Sub-Committee on Disinformation

Debate between Damian Collins and Angela Crawley

Thursday 4th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. One of the issues at the heart of this—it comes up again and again throughout our report—is the obligations of the tech companies. A social media platform is not necessarily the publisher of content; it has been posted there by a user of the platform. However, the social media company can observe everything that is going on and it curates the content as well.

When someone goes on social media, if they just saw what their friends had posted most recently, that would be one thing, but because social media algorithms direct users towards particular content, we are concerned not only that harmful content can exist, but that when individuals start to engage with it, they are directed to even more of it. I think that we should not only consider the responsibilities of the tech companies to remove harmful content when it is posted, but question the ethics of algorithms and systems that can direct people towards harmful content.

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on an excellent, wide-ranging and groundbreaking report, and I congratulate all the members and staff of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on it. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), who demonstrates great knowledge of and enthusiasm for this inquiry, asked me to make a few points.

The inquiry started an ongoing worldwide conversation about the threats posed by shadowy, unaccountable and anti-democratic forces. As I understand it, in February the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee hosted its first ever international grand committee, which included representatives of countries such as Canada, Ireland, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Singapore, France and Latvia. The Committee has also formed a new Sub-Committee as part of that international grand committee.

I recognise that it must have been difficult in a fast-moving environment to produce the formal report of an 18-month inquiry in such a timely fashion. I congratulate the Committee on establishing the Sub-Committee. Although the hon. Gentleman may already have answered this question, can he say exactly when the White Paper, which has been delayed repeatedly, will be published? Does he have any information on that White Paper that he could outline today?

[Damian Collins]

I have some information on that, but given that the Minister is here, I will leave it to her to respond. The official word is “imminently”, which I think means “very imminently”. We look forward to the White Paper; it is an important piece of work that I hope will lay the foundations for turning the work of our inquiry, and other work that the Government have done, into real policy. We could establish in this country a world-leading framework for dealing with these issues.