Online Safety Act: Implementation

Martin Wrigley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on securing this debate.

We have heard some consistent themes coming through. We have heard about Ofcom perhaps misinterpreting what the House intended with the Act. We have heard about the importance of the Ofcom code of practice, how it is constructed and how it drives online platforms’ behaviour. We have heard from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) about the importance of conformity across different platforms. We have heard that regulators might not be fulfilling the expectations of this House. We have also heard from the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) about lawful but awful content and about how we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I think there is a feeling that the Act does what it does, but that the interpretation has not been what was hoped for and that there is still much more to do. We heard from the hon. Member for Livingston (Gregor Poynton) about the “legal but feasible” loophole, and also about bringing in safety by design, which became a consistent theme throughout the rest of the conversations. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) talked about the design to protect children and the framework’s lack of mitigation on livestreaming, and said that seven-year-olds and 17-year-olds are treated the same. That is clearly not right.

The hon. Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) impressed upon us the urgency and importance of the children’s safety codes. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) cited the astonishing fact that 83% of 10 to 15-year-olds have phones—that is an amazing proportion—and also mentioned cyber-bullying.

Other hon. Members spoke about other areas, but the same things came up. As a member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and, until recently, a tribunal member with the telecoms regulator—that responsibility has now moved to Ofcom—I have seen the importance of the codes of practice and how long it takes to revise them. Thirty years in the telecoms industry showed me how tough age assessment can be. I have also spent time delivering app stores, but before the age of Google and Apple phones.

It is clear that the hard-won amendment to include smaller sites with harmful content has been lost through its exclusion from the statutory instrument. In the Bill Committee, the Minister said that we must do everything in our power, and that there is much more to do. We have heard a lot about what needs to be done, and we urge the Government to do it. We urge them to look again at the exclusion of small but harmful sites and to continue to look at how we can improve the implementation of safety by design.

--- Later in debate ---

[Feryal Clark]

I was about to come to the point that the right hon. and learned Member raised about the digital regulation Committee. I have had a brief conversation with him about that, and agree about the importance of parliamentary scrutiny of the implementation of the Online Safety Act. I welcome the expertise that Members of both Houses bring. Select Committees are a matter for the House, as he is aware.

We will continue to work with the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee and the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee to support their ongoing scrutiny, as well as other parliamentary Committees that may have an interest in the Act. The Act requires the Secretary of State to review the effectiveness of the regime, two to five years after the legislation comes into force. We will ensure that Parliament is central to that process. I encourage the right hon. and learned Member to continue to raise the matter with the right people.

Most hon. Members raised the issue of apps. Ofcom will have a duty to publish a report on the role of app stores and children’s accessing harmful content on the apps of regulated services. The report is due between January ’26 and January ’27. Once it is published, the Secretary of State may, if appropriate, make regulations to bring app stores into the scope of the Act. The timing will ensure that Ofcom can prioritise the implementation of child safety duties. I will write to the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam on the issue of proportionality, as I want to ensure that I give him the full details about how that is being interpreted by Ofcom.

We fully share the concerns of hon. Members over small platforms that host incredibly harmful content, such as hate forums. These dark corners of the internet are often deliberately sought out by individuals who are at risk of being radicalised.

[Martin Wrigley]

If the Government fully support our concerns about small but harmful sites, will the statutory instrument be reworked to bring them back into category 1, as the Act states?

[Feryal Clark]

The Government are confident that the duties to tackle illegal content and, where relevant, protect children from harmful content will have a meaningful impact on the small but risky services to which the hon. Gentleman refers. Ofcom has created a dedicated supervision taskforce for small but high-risk services, recognising the need for a bespoke approach to securing compliance. The team will focus on high-priority risks, such as CSAM, suicide and hate offences directed at women and girls. Where services do not engage with Ofcom and where there is evidence of non-compliance, Ofcom will move quickly to enforcement action, starting with illegal harm duties from 17 March, so work is being done on that.

The comprehensive legal safety duties will be applied to all user-to-user forums, and child safety duties will be applied to all user-to-user forums likely to be accessed by children, including the small but high-risk sites. These duties will have the most impact in holding the services to account. Because of the deep concerns about these forums, Ofcom has, as I said, created the small but risky supervision taskforce. For example, Ofcom will be asking an initial set of firms that pose a particular risk, including smaller sites, to disclose their illegal content risk assessment by 31 March.

The Government have been clear that we will act where there is evidence that harm is not being adequately addressed despite the duties being in effect, and we have been clear to Ofcom that it has the Government’s and Parliament’s backing to be bold in the implementation of the Online Safety Act. We are in clear agreement that the Act is not the end of the road, and Ofcom has already committed to iterating on the codes of practice, with the first consultation on further measures being launched this spring. The Government remain open minded as to how we ensure that users are kept safe online, and where we need to act, we will. To do so, we must ensure that the actions we take are carefully considered and rooted in evidence.