Online Safety Bill

Debate between Paul Scully and Rehman Chishti

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

It is important that we tackle this in a number of ways. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and I spoke earlier, and I will come to some of what he will outline. It is important that Ofcom recognises the technologies that are available and—with the Children’s Commissioner as one of the statutory consultees—liaises with the social media platforms, and the agencies, to ensure that there are codes of practice that work, and that we get this absolutely right. It is about enforcing the terms and conditions of the companies and being able to produce the evidence and track the exchanges, as I will outline later, for the agency to use for enforcement.

With the rapid developments in technology, on occasions there will be no existing accredited technology available that will satisfactorily mitigate the risks. Similarly, tech companies might be able to better design solutions that integrate more easily with their services than those that are already accredited. The new regulatory framework must incentivise tech companies to ensure that their safety measures keep pace with the evolving threat, and that they design their services to be safe from the outset. It is for these reasons that the Government have tabled the amendments that we are discussing.

New clauses 11 and 12 establish options for Ofcom when deploying its powers under notices to deal with terrorism content and CSEA content. These notices will empower Ofcom to require companies to use accredited technology to identify and remove illegal terrorism and CSEA content or to prevent users from encountering that content or, crucially, to use their best endeavours to develop or to source technology to tackle CSEA. That strikes the right balance of supporting the adoption of new technology, while ensuring that it does not come at the expense of children’s physical safety.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Terrorism is often linked to non-violent extremism, which feeds into violent extremism and terrorism. How does the Bill define extremism? Previous Governments failed to define it, although it is often linked to terrorism.

[Paul Scully]

This Bill links with other legislation, and obviously the agencies. We do not seek to redefine extremism where those definitions already exist. As we expand on the changes that we are making, we will first ensure that anything that is already illegal goes off the table. Anything that is against the terms and conditions of those platforms that are hosting that content must not be seen. I will come to the safety net and user protection later.