Online Abuse

Damian Collins Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and address the petitions on online abuse, which reflect the understandable growing public concern about the prevalence of abusive material and behaviour online, in particular on social media. I chaired the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill—the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee. We had consistent evidence from people about the nature of the abuse they had faced online, and how that abuse creates spaces online where not only are people targeted, but hate speech, racist speech, vile abuse and extremism have become normalised within the echo chambers of certain sectors of social media.

People are frustrated because they have raised these concerns directly with social media platforms, their Member of Parliament and the Government. The sort of action that they think should be taken to combat abusive behaviour, and that would be taken if the behaviour took place in a public space, is not being taken online. People cannot just log out of their accounts. We cannot just say, “Well, the easiest way to avoid online abuse is not to be online.” Many people are required to be online due to the nature of their work. Why should people not be able to go online and enjoy, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) said, the connectivity that comes from being on social media without being the victim or target of abuse? We do not create spaces for abuse in the physical world; we should not create such spaces in the online world either.

As the hon. Member said, the draft Online Safety Bill is big and quite complicated. I urge everyone to read the 60,000-word report by the Joint Committee. The Bill becomes a lot simpler and clearer after reading the report. At the heart of the Bill is something simple: activity that is illegal offline should be regulated online, and the laws that Parliament has created and that our courts enforce offline should be applied online as well. Offences are committed not just by someone who is abusing another person, but by a platform that actively hosts, amplifies and creates an audience for that content, and platforms should be liable to combat abuse. Indeed, without that liability, we will not be able to combat it.

Online platforms should not be amplifying abusive behaviour to others. In a shocking incident last summer—one of many—members of the English national football team were the subject of racist abuse after the final of the European championships. That was foreseen by the football authorities, who warned social media companies that this would be a problem, but the companies did nothing to combat it. The issue is not just that foreseeable abuse was not acted on and stopped; it is that social media companies’ systems were making people aware that the abuse was taking place, and even highlighting the key words. People were prosecuted in the courts following that event because of their use of racist language, and the racial abuse directed towards others.

We know what the offences are, and we know what the thresholds are for legal action. That standard should be enforced online. The draft Online Safety Bill should, by regulating illegal activity online, set the minimum standards required. It should allow us to set the safety standards that we think should be set, so that they are based not on terms of service written by American technology companies in California, but on our laws and the thresholds we set to keep people safe. They should be proactively enforced. The company should not be waiting for people to complain; they should be proactively looking for this content.

I will focus my remarks on a part of the Bill that it is important to get right: priority harms. The term that has been used is “legal but harmful”. Clearly illegal content exists; content that constitutes child abuse or a terrorist offence is clearly illegal and no context is needed to understand why it is bad. The Government propose creating a schedule of priority harms of other offences. I am pleased to see the steps the Government have taken since the Joint Committee report was published; they are writing more of those offences into the Bill, and making it absolutely clear when they apply. However, we do need certainty; victims need to know that an offence has been committed. They should be seeking redress based on the fact that an offence has been committed against them. The social media companies need to know which offences are in scope, and what they are expected to do in different situations. The regulator needs to give certainty, based on the law and its regulatory powers, about where those thresholds are.

That is why the Joint Committee recommended removing the definition of “legal but harmful” from the Bill, and instead writing into the Bill those offences that it applies to, making it really clear which offences are in scope. Once the regulator is established, its first job will be to create the risk registers from which it will create the codes of practice that apply to the different companies. Then the regulator will be well placed to act if Ofcom feels that there are gaps in the regulatory regime—if there are offences that should have been included but were not, or if new offences need to be added to the priority harm areas. It is much better if offences in the regulatory regime are based on laws that are understood, that Parliament has passed and that the courts enforce, so that there is no ambiguity. I understand the desire to future-proof the legislation, and to say, “Something bad may happen that we cannot foresee; there should be provision to regulate for that.” However, it is difficult to take enforcement action against a social media company for not acting against content that was not proscribed or recognised by the regulator.

The Government have done a good job of bringing so many offences into the Bill. One of the concerns was whether equalities legislation was enforceable online—how would we enforce race hate, and other abuse, online? The Government have made clear how that could be done. However, it would be better if the regulatory regime was based on offences named in the Bill, rather than our having an additional general definition of something that is “legal but harmful”.

I do not believe that the Government’s intention is for the regulator to start creating new offences; the Government want to bring clarity. Having a tight focus on existing offences, as regulated through the codes of practice that set the minimum safety standards, gives more clarity and more certainty. That is what people want. They want to know what they are being protected from, that the companies have to be proactive in removing certain sorts of content, and that there is no ambiguity or confusion over what that is and how it should be done. When the Minister responds and the Government give their thoughts about the final draft of the draft Online Safety Bill, they should bear that in mind. The Bill will provide a lot more clarity if we give people certainty—both those who are concerned about freedom of expression, and those who want to know that certain offences will be covered by the Bill.