Online Safety Bill

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. We want to have as many conversations as possible in this area with Members on all sides, and I hope we can be as transparent as possible in that operation. We have already started the conversation. The Secretary of State and I met some of the big tech companies just yesterday to talk about exactly this area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover, my right hon. Friends the Members for South Holland and The Deepings and for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and others are absolutely right to highlight concerns about illegal small boat crossings and the harm that can be caused to people crossing in dangerous situations. The use of highly dangerous methods to enter this country, including unseaworthy, small or overcrowded boats and refrigerated lorries, presents a huge challenge to us all. Like other forms of serious and organised crime, organised immigration crime endangers lives, has a corrosive effect on society, puts pressure on border security resources and diverts money from our economy.

As the Prime Minister has said, stopping these crossings is one of the Government’s top priorities for the next year. The situation needs to be resolved and we will not hesitate to take action wherever that can have the most effect, including through this Bill. Organised crime groups continue to facilitate most migrant journeys to the UK and have no respect for human life, exploiting vulnerable migrants, treating them as commodities and knowingly putting people in life-threatening situations. Organised crime gangs are increasingly using social media to facilitate migrant crossings and we need to do more to prevent and disrupt the crimes facilitated through these platforms. We need to share best practice, improve our detection methods and take steps to close illegal crossing routes as the behaviour and methods of organised crime groups evolve.

However, amendment 82 risks having unforeseen consequences for the Bill. It could bring into question the meaning of the term “content” elsewhere in the Bill, with unpredictable implications for how the courts and companies would interpret it. Following constructive discussions with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, I can now confirm that in order to better tackle illegal immigration encouraged by organised gangs, the Government will add section 2 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to the list of priority offences. Section 2 makes it an offence to arrange or facilitate the travel of another person, including through recruitment, with a view to their exploitation.

We will also add section 24 of the Immigration Act to the priority offences list in schedule 7. Although the offences in section 2 cannot be carried out online, paragraph 33 of the schedule states the priority illegal content includes the inchoate offences relating to the offences listed. Therefore aiding, abetting, counselling and conspiring in those offences by posting videos of people crossing the channel that show the activity in a positive light could be an offence that is committed online and therefore fall within what is priority illegal content. The result of this amendment would therefore be that platforms would have to proactively remove that content. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and my right hon. Friends the Members for South Holland and The Deepings and for Maidenhead for raising this important issue and I would be happy to offer them a meeting with my officials to discuss the drafting of this amendment ahead of it being tabled in the other place.

We recognise the strength of feeling on the issue of harmful conversion practices and remain committed to protecting people from these practices and making sure that they can live their lives free from the threat of harm or abuse. We have had constructive engagement with my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) on her amendment 84, which seeks to prevent children from seeing harmful online content on conversion practices. It is right that this issue is tackled through a dedicated and tailored legislative approach, which is why we are announcing today that the Government will publish a draft Bill to set out a proposed approach to banning conversion practices. This will apply to England and Wales. The Bill will protect everybody, including those targeted on the basis of their sexuality or being transgender. The Government will publish the Bill shortly and will ask for pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee in this parliamentary Session.

This is a complex area and pre-legislative scrutiny exists to help ensure that any Bill introduced to Parliament does not cause unintended consequences. It will also ensure that the Bill benefits from stakeholder expertise and input from parliamentarians. The legislation must not, through a lack of clarity, harm the growing number of children and young adults experiencing gender-related distress through inadvertently criminalising or chilling legitimate conversations that parents or clinicians may have with children. This is an important issue, and it needs the targeted and robust approach that a dedicated Bill would provide.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I am afraid I have only three minutes, so I am not able to give way.

The Government cannot accept the Labour amendments that would re-add the adult safety duties and the concept of content that is harmful to adults. These duties and the definition of harmful content were removed from the Bill in Committee to protect free speech and to ensure that the Bill does not incentivise tech companies to censor legal content. It is not appropriate for the Government to decide whether legal content is harmful to adult users, and then to require companies to risk assess and set terms for such content. Many stakeholders and parliamentarians are justifiably concerned about the consequences of doing so, and I share those concerns. However, the Government recognise the importance of giving users the tools and information they need to keep themselves safe online, which is why we have introduced to the Bill a fairer, simpler approach for adults—the triple shield.

Members have talked a little about user empowerment. I will not have time to cover all of that, but the Government believe we have struck the right balance of empowering adult users on the content they see and engage with online while upholding the right to free expression. For those reasons, I am not able to accept these amendments, and I hope the hon. Members for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) will not press them to a vote.

The Government amendments are consequential on removing the “legal but harmful” sections, which were debated extensively in Committee.

The Government recognise the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud about anonymous online abuse, and I applaud her important campaigning in this area. We expect Ofcom to recommend effective tools for compliance, with the requirement that these tools can be applied by users who wish to filter out non-verified users. I agree that the issue covered by amendment 52 is important, and I am happy to continue working with her to deliver her objectives in this area.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford spoke powerfully, and we take the issue incredibly seriously. We are committed to introducing a new communications offence of intentional encouragement and assistance of self-harm, which will apply whether the victim is a child or an adult.