Online Harms Consultation

Debate between Christian Wakeford and Oliver Dowden

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

On age verification, we are moving it from what we previously had, which was not dealing with user-generated content. Most pornography that children access is on sites that have user-generated content. Usually, that is the way that children stumble across it by mistake. It is really important that we broaden the scope of what we are doing, and that is precisely what we are addressing through this legislation.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con) [V]]

Earlier this year, we witnessed the Wiley scandal, which saw an antisemitic rant over numerous posts. It took 72 hours and a mass boycott of social media by the Jewish community and its supporters before any action was taken by the platforms. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the law should apply online as it does offline and that online platforms must do more to stop the spread of hate speech and illegal content?