Online Harms White Paper

Debate between James Cartlidge and Jeremy Wright

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady will see that there is a fairly extensive list of online harms in the White Paper already, and we do not regard it as exhaustive. As she heard me say to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), we think it is important that the process should be able to deal with new harms as they emerge. However, she will recognise that it is important to ensure that we preserve what is good and special about the internet—the capacity for people to come up with new ideas, to have discussion and to have a free flow and exchange—while ensuring that the harms that she rightly points to are controlled. That is exactly what the White Paper seeks to do. We do not, as I have said, believe that everything in it will yet be perfect, but it is important that she and others contribute to the process over the next period of consultation and make it better.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I very much welcome the statement, but returning to the earlier question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), does the Secretary of State accept that if we are not clear about the extent to which the new duty of care impacts on the issue of publisher versus platform, the courts will make that interpretation for us?

[Jeremy Wright]

Harking back to a former life, in my experience there is always a risk of court involvement, but we should seek to be as clear as possible about the responsibilities of online companies. Whatever we choose to call them—platform, publisher or something else—it is their responsibilities and what they are engaged in doing that matter. That is what we are seeking to achieve, and once we have defined that with clarity, the necessary powers will need to be available to a regulator to deal with when that does not happen.