Oral Answers to Questions

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this case and for all the work that she and her team did to help those villages. I asked officials to look into this case, and they told me that the broadband supplier responsible for the projects in those villages did not put them forward for consideration as a voucher priority area, on the basis that they were not expected to deliver a gigabit-capable connection faster than our own Project Gigabit procurement in Kent. In good news, I can assure my hon. Friend that we are making very good progress on that procurement and we hope to be able to launch it in the coming weeks.

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

7. What steps her Department is taking to increase the transparency and accountability of technology platforms.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Damian Collins)]

The Government are driving forward a digital regulatory approach that unlocks growth and boosts trust. As part of that, we are taking steps to improve transparency and accountability, including through the Online Safety Bill; data protection legislation that maintains rules for responsible usage; and digital markets legislation, which will promote competition in digital markets.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern at the recent behaviour of PayPal in arbitrarily removing certain accounts of campaigning and journalistic organisations without any warning or explanation? Will he consider how the Online Safety Bill can give greater protection for free speech by increasing the accountability of PayPal, Facebook and the other giant tech platforms?

[Damian Collins]

Absolutely. I agree with my right hon. Friend: it is really important that big tech platforms are transparent and accountable to their users in their terms of service for how they trade. That is important in the principle of how the Online Safety Bill works, both in protecting freedom of speech and in ensuring that companies enforce their platform policies correctly. In terms of digital markets, it is also important that customers know what fair access they have to markets and that they will be treated fairly by platforms, and that the platforms make clear what their terms of service are.