Online Safety Bill

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend raises an important point that deserves further consideration as the Bill progresses through its parliamentary stages. There is, of course, still a general presumption that any illegal activity that could also constitute illegal activity online—for example, promoting or sharing content that could incite people to commit violent acts—is within scope of the legislation. There are some priority illegal offences, which are set out in schedule 7, but the non-priority offences also apply if a company is made aware of content that is likely to be in breach of the law. I certainly think this is worth considering in that context.

In addition, the Bill makes it clear that platforms have duties to mitigate the risk of their service facilitating an offence, including where that offence may occur on another site, such as can occur in cross-platform child sexual exploitation and abuse—CSEA—offending, or even offline. This addresses concerns raised by a wide coalition of children’s charities that the Bill did not adequately tackle activities such as breadcrumbing—an issue my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), the Chair of the Select Committee, has raised in the House before—where CSEA offenders post content on one platform that leads to offences taking place on a different platform.

We have also tabled new clause 14 and a related series of amendments in order to provide greater clarity about how in-scope services should determine whether they have duties with regard to content on their services. The new regulatory framework requires service providers to put in place effective and proportionate systems and processes to improve user safety while upholding free expression and privacy online. The systems and processes that companies implement will be tailored to the specific risk profile of the service. However, in many cases the effectiveness of companies’ safety measures will depend on them making reasonable judgments about types of content. Therefore, it is essential to the effective functioning of the framework that there is clarity about how providers should approach these judgments. In particular, such clarity will safeguard against companies over-removing innocuous content if they wrongly assume mental elements are present, or under-removing content if they act only where all elements of an offence are established beyond reasonable doubt. The amendments make clear that companies must consider all reasonably available contextual information when determining whether content is illegal content, a fraudulent advert, content that is harmful to children, or content that is harmful to adults.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I was on the Bill Committee and we discussed lots of things, but new clause 14 was not discussed: we did not have conversations about it, and external organisations have not been consulted on it. Is the Minister not concerned that this is a major change to the Bill and it has not been adequately consulted on?

[Damian Collins]

As I said earlier, in establishing the threshold for priority illegal offences, the current threshold of laws that exist offline should provide good guidance. I would expect that as the codes of practice are developed, we will be able to make clear what those offences are. On the racial hatred that the England footballers received after the European championship football final, people have been prosecuted for what they posted on Twitter and other social media platforms. We know what race hate looks like in that context, we know what the regulatory threshold should look at and we know the sort of content we are trying to regulate. I expect that, in the codes of practice, Ofcom can be very clear with companies about what we expect, where the thresholds are and where we expect them to take enforcement action.

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

I rise to speak in favour of amendments 15 to 19 in the names of my hon. Friends and, later, amendments 11 and 12 in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright).

As we discussed at great length in Committee—my first Bill Committee; a nice simple one to get me started—the Bill has a number of critical clauses to address the atrocious incidence of child sexual expectation online. Amendments 15 to 19 are aimed at strengthening those protections and helping to ensure that the internet is a safer place for every young person. Amendments 15 and 16 will bring into scope tens of millions of interactions with accounts that actively enable the discovery and sharing of child abuse material. Amendments 17 to 19 will tackle the issue of cross-platform abuse, where abuse starts on one platform and continues on another. These are urgent measures that children’s charities and advocacy groups have long called for, and I seriously hope this House will support them.

Last week, along with the shadow Minister and the then Minister, I attended an extremely moving reception hosted by one of those organisations, the NSPCC. It included a speech by Rachel, a mother of a victim of online grooming and child sexual exploitation. She outlined in a very powerful way how her son Ben was forced from the age of 13 to take and share photos of himself that he did not want to, and to enter Skype chats with multiple men. He was then blackmailed with those images and subjected to threats of violence to his family. Rachel said to us:

“We blamed ourselves and I thought we had failed…I felt like I hadn’t done enough to protect our children”.

I want to say to you, Rachel, that you did not fail Ben. Responsibility for what happened to Ben lies firmly with the perpetrators of these heinous crimes, but what did fail Ben and has failed our young people for far too long is the lack of urgency and political will to regulate the wild west of the internet. No one is pretending that this is an easy task, and we are dealing with a highly complex piece of legislation, but if we are to protect future Bens we have to strengthen this Bill as much as possible.

Another young woman, Danielle, spoke during the NSPCC event. She had been a victim of online CSE that had escalated into horrific real-world physical and sexual abuse. She told us how she has to live with the fear that her photos may appear online and be shared without her knowledge or control. She is a strong young woman who is moving on with her life with huge resilience, but her trauma is very real. Amendment 19 would ensure that proportionate measures are in place to prevent the encountering or dissemination of child abuse content—for example, through intelligence sharing of new and emerging threats. This will protect Danielle and people like her, giving them some comfort that measures are in place to stop the spread of these images and to place far more onus on the platforms to get on top of this horrific practice.

Amendments 11 and 12, in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam, will raise the threshold for non-broadcast media outlets to benefit from the recognised news publisher exemption by requiring that such publishers are subject to complaints procedures that are both suitable and sufficient. I support those amendments, which, while not perfect, are a step forward in ensuring that this exception is protected from abuse.

I am also pleased that the Government have listened to some of my and other Members’ concerns and have now agreed to bring forward amendments at a later stage to exclude sanctioned publishers such as Russia Today from accessing this exemption. However, there are hundreds if not thousands of so-called news publishers across the internet that pose a serious threat, from the far right and also from Islamist, antisemitic and dangerous conspiratorial extremism. We must act to ensure that journalistic protections are not abused by those wishing to spread harm. Let us be clear that this is as much about protecting journalism as it is about protecting users from harm.

We cannot overstate the seriousness of getting this right. Carving out protections within the Bill creates a risk that if we do not get the criteria for this exemption right, harmful and extremist websites based internationally will simply establish offices in the UK, just so that they too can access this powerful new protection. Amendments 11 and 12 will go some way towards ensuring that news publishers are genuine, but I recognise that the amendments are not the perfect solution and that more work is needed as the Bill progresses in the other place.

In closing, I hope that we can find consensus today around the importance of protecting children online and restricting harmful content. It is not always easy, but I know we can find common ground in this place, as we saw during the Committee stage of the Bill when I was delighted to gain cross-party support to secure the introduction of Zach’s law, inspired by my young constituent Zach Eagling, which will outlaw the dreadful practice of epilepsy trolling online.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

You will resume your seat no later than 4.20 pm. We will therefore not put the clock on you.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I will try to avoid too much preamble, but I thank the former Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), for all his work in Committee and for listening to my nearly 200 contributions, for which I apologise. I welcome the new Minister to his place.

As time has been short today, I am keen to meet the Minister to discuss my new clauses and amendments. If he cannot meet me, I would be keen for him to meet the NSPCC, in particular, on some of my concerns.

Amendment 196 is about using proactive technology to identify CSEA content, which we discussed at some length in Committee. The hon. Member for Croydon South made it very clear that we should use scanning to check for child sexual abuse images. My concern is that new clause 38, tabled by the Lib Dems, might exclude proactive scanning to look for child sexual abuse images. I hope that the Government do not lurch in that direction, because we need proactive scanning to keep children protected.

New clause 18 specifically addresses child user empowerment duties. The Bill currently requires that internet service providers have user empowerment duties for adults but not for children, which seems bizarre. Children need to be able to say yes or no. They should be able to make their own choices about excluding content and not receiving unsolicited comments or approaches from anybody not on their friend list, for example. Children should be allowed to do that, but the Bill explicitly says that user empowerment duties apply only to adults. New clause 18 is almost a direct copy of the adult user empowerment duties, with a few extra bits added. It is important that children have access to user empowerment.

Amendment 190 addresses habit-forming features. I have had conversations about this with a number of organisations, including The Mix. I regularly accessed its predecessor, The Site, more than 20 years ago, and it is concerned that 42% of young people surveyed by YoungMinds show addiction-like behaviour in what they are accessing on social media. There is nothing on that in this Bill. The Mix, the Mental Health Foundation, the British Psychological Society, YoungMinds and the Royal College of Psychiatrists are all unhappy about the Bill’s failure to regulate habit-forming features. It is right that we provide support for our children, and it is right that our children are able to access the internet safely, so it is important to address habit-forming behaviour.

Amendment 162 addresses child access assessments. The Bill currently says that providers need to do a child access assessment only if there is a “significant” number of child users. I do not think that is enough and I do not think it is appropriate, and the NSPCC agrees. The amendment would remove the word “significant.” OnlyFans, for example, should not be able to dodge the requirement to child risk assess its services because it does not have a “significant” number of child users. These sites are massively harmful, and we need to ensure changes are made so they cannot wriggle out of their responsibilities.

Finally, amendment 161 is about live, one-to-one oral communications. I understand why the Government want to exempt live, one-to-one oral communications, as they want to ensure that phone calls continue to be phone calls, which is totally fine, but they misunderstand the nature of things like Discord and how people communicate on Fortnite, for example. People are having live, one-to-one oral communications, some of which are used to groom children. We cannot explicitly exempt them and allow a loophole for perpetrators of abuse in this Bill. I understand what the Government are trying to do, but they need to do it in a different way so that children can be protected from the grooming behaviour we see on some online platforms.

Once again, if the Minister cannot accept these amendments, I would be keen to meet him. If he cannot meet me, will he please meet the NSPCC? We cannot explicitly exempt those and allow a loophole for perpetrators of abuse in this Bill. I understand what the Government are trying to do, but they need to do it in a different way, in order that children can be protected from that grooming behaviour that we see on some of those platforms that are coming online. Once again, if the Minister cannot accept these amendments, I would be keen to meet him. If he cannot do that, I ask that the NSPCC have a meeting with him.

[Damian Collins]

We have had a wide-ranging debate of passion and expert opinion from Members in all parts of the House, which shows the depth of interest in this subject, and the depth of concern that the Bill is delivered and that we make sure we get it right. I speak as someone who only a couple of days ago became the Minister for online safety, although I was previously involved in engaging with the Government on this subject. As I said in my opening remarks, this has been an iterative process, where Members from across the House have worked successfully with the Government to improve the Bill. That is the spirit in which we should complete its stages, both in the Commons and in the Lords, and look at how we operate this regime when it has been created.

I wish to start by addressing remarks made by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), the shadow Minister, and by the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) about violence against women and girls. There is a slight assumption that if the Government do not accept an amendment that writes, “Violence against women and girls” into the priority harms in the Bill, somehow the Bill does not address that issue. I think we would all agree that that is not the case. The provisions on harmful content that is directed at any individual, particularly the new harms offences approved by the Law Commission, do create offences in respect of harm that is likely to lead to actual physical harm or severe psychological harm. As the father of a teenage girl, who was watching earlier but has now gone to do better things, I say that the targeting of young girls, particularly vulnerable ones, with content that is likely to make them more vulnerable is one of the most egregious aspects of the way social media works. It is right that we are looking to address serious levels of self-harm and suicide in the Bill and in the transparency requirements. We are addressing the self-harm and suicide content that falls below the illegal threshold but where a young girl who is vulnerable is being sent content and prompted with content that can make her more vulnerable, could lead her to harm herself or worse. It is absolutely right that that was in the scope of the Bill.

New clause 3, perfectly properly, cites international conventions on violence against women and girls, and how that is defined. At the moment, with the way the Bill is structured, the schedule 7 offences are all based on existing areas of UK law, where there is an existing, clear criminal threshold. Those offences, which are listed extensively, will all apply as priority areas of harm. If there is, through the work of the Law Commission or elsewhere, a clear legal definition of misogyny and violence against women and girls that is not included, I think it should be included within scope. However, if new clause 3 was approved, as tabled, it would be a very different sort of offence, where it would not be as clear where the criminal threshold applied, because it is not cited against existing legislation. My view, and that of the Government, is that existing legislation covers the sorts of offences and breadth of offences that the shadow Minister rightly mentioned, as did other Members. We should continue to look at this—

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[John Nicolson]

I wish to speak to new clause 33, my proposed new schedule 1 and amendments 201 to 203. I notice that the Secretary of State is off again. I place on record my thanks to Naomi Miles of CEASE—the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation—and Ceri Finnegan of Barnardos for their support.

The UK Government have taken some steps to strengthen protections on pornography and I welcome the fact that young teenagers will no longer be able to access pornography online. However, huge quantities of extreme and harmful pornography remain online, and we need to address the damage that it does. New clause 33 would seek to create parity between online and offline content—consistent legal standards for pornography. It includes a comprehensive definition of pornography and puts a duty on websites not to host content that would fail to attain the British Board of Film Classification standard for R18 classification.

The point of the Bill, as the Minister has repeatedly said, is to make the online world a safer place, by doing what we all agree must be done—making what is illegal offline, illegal online. That is why so many Members think that the lack of regulation around pornography is a major omission in the Bill.

The new clause stipulates age and consent checks for anyone featured in pornographic content. It addresses the proliferation of pornographic content that is both illegal and harmful, protecting women, children and minorities on both sides of the camera.

The Bill presents an opportunity to end the proliferation of illegal and harmful content on the internet. Representations of sexual violence, animal abuse, incest, rape, coercion, abuse and exploitation—particularly directed towards women and children—are rife. Such content can normalise dangerous and abusive acts and attitudes, leading to real-world harm. As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) said in her eloquent speech earlier, we are seeing an epidemic of violence against women and girls online. When bile and hatred is so prolific online, it bleeds into the offline space. There are real-world harms that flow from that.

The Minister has said how much of a priority tackling violence against women and girls is for him. Knowing that, and knowing him, he will understand that pornography is always harmful to children, and certain kinds of pornographic content are also potentially harmful to adults. Under the Video Recordings Act 1984, the BBFC has responsibility for classifying pornographic content to ensure that it is not illegal, and that it does not promote an interest in abusive relationships, such as incest. Nor can it promote acts likely to cause serious physical harm, such as breath restriction or strangulation. In the United Kingdom, it is against the law to supply pornographic material that does not meet this established BBFC classification standard, but there is no equivalent standard in the online world because the internet evolved without equivalent regulatory oversight.

I know too that the Minister is determined to tackle some of the abusive and dangerous pornographic content online. The Bill does include a definition of pornography, in clause 66(2), but that definition is inadequate; it is too brief and narrow in scope. In my amendment, I propose a tighter and more comprehensive definition, based on that in part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017, which was debated in this place and passed into law. The amendment will remove ambiguity and prevent confusion, ensuring that all websites know where they stand with regard to the law.

The new duty on pornographic websites aligns with the UK Government’s 2020 legislation regulating UK-established video-sharing platforms and video-on-demand services, both of which appeal to the BBFC’s R18 classification standards. The same “high standard of rules in place to protect audiences”, as the 2020 legislation put it, and “certain content standards” should apply equally to online pornography and offline pornography, UK-established video-sharing platforms and video-on-demand services.

Let me give some examples sent to me by Barnardo’s, the children’s charity, which, with CEASE, has done incredibly important work in this area. The names have been changed in these examples, for obvious reasons.

“There are also children who view pornography to try to understand their own sexual abuse. Unfortunately, what these children find is content that normalises the most abhorrent and illegal behaviours, such as 15-year-old Elizabeth, who has been sexually abused by a much older relative for a number of years. The content she found on pornography sites depicted older relatives having sex with young girls and the girls enjoying it. It wasn’t until she disclosed her abuse that she realised that it was not normal.

Carrie is a 16-year-old who was being sexually abused by her stepfather. She thought this was not unusual due to the significant amount of content she had seen on pornography sites showing sexual relationships within stepfamilies.”

That is deeply disturbing evidence from Barnardo’s.

Although in theory the Bill will prevent under-18s from accessing such content, the Minister knows that under-18s will be able to bypass regulation through technology like VPNs, as the DCMS Committee and the Bill Committee—I served on both—were told by experts in various evidence sessions. The amendment does not create a new law; it merely moves existing laws into the online space. There is good cause to regulate and sometimes prohibit certain damaging offline content; I believe it is now our duty to provide consistency with legislation in the online world.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I want to talk about several things, but particularly new clause 7. I am really pleased that the new clause has come back on Report, as we discussed it in the Bill Committee but unfortunately did not get enough support for it there—as was the case with everything we proposed—so I thank the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) for tabling it. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) for his lobbying and for providing us with lots of background information. I agree that it is incredibly important that new clause 7 is agreed, particularly the provisions on consent and making sure that participants are of an appropriate age to be taking part. We have heard so many stories of so many people whose videos are online—whose bodies are online—and there is nothing they can do about it because of the lack of regulation. My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) has covered new clause 33 in an awful lot of detail—very good detail—so I will not comment on that.

The right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) mentioned how we need to get the balance right, and specifically talked about the role of the regulator. In many ways, this Bill has failed to get the balance right in its attempts to protect children online. Many people who have been involved in writing this Bill, talking about this Bill, scrutinising this Bill and taking part in every piece of work that we have done around it do not understand how children use the internet. Some people do, absolutely, but far too many of the people who have had any involvement in this Bill do not. They do not understand the massive benefits to children of using the internet, the immense amount of fun they can have playing Fortnite, Fall Guys, Minecraft, or whatever it is they happen to be playing online and how important that is to them in today’s crazy world with all of the social media pressures. Children need to decompress. This is a great place for children to have fun—to have a wonderful time—but they need to be protected, just as we would protect them going out to play in the park, just the same as we would protect them in all other areas of life. We have a legal age for smoking, for example. We need to make sure that the protections are in place, and the protections that are in place need to be stronger than the ones that are currently in the Bill.

I did not have a chance earlier—or I do not think I did—to support the clause about violence against women and girls. As I said in Committee, I absolutely support that being in the Bill. The Government may say, “Oh we don’t need to have this in the Bill because it runs through everything,” but having that written in the Bill would make it clear to internet service providers—to all those people providing services online and having user-generated content on their sites—how important this is and how much of a scourge it is. Young women who spend their time on social media are more likely to have lower outcomes in life as a result of problematic social media use, as a result of the pain and suffering that is caused. We should be putting such a measure in the Bill, and I will continue to argue for that.

We have talked a lot about pornographic content in this section. There is not enough futureproofing in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire and I tabled amendment 158 because we are concerned about that lack of futureproofing. The amendment edits the definition of “content”. The current definition of “content” says basically anything online, and it includes a list of stuff. We have suggested that it should say “including but not limited to”, on the basis that we do not know what the internet will look like in two years’ time, let alone what it will look like in 20 years’ time. If this Bill is to stand the test of time, it needs to be clear that that list is not exhaustive. It needs to be clear that, when we are getting into virtual reality metaverses where people are meeting each other, that counts as well. It needs to be clear that the sex dungeon that exists in the child’s game Roblox is an issue—that that content is an issue no matter whether it fits the definition of “content” or whether it fits the fact that it is written communication, images or whatever. It does not need to fit any of that. If it is anything harmful that children can find on the internet, it should be included in that definition of “content”, no matter whether it fits any of those specific categories. We just do not know what the internet is going to look like.

I have one other specific thing in relation to the issues of content and pornography. One of the biggest concerns that we heard is the massive increase in the amount of self-generated child sexual abuse images. A significant number of new images of child sexual abuse are self-generated. Everybody has a camera phone these days. Kids have camera phones these days. They have much more potential to get themselves into really uncomfortable and difficult situations than when most of us were younger. There is so much potential for that to be manipulated unless we get this right.