Online Safety Bill (Seventeenth sitting)

Dean Russell Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Philp]

That is a fairly standard clause in legislation. Clearly, for most legislation and most areas of Government activity, the relevant departmental Select Committee would be expected to provide the ongoing scrutiny, so ordinarily the DCMS Committee would do that. I hear the shadow Minister’s comments: she said that this proposal is not designed in any way to impugn or disrespect that Committee, but I listened to the comments of the Chair of that Committee on Second Reading, and I am not sure he entirely shares that view—he expressed himself in quite forthright terms.

On the proposal, we understand that the Joint Committee did valuable work. This is an unusual piece of legislation, in that it is completely groundbreaking. It is unlike any other, so the case for a having a particular Committee look at it may have some merits. I am not in a position to give a definitive Government response to that because the matter is still under consideration, but if we were to establish a special Committee to look at a single piece of legislation, there are two ways to do it. It could either be done in statute, as the new clause seeks, or it could be done by Standing Orders.

Generally speaking, it is the practice of the House to establish Committees by Standing Orders of the House rather than by statute. In fact, I think the only current Committee of the House established by statute—Ms Rees, you will correct me if I am wrong, as you are more of an expert on these matters than me—is the Intelligence and Security Committee, which was established by the Intelligence Services Act 1994. That is obviously very unusual, because it has special powers. It looks into material that would ordinarily be classified as secret, and it has access to the intelligence services. It is a rather unusual Committee that has to be granted special powers because it looks into intelligence and security matters. Clearly, those considerations do not apply here. Were a particular Committee to be established, the right way of doing that would not be in statute, as the new clause proposes, but via the Standing Orders of the House, if that is something that Parliament wants to do.

[Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)]

As another member of the Joint Committee, I totally understand the reasoning. I want to put on record my support for setting up a Committee through the approach the Minister mentioned using statutory instruments. I will not support the new clause but I strongly support the Joint Committee continuing in some form to enable scrutiny. When we look forward to the metaverse, virtual reality and all the things that are coming, it is important that that scrutiny continues. No offence to Opposition colleagues, but I do not think the new clause is the right way to do that. However, the subject is worth further exploration, and I would be very supportive of that happening.