Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Online Censorship

Debate between Emily Darlington and Graham Stringer

Thursday 21st May 2026 Westminster Hall

[Emily Darlington]

Yes, they would be. I am trying to say that the OSA does not limit this, but it does limit some of the other material. It is important that there is a place for the Government to say what platforms should or should not be able to publish, but they should not micromanage. I agree on that. It should not be like the Lord Chamberlain saying, “Here are the words that you are allowed to use”, or, “The Queen does not approve of those phrases”, but we should be clear that we limit free speech where it has a real, negative impact on individuals or on society, and that we are protecting people because of their age, gender or other protected characteristics.

The shadow Minister raised an important discussion about publishers, plurality and biases that are already in the system. The systems are designed by men and the content, for the most part, focuses on men—not completely, but the algorithms are traditionally designed by men and therefore feed what they think men want, or not even what they want, but what will keep them on the platform the longest. That is their business model.

I appreciate the Minister reiterating the Government’s position that we believe that women should have access to accurate medical information. There are two sides to that: making sure that we suppress inaccurate medical information; and making sure that we have the mechanisms to show what is medically accurate with a tick. We should then make sure that that is the material that people see.

I appreciate what you said about appeal mechanisms, but it is difficult to appeal against shadow-banning, so we need to talk further about that. Again, that is about transparency on algorithms, which you were talking about, and about our dialogue with social media platforms. We need to ask them, what is more damaging? Is it the sexualised content, the misogynistic content or the health advice? We need to have that serious discussion with them.

We also need to think much wider than the four big social media companies. That is not always where people go for such advice. We have heard of experiences on LinkedIn and many other platforms that show that this is a widespread issue. Finally, you are absolutely right about media literacy, so that we know what is good health content and what is based on rubbish science. That is part of how we get through this. [Interruption.] I thank everyone for attending.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I did not want to interrupt the hon. Lady in what has been an interesting debate, but I remind hon. Members that if you say “you”, that is me—

[Emily Darlington]

You are absolutely right, Mr Stringer. I apologise.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I did not want to interrupt the debate, but it is worth remembering for future debates.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the censorship of women’s health and wellbeing content online.