Online Safety Bill

Julian Knight Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), to his place. To say that he has been given a hospital pass in terms of this legislation is a slight understatement. It is very difficult to understand, and the ability he has shown at the Dispatch Box in grasping many of the major issues is to his credit. He really is a safe pair of hands and I thank him for that.

Looking at the list of amendments, I think it is a bit of a hotchpotch, yet we are going to deal only with certain amendments today and others are not in scope. That shows exactly where we are with this legislation. We have been in this stasis now for five years. I remember that we were dealing with the issue when I joined the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and it is almost three years since the general election when we said we would bring forward this world-leading legislation. We have to admit that is a failure of the political class in all respects, but we have to understand the problem and the realities facing my hon. Friend, other Ministers and the people from different Departments involved in drafting this legislation.

We are dealing with companies that are more powerful than the oil barons and railway barons of the 19th century. These companies are more important than many states. The total value of Alphabet, for instance, is more than the total GDP of the Netherlands, and that is probably a low estimate of Alphabet’s global reach and power. These companies are, in many respects, almost new nation states in their power and reach, and they have been brought about by individuals having an idea in their garage. They still have that culture of having power without the consequences that flow from it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Davis]

My hon. Friend is giving a fascinating disquisition on this industry, but is not the implication that, in effect, these companies are modern buccaneer states and we need to do much more to legislate? I am normally a deregulator, but we need more than one Bill to do what we seek to do today.

[Julian Knight]

My right hon. Friend is correct. We spoke privately before this debate, and he said this is almost five Bills in one. There will be a patchwork of legislation, and there is a time limit. This is a carry-over Bill, and we have to get it on the statute book.

This Bill is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and I take the Opposition’s genuine concerns about legal but harmful material. The shadow Minister mentioned the tragic case of Molly Russell. I heard her father being interviewed on the “Today” programme, and he spoke about how at least three quarters of the content he had seen that had prompted that young person to take her life had been legal but harmful. We have to stand up, think and try our best to ensure there is a safer space for young people. This Bill does part of that work, but only part. The work will be done in the execution of the Bill, through the wording on age verification and age assurance.

[Dame Maria Miller]

Given the complexities of the Bill, and given the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s other responsibilities, will my hon. Friend join me in saying there should be a special Committee, potentially of both Houses, to keep this area under constant review? That review, as he says, is so badly needed.

[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.