Body Image in the Media and Online

Chris Philp Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. We used to appear opposite each other on occasion, so it is nice to serve under your chairmanship now. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) on tabling this important topic for discussion this afternoon and for speaking with such eloquence. The examples he gave were powerful and make a strong case for the need to do more in this important area for the sake of all our children and, indeed, many adults who suffer problems and issues as a result of images they see online. I take the opportunity to assure the House and, indeed, the public that the Government takes those problems seriously.

There are two projects under way designed to address exactly those issues, which provide useful platforms for doing more. My hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth touched on both. The first is the online advertising programme, which, as the name implies, is designed to address the content of paid-for online advertising, where some of the images he describes appear. As he said, the Advertising Standards Authority launched a call for evidence on 21 October that remains open until 13 January, so there are opportunities for people to make their views known. I hope that the ASA will be able to do more in this area in response to that.

In the coming months, the online advertising programme consultation will be launched and, again, that will be an extremely useful vehicle into which points such as the ones made today can be fed. That will likely lead in due course to further measures in the online advertising space. It is clear that there is a real opportunity through the programme to do more in this area. Given the call for evidence and the consultation in the coming months, the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth are extremely timely and very welcome. He has picked his moment with a great deal of good fortune.

There is not just the question of advertising but that of user-generated content, and that is in the scope of the draft Online Safety Bill, which my hon. Friend mentioned. It was published last May and I can see he has a copy of it in front of him, which is diligently tagged up. I am delighted he has been studying it so carefully.

As hon. Members will know, the draft Bill is currently going through a pre-legislative scrutiny process. A Joint Committee of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), is looking very carefully at it. The Committee has taken extensive evidence and will be publishing a report on or before 10 December, which may well address some of the issues. The Government are certainly in listening mode on the draft Online Safety Bill and we are ready to make changes, amendments and improvements to the Bill where there is a case to do so. There is scope for us to do more in this area. The Bill has a number of important mechanisms that will directly help address some of the issues that have been raised.

Let me pick up a couple of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth. First, he mentioned the importance of algorithms. As he said, this applies not only to matters of body image and the fact that he has lots of pictures of well-built men appearing in his timeline, for the reasons that he explained, but elsewhere. These algorithms drive all kinds of content, some of which is harmful. In fact, Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, explained how the algorithms promote content that is often harmful, or even hateful, to individuals for purely commercial reasons. The algorithms do that not through any exercise of editorial judgment, but simply to drive user engagement, and therefore revenue, for the companies concerned. It is a purely commercial, profit-driven activity.

My hon. Friend made a point about transparency. When they are asked to talk a bit more about what these algorithms do, the companies very often refuse to disclose what is going on. Therefore, some of the most important measures in the draft Online Safety Bill are to do with transparency. There is a transparency duty on the category 1 companies—the largest companies—to be transparent about what is going on.

There are also powerful information rights for Ofcom, whereby Ofcom can require the companies concerned to provide information about a whole range of things, including algorithms. Companies will have to provide that information to Ofcom, providing the transparency that is so woefully lacking. If they fail to meet either the transparency duty or the information duty, that is, responding to an information request, they can be fined up to 10% of their global revenue. In the case of the information disclosure duties, not only can the company be punished by way of extremely large fine, but there will also be personal criminal liability for named executives. There will be a big change in the transparency about algorithms and how information is provided.

In the context of the draft Online Safety Bill, my hon. Friend also mentioned content that is legal but harmful. There is clearly a strong case to say that material that causes either young people or adults to develop anxiety about their body image can potentially be harmful. Once we have passed the Bill, the Ofcom consultation process will define the priority harms, which will be the harms where category 1 companies will have to take particular care. They will have to lay out in their terms and conditions how they will address issues with priority harms. There is a mechanism through which representations can be made, and the argument can be made that matters concerning body image ought to included.

[Dr Luke Evans]

I am very grateful for the comprehensive answers that the Minister is giving. On that secondary point, will the consultation be coming back to the House of Commons to determine those priorities or will they be set out after a consultation that will be delivered straight to Ofcom for it to make its judgment?

[Chris Philp]

There will be an extensive consultation run by Ofcom, both on the matters considered to be priority harms and on the codes of practice that go alongside those. The Bill, as drafted, will see those codes of practice and the list of harms come back to the Secretary of State, and there will then be a parliamentary procedure, so Parliament will have an opportunity to look at the list of priority harms and the codes of conduct to be sure that Parliament is happy with them. There are various debates about whether the mechanisms to do that can be fine-tuned in some way, but it will not just disappear into a void with no further interaction with Parliament at all. In providing evidence to Ofcom, there will be an opportunity for my hon. Friend and for people who are campaigning with such passion on this issue to make representations.

[Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I join the Minister in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) on introducing this debate so eloquently. Can I take the Minister back to advertising? I spent many years working in British advertising agencies in London. I was a little concerned about the advertising ban in the Health and Care Bill, which we have been discussing in the last couple of days. We have a world-leading industry, and I gently say to my hon. Friend and to the Minister that if advertising is labelled in this way—I am talking more about the traditional media than online advertising—then either the health warning is so small that no one notices it or it is large enough to have a lot of notice. At that point, certainly the larger advertising agencies will ensure that they do shoots to get what they want without any retouching. I urge the Minister to be cautious and protect our world-leading advertising industry, which sets higher standards than virtually anywhere else in the world.

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, given that it is built on years of expertise in the industry. These issues require careful thought and there are balances to strike. We do not want to cause unreasonable problems for the advertising industry.

That is why the Government and various regulatory authorities are looking at this in such a careful way, with the call for evidence that is running at the moment, the consultations in the coming months on the online advertising programme and the consultation on the priority harms and codes of conduct that Ofcom will conduct in relation to the online safety Bill. Through those consultations, there will be an opportunity for campaigners to put forward their point of view on body image. Obviously, the advertising industry will have extensive opportunities to put its case. There will be opportunities for regulators and Parliament to think about how that balance can most appropriately be struck. We fully recognise that, as in so many areas, there is a balance to strike in ensuring we reach the right solution.

[Dr Luke Evans]

I absolutely agree on striking that balance. To address the earlier intervention, I hope that no one would ever see a label on these images, because companies would be socially responsible and choose not to doctor them. However, should those images be doctored for any reason, having that label—a small “p”, a small “b”, or whatever it happens to be—alerts the user to the fact that, when they are scrolling through hundreds of images, particularly on social media, all is not as it seems. I think that is a fair balance.

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. His comment is probably directed as much at my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Lord) as at me. Clearly, there are important points to debate.

In conclusion, the Government take the issue extremely seriously, not just in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport but across Government, such as in the Department of Health and Social Care and other Departments. We recognise that serious psychological harm is potentially being caused, particularly to young people but more widely as well. We want to ensure that reasonable steps are taken to avoid harm being inflicted.

I hope Members across the House, with opinions on both sides of the argument, will fully engage with the consultation on the online advertising programme and the call for evidence from the Advertising Standards Authority. I hope they will also fully engage, after the Bill passes, with Ofcom when it consults on the priority harms and codes of conduct. Some extremely important issues and arguments have surfaced on both sides in today’s debate. We look forward to debating the matter further in the coming months to ensure we strike that balance. We need to protect people who need protection, so that the internet is not an ungoverned, lawless space where anything goes, but equally we need to ensure that industries, such as advertising, are not unduly penalised or circumscribed. I am confident that the House, on a cross-party basis, can apply its collective wisdom and strike that balance. I look forward to working with colleagues to achieve that.

Question put and agreed to.