Online Harms

Lord Bishop of London Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My noble friend has a long-standing interest in small and medium-sized businesses. The White Paper says categorically that the regulator will have a duty to promote innovation and to take account of small businesses. We expect it to be proportionate, which means, as I said, that large companies will be held to a different—although always reasonable—standard from that for small start-ups; for example, we expect that, as in financial services, the regulator will have a regulatory sandbox that small start-ups could work in.

As far as the penalties are concerned, we absolutely want to have the ability to hold the largest companies to account. That means the potential of serious penalties. My noble friend talked about 4% of global turnover. That would be a direct copy-over from the GDPR. We have not said that. We are consulting about some of the further, more serious penalties, such as holding individual directors to civil or criminal liability personally, but that is something that we would want to talk about. We would be interested in hearing my noble friend’s views on that. We want serious potential penalties but we want the regulator to be proportionate in their use.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, I add my voice to those of my friends, the right reverend Prelates who sit on these Benches, who have welcomed this White Paper as a first step. Many of the platforms that would fall under the proposed regulator are based overseas. I hope that the proposals set out in the White Paper will give sufficient power to any regulator to hold these and future international companies to account.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The right reverend Prelate is right that holding international companies to account is absolutely crucial, as I think I said before. There are limits to that, obviously, but some of the methods that we are consulting on—ultimately leading to closing the website down completely—are pretty serious, particularly for the large companies. We absolutely understand that. In addition, we want to continue to work with our international partners, such as the G7, the G20, and those countries that share our views on freedom of speech and on balancing that with controlling and dealing with the worst harms. We want a free and vibrant internet but we do not want the harms that go with it. I absolutely take his point, and we will listen to what people have to say about the correct means of holding international companies to account, but it is crucial that we are able to do that. I can tell noble Lords that we have now had 50 responses to the consultation.