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.