Digital Platforms: Impact on Democracy

Lord Wills Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

My Lords, protecting children online is perhaps the greatest priority in our online harms legislation. Obviously, we are working very hard to understand the interaction between our trade policy and our online harms policy in future trade agreements, but we stand by our online harms commitment and nothing in the US trade deal will affect that. I am more than happy to do my best to liaise with colleagues in the Department for International Trade, as the noble Baroness suggests.

[Lord Wills (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I recognise what the Minister said earlier about the duty of care but will she now rule out placing explicit obligations on social media companies to police advertisements with political content on their platforms? To save time, a simple “yes” or “no” would be sufficient as an answer.

[Baroness Barran]

I cannot give a simple “yes” or “no” at this time; all these things will be considered in detail, as I have mentioned already.