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.