Online Safety Bill

Debate between John Nicolson and Julian Knight

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question, which I have previously addressed. The problem is the precedent it would set. Any special Committee set up by a Bill would be appointed by the Whips, so we might as well forget about the Select Committee system. This is not a huge concern for the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, because the advent of any such special Committee would probably be beyond the next general election, and I am not thinking to that timeframe. I am concerned about the integrity of Parliament. The problem is that if we do that in this Bill, the next Government will come along and do it with another Bill and then another Bill. Before we know it, we will have a Select Committee system that is Whips-appointed and narrow in definition, and that cuts across something we all vote for.

There are means by which we can have legislative scrutiny—that is the point I am making in my speech. I would very much welcome a Committee being set up after a year, temporarily, to carry out post-legislative scrutiny. My Committee has a Sub-Committee on disinformation and fake news, which could also look at this Bill going forward. So I do not accept my right hon. Friend’s point, but I appreciate completely the concerns about our needing proper scrutiny in this area. We must also not forget that any changes to Ofcom’s parameters can be put in a statutory instrument, which can by prayed against by the Opposition and thus we would have the scrutiny of the whole House in debate, which is preferable to having a Whips-appointed Committee.

I have gone into quite a bit of my speech there, so I am grateful for that intervention in many respects. I am not going to touch on every aspect of this issue, but I urge right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House to think about the fact that although this is far from perfect legislation and it is a shame that we have not found a way to work through the legal but harmful material issue, we have to understand the parameters we are working in, in the real world, with these companies. We need to see that there is a patchwork of legislation, and the biggest way in which we can effectively let the social media companies know they have skin in the game in society—a liberal society that created them—is through competition legislation, across other countries and other jurisdictions. I am talking about our friends in the European Union and in the United States. We are working together closely now to come up with a suite of competition legislation. That is how we will be able to cover off some of this going forward. I will be supporting this Bill tonight and I urge everyone to do so, because, frankly, after five years I have had enough.

[John Nicolson]

I rise to speak to the amendments in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends, which of course I support.

It is welcome to see the Online Safety Bill back in the House. As we have debated this Bill and nursed it, as in my case, through both the Bill Committee and the Joint Committee, we have shone a light into some dark corners and heard some deeply harrowing stories. Who can forget the testimony given to us by Molly Russell’s dad, Ian? As we have heard, in the Public Gallery we have bereaved families who have experienced the most profound losses due to the extreme online harms to which their loved ones have been exposed; representatives of those families are watching the proceedings today. The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) mentioned that Ian is here, but let me mention the names of the children. Amanda and Stuart Stephens are here, and they are the parents of Olly; Andy and Judy Thomas are here, and they are the parents of Frankie; and Lorin LaFave, the mother of Breck is here, as is Ruth Moss, the mother of Sophie. All have lost children in connection with online harms, and I extend to each our most sincere condolences, as I am sure does every Member of the House. We have thought of them time and time again during the passage of this legislation; we have thought about their pain. All of us hope that this Bill will make very real changes, and we keep in our hearts the memories of those children and other young people who have suffered.

In our debates and Committee hearings, we have done our best to harry the social media companies and some of their secretive bosses. They have often been hiding away on the west coast of the US, to emerge blinking into the gloomy Committee light when they have to answer some questions about their nefarious activities and their obvious lack of concern for the way in which children and others are impacted.

We have debated issues of concern and sometimes disagreement in a way that shows the occasional benefits of cross-House co-operation. I have been pleased to work with friends and colleagues in other parties at every stage of the Bill, not least on Zach’s law, which we have mentioned. The result is a basis of good, much-needed legislation, and we must now get it on to the statute book.

It is unfortunate that the Bill has been so long delayed, which has caused great stress to some people who have been deeply affected by the issues raised, so that they have sometimes doubted our good faith. These delays are not immaterial. Children and young teenagers have grown older in an online world full of self-harm—soon to be illegal harms, we hope. It is a world full of easy-to-access pornography with no meaningful age verification and algorithms that provide harmful content to vulnerable people.

I have been pleased to note that calls from Members on the SNP Benches and from across the House to ensure that specific protection is granted to women and girls online have been heeded. New communications offences on cyber-flashing and intimate image abuse, and similar offences, are to be incorporated. The requirements for Ofcom to consult with the Victims’ Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner are very welcome. Reporting tools should also be more responsive.

New clause 28 is an important new clause that SNP Members have been proud to sponsor. It calls for an advocacy body to represent the interests of children. That is vital, because the online world that children experience is ever evolving. It is not the online world that we in this Chamber tend to experience, nor is it the one experienced by most members of the media covering the debate today. We need, and young people deserve, a dedicated and appropriately funded body to look out for them online—a strong, informed voice able to stand up to the representations of big tech in the name of young people. This will, we hope, ensure that regulators get it right when acting on behalf of children online.

I am aware that there is broad support for such a body, including from those on the Labour Benches. We on the SNP Benches oppose the removal of the aspect of the Bill related to legal but harmful material. I understand the free speech arguments, and I have heard Ministers argue that the Government have proposed alternative approaches, which, they say, will give users control over the content that they see online. But adults are often vulnerable, too. Removing measures from the Bill that can protect adults, especially those in a mental health spiral or with additional learning needs, is a dereliction of our duty. An on/off toggle for harmful content is a poor substitute for what was originally proposed.

The legal but harmful discussion was and is a thorny one. It was important to get the language of the Bill right, so that people could be protected from harm online without impinging on freedom of expression, which we all hold dear. However, by sending aspects of the Bill back to Committee, with the intention of removing the legal but harmful provisions, I fear that the Government are simply running from a difficult debate, or worse, succumbing to those who have never really supported this Bill—some who rather approve of the wild west, free-for-all internet. It is much better to rise to the challenge of resolving the conflicts, such as they are, between free speech and legal but harmful. I accept that the Government’s proposals around greater clarity and enforcement of terms and conditions and of transparency in reporting to Ofcom offer some mitigation, but not, in my view, enough.

BBC White Paper

Debate between John Nicolson and Julian Knight

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Nicolson]

I am absolutely delighted for the Scottish Government to have a say. My objection, however, is about something different. My objection is to political pressure being put on appointments, in particular to the main board. As we all know, the main board, with the number of members it has, will be enormously powerful. In fact, the Secretary of State yesterday argued how different this board would be from the previous trust—he said it would have real teeth. It is therefore vital that we should have fully independent board members, specifically the non-executive members the Government want to appoint.

[Julian Knight]

Does the hon. Gentleman think the new BBC board will be more or less accountable and democratic than the outgoing BBC Trust?

[John Nicolson]

The answer to that is we do not know yet. That is precisely why I am addressing these concerns in Parliament today. If the non-executive board members are truly independent, of course that is a great thing. However, the evidence the Secretary of State gave yesterday was worrying for the reasons I have given.

Trust in the BBC is crucial. It is no secret, as my hon. Friends have mentioned, that many in Scotland have been suspicious of BBC objectivity in recent years. The Secretary of State said a short while ago that a majority in Scotland—although he acknowledged a lesser number—were pleased with the BBC, but let me give the House the figure from the BBC Trust itself. The BBC enjoys only a 48% satisfaction rating in Scotland—less than half, for those who are numerically challenged. Sometimes criticisms of the BBC in Scotland have been fair and sometimes not, but the BBC itself—the Secretary of State acknowledged this—has a problem in Scotland.

We welcome other proposals in the White Paper. Licensed services issued by the new regulator Ofcom will include specific regulatory provision for all the nations. Out-of-London quotas will be maintained, which should enable a healthy, independent production sector in the nations and regions. The BBC’s network television supply target will be 17% for content spending in the nations, with spending proportionate to the population of each nation. That suggests some progress in adapting the BBC to the changing needs of these islands in 2016 and beyond.

Of course, many of the changes required must come from within the BBC itself. There are proposals for the creation of a BBC Scotland board to oversee dedicated, nation-specific services. This would help to devolve decision-making, increasing the likelihood of relevant and reflective content suited for distinct audiences. We welcome the idea of a separate Scottish board, as proposed. We want to see a BBC that is editorially independent and well-resourced; a BBC that is bold and creative, and one that is crucially representative of, and delivers for, both Scottish and UK audiences as a whole. With a more responsive governance structure, we believe the BBC would be more nimble and better able to address the concerns of audiences.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Nicolson]

The hon. Gentleman does himself down. Perhaps in Northern Ireland he is seen as a radical, but here I have always seen him as a centrist luvvie. The BBC should of course reflect the society in which we all live. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman mentions deselection. I did not mean to be quite so wounding. As we all saw in the recent debate on BME and lesbian and gay representation—something I know the hon. Gentleman cares passionately about—I think we are all keen to see more equal representation at all levels in the BBC, from presenters to management and, of course, on the new board.

Combined with greater financial commissioning and editorial control, we believe the BBC in Scotland can provide relevant reflective programming and support our nation’s creative industries. We believe that bringing the BBC closer to viewers and listeners in Scotland is the best way of ensuring trust in, and satisfaction with, the BBC, and making sure it is rebuilt and retained.

Let me turn to news provision in Scotland, because I think it lies at the heart of the problem of trust for the BBC in Scotland. Some Members of the House may know that I spent much of my previous career in television news and current affairs. I reported for “On the Record”, “Panorama”, “Assignment” and “Newsnight”, and I presented “BBC Breakfast” and “ITV News”. I am passionate about editorially independent news. I therefore speak as a friend, albeit a critical one, when I say I do not think the BBC covered itself in glory during our referendum on independence. The model for coverage was wrong. The BBC treated a binary choice as though it were a traditional election. Proponents of the status quo were subjected to much less scrutiny than those who wanted constitutional change.

[Julian Knight]

Is it not really simply the fact that the BBC had the gross audacity to point out that an economic plan based on $100 a barrel was nonsense?

[John Nicolson]

That is a soundbite, not an answer to my arguments.

The problem was that the BBC treated the referendum coverage not as a binary choice but as a traditional election. The BBC recognises that it made a mistake in that, but let me tell the House how it does so. It says, on the one hand, “We made no mistakes whatsoever in our coverage of the referendum”, but then simultaneously says, “We must learn the lessons from the Scottish referendum in the way that we cover the European referendum”—and it now tells me that it has done that in its current coverage. It cannot say that it made no mistakes in covering the Scottish referendum and simultaneously say that it will learn lessons from it—that is intellectually incoherent.