Online Safety Bill (Programme) (No. 4)

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Programme motion
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

There has been long-standing consensus since the Bill was first mooted more than four years ago—before anyone had even heard of TikTok—that online and social media needed regulating. Despite our concerns about both the previous drafting and the new amendments, we support the principle of the Online Safety Bill, but I take issue with the Secretary of State’s arguments today. [Interruption.] I think the hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) is trying to correct my language from a sedentary position. Perhaps he wants to listen to the argument instead, because what he and the Secretary of State are doing today will take the Bill a massive step backwards, not forwards.

The consensus has not just been about protecting children online, although of course that is a vital part of the Bill; it is also about the need to tackle the harms that these powerful platforms present when they go unmitigated. As we have heard this evening, there is a cross-party desire to strengthen and broaden the Bill, not water it down, as we are now hearing. Alas, we are not there.

This is not a perfect Bill and was never going to be, but even since the last delay before the summer, we have had the coroner’s inquest into the tragic Molly Russell case, Russian disinformation campaigns and the takeover and ongoing implosion of Twitter. Yet the Government are now putting the entire Bill at risk. It has already been carried over once, so if we do not complete its passage before the end of this parliamentary Session, it will fall completely. The latest hold-up is to enable the Government to remove “legal but harmful” clauses. This goes against the very essence of the Bill, which was created to address the particular power of social media to share, to spread and to broadcast around the world very quickly.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I understand the shadow Minister’s concern about what the Government are trying to do, but I do not understand why she is speaking against a programme motion that gives the Opposition more time to scrutinise the Bill. It must be the first time I have heard a member of the Opposition demand less time in which to scrutinise a Bill.

[Lucy Powell]

I shall come on to that. It is we, on the Opposition side of the House, who are so determined to get the Bill on to the statute book that I find myself arguing against the Government’s further delay. Let us not forget that six months have passed between the first day on Report and the second, today—the longest ever gap between two days of Report in the history of the House—so it is delay after delay.

Disinformation, abuse, incel gangs, body shaming, covid denial, holocaust denial, scammers—the list goes on, all of it actively encouraged by unregulated engagement algorithms and business models that reward sensational, extreme, controversial and abusive behaviour. It is these powers and models that need regulating, for individuals on the receiving end of harm but also to deal with harms to society, democracy and our economy. The enormous number of amendments that have been tabled in the last week should be scrutinised, but we now face a real trade-off between the Bill not passing through the other place in time and the provision of more scrutiny. As I told the Secretary of State a couple of weeks ago in private, our judgment is this: get the Bill to the other place as soon as possible, and we will scrutinise it there.

[Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that what the Labour party did was initiate a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister rather than making progress with the Bill—which she says is so important—at the time when it was needed?

[Lucy Powell]

The hon. Lady remembers incorrectly. It was members of her own party who tabled the motion of no confidence. Oh, I have just remembered: they did not have confidence in the Prime Minister at the time, did they? We have had two Prime Ministers since then, so I am not sure that they have much confidence—[Interruption.]

[Sara Britcliffe]

rose—

[Lucy Powell]

I will move on now, thank you.

We would not have been here at all if the Secretary of State had stuck to the guns of her predecessor, who, to be fair to her—I know she is not here today—saw off a raft of vested interests to enable the Bill to progress. The right hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) understood that this is not about thwarting the right to hold views that most of us find abhorrent, but about not allowing those views to be widely shared on a powerful platform that, in the offline world, just does not exist. She understood that the Online Safety Bill came from a fundamental recognition that the algorithms and the power of platforms to push people towards content that, although on its own may not be illegal, cumulatively causes significant harm. Replacing the prevention of harm with an emphasis on free speech lets the platforms off the hook, and the absence of duties to prevent harm and dangerous outcomes will allow them to focus on weak user controls.

Simply holding platforms to account for their own terms and conditions—the Secretary of State referred to that earlier—which, as we saw just this week at Twitter, can be rewritten or changed at whim, will not constitute robust enough regulation to deal with the threat that these platforms present. To protect children, the Government are relying on age verification, but as those with teenage children are well aware—including many of us in the House—most of them pass themselves off as older that they are, and verification is easy to get around. The proposed three shields for adults are just not workable and do not hold up to scrutiny. Let us be clear that the raft of new amendments that have been tabled by the Government this week are nothing more than a major weakening and narrowing of this long-awaited legislation.

This is not what Labour would do. We would tackle at root the power of the platforms to negatively shape all our lives. But we are where we are, and it is better to have the regulator in place with some powers than to have nothing at all. I fear that adding more weeks in Committee in the Commons, having already spent years and years debating this Bill, will not make it any better anyway. Going back into Committee is an unprecedented step, and where might that end? What is to prevent another new Minister or Secretary of State from changing their mind again in the new year, or to prevent there being another reshuffle or even another Prime Minister? That might happen! This is a complex and important Bill, but it is also long, long overdue. We therefore support the original programme motion to get the Bill into the other place immediately, and we will not be voting to put the Bill back into Committee.