Online Safety Bill

Deidre Brock Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Nicolson]

Yes, and I shall return to that point later in my speech.

The Secretary of State’s powers in the Bill need to be addressed. From interested charities to the chief executive of Ofcom, there is consensus that the powers of the Secretary of State in the legislation are too wide. Child safety campaigners, human rights groups, women and girls’ charities, sports groups and democracy reform campaigners all agree that the Secretary of State’s powers threaten the independence of the regulator. That is why both the Joint Committee and the Select Committee have, unanimously and across party lines, recommended reducing the proposed powers.

We should be clear about what exactly the proposed powers will do. Under clause 40, the Secretary of State will be able to modify the draft codes of practice, thus allowing the UK Government a huge amount of power over the independent communications regulator, Ofcom. The Government have attempted to play down the powers, saying that they would be used only in “exceptional circumstances”, but the word “exceptional” is nebulous. How frequent is exceptional? All we are told is that the exceptional circumstances could reflect changing Government “public policy”. That is far too vague, so perhaps the Secretary of State will clarify the difference between public policy and Government policy and give us some further definition of “exceptional”.

While of course I am sure Members feel certain that the current Secretary of State would exercise her powers in a calm and level-headed way, imagine if somebody intemperate held her post or—heaven forfend—a woke, left-wing snowflake from the Labour Benches did. The Secretary of State should listen to her own MPs and reduce her powers in the Bill.

Let me turn to misinformation and disinformation. The Bill aims not only to reduce abuse online but to reduce harm more generally. That cannot be done without including in the Bill stronger provisions on disinformation. As a gay man, I have been on the receiving end of abuse for my sexuality, and I have seen the devasting effect that misinformation and disinformation have had on my community. Disinformation has always been weaponised to spread hate; however, the pervasive reach of social media makes disinformation even more dangerous.

The latest battle ground for LGBT rights has seen an onslaught against trans people. Lies about them and their demand for enhanced civil rights have swirled uncontrollably. Indeed, a correspondent of mine recently lamented “trans funding” in the north-east of Scotland, misreading and misunderstanding and believing it to involve the compulsory regendering of retiring oil workers in receipt of transitional funding from the Scottish Government. That is absurd, of course, but it says something about the frenzied atmosphere stirred up by online transphobes.

The brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, with lies spewed by the Russian Government and their media apologists, has, like the covid pandemic, illustrated some of the other real-world harms arising from disinformation. It is now a weapon of war, with serious national security implications, yet the UK Government still do not seem to be taking it seriously enough. Full Fact, the independent fact-checking service, said that there is currently no credible plan to tackle disinformation. The Government may well argue that disinformation will fall under the false communications provision in clause 151, but in practice it sets what will likely be an unmeetable bar for services. As such, most disinformation will be dealt with as harmful content.

We welcome the Government’s inclusion of functionality in the risk assessments, which will look not just at content but how it spreads. Evidence from the two Committees shows that the dissemination of harm is as important as the content itself, but the Government should be more explicit in favouring content-neutral modes for reducing disinformation, as this will have less of an impact on freedom of speech. That was recommended by the Facebook whistleblowers Sophie Zhang and Frances Haugen.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[John Nicolson]

No, I will make some progress, if I may.

A vital tool in countering disinformation is education, and Estonia—an early and frequent victim of Russian disinformation—is a remarkable case study. That is why the Government’s decision to drop Ofcom’s clause 104 media duties is perplexing. Media literacy should be a shared responsibility for schools, Government, and wider society. Spreading and enhancing media literacy should be up to not just Ofcom, but the larger platforms too. Ofcom should also be allowed to break platform terms and conditions for the purposes of investigation. For example, it would currently be unable to create fake profiles to analyse various companies’ behaviour, such as their response to abuse. It would empower the regulator.

Various issues arise when trying to legislate for harm that is not currently illegal. This is challenging for us as legislators since we do not know exactly what priority harms will be covered by secondary legislation, but we would like assurances from the Government that Zach’s law, as it has come to be known, will become a standalone offence. Vicious cowards who send seizure-inducing flashing images to people with epilepsy to trigger seizures must face criminal consequences. The Minister told me in a previous debate that this wicked behaviour will now be covered by the harmful communications offence under clause 150, but until a specific law is on the statute book, he will, I imagine, understand families’ desire for certainty.

Finally, I turn to cross-platform abuse. There has been a terrifying increase in online child abuse over the past three years. Grooming offences have increased by 70% in that period. The Select Committee and the Joint Committee received a host of recommendations which, disappointingly, seem to have been somewhat ignored by the Government. On both Committees, we have been anxious to reduce “digital breadcrumbing”, which is where paedophiles post images of children which may look benign and will not, therefore, be picked up by scanners. However, the aim is to induce children, or to encourage other paedophiles, to leave the regulated site and move to unregulated sites where they can be abused with impunity. I urge the Secretary of State to heed the advice of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Without enacting the measures it recommends, children are at ever greater risk of harm.

The House will have noted that those on the SNP Benches have engaged with the Government throughout this process. Indeed, I am the only Member to have sat on both the Joint Committee and the Select Committee as this Bill has been considered and our reports written. It has been a privilege to hear from an incredible range of witnesses, some of whom have displayed enormous bravery in giving their testimony.

We want to see this legislation succeed. That there is a need for it is recognised across the House—but across the House, including on the Tory Benches, there is also recognition that the legislation can and must be improved. It is our intention to help to improve the legislation without seeking party advantage. I hope the Secretary of State will engage in the same constructive manner.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is an honour to close this debate on behalf of the Opposition. Sadly, there is so little time for the debate that there is much that we will not even get to probe, including any mention of the Government’s underfunded and ill-thought-through online media strategy.

However, we all know that change and regulation of the online space are much needed, so Labour welcomes this legislation even in its delayed form. The current model, which sees social media platforms and tech giants making decisions about what content is hosted and shared online, is simply failing. It is about time that that model of self-regulation, which gives too much control to Silicon Valley, was challenged.

Therefore, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) said, Labour broadly supports the principles of the Bill and welcomes some aspects of the Government’s approach, including the duty of care frameworks and the introduction of an independent regulator, Ofcom. It cannot and should not be a matter for the Government of the time to control what people across the UK are able to access online. Labour will continue to work hard to ensure that Ofcom remains truly independent of political influence.

We must also acknowledge, however, that after significant delays this Bill is no longer world leading. The Government first announced their intention to regulate online spaces all the way back in 2018. Since then, the online space has remained unregulated and, in many cases, has perpetuated dangerous and harmful misinformation with real-world consequences. Colleagues will be aware of the sheer amount of coronavirus vaccine disinformation so easily accessed by millions online at the height of the pandemic. Indeed, in many respects, it was hard to avoid.

More recently, the devastating impact of state disinformation at the hands of Putin’s regime has been clearer than ever, almost two years after Parliament’s own Intelligence and Security Committee called Russian influence in the UK “the new normal”.

[Deidre Brock]

Does the hon. Lady share my disappointment and concern that the Bill does nothing to address misinformation and disinformation in political advertising? A rash of very aggressive campaign groups emerged before the last Scottish Parliament elections, for example; they spent heavily on online political advertising, but were not required to reveal their political ties or funding sources. That is surely not right.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I share the hon. Lady’s concern. There is so much more that is simply missing from this Bill, which is why it is just not good enough. We have heard in this debate about a range of omissions from the Bill and the loopholes that, despite the years of delay, have still not been addressed by the Government. I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for pointing those out. It is a shame that we are not able to address them individually here, but we will probe those valued contributions further in the Bill Committee.

Despite huge public interest and a lengthy prelegislative scrutiny process, the Government continue to ignore many key recommendations, particularly around defining and regulating both illegal and legal but harmful content online. The very nature of the Bill and its heavy reliance on secondary legislation to truly flesh out the detail leaves much to be desired. We need to see action now if we are truly to keep people safe online.

Most importantly, this Bill is an opportunity, and an important one at that, to decide the kind of online world our children grow up in. I know from many across the House that growing up online as children do now is completely unimaginable. When I was young, we played Snake on a Nokia 3310, and had to wait for the dial-up and for people to get off the phone in order to go online and access MSN, but for people today access to the internet, social media and everything that brings is a fundamental part of their lives.

Once again, however, far too much detail, and the specifics of how this legislation will fundamentally change the user experience, is simply missing from the Bill. When it comes to harmful content that is not illegal, the Government have provided no detail. Despite the Bill’s being years in the making, we are no closer to understanding the impact it will have on users.

The Bill in its current draft has a huge focus on the tools for removing and moderating harmful content, rather than ensuring that design features are in place to make services systematically safer for all of us. The Government are thus at real risk of excluding children from being able to participate in the digital world freely and safely. The Bill must not lock children out of services they are entitled to use; instead, it must focus on making those services safe by design.

I will push the Minister on this particular point. We are all eager to hear what exact harms platforms will have to take steps to address and mitigate. Will it be self-harm? Will it perhaps be content promoting eating disorders, racism, homophobia, antisemitism and misogyny? One of the key problems with the Bill is the failure to make sure that the definitions of “legal but harmful” content are laid out within it. Will the Minister therefore commit to amending the Bill to address this and to allow for proper scrutiny? As we have heard, the Government have also completely failed to address what stakeholders term the problem of breadcrumbing. I would be grateful if the Minister outlined what steps the Government will be taking to address this issue, as there is clearly a loophole in the Bill that would allow this harmful practice to continue.

As we have heard, the gaps in the Bill, sadly, do not end there. Women and girls are disproportionately likely to be affected by online abuse and harassment. Online violence against women and girls is defined as including but not limited to

“intimate image abuse, online harassment, the sending of unsolicited explicit images, coercive ‘sexting’, and the creation and sharing of ‘deepfake’ pornography.”

This Bill is an important step forward but it will need significant strengthening to make online spaces safe for women and girls. While we welcome the steps by the Government to include cyber-flashing in the Bill, it must go further in other areas. Misogyny should be included as a harm to adults that online platforms have a duty to prevent from appearing on them. As colleagues will be aware, Instagram has been completely failing to tackle misogynistic abuse sent via direct message. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate has exposed what it terms an “epidemic of misogynistic abuse”, 90% of which has been completely and utterly ignored by Instagram, even when it has been reported to moderators. The Government must see sense and put violence against women and girls into the Bill, and it must also form a central pillar of regulation around legal but harmful content. Will the Minister therefore commit to at least outlining the definitions of “legal but harmful” content, both for adults and children, in the Bill?

Another major omission from the Bill in as currently drafted is its rather arbitrary categorisation of platforms based on size versus harm. As mentioned by many hon. Members, the categorisation system as it currently stands will completely fail to address some of the most extreme harms on the internet. Thanks to the fantastic work of organisations such as Hope not Hate and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, we know that smaller platforms such as 4chan and BitChute have significant numbers of users who are highly motivated to promote extremely dangerous content. The Minister must accept that his Department has been completely tone-deaf on this particular point, and—he must listen to what hon. Members have said today—its decision making utterly inexplicable. Rather than an arbitrary size cut-off, the regulator must instead use risk levels to determine which category a platform should fall into so that harmful and dangerous content does not slip through the net. Exactly when will the Minister’s Department publish more information on the detail around this categorisation system? Exactly what does he have to say to those people, including many Members here today, who have found themselves the victim of abusive content that has originated on these hate-driven smaller platforms? How will this Bill change their experience of being online? I will save him the energy, because we all know the real answer: it will do little to change the situation.

This Bill was once considered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve internet safety for good, and Labour wants to work with the Government to get this right. Part of our frustration is due to the way in which the Government have failed to factor technological change and advancement—which, as we all know, and as we have heard today, can be extremely rapid—into the workings of this Bill. While the Minister and I disagree on many things, I am sure that we are united in saying that no one can predict the future, and that is not where my frustrations lie. Instead, I feel that the Bill has failed to address issues that are developing right now—from developments in online gaming to the expansion of the metaverse. These are complicated concepts but they are also a reality that we as legislators must not shy away from.

The Government have repeatedly said that the Bill’s main objective is to protect children online, and of course it goes without saying that Labour supports that. Yet with the Bill being so restricted to user-to-user services, there are simply too many missed opportunities to deal with areas where children, and often adults, are likely to be at risk of harm. Online gaming is a space that is rightly innovative and fast-changing, but the rigid nature of how services have been categorised will soon mean that the Bill is outdated long before it has had a chance to have a positive impact. The same goes for the metaverse.

While of course Labour welcomes the Government’s commitment to prevent under-18s from accessing pornography online, the Minister must be realistic. A regime that seeks to ban rather than prevent is unlikely to ever be able to keep up with the creative, advanced nature of the tech industry. For that reason, I must press the Minister on exactly how this Bill will be sufficiently flexible and future-proofed to avoid a situation whereby it is outdated by the time it finally receives Royal Assent. We must make sure that we get this right, and the Government know that they could and can do more. I therefore look forward to the challenge and to working with colleagues across the House to strengthen this Bill throughout its passage.