Draft Online Safety Bill Report

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this forward. We have a colleague in Northern Ireland, Diane Dodds MLA, who has had unbelievably vile abuse towards her and her family. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a huge loophole and gap in this Bill—namely, that the anonymity clause remains that allows comments such as those to my colleague and friend Diane Dodds, which were despicable in the extreme? There will be no redress and no one held accountable through this Bill. The veil of anonymity must be lifted and people made to face the consequences of what they are brave enough to type but not to say.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is not trying to make a speech, is he? No, he is not.

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. The Committee agreed in the report that there must be an expedited process of transparency, so that when people are using anonymity to abuse other people—saying things for which in public they might be sued or have action taken against them—it must be much easier to swiftly identify who those people are. People must know that if they post hate online directed at other people and commit an offence in doing so, their anonymity will not be a shield that will protect them: they will be identified readily and action taken against them. Of course there are cases where anonymity may be required, when people are speaking out against an oppressive regime or victims of abuse are telling their story, but it should not be used as a shield to abuse others. We set that out in the report and the hon. Gentleman is right that the Bill needs to move on it.

We are not just asking the companies to moderate content; we are asking them to moderate their systems as well. Their systems play an active role in directing people towards hate and abuse. A study commissioned by Facebook showed that over 60% of people who joined groups that showed extremist content did so at the active recommendation of the platform itself. In her evidence to the Committee, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen made clear the active role of systems in promoting and driving content through to people, making them the target of abuse, and making vulnerable people more likely to be confronted with and directed towards content that will exacerbate their vulnerabilities.

Facebook and companies like it may not have invented hate but they are driving hate and making it worse. They must be responsible for these systems. It is right that the Bill will allow the regulator to hold those companies to account not just for what they do or do not take down, but for the way they use the systems that they have created and designed to make money for themselves by keeping people on them longer, such that they are responsible for them. The key thing at the heart of the Bill and at the heart of the report published by the Joint Committee is that the companies must be held liable for the systems they have created. The Committee recommended a structural change to the Bill to make it absolutely clear that what is illegal offline should be regulated online. Existing offences in law should be written into the Bill and it should be demonstrated how the regulator will set the thresholds for enforcement of those measures online.

This approach has been made possible because of the work of the Law Commission in producing its recommendations, particularly in introducing new offences around actively promoting self-harm and promoting content and information that is known to be false. A new measure will give us the mechanism to deal with malicious deepfake films being targeted at people. There are also necessary measures to make sure that there are guiding principles that the regulator has to work to, and the companies have to work to, to ensure regard to public health in dealing with dangerous disinformation relating to the pandemic or other public health issues.

We also have to ensure an obligation for the regulator to uphold principles of freedom of expression. It is important that effective action should be taken against hate speech, extremism, illegal content and all harmful content that is within the scope of the Bill, but if companies are removing content that has every right to be there—where the positive expression of people’s opinions has every right to be online—then the regulator should have the power to intervene in that direction as well.

At the heart of the regime has to be a system where Ofcom, as the independent regulator, can set mandatory codes and standards that we expect the companies to meet, and then use its powers to investigate and audit them to make sure that they are complying. We cannot have a system that is based on self-declared transparency reports by the companies where even they themselves struggle to explain what the results mean and there is no mechanism for understanding whether they are giving us the full picture or only a highly partial one. The regulator must have that power. Crucially, the codes of practice should set the mandatory minimum standards. We should not have Silicon Valley deciding what the online safety of citizens in this country should be. That should be determined through legislation passed through this Parliament empowering the regulator to set the minimum standards and take enforcement action when they have not been met.

We also believe that the Bill would be improved by removing a controversial area, the principles in clause 11. The priority areas of harm are determined by the Secretary of State and advisory to the companies. If we base the regulatory regime and the codes of practice on established offences that this Parliament has already created, which are known and understood and therefore enforced, we can say they are mandatory and clear and that there has been a parliamentary approval process in creating the offences in the first place.

Where new areas of harm are added to the schedules and the codes of practice, there should be an affirmative procedure in both Houses of Parliament to approve those changes to the code, so that Members have the chance to vote on changes to the codes of practice and the introduction of new offences as a consequence of those offences being created.

The Committee took a lot of evidence on the question of online fraud and scams. We received evidence from the Work and Pensions Committee and the Treasury Committee advising us that this should be done: if a known scam or attempt to rip off and defraud people is present on a website or social media platform, be it through advertising or any kind of posting, it should be within the scope and it should be for the regulator to require its removal. There should not be a general blanket exemption for advertising, which would create a perverse incentive to promote such content more actively.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

As the House can see, a great many people want to speak this afternoon, so we will have to have a time limit of five minutes with immediate effect.