Online Harms White Paper

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I agree with my hon. Friend that that is indeed the balance to be struck. I hope that I can reassure him that it is our intention to do so and that we believe that free speech and safety online are not mutually exclusive. We can do both; we must do both. That is what the White Paper intends to do. As he says, it simply would not be right for Government to seek to determine the answers to the questions that we are concerned with. There must be an independent regulator to do so. It must be properly funded and must be properly robust in the opportunities that it has to hold online companies to account.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Having spent 20 years in the tech industry, I can say categorically that the harms that the White Paper begins to address were well identified five or even 10 years ago, but it does nothing to address the growing harms associated with algorithms, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and data dominance. The Secretary of State says that other Departments or consultations will address them but, like the world we live in, those harms are all interconnected. Why is the Secretary of State allowing a piecemeal, ad hoc and at times knee-jerk legislative framework to develop, when what we need is a comprehensive, cross-departmental, evidence-based, forward-looking review of digital rights and responsibilities, so that we can have a regulatory framework fit for the future?

[Jeremy Wright]

I do not wish to damage the atmosphere of consensus that has helpfully emerged this afternoon, but I have to say that I think that the hon. Lady is completely wrong. What we have set out is exactly designed to deal with the problem that she has identified: that if we are reactive—if we chase harms that emerged some time ago and do not think about harms that are yet to emerge—we will indeed miss the point. However, that is exactly what a duty of care is designed to do. Those who are subject to a duty of care will be obliged not just to look at the harms that they already know about, but to scan the horizon. If they see a harm coming and choose to do nothing about it, they will be answerable for that failure. That is exactly one of the advantages of the duty of care model.