its

“duty to make available information to allow users to establish the reliability and accuracy of content”.

That takes us back to the difficulties we were struggling with on how misinformation and disinformation will be settled and whether it is even feasible. I do not know whether any noble Lords have been following the “mask wars” that are going on. There are bodies of scientists on both sides on the efficacy of mask wearing—wielding scientific papers at dawn, as it were. These are well-informed, proper scientists who completely disagree on whether it was effective during lockdown. I say that because establishing reliability and accuracy is not that straightforward.

I like the idea of making available

“to users such information that may be necessary to allow users to establish the reliability and accuracy of content encountered on the service”.

I keep thinking that we need adults and young people to say that there is not one truth, such as “the science”, and to be equipped and given the tools to search around and compare and contrast different versions. I am involved in Debating Matters for 16 to 18 year-olds, which has topic guides that say, “Here is an argument, with four really good articles for it and four really good articles against, and here’s a load of background”. Then 16 to 18 year-olds will at least think that there is not just one answer. I feel that is the way forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said that I was preaching a counsel of despair; I like to think of myself as a person who has faith in the capacity and potential of people to overcome problems. I had a slight concern when reading the literature associated with online and digital literacy—not so much with the amendments—that it always says that we must teach people about the harms of the online world. I worry that this will reinforce a disempowering idea of feeling vulnerable and everything being negative. One of the amendments talks about a duty to promote users’ “safe use” of the service. I encourage a more positive outlook, incorporating into this literacy an approach that makes people aware that they can overcome and transcend insults and be robust and savvy enough to deal with algorithms—that they are not always victims but can take control over the choices they make. I would give them lessons on resilience, and possibly just get them all to read John Locke on toleration.

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 236, 237 and 238 in my name. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for supporting me. Like others, I thank Full Fact for its excellent briefings. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for introducing this group of amendments, as it saves me having to make the case for why media literacy is a very important aspect of this work. It is the other side of regulation; they very much go hand in hand. If we do not take steps to promote media literacy, we could fall into a downward spiral of further and further regulation, so it is extremely important.

It is a sad fact that levels of media literacy are very low. Research from Ofcom has found that one-third of internet users are unaware of the potential for inaccurate and biased information. Further, 40% of UK adult internet users do not have the skills to critically assess information they see online, and only 2% of children have skills to tell fact from fiction online. It will not be paternalistic, but a regulator should be proactively involved in developing media literacy programmes. Through the complaints it receives and from the work that it does, the regulator can identify and monitor where the gaps are in media literacy.

To date, the response to this problem has been for social media platforms to remove content deemed harmful. This is often done using technology that picks up on certain words and phrases. The result has been content being removed that should not have been. Examples of this include organisations such as Mumsnet having social media posts on sexual health issues taken down because the posts use certain words or phrases. At one stage, Facebook’s policy was to delete or censor posts expressing opinions that deviated from the norm, without defining what “norm” actually meant. The unintended consequences of the Bill could undermine free speech. Rather than censoring free speech through removing harmful content, we should give a lot more attention to media literacy.

During the Bill’s pre-legislative scrutiny, the Joint Committee recommended that the Government include provisions to ensure media literacy initiatives are of a high standard. The draft version of the Bill included Clause 103, which strengthened the media literacy provisions in the Communications Act 2003, as has already been mentioned. Regrettably, the Government later withdrew the enhanced media literacy clause, so the aim of my amendments is to reintroduce strong media literacy provisions. Doing so will both clarify and strengthen media literacy obligations on online media providers and Ofcom.

Amendment 236 would place a duty on Ofcom to take steps to improve the media literacy of the public in relation to regulated services. As part of this duty, Ofcom must try to reach audiences who are less engaged and harder to reach through traditional media literacy services. It must also address gaps in the current availability of media literacy provisions for vulnerable users. Many of the existing media literacy services are targeted at children but we need to include vulnerable adults too. The amendment would place a duty on Ofcom to promote availability and increase the effectiveness of media literacy initiatives in relation to regulated services. It seeks to ensure that providers of regulated services take appropriate measures to improve users’ media literacy through Ofcom’s online safety function. This proposed new clause makes provision for Ofcom to prepare guidance about media literacy matters, and such guidance must be published and kept under review.

Amendment 237 would place a duty on Ofcom to prepare a strategy on how it intends to undertake the duty to promote media literacy. This strategy should set out the steps Ofcom proposes to take to achieve its media literacy duties and identify organisations, or types of organisations, that Ofcom will work with to undertake these duties. It must also explain why Ofcom believes the proposed steps will be effective in how it will assess progress. This amendment would also place a duty on Ofcom to have regard to the need to allocate adequate resources for implementing this strategy. It would require Ofcom’s media strategy to be published within six months of this provision coming into force, and to be revised within three years; in both cases this should be subject to consultation.

Amendment 238 would place a duty on Ofcom to report annually on the delivery of its media literacy strategy. This reporting must include steps taken in accordance with the strategy and assess the extent to which those steps have had an effect. This amendment goes further than the existing provisions in the Communications Act 2003, which do not include duties on Ofcom to produce a strategy or to measure progress; nor do they place a duty on Ofcom to reach hard-to-reach audiences who are the most vulnerable in our society to disinformation and misinformation.