Representation of the People Bill (Ninth sitting)

Lisa Smart Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Chowns]

I will briefly speak to the new clause, because it is important, and has clearly garnered support from a large number of Government MPs—indeed, the second signatory is the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah).

The new clause is quite reasonable; it simply would require the Electoral Commission to publish a report setting out its assessment of the risk of electoral online harms. As we have already discussed in Committee, there is clear evidence of electoral online harms, so it would be useful to ask the Electoral Commission to produce such a report to set the risks out clearly and the measures it intends to take to address them.

I will not press the new clause to a vote. I am open as to whether this necessarily needs to be in statute or simply in Government guidance, but it is an important element of improving the safeguards against online harms in our electoral system. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for North Herefordshire for her comments. We have seen this over the last couple of elections in ’19 and ’24, and we are going to see it again in local and national elections: our regulatory framework is not keeping pace. As far as I am aware, there is no electoral framework—I would love to hear from the Minister on this—for anyone to systematically map the risks posed by deepfakes and associated online issues. Voters deserve to make free, informed choices, not tainted by some of the things that are seen online. I hope that the Government will take this forward.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Samantha Dixon)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. The Government do not believe that the new clause is the right or effective way to address these concerns, although we acknowledge the seriousness of the issue that our hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) is raising.

The new clause would risk blurring regulatory boundaries between two rightly independent regulators. The Electoral Commission and Ofcom have distinct statutory roles, with Ofcom responsible for regulation and enforcement of online safety duties on services. Requiring the Electoral Commission to make proposals for amending the Online Safety Act 2023 would cut across that, and risk duplication in an area where clarity is essential.

Secondly, the Electoral Commission already has the power under section 6 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 to produce and publish reports on matters relating to elections where it considers that appropriate. We therefore do not consider it necessary or proportionate to mandate a further statutory report.

I would also note the risk of duplication with the recent Speaker’s Conference report, which examined these issues and included evidence from the Electoral Commission. The Government welcomed the conference’s findings, and our response was published on 5 March. Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom is the independent regulator responsible for overseeing the risk-based framework, including publishing codes of practice and requiring the largest services to provide transparency reports about their systems and processes for addressing online harms. That framework provides an appropriate basis for regulatory oversight and platform accountability.

The Online Safety Act also places clear duties on services that host user-generated content to tackle illegal content online, including illegal abuse, threats and incitement of violence. Ofcom is now implementing and enforcing that framework, and the Government will work closely with Ofcom, the Electoral Commission and law enforcement through existing arrangements. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member for North Herefordshire to withdraw the new clause.