Online Safety Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate - 13th sitting
Tuesday 21st June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

It is fantastic to hear that those other things are happening—that is all well and good—but surely we should explicitly call out disinformation and misinformation in the Online Safety Bill. The package of other measures that the Minister mentions is fantastic, but I think they have to be in the Bill.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady says that those measures should be in the Bill—more than they already are—but as I have pointed out, the way in which the legal architecture of the Bill works means that the mechanisms to do that would be adding a criminal offence to schedule 7 as a priority offence, for example, or using a statutory instrument to designate the relevant kind of harm as a priority harm, which we plan to do in due course for a number of harms. The Bill can cover disinformation with the use of those mechanisms.

We have not put the harmful to adults content in the Bill; it will be set out in statutory instruments. The National Security Bill is still progressing through Parliament, and we cannot have in schedule 7 of this Bill an offence that has not yet been passed by Parliament. I hope that that explains the legal architecture and mechanisms that could be used under the Bill to give force to those matters.

On amendment 57, the Government feel that six months is a very short time within which to reach clear conclusions, and that 18 months is a more appropriate timeframe in which to understand how the Bill is bedding in and operating. Amendment 58 would require Ofcom to produce a code of practice on system-level disinformation. To be clear, the Bill already requires Ofcom to produce codes of practice that set out the steps that providers will take to tackle illegal content— I mentioned the new National Security Bill, which is going through Parliament—and harmful content, which may, in some circumstances, include disinformation.

Disinformation that is illegal or harmful to individuals is in scope of the duties set out in the Bill. Ofcom’s codes of practice will, as part of those duties, have to set out the steps that providers should take to reduce harm to users that arises from such disinformation. Those steps could include content-neutral design choices or interventions of other kinds. We would like Ofcom to have a certain amount of flexibility in how it develops those codes of practice, including by being able to combine or disaggregate those codes in ways that are most helpful to the general public and the services that have to pay regard to them. That is why we have constructed them in the way we have. I hope that provides clarity about the way that disinformation can be brought into the scope of the Bill and how that measure then flows through to the codes of practice. I gently resist amendments 57 and 58 while supporting the clause standing part of the Bill.

Question put, That the amendment be made.