Online Safety Bill

Jamie Stone Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Obviously I, and my party, support the thrust of the Bill. The Government have been talking about this since 2018, so clearly time is of the essence.

Members have referred repeatedly to the slight vagueness of the definitions currently in the Bill—words such as “harms”, for instance—so I wanted to examine this from a “first principles” point of view. In another place, and almost in another life, and for four long years—perhaps as a punishment brief—I was made the Chairman of Subordinate Legislation Committee in the Scottish Parliament, so without bragging terribly much, I can say that there is nothing I do not know about affirmative and negative resolutions and everything to do with statutory instruments. You could call me a statutory instrument wonk. What I do know, and I do not think it is very different from discussion here, is that instruments come and go; they are not on the face of a Bill, because they are secondary legislation; and, by and large, ordinary, run-of-the-mill Members of Parliament do not take a huge amount of interest in them. The fact is, however, that the powers that will be granted to the Secretary of State to deliver definitions by means of subordinate legislation—statutory instruments—concern me slightly.

Reference has been made to how unfortunate it would be if the Secretary of State could tell the regulator what the regulator was or was not to do, and to the fact that other countries will look at what we do and, hopefully, see it as an example of how things should be done on a worldwide basis. Rightly or wrongly, we give ourselves the name of the mother of Parliaments. The concept of freedom of speech is incredibly important to the way we do things in this place and as a country. When it comes to the definition of what is bad, what is good, what should be online and what should not, I would feel happier if I could see that all 650 Members of Parliament actually understood and owned those definitions, because that is fundamental to the concept of freedom of speech. I look forward to seeing what comes back, and I have no reason to think that the Government are unsympathetic to the points that I am making. This is about getting the balance right.

Finally, in the short time available, I want to make two last points. My party is very keen on end-to-end encryption, and I need reassurance that that remains a possibility. Secondly, on the rules governing what is right and what is wrong for the press, the seven criteria would, as I read them, still allow a channel that I am not keen on, the Russian propaganda channel Russia Today, to broadcast, and allow my former colleague, the former First Minister of Scotland—this is no reflection on the Scottish National party—to broadcast his nonsense. That has now been banned, but the rules, as I see them, would allow Russia Today to broadcast.