Online Safety Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th May 2023 Lords Chamber

Senior clinicians including Sir Jeremy Farrar, Professor John Bell and the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, have written to the Secretary of State to raise their concerns. These are serious players voicing serious concerns. The approach in Amendment 52 is, in my view, the best and most proportionate way to protect those who are most vulnerable to false and misleading information.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 59, 107 and 264 in this group, all of which are in my name. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, I express gratitude to Full Fact for its advice and support in preparing them.

My noble friend Lord Bethell has just reminded us of the very large degree of discretion that is given to platforms by the legislation in how they respond to information that we might all agree, or might not agree, is harmful, misinformation or disinformation. We all agree that those categories exist. We might disagree about what falls into them, but we all agree that the categories exist, and the discretion given to the providers in how to handle it is large. My amendments do not deal specifically with health-related misinformation or disinformation but are broader.

The first two, Amendments 59 and 107—I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Strathcarron for his support of Amendment 59—try to probe what the Government think platforms should do when harmful material, misinformation and disinformation appear on their platforms. As things stand, the Government require that the platforms should decide what content is not allowed on their platforms; then they should display this in their terms of service; and they should apply a consistent approach in how they manage content that is in breach of their terms of service. The only requirement is for consistency. I have no objection to their being required to behave consistently, but that is the principal requirement.

What Amendments 59 and 107 do—they have similar effects in different parts of the Bill; one directly on the platforms; the other in relation to codes of practice—is require them also to act proportionately. Here, it might be worth articulating briefly the fact that there are two views about platforms and how they respond, both legitimate. One is that some noble Lords may fear that platforms will not respond at all: in other words, they will leave harmful material on their site and will not properly respond.

The other fear, which is what I want to emphasise, is that platforms will be overzealous in removing material, because they will have written their terms of service, as I said on a previous day in Committee, not only for their commercial advantage but also for their legal advantage. They will have wanted to give themselves a wide latitude to remove material, or to close accounts, because that will help cover their backs legally. Of course, once they have granted themselves those powers, the fear is that they will use them overzealously, even in cases where that would be an overreaction. These two amendments seek to oblige the platforms to respond proportionately, to consider alternative approaches to cancellation and removal of accounts and to be obliged to look at those as well.

There are alternative approaches that they could consider. Some companies already set out to promote good information, if you like, and indeed we saw that in the Covid-19 pandemic. My noble friend Lord Bethell said that they did so, and they did so voluntarily. This amendment would not explicitly but implicitly encourage that sort of behaviour as a first resort, rather than cancellation, blocking and removal of material as a first resort. They would still have the powers to cancel, block and remove; it is a question of priority and proportionality.

There are also labels that providers can put on material that they think is dubious, saying, “Be careful before you read this”, or before you retweet it; “This is dubious material”. Those practices should also be encouraged. These amendments are intended to do that, but they are intended, first and foremost, to probe what the Government’s attitude is to this, whether they believe they have any role in giving guidance on this point and how they are going to do so, whether through legislation or in some other way, because many of us would like to know.

Amendment 264, supported by my noble friend Lord Strathcarron and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, deals with quite a different matter, although it falls under the general category of misinformation and disinformation: the role the Government take directly in seeking to correct misinformation and disinformation on the internet. We know that No. 10 has a unit with this explicit purpose and that during the Covid pandemic it deployed military resources to assist it in doing so. Nothing in this amendment would prevent that continuing; nothing in it is intended to create scare stories in people’s minds about an overweening Government manipulating us. It is intended to bring transparency to that process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The Minister mentioned “acute” examples of misinformation and used the example of the pandemic. I tried to illustrate that perhaps, with hindsight, what were seen as acute examples of misinformation turned out to be rather more accurate than we were led to believe at the time. So my concern is that there is already an atmosphere of scepticism about official opinion, which is not the same as misinformation, as it is sometimes presented. I used the American example of the Hunter Biden laptop so we could take a step away.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

This might be an appropriate moment for me to say—on the back of that—that, although my noble friend explained current government practice, he has not addressed my point on why there should not be an annual report to Parliament that describes what government has done on these various fronts. If the Government regularly meet newspaper publishers to discuss the quality of information in their newspapers, I for one would have entire confidence that the Government were doing so in the public interest, but I would still quite like—I think the Government would agree on this—a report on what was happening, making an exception for national security. That would still be a good thing to do. Will my noble friend explain why we cannot be told?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

While I am happy to elaborate on the work of the counter-disinformation unit in the way I just have, the Government cannot share operational details about its work, as that would give malign actors insight into the scope and scale of our capabilities. As my noble friend notes, this is not in the public interest. Moreover, reporting representations made to platforms by the unit would also be unnecessary as this would overlook both the existing processes that govern engagements with external parties and the new protections that are introduced through the Bill.

In the first intervention, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, gave a number of examples, some of which are debatable, contestable facts. Companies may well choose to keep them on their platforms within their terms of service. We have also seen deliberate misinformation and disinformation during the pandemic, including from foreign actors promoting more harmful disinformation. It is right that we take action against this.

I hope that I have given noble Lords some reassurance on the points raised about the amendments in this group. I invite them not to press the amendments.