Online Safety Bill

Debate between Paul Scully and Debbie Abrahams

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

This is a difficult path to tread in approaching this issue for the first time. In many ways, these are things that we should have done 10 or 15 years ago, as social media platforms and people’s engagement with them proliferated over that period. Regulation has to be done gently, but it must be done. We must act now and get it right, to ensure that we hold the big technology companies in particular to account, while also understanding the massive benefits that those technology companies and their products provide.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I agree with the Minister that this is a groundbreaking Bill, but we must be clear that there are still gaps. Given what he is saying about the requirements for regulation of online social media companies and other platforms, how will he monitor, over a period of time, whether the measures that we have are as dynamic as they need to be to catch up with social media as it develops?

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Paul Scully and Debbie Abrahams

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

Coroners already have some powers in this area, but we are aware of instances raised by my right hon. Friend and others in which that has not been the case. We will happily work with Baroness Kidron, and others, and look favourably on changes where they are necessary.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I entirely agree that our focus has been on protecting children, but is the Minister as concerned as I am about the information and misinformation, and about the societal impacts on our democracy, not just in this country but elsewhere? The hon. Member for Watford suggested a Committee that could monitor such impacts. Is that something the Minister will reconsider?

[Paul Scully]

For the purpose of future-proofing, we have tried to make the Bill as flexible and as technologically neutral as possible so that it can adapt to changes. I think we will need to review it, and indeed I am sure that, as technology changes, we will come back with new legislation in the future to ensure that we continue to be world-beating—but let us see where we end up with that.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Paul Scully and Debbie Abrahams

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

There simply has to be. These are global companies and we want to make the Bill work for the whole of the UK. This is not an England-only Bill, so the changes must happen for every user, whether they are in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales or England.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will make a bit of progress, because I am testing Mr Speaker’s patience.

We are making a number of technical amendments to ensure that the new communications offences are targeted and effective. New clause 52 seeks to narrow the exemptions for broadcast and wireless telegraphy licence holders and providers of on-demand programme services, so that the licence holder is exempt only to the extent that communication is within the course of a licensed activity. A separate group of technical amendments ensure that the definition of sending false and threatening communications will capture all circumstances—that is far wider than we have at the moment.

We propose a number of consequential amendments to relevant existing legislation to ensure that new offences operate consistently with the existing criminal law. We are also making a number of wider technical changes to strengthen the enforcement provisions and ensure consistency with other regulatory frameworks. New clause 42 ensures that Ofcom has the power to issue an enforcement notice to a former service provider, guarding against service providers simply shutting down their business and reappearing in a slightly different guise to avoid regulatory sanction. A package of Government amendments will set out how the existing video-sharing platform regime will be repealed and the transitional provisions that will apply to those providers as they transition to the online safety framework.

Finally, new clause 40 will enable the CMA to share information with Ofcom for the purpose of facilitating Ofcom’s online safety functions. That will help to ensure effective co-operation between Ofcom and the CMA.

[Paul Scully]

Indeed, there will be, and are, review points in the Bill. I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend will raise that on other occasions as well.

I want to ensure that there is plenty of time for Members to debate the Bill at this important stage, and I have spoken for long enough. I appreciate the constructive and collaborative approach that colleagues have taken throughout the Bill’s passage.

[Debbie Abrahams]

rose—

[Paul Scully]

I will give way a final time.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am grateful to the Minister. Does he support Baroness Kidron’s amendment asking for swift, humane access to data where there is a suspicion that online information may have contributed to a child’s suicide? That has not happened in previous instances; does he support that important amendment?

[Paul Scully]

I am glad that I gave way so that the hon. Lady could raise that point. Baroness Kidron and her organisation have raised that issue with me directly, and they have gathered media support. We will look at that as the Bill goes through this place and the Lords, because we need to see what the powers are at the moment and why they are not working.

Now is the time to take this legislation forward to ensure that it can deliver the safe and transparent online environment that children and adults so clearly deserve.

Long Covid: Impact on the Workforce

Debate between Paul Scully and Debbie Abrahams

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on opening the debate so incredibly well, and I congratulate her, the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter)—unfortunately he could not be here—on securing this important debate on the impact of long covid in the workplace. I thank the Backbench Business Committee and all those who have taken part in the debate for their thoughtful and insightful comments.

We heard about the ONS estimate that, in the four-week period ending 31 January 2022, 1.5 million people in the UK reported experiencing ongoing symptoms following covid. Of them, nearly 300,000 reported that their ability to undertake day-to-day activities had been significantly limited. It is therefore clear, as we have heard, that long covid presents a growing challenge for the workplace and more widely. The emergence of a completely new condition such as long covid is a real rarity and, much like our experience of the covid-19 pandemic itself, we must be and are constantly developing our understanding.

We have put support in place for those suffering from the condition. NHS England has invested £224 million to date to provide care for people with long covid. It has established 90 long covid assessment services across England, which are assessing and diagnosing people experiencing long-term health effects as a result of covid-19 infection, whether they have had a positive test or are likely to have long covid based on their clinical symptoms, regardless of whether they were admitted to hospital during their covid-19 illness. The services offer physical, cognitive and psychological assessment and, where appropriate, refer patients to existing services for treatment and rehabilitation. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon talked about the $1 billion in the States. Not all of that has been allocated yet, while the UK is already ploughing ahead, and we are quite far ahead of other countries, including the States, in our research in the area. Of course, there is always more that we can do.

It is clearly essential to get the right healthcare and treatment in place for individuals, for employers and for the wider economy. However, the theme of the debate is the impact of long covid in the workplace. People can suffer from many long-term health and other conditions that may affect their work. We have heard about ME, and we could talk about fibromyalgia, Guillain-Barré, Miller Fisher all those things. Indeed, there are other conditions that are not necessarily post-viral.

Earlier this month, I gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee on the impact of the menopause in the workplace, and in February I responded for the Government to a Westminster Hall debate on supporting people with endometriosis in the workplace. Those are different conditions, but, none the less, they are long lasting and we need to ensure that we can get people the right treatments and adjustments. Indeed, in the case of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), a simple, natural adjustment made his working life so much easier, and for so many of these other conditions there are examples of small things that employers can do to keep people in the workplace. They do not have to be complicated, and they certainly do not have to be expensive.

We believe that employers should play a significant role in supporting people with long-term health conditions to access and remain in work. That can certainly benefit individuals as well as bringing real bottom-line benefits to employers through, for example, avoiding recruitment costs and not unnecessarily losing experienced and valued members of staff.

However, it is not sustainable for every condition to get different or special treatment. For employers, that could lead to confusion and complexity; likewise for employees. That is why the Government’s starting position is that, specifically in the workplace and in the overall framework for providing health support to employees, long covid should be treated the same as any other long-term health condition. Let me set out that framework, which, as hon. Members would expect, is a cross-departmental effort.

The Government’s response to the “Health is everyone’s business” consultation, led by the Department for Work and Pensions, was published in July 2021. It sets out some of the measures that we will take to protect and maintain the progress made to reduce ill health-related job loss and see 1 million more disabled people in work from 2017 through to 2027.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am listening keenly to the Minister, but the issue is that this is an infectious disease that is contracted partly as a result of exposure, and there is clear evidence that exposure happens in the workplace. It is therefore not the same as existing progressive or fluctuating illnesses; it is very much an infectious disease contracted in the workplace. That is the basis for our recommendations.

[Paul Scully]

I understand the hon. Member’s point. I am trying to set out the framework for managing long-term illness, but clearly, we still have support in the workplace for those with infectious diseases. I cited ME, fibromyalgia, Guillain-Barré syndrome and Miller Fisher syndrome, which are all post-viral infections—an infection beforehand typically leads to those other long-lasting conditions. That is why I am compartmentalising the framework, but none the less, I take the hon. Member’s point about the infections happening in the first place.

“Health is everyone’s business” did not consult on long covid, or any other specific health condition for that matter; it looked at system-level measures to support employers and employees to manage any health condition or disability in the workplace. The measures that we are taking forward include providing greater clarity on employer and employee rights and responsibilities by developing a national digital information and advice service; working with the Health and Safety Executive to develop a set of clear and simple principles that employers would be expected to apply to support disabled people and those with long-term health conditions in the work environment; and increasing access to occupational health services, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises, which, as we know, are currently underserved.

As I said, although those measures are not long covid-specific, they are key steps in our effort to change the workplace culture around health and sickness management. That will benefit those suffering from long covid in the same way as those suffering from other longer-term health issues or disability.

As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) said, we are also responsible for flexible working. We know that that policy can be incredibly helpful to those suffering from many long-term health conditions, including long covid, as they seek to manage the symptoms, some of which we have heard about today, such as extreme tiredness, insomnia, depression and anxiety. Although flexible working does not provide the whole answer, it can be an important tool for employers and employees as they have discussions about how better to balance the demands of work and life, particularly for those managing long-term health conditions.

The consultation on flexible working introduced plans for a future call for evidence on ad hoc flexible working; we want to explore how non-contractual flexibility works in practice. I discussed that with the Flexible Working Taskforce in February. We will ensure that the role of ad hoc flexible working to support those with long covid and other health conditions—such as the menopause and endometriosis, which I have mentioned—is part of its considerations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Scully and Debbie Abrahams

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising flexible working. The Government have been clear about the benefits of flexible working for employers and their employees. The manifesto we stood on talked about an employment Bill, which we will bring forward when possible, to make flexible working the default. We look forward to introducing those measures, subject to consultation.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effectiveness of the benefit system for supporting disabled people.

Victims Strategy

Debate between Paul Scully and Debbie Abrahams

Thursday 11th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

Let me begin by echoing what has been said by Members, including my hon. Friend the Minister, about the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and the amazing work that she has done. She is championing her constituents, as her name suggests, and it is important that she does not become a victim in any sense. There should be no witch hunt surrounding any of us who do our jobs and champion our constituents.

I welcomed what the Minister said in introducing the victims strategy, which is an important piece of the jigsaw that includes the need to reduce crime overall, to secure justice for victims and to reassure people and make them feel safe. The serious violence strategy, the Offensive Weapons Bill, the forthcoming domestic abuse Bill and this victims strategy should be all of a piece rather than working in isolation.

If the Minister wants any advice on how to roll out the strategy and make it a really meaningful document, he could do worse than come down to the Churchill Room at 7 o’clock this evening. Coincidentally, a couple of my constituents, Ray and Vi Donovan, will be attending a dinner there. They run the Chris Donovan Trust. What happened to them was this. Chris was walking along the street with his brother one day. He was beaten up, left to die, run over and dragged by a car—murdered, 16 years ago.

Ray and Vi, who naturally experienced a lot of anger and horror at losing their child, have turned that horror, that anger and frustration, into an incredible charity. They actually met the perpetrators who served their sentence, and they now go out into prisons and schools and work on restorative justice. They realise that victims are not just the people who have lost loved ones, and that any serious crime such as murder creates any number of victims because people’s lives are written off.

Ray and Vi also work with other charities. Along with the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who is in the Chamber, I attended an awards ceremony that they hosted recently. They present awards to other small charities, typically run by the families of other victims of serious crime who have been murdered. They have taken that negative energy and turned it into something really positive to prevent people from going down the same path and creating more victims. One of the people to whom they awarded a prize was the Victims’ Commissioner for London, Claire Waxman, who had suffered a horrendous amount of abuse from a long-term stalker.

I have often spoken about domestic abuse in this place, and I am glad that the subject has arisen now. We must go further in ensuring that we support domestic abuse victims fully. A family member has gone through some harrowing times over the last few years because of her controlling, coercive partner. Fortunately, she did not have to be cross-examined, but that is not always the case, despite the Government’s best efforts. I know that many courts are working to try to separate entrances—certainly in the criminal courts people cannot be cross-examined by the alleged perpetrator, but in the family courts they can. Organisations such as Women’s Aid have given many examples of that.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman’s constituent has been affected by the fact that universal credit payments are made to only one member of the household, but that can make the position even worse for families in which domestic abuse is an issue. He might like to have a word with the Secretary of State, who does not seem to want to introduce split payments to this flawed process.

[Paul Scully]

I do not think that that applies in the case that I have mentioned, but the hon. Lady has made a very interesting point.

We need to do more to ensure that victims cannot be questioned by perpetrators, which, effectively, extends suffering for many years.

There have been more than 100 victims in London this year. We have seen victim after victim portrayed in photographs in the Evening Standard. That senseless loss of life is often, but not solely, a result of gang activities. It is important to remember these victims’ names, from Kyall Parnell, who was only 17 and who was stabbed in Tulse Hill on New Year’s Eve, to Sandra Zmijan, whose body was found in a back garden in west London only about three weeks ago, on 24 September.

Just this week I was walking through Victoria station on my way to Westminster, as I usually do on my daily commute, and saw members of the Metropolitan police and some family members and activists handing out leaflets and posters. They wanted to find one of the most wanted people, Shane O’Brien. He murdered someone three years ago, and we must not forget his victim’s name: Josh Hanson, who was murdered in Eastcote in Hillingdon three years ago. They are trying to find Shane O’Brien and bring him to justice, so that Josh Hanson’s family, who are victims as well, can have some justice. If anybody can help, the incident room can be reached on 0208 785 8099, or people can report via Crimestoppers. We need to look at all these things as part of a holistic solution in London and across the country.

That wider solution includes ensuring we can protect our police on the street. I am working closely, as our party’s vice-chairman for London, with Shaun Bailey, who is talking about putting 1,000 more police on the street, using lessons from New York, which is utilising artificial intelligence and technology to release police from certain activities and on to the frontline. But this is not just about money, although that is important—I know every London MP of every political hue calls for extra resource for the Met police; it is also about how that money is spent. The Met police have £110 million from Government—from the precept, and therefore from the Mayor as well. So this has come from right across the board: the Mayor has the money, and he has given it to the Met police, and now we have to make sure that they can use it effectively to recruit the policemen we need.

We must move on from that consideration, too, because by the time someone has a knife in their hand and a policemen has found them, it is too late. We need to reach these people far earlier—not at secondary school, but at primary school.

The victims strategy fits in well in the London knife crime context not just through the ability to give someone who has been a victim and is a member of a gang the emotional support they need, but by having a way of removing them from the situation that would allow them to enter into gang retribution, so that we can break the cycle. The victims strategy can be used as a method of breaking the cycle, too.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Paul Scully and Debbie Abrahams

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

May I just make these points? Then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

People on low incomes are often juggling to heat or eat, as we heard in this morning’s Westminster Hall debate on the bedroom tax. Being able to pay their rent is an increasing issue; 443,000 are currently affected. Having a secure, warm home with healthy, nutritious food are basic physiological needs. When these needs are not met, people’s health suffers both physically and mentally. This is particularly the case for children as they are developing. Being in work or well educated does not guarantee these essential needs; money does. Again, I make my key point: two thirds of children in poverty now are from working families.

The lack of evidence, to which my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) was alluding, is stark. Why was there no Government impact assessment of these proposals? We should look at the evidence from the United States, for example. It has been analysing the effects of its social security reforms, and that shows that programmes that focus specifically on parental employment failed; in fact, they had no effect or exacerbated children’s health issues. Conversely, programmes focused on supplementing the income of low-income families improved health.

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

Indicators are exactly that; they are not things that can be tackled, whereas this Bill seeks to refocus the Government position on the underlying causes and symptoms. Does the hon. Lady agree that far from being hidden, the figures that she seeks to include in this Bill will still be reported in the households below average income report?

[Debbie Abrahams]

The point here is about making the Government accountable for their policies that may in turn be affecting those measures.

I know the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) wanted to intervene, too.