Online Safety Bill

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the amendments the Government have tabled, but I ask the Minister to clarify the effect of Amendment 50E. I declare an interest as chair of the Communications and Digital Select Committee, which has discussed Amendment 50E and the labelling of content for children with the news media organisations. This is a very technical issue, but from what my noble friend was just saying, it seems that content that would qualify for labelling for child protection purposes, and which therefore does not qualify for a right of appeal before the content is so labelled, is not content that would normally be encountered by adults but might happen to appeal to children. I would like to be clear that we are not giving the platforms scope for adding labels to content that they ought not to be adding labels to. That aside, as I say, I am grateful to my noble friend for these amendments.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, I have no major objection and support the Government’s amendments. In a sense the Minister got his retaliation in first, because we will have a much more substantial debate on the scope of Clause 14. At this point I welcome any restriction on Clause 14 in the way that the Minister has stated.

Yet to come we have the whole issue of whether an unregulated recognised news publisher, effectively unregulated by the PRP’s arrangements, should be entitled to complete freedom in terms of below-the-line content, where there is no moderation and it does not have what qualifies as independent regulation. Some debates are coming down the track and—just kicking the tyres on the Minister’s amendments—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, made a fair point, which I hope the Minister will answer.

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[Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 52, tabled by my noble friend Lady Merron. This is an important issue which must be addressed in the Bill if we are to make real progress in making the internet a safer space, not just for children but for vulnerable adults.

We have the opportunity to learn lessons from the pandemic, where misinformation had a devastating impact, spreading rapidly online like the virus and threatening to undermine the vaccine rollout. If the Government had kept their earlier promise to include protection from harmful false health content in their indicative list of harmful content that companies would have been required to address under the now removed adult safety duties, these amendments would not be necessary.

It is naive to think that platforms will behave responsibly. Currently, they are left to their own devices in how they tackle health misinformation, without appropriate regulatory oversight. They can remove it at scale or leave it completely unchecked, as illustrated by Twitter’s decision to stop enforcing its Covid-19 misinformation policies, as other noble Lords have pointed out.

It is not a question of maintaining free speech, as some might argue. It was the most vulnerable groups who suffered from the spread of misinformation online—pregnant women and the BAME community, who had higher illness rates. Studies have shown that, proportionately, more of them died, not just because they were front-line workers but because of rumours spread in the community which resulted in vaccine hesitancy, with devastating consequences. As other noble Lords have pointed out, in 2021 the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists found that only 42% of women who had been offered the vaccine accepted it, and in October that year one in five of the most critically ill Covid patients were unvaccinated, pregnant women. That is a heartbreaking statistic.

Unfortunately, it is not just vaccine fears that are spread on the internet. Other harmful theories can affect patients with cancer, mental health issues and sexual health issues, and, most worryingly, can affect children’s health. Rumours and misinformation play on the minds of the most vulnerable. The Government have a duty to protect people, and by accepting this amendment they would go some way to addressing this.

Platforms must undertake a health misinformation risk assessment and have a clear policy on dealing with harmful, false and misleading health information in their terms of service. They have the money and the expertise to do this, and Parliament must insist. As my noble friend Lady Merron said, I do not think that the Minister can say that the false communications offence in Clause 160 will address the problem, as it covers only a user sending a knowingly false communication with the intention of causing harm. The charity Full Fact has stated that this offence will exclude most health misinformation that it monitors online.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate. I absolutely agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said right at the beginning of her speech. This was one of the most difficult areas that the Joint Committee had to look at. I am not saying that anything that we said was particularly original. We tried to say that this issue could be partly addressed by greater media literacy, which, no doubt, we will be talking about later today; we talked about transparency of system design, and about better enforcement of service terms and conditions. But things have moved on. Clearly, many of us think that the way that the current Bill is drafted is inadequate. However, the Government did move towards proposing a committee to review misinformation and disinformation. That is welcome, but I believe that these amendments are taking the thinking and actions a step forward.

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[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I spoke at Second Reading about the relationship between online safety and protecting people’s mental health, a theme that runs throughout the Bill. I have not followed the progress in Committee as diligently as I wish, but this group of amendments has caught the eye of the Mental Health Foundation, which has expressed support. It identified Amendment 188, but I think it is the general principle that it supports. The Mental Health Foundation understands the importance of education, because it asked young people what they thought should be done. It sponsored a crucial inquiry through its organisation YoungMinds, which produced a report earlier this year, Putting a Stop to the Endless Scroll.

One of the three major recommendations that emerged from that report, from the feelings of young people themselves, was the need for better education. It found that young people were frustrated at being presented with outdated information about keeping their details safe. They felt that they needed something far more advanced, more relevant to the online world as it is happening at the moment, on how to avoid the risks from such things as image-editing apps. They needed information on more sophisticated risks that they face, essentially what they described as design risks, where the website is designed to drag you in and make you addicted to these algorithms.

The Bill as a whole is designed to protect children and young people from harm, but it must also, as previous speakers have made clear, provide young people themselves with tools so that they can exercise their own judgment to protect themselves and ensure that they do not fall foul, set on that well-worn path between being engaged on a website and ending up with problems with their mental health. Eating is the classic example: you click on a website about a recipe and, step by step, you get dragged into material designed to harm your health through its effect on your diet.

I very much welcome this group of amendments, what it is trying to achieve and the role that it will have by educating young people to protect themselves, recognising the nature of the internet as it is now, so that they do not run the risks of affecting their mental health.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, this has probably been the most constructive and inspiring debate that we have had on the Bill. In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for introducing this debate. His passion for this kind of media literacy education absolutely shines through. I thank him for kicking off in such an interesting and constructive way. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Storey is not here to contribute as well, with his educational background. He likewise has a passion for media literacy education and would otherwise have wanted to contribute to the debate today.

I am delighted that I have found some common ground with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. The idea of sending my noble friend Lord Allan on tour has great attractions. I am not sure that he would find it quite so attractive. I am looking forward to him coming back before sending him off around the country. I agree that he has made a very constructive contribution. I agree with much of what the noble Baroness said, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, had the same instinct: this is a way of better preserving freedom of speech. If we can have those critical thinking skills so that people can protect themselves from misinformation, disinformation and some of the harms online, we can have greater confidence that people are able to protect themselves against these harms at whatever age they may be.

I was very pleased to hear the references to Lord Puttnam, because I think that the Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee report was ground-breaking in the way it described the need for digital media literacy. This is about equipping not just young people but everybody with the critical thinking skills needed to differentiate fact from fiction—particularly, as we have talked through in Committee, on the way that digital platforms operate through their systems, algorithms and data.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, talked about the breadth and depth needed for media and digital literacy education; he had it absolutely right about people being appropriately savvy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, echoed what he said in that respect.

I think we have some excellent amendments here. If we can distil them into a single amendment in time for Report or a discussion with the Minister, I think we will find ourselves going forward constructively. There are many aspects of this. For instance, the DCMS Select Committee recommended that digital literacy becomes the fourth pillar of education, which seems to me a pretty important aspect alongside reading, writing and maths. That is the kind of age that we are in. I have quoted Parent Zone before. It acknowledges the usefulness of user empowerment tools and so on, but again it stressed the need for media literacy. What kind of media literacy? The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, was extremely interesting when she said that what is important is not just user behaviour but making the right choices—that sort of critical thinking. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, provided an analogy with preventive health that was very important.

Our Joint Committee used a rather different phrase. It talked about a “whole of government” approach. When we look at all the different aspects, we see that it is something not just for Ofcom—I entirely agree with that—but that should involve a much broader range of stakeholders in government. We know that, out there, there are organisations such as the Good Things Foundation and CILIP, the library association, and I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, is not in her place to remind us about Doteveryone, an organisation that many of us admire a great deal for the work it carries out.

I think the “appropriately savvy” expression very much applies to the fraud prevention aspect, and it will be interesting when we come to the next group to talk about that as well. The Government have pointed to the DCMS online media strategy, but the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, is absolutely right to ask what its outcome has been, what its results have been, and what resources are being devoted towards it. We are often pointed to that by the Government, here in Committee and at Oral Questions whenever we ask how the media literacy strategy is going, so we need to kick the tyres on that as well as on the kind of priority and resources being devoted to media literacy.

As ever, I shall refer to the Government’s response to the Joint Committee, which I found rather extraordinary. The Government responded to the committee’s recommendation about minimum standards; there is an amendment today about minimum standards. They said:

“Ofcom has recently published a new approach to online media literacy … Clause 103 of the draft Bill”—


the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, referred to the fact that in the draft Bill there was originally a new duty on Ofcom—

“did not grant Ofcom any additional powers. As such, it is … unnecessary regulation. It has therefore been removed”.

It did add to Ofcom’s duties. Will the Minister say whether he thinks all the amendments here today would constitute unnecessary regulation? As he can see, there is considerable appetite around the Committee for the kind of media literacy duty across the board that we have talked about today. He might make up for some of the disappointment that many of us feel about the Government’s having got rid of that clause by responding to that question.

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[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I shall say very briefly in support of these amendments that in 2017, the 5Rights Foundation, of which I am the chair, published the Digital Childhood report, which in a way was the thing that put the organisation on the map. The report looked at the evolving capacity of children through childhood, what technology they were using, what happened to them and what the impact was. We are about to release the report again, in an updated version, and one of the things that is most striking is the introduction of fraud into children’s lives. At the point at which they are evolving into autonomous people, when they want to buy presents for their friends and parents on their own, they are experiencing what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, expressed as embarrassment, loss of trust and a sense of deserting confidence—I think that is probably the phrase. So I just want to put on the record that this is a problem for children also.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting short debate and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, made a very simple proposition. I am very grateful to her for introducing this so clearly and comprehensively. Of course, it is all about the way that platforms will identify illegal, fraudulent advertising and attempt to align it with other user-to-user content in terms of transparency, reporting, user reporting and user complaints. It is a very straightforward proposition.

First of all, however, we should thank the Government for acceding to what the Joint Committee suggested, which was that fraudulent advertising should be brought within the scope of the Bill. But, as ever, we want more. That is what it is all about and it is a very straightforward proposition which I very much hope the Minister will accede to.

We have heard from around the Committee about the growing problem and I will be very interested to read the report that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, was talking about, in terms of the introduction of fraud into children’s lives—that is really important. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, mentioned some of the statistics from Clean Up the Internet, Action Fraud and so on, as did the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. And, of course, it is now digital. Some 80% of fraud, as he said, is cyber-enabled, and 23% of all reported frauds are initiated on social media—so this is bang in the area of the Bill.

It has been very interesting to see how some of the trade organisations, the ABI and others, have talked about the impact of fraud, including digital fraud. The ABI said:

“Consumers’ confidence is being eroded by the ongoing proliferation of online financial scams, including those predicated on impersonation of financial service providers and facilitated through online advertising. Both the insurance and long-term savings sectors are impacted by financial scams perpetrated via online paid-for advertisements, which can deprive vulnerable consumers of their life savings and leave deep emotional scars”.


So, this is very much a cross-industry concern and very visible to the insurance industry and no doubt to other sectors as well.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, on her chairing of the fraud committee and on the way it came to its conclusions and scrutinised the Bill. Paragraphs 559, 560 and 561 all set out where the Bill needs to be aligned to the other content that it covers. As she described, there are two areas where the Bill can be improved. If they are not cured, they will substantially undermine its ability to tackle online fraud effectively.

This has the backing of Which? As the Minister will notice, it is very much a cross-industry and consumer body set of amendments, supporting transparency reporting and making sure that those platforms with more fraudulent advertising make proportionately larger changes to their systems. That is why there is transparency reporting for all illegal harms that platforms are obliged to prevent. There is no reason why advertising should be exempt. On user reporting and complaints, it is currently unclear whether this applies only to illegal user-generated content and unpaid search content or if it also applies to illegal fraudulent advertisements. At the very least, I hope the Minister will clarify that today.

Elsewhere, the Bill requires platforms to allow users to complain if the platform fails to comply with its duties to protect users from illegal content and with regard to the content-reporting process. I very much hope the Minister will accede to including that as well.

Some very simple requests are being made in this group. I very much hope that the Minister will take them on board.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

It is the simple requests that always seem to evade the easy solutions. I will not go back over the very good introductory speech from the noble Baroness, which said it all; the figures are appalling and the range of fraud-inspired criminality is extraordinary. It plays back to a point we have been hammering today: if this Bill is about anything, it is the way the internet amplifies that which would be unpleasant anyway but will now reach epidemic proportions.

I wonder whether that is the clue to the problem the noble Baroness was commenting on—I think more in hope than in having any way to resolve it. It is great news that three Bills are doing all the stuff we want. We have talked a bit about three-legged stools; this is another one that might crash over. If we are not careful, it will slip through the cracks. I am mixing my metaphors again.

If the Minister would not mind a bit of advice, it seems to me that this Bill could do certain things and do them well. It should not hold back and wait for the others to catch up or do things differently. The noble Baroness made the point about the extraordinarily difficult to understand gap, in that what is happening to priority illegal content elsewhere in the Bill does not apply to this, even though it is clearly illegal activity. I understand that there is a logical line that it is not quite the same thing—that the Bill is primarily about certain restricted types of activity on social media and not the generality of fraud—but surely the scale of the problem and our difficulty in cracking down on it, by whatever routes and whatever size of stool we choose, suggest that we should do what we can in this Bill and do it hard, deeply and properly.

Secondly, we have amendments later in Committee on the role of the regulators and the possibility recommended by the Communications and Digital Committee that we should seek statutory backing for regulation in this area. Here is a classic example of more than two regulators working to achieve the same end that will probably bump into each other on the way. There is no doubt that the FCA has primary responsibility in this area, but the reality is that the damage is being done by the amplification effect within the social media companies.