Online Safety Bill (Programme) (No. 4)

Michelle Donelan Excerpts

Programme motion
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Michelle Donelan)]

I beg to move,

That the following provisions shall apply to the Online Safety Bill for the purpose of varying and supplementing the Order of 19 April 2022 in the last session of Parliament (Online Safety Bill: Programme) as varied by the Orders of 12 July 2022 (Online Safety Bill: Programme (No.2)) and today (Online Safety Bill: Programme (No.3)).

Re-committal

(1) The Bill shall be re-committed to a Public Bill Committee in respect of the following Clauses and Schedules—

(a) in Part 3, Clauses 11 to 14, 17 to 20, 29, 45, 54 and 55 of the Bill as amended in Public Bill Committee;

(b) in Part 4, Clause 64 of, and Schedule 8 to, the Bill as amended in Public Bill Committee;

(c) in Part 7, Clauses 78, 81, 86, 89 and 112 of, and Schedule 11 to, the Bill as amended in Public Bill Committee;

(d) in Part 9, Clause 150 of the Bill as amended in Public Bill Committee;

(e) in Part 11, Clause 161 of the Bill as amended in Public Bill Committee;

(f) in Part 12, Clauses 192, 195 and 196 of the Bill as amended in Public Bill Committee;

(g) New Clause [Repeal of Part 4B of the Communications Act: transitional provision etc], if it has been added to the Bill, and New Schedule [Video-sharing platform services: transitional provision etc], if it has been added to the Bill.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee on re-committal

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee on re-committal shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 15 December 2022.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration following re-committal and Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration following re-committal shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration following re-committal.

I know that colleagues across the House have dedicated a huge amount of time to getting the Bill to this point, especially my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), who unfortunately could not be with us today. I thank everybody for their contributions through the pre-legislative scrutiny and passage and for their engagement with me since I took office. Since then, the Bill has been my No. 1 priority.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Member not agree that it is regrettable that her junior Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully)—failed to acknowledge in his winding-up speech that there had been any contributions to the debate on Report from Labour Members?

[Michelle Donelan]

As the right hon. Member will note, the Minister had to stop at a certain point and he had spoken for 45 minutes in his opening remarks. I think that he gave a true reflection of many of the comments that were made tonight. The right hon. Member will also know that all the comments from Opposition Members are on the parliamentary record and were televised.

The sooner that we pass the Bill, the sooner we can start protecting children online. This is a groundbreaking piece of legislation that, as hon. Members have said, will need to evolve as technology changes.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Department will consider amendments, in relation to new clause 55, to stop the people smugglers who trade their wares on TikTok?

[Michelle Donelan]

I commit to my hon. Friend that we will consider those amendments and work very closely with her and other hon. Members.

We have to get this right, which is why we are adding a very short Committee stage to the Bill. We propose that there will be four sittings over two days. That is the right thing to do to allow scrutiny. It will not delay or derail the Bill, but Members deserve to discuss the changes.

With that in mind, I will briefly discuss the new changes that make recommittal necessary. Children are at the very heart of this piece of legislation. Parents, teachers, siblings and carers will look carefully at today’s proceedings, so for all those who are watching, let me be clear: not only have we kept every single protection for children intact, but we have worked with children’s organisations and parents to create new measures to protect children. Platforms will still have to shield children and young people from both illegal content and a whole range of other harmful content, including pornography, violent content and so on. However, they will also face new duties on age limits. No longer will social media companies be able to claim to ban users under 13 while quietly turning a blind eye to the estimated 1.6 million children who use their sites under age. They will also need to publish summaries of their risk assessments relating to illegal content and child safety in order to ensure that there is greater transparency for parents, and to ensure that the voice of children is injected directly into the Bill, Ofcom will consult the Children’s Commissioner in the development of codes of practice.

These changes, which come on top of all the original child protection measures in the Bill, are completely separate from the changes that we have made in respect of adults. For many people, myself included, the so-called “legal but harmful” provisions in the Bill prompted concerns. They would have meant that the Government were creating a quasi-legal category—a grey area—and would have raised the very real risk that to avoid sanctions, platforms would carry out sweeping take-downs of content, including legitimate posts, eroding free speech in the process.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the work of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism? Does she agree with the group, and with us, that by removing parts of the Bill we are allowing the kind of holocaust denial that we all abhor to continue online?

[Michelle Donelan]

I have worked very closely with a range of groups backing the causes that the hon. Lady mentions in relation to cracking down on antisemitism, including the Board of Deputies, the Antisemitism Policy Trust and members of the APPG. [Hon. Members: “They don’t back it.”] They do indeed back the Bill. They have said that it is vital that we progress this further. We have adopted their clause in relation to breach notifications, to increase transparency, and we have injected a triple shield that will ensure that antisemitism does not remain on these platforms.

I return to the concerns around “legal but harmful”. Worryingly, it meant that users could run out of road. If a platform allowed legal but harmful material, users would therefore face a binary choice between not using the platform at all or facing abuse and harm that they did not want to see. We, however, have added a third shield that transfers power away from silicon valley algorithms to ordinary people. Our new triple shield mechanism puts accountability, transparency and choice at the heart of the way we interact with each other online. If it is illegal, it has to go. If it violates a company’s terms and conditions, it has to go. Under the third and final layer of the triple shield, platforms must offer users tools to allow them to choose what kind of content they want to see and engage with.

These are significant changes that I know are of great interest to hon. Members. As they were not in scope on Report, I propose that we recommit a selection of clauses for debate by a Public Bill Committee in a very short Committee stage, so that this House of Commons can scrutinise them line by line.

I assure hon. Members that the Bill is my absolute top priority. We are working closely with both Houses to ensure that it completes the remainder of its passage and reaches Royal Assent by the end of this parliamentary Session. It is absolutely essential that we get proper scrutiny. I commend the motion to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

With the leave of the House, in making my closing remarks, I want to remind all Members and all those watching these proceedings exactly why we are here today. The children and families who have had their lives irreparably damaged by social media giants need to know that we are on their side, and that includes the families who sat in the Gallery here today and who I had the opportunity to talk to. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work they have done, including Ian Russell. They have shone a spotlight and campaigned on this issue. As many Members will know, in 2017, Ian’s 14-year-old daughter Molly took her own life after being bombarded by self-harm content on Instagram and Pinterest. She was a young and innocent girl.

To prevent other families from going through this horrendous ordeal, we must all move the Bill forward together. And we must work together to get the Bill on the statute book as soon as possible by making sure this historic legislation gets the proper scrutiny it deserves, so that we can start protecting children and young people online while also empowering adults.

For too long, the fierce debate surrounding the Bill has been framed by an assumption that protecting children online must come at the expense of free speech for adults. Today we can put an end to this dispute once and for all. Our common-sense amendments to the Bill overcome these barriers by strengthening the protections for children while simultaneously protecting free speech and choice for adults.

However, it is right that the House is allowed to scrutinise these changes in Committee, which is why we need to recommit a selection of clauses for a very short Committee stage. This will not, as the Opposition suggest, put the Bill at risk. I think it is really wrong to make such an assertion. As well as being deeply upsetting to the families who visited us this evening, it is a low blow by the Opposition to play politics with such an important Bill.

We will ensure the Bill completes all stages by the end of this Session, and we need to work together to ensure that children come first. We can then move the Bill forward, so that we can start holding tech companies to account for their actions and finally stop them putting profits before people and before our children.

Question put.

Online Safety Bill

Michelle Donelan Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Michelle Donelan)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

It has been a long road to get here, and it has required a huge team effort that has included Members from across the House, the Joint Committee, Public Bill Committees, the Ministers who worked on this over the years in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and my predecessors as Secretaries of State. Together, we have had some robust and forthright debates, and it is thanks to Members’ determination, expertise and genuine passion on this issue that we have been able to get to this point today. Our differences of opinion across the House have been dwarfed by the fact that we are united in one single goal: protecting children online.

I have been clear since becoming Secretary of State that protecting children is the very reason that this Bill exists, and the safety of every child up and down the UK has driven this legislation from the start. After years of inaction, we want to hold social media companies to account and make sure that they are keeping their promises to their own users and to parents. No Bill in the world has gone as far as this one to protect children online. Since this legislation was introduced last year, the Government have gone even further and made a number of changes to enhance and broaden the protections in the Bill while also securing legal free speech. If something should be illegal, we should have the courage of our convictions to make it illegal, rather than creating a quasi-legal category. That is why my predecessor’s change that will render epilepsy trolling illegal is so important, and why I was determined to ensure that the promotion of self-harm, cyber-flashing and intimate image abuse are also made illegal once and for all in this Bill.

[Vicky Ford]

Will my right hon. Friend make it clear, when the Bill gets to the other place, that content that glamorises eating disorders will be treated as seriously as content glamorising other forms of self-harm?

[Michelle Donelan]

I met my right hon. Friend today to discuss that very point, which is particularly important and powerful. I look forward to continuing to work with her and the Ministry of Justice as we progress this Bill through the other place.

The changes are balanced with new protections for free speech and journalism—two of the core pillars of our democratic society. There are amendments to the definition of recognised news publishers to ensure that sanctioned outlets such as RT must not benefit.

Since becoming Secretary of State I have made a number of my own changes to the Bill. First and foremost, we have gone even further to boost protections for children. Social media companies will face a new duty on age limits so they can no longer turn a blind eye to the estimated 1.6 million underage children who currently use their sites. The largest platforms will also have to publish summaries of their risk assessments for illegal content and material that is harmful for children—finally putting transparency for parents into law.

I believe it is blindingly obvious and morally right that we should have a higher bar of protection when it comes to children. Things such as cyber-bullying, pornography and posts that depict violence do enormous damage. They scar our children and rob them of their right to a childhood. These measures are all reinforced by children and parents, who are given a real voice in the legislation by the inclusion of the Children’s Commissioner as a statutory consultee. The Bill already included provisions to make senior managers liable for failure to comply with information notices, but we have now gone further. Senior managers who deliberately fail children will face criminal liability. Today, we are drawing our line in the sand and declaring that the UK will be the world’s first country to comprehensively protect children online.

Those changes are completely separate to the changes I have made for adults. Many Members and stakeholders had concerns over the “legal but harmful” section of the Bill. They were concerned that it would be a serious threat to legal free speech and would set up a quasi-legal grey area where tech companies would be encouraged to take down content that is perfectly legal to say on our streets. I shared those concerns, so we have removed “legal but harmful” for adults. We have replaced it with a much simpler and fairer and, crucially, much more effective mechanism that gives adults a triple shield of protection. If it is illegal, it has to go. If it is banned under the company’s terms and conditions, it has to go.

Lastly, social media companies will now offer adults a range of tools to give them more control over what they see and interact with on their own feeds.

[Damian Collins]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about things that are illegal offline but legal online. The Bill has still not defined a lot of content that could be illegal and yet promoted through advertising. As part of their ongoing work on the Bill and the online advertising review, will the Government establish the general principle that content that is illegal will be regulated whether it is an ad or a post?

[Michelle Donelan]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend on the importance of this topic. That is exactly why we have the online advertising review, a piece of work we will be progressing to tackle the nub of the problem he identifies. We are protecting free speech while putting adults in the driving seat of their own online experience. The result is today’s Bill.

I thank hon. Members for their hard work on this Bill, including my predecessors, especially my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries). I thank all those I have worked with constructively on amendments, including my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), for Stone (Sir William Cash), for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), and my right hon. Friends the Members for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) and for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes).

I would like to put on record my gratitude for the hard work of my incredibly dedicated officials—in particular, Sarah Connolly, Orla MacRae and Emma Hindley, along with a number of others; I cannot name them all today, but I note their tremendous and relentless work on the Bill. Crucially, I thank the charities and devoted campaigners, such as Ian Russell, who have guided us and pushed the Bill forward in the face of their own tragic loss. Thanks to all those people, we now have a Bill that works.

Legislating online was never going to be easy, but it is necessary. It is necessary if we want to protect our values —the values that we protect in the real world every single day. In fact, the NSPCC called this Bill “a national priority”. The Children’s Commissioner called it

“a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to protect all children”.

But it is not just children’s organisations that are watching. Every parent across the country will know at first hand just how difficult it is to shield their children from inappropriate material when social media giants consistently put profit above children’s safety. This legislation finally puts it right.