Online Harms

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree with the noble Baroness that the television regulator and other media regulators have done a good job and that they are a good example. However, I will not be watching that programme, because I have an enormous amount of work today. If she promises not to ask any questions about the statutory instrument tomorrow, I might have a bit more time. But seriously, that shows that the decisions we are asking regulators to make are not easy. We are not trying to censor the internet. We want a vibrant internet which allows discussion, debate and different points of view but which does not allow some of the worst harms, which are indescribably bad. We need to deal with those, and we want to make the areas which are regulated offline also regulated online, in a reasonable and proportionate way.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, we must not delude ourselves; despite everything the major internet giants and the social media platforms say about how they are trying to advance the cause of humankind and make things better for us, they are there to make profit—to make money. In the same way as when you are dealing with a chap and you grab him by a certain part of his anatomy, his mind follows, if you grab their money, their minds will follow. Anything we do about punishing must focus on the money side, because that will grab their attention.

When we talked about the international side of things some years ago, we were concerned about countries such as China and Russia, which immediately said, “Oh yes, this sort of control is a wonderful thing”, and we had to be careful to get ourselves unwound from that. Have we had any international discussions at all yet about what we are proposing in this White Paper?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree with the noble Lord about money, although it is not only about money; individual liability is also important. If senior executives of companies are held personally responsible, that has a significant effect, as do criminal charges against companies. However, those things are part of the consultation.

On Russia and China, and countries that do not share our views about the open internet, obviously we have to take that into account, which is why, for example, there is a lot of discussion about disinformation and how companies will be expected to look out for that and deal with it by using technology and in many other ways.

Lastly, I am not aware of the detail of the international discussions, but no other country has taken this approach. For example, we have talked about individual measures that different countries have taken: Australia has set up a new safety commissioner, who is like an ombudsman, but again, that is reactive rather than proactive, and Germany has set up a law which insists that companies must take down material, but again, that is reactive. We have talked to countries about individual bits of legislation, but no one anywhere has taken a holistic and proactive approach to internet regulation. We certainly expect that if this goes through, is a success and works well, other countries will be interested, and we will certainly be prepared to talk to them about it.