Online Harms

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

I agree. Some of those matters should be addressed in the Bill and some outside it, but my hon. Friend, whom I commend for all his work, particularly on pensions fraud and investment fraud, is absolutely right that as the balance in the types of crimes has shifted, the ways we resource ourselves and tool up to deal with them has to reflect that.

Could you give me an indication, Mr Dowd, of how many Members are speaking in this debate after me?

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

About eight to 10.

[Damian Hinds]

I shall accelerate in that case. The third area I want to mention, from my previous role as Security Minister, is disinformation. I welcome what is called the bridge that has been built between the Online Safety Bill and the National Security Bill to deal specifically with state-sponsored disinformation, which has become a tool of war. That probably does not surprise anybody, but I am afraid that, for states with a hostile intention, it can become, and is, a tool in peacetime. Quite often, it is not necessarily even about spreading untruths—believe it or not—but just about trying to wind people up and make them dislike one another more in an election, referendum or whatever it may be. This is important work.

Health disinformation, which we were exercised about during the coronavirus pandemic, is slated to be on the list of so-called legal but harmful harms, so the Bill would also deal with that. That brings me to my central point about the hardest part of this Bill: the so-called legal but harmful harms. I suggest that we actually call them “harmful but legal”, because that better captures their essence, as our constituents would understand it. It is a natural reaction when hearing about the Online Safety Bill, which will deal with stuff that is legal, to say, “Well, why is there a proposed law going through the British Parliament that tries to deal with things that are, and will stay, legal? We have laws to give extra protection to children, but adults should be able to make their own choices. If you start to interfere with that, you risk fundamental liberties, including freedom of speech.” I agree with that natural reaction, but I suggest that we have to consider a couple of additional factors.

First, there is no hard line between adults and children in this context. There is not a 100%—or, frankly, even 50%—reliable way of being able to tell who is using the internet and whether they are above or below age 18. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), among others, has been round the loop many times looking at age verification and so-called age assurance. It is very difficult. That is why a couple of weeks ago a piece of Ofcom research came out that found 32%—a third—of eight to 17-year-old social media users appear to be over 18. That is why a couple of weeks ago a piece of Ofcom research came out that found 32%—a third—of eight to 17-year-old social media users appear to be over 18. Why is that? Because it is commonplace for someone to sign up to TikTok or Snapchat with the minimum age of 13 when they are 10. They must give an age above 13 to be let in. Let us say that that age limit was set at 14; that means that when they are 14, it thinks they are 18—and so it carries on, all the way through life.

[Damian Hinds]

I thank the hon. Lady; I think her point stands on its own.

The second additional factor I want to put forward, which may sound odd, is that in this context there is not a hard line between what is legal and what is not. I mentioned emoji abuse. I am not a lawyer, still less a drafter of parliamentary legislation—there are those here who are—but I suggest it will be very hard to legislate for what constitutes emoji abuse in racism. Take something such as extremism. Extremist material has always been available; it is just that it used to be available on photocopied or carbon-copied sheets of paper. It was probably necessary to go to some draughty hall somewhere or some backstreet bookshop in a remote part of London to access it, and very few people did. The difference now is that the same material is available to everyone if they go looking for it; sometimes it might come to them even if they do not go looking for it. I think the context here is different.

This debate—not the debate we are having today, but the broader debate—is sometimes conducted in terms that are just too theoretical. People sometimes have the impression that we will allow these companies to arbitrarily take down stuff that is legal but that they just do not like—stuff that does not fit with their view of the world or their politics. On the contrary, the way the Bill has been drafted means that it will require consistency of approach and protect free speech.

I am close to the end of my speech, but let us pause for a moment to consider the sorts of things we are talking about. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) made a written ministerial statement setting out an indicative list of the priority harms for adults. They are abuse and harassment—not mere disagreement, but abuse and harassment—the circulation of real or manufactured intimate images without the subject’s consent; material that promotes self-harm; material that promotes eating disorders; legal suicide content; and harmful health content that is demonstrably false, such as urging people to drink bleach to cure cancer.

I suggest that when people talk about free speech, they do not usually mean those kinds of things; they normally mean expressing a view or being robust in argument. We have the most oppositional, confrontational parliamentary democracy in the world, and we are proud of our ability to do better, to make better law and hold people to account through that process, but that is not the same thing as we are talking about here. Moreover, there is a misconception that the Bill would ban those things; in fact, the Bill states only that a service must have a policy about how it deals with them. A helpful Government amendment makes it clear that that policy could be, “Well, we’re not dealing with it at all. We are allowing content on these things.”

There are also empowerment tools—my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) may say more about that later in relation to anonymity—but we want users to be in control. If there is this contractual relationship, where it is clearly set out what is allowed in this space and someone signs up to it, I suggest that enhances their freedoms as well as their rights.

I recognise that there are concerns, and it is right to consider them. It may be that the Bill can be tightened to reassure everybody, while keeping these important protections. That might be around the non-priority areas, which perhaps people consider to be too broad. There might also be value in putting the list of priority harms in the Bill, so that people are not concerned that this could balloon.

As I said at the start, the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, knows more about this than probably any other living human being. He literally works tirelessly on it and is immensely motivated, for all the right reasons. I have probably not said anything in the past 10 minutes that he did not already know. I know it is a difficult job to square the circle and consider these tensions.

My main message to the Minister and the Government is, with all the work that he and others have done, please let us get on with it. Let us get the Bill into law as soon as possible. If changes need to be made to reassure people, then absolutely let us make them, but most of all, let us keep up the momentum.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I would not have dreamed of interfering in your largesse, but I am pleased that you interfered in your own. Thank you very much.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this important debate. Many people will be watching who have taken a keen interest in the Online Safety Bill, which is an important piece of legislation, and the opportunities it offers to protect people from harmful, dangerous online content. I also welcome the Minister to his place. I am sure he will listen carefully to all the contributions.

My interest in the Bill is constituency based. I was approached by the family of a young man from my constituency called Joe Nihill, a popular former Army cadet who sadly took his own life at the age of 23 after accessing harmful online content related to suicide. Joe’s mother Catherine and sister-in-law Melanie have run an inspiring campaign, working with the Samaritans to ensure that the law is changed. In the note Joe left before he sadly took his life, he referred to such online content. One of his parting wishes was that what happened to him would not happen to others.

I want to ensure that the Minister and the Government take full opportunity of the Bill, so let me talk briefly about two amendments that might strengthen it. We want to protect people of all ages, and ensure that smaller online platforms as well as the larger ones are covered. Two related amendments have been tabled: amendment 159 by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and proposed new clause 16 by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). I know that they are backed by the Samaritans and the inspiring campaigners from my constituency.

Amendment 159, relating to protecting people of all ages, addresses the point that clearly harmful suicide and self-harm content can be accessed by over-18s, and vulnerable people are not limited to those under 18 years of age. Joe Nihill was 23 when he sadly took his own life after accessing such content.

As it is currently drafted, the Bill’s impact assessment states that of the platforms in scope

“less than 0.001% are estimated to meet the Category 1 and 2A thresholds”.

It is estimated that only 20 platforms will be required to fulfil category 1 obligations. If the Bill is enacted in its current form, unamended, then smaller platforms, where some of the most harmful suicide and self-harm content can be found, will not even need to consider the risk that any harmful but legal content on their site poses to adult users. Amendment 159 presents a real opportunity for the Government to close a loophole and further improve the legislation to ensure that people of all ages are protected.

The issue is so relevant. Between 2011 and 2015, 151 people who died by suicide were known to have visited websites that encouraged suicide or shared information about methods of harm, and 82% of those people were over 25. The Government must retain regulation of harmful but legal content, but they should extend the coverage of the Bill to smaller platforms where some of the most harmful suicide and self-harm content can be found. I urge the Government to carefully consider and adopt amendment 159.

Finally on closing all the related loopholes in the Bill, new clause 16 tabled by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden would create a new communications offence of sending a message encouraging or assisting another person to self-harm. That offence is crucial to ensuring that the most harmful self-harm content is addressed on all platforms. As the Minister knows, Samaritans was pleased that the Government agreed in principle to create a new offence of encouraging or assisting self-harm earlier this year. That new offence needs to be created in time to be part of this legislation from the outset. We do not want to miss this opportunity. The Law Commission has made recommendations in this regard.

I urge the Government to make sure that the Bill takes all possible opportunities. I know that the Minister is working hard on that, as the right hon. Member for East Hampshire said. I plead with the Minister to accept amendment 159 and new clause 16, so that we do not miss the opportunity to ensure that people over 18 are protected by the legislation and that even the smaller platforms are covered.

The Bill, which will come back before the House next week, is a historic opportunity, and people across the country have taken a close interest in it. My two constituents, Catherine and Melanie, are very keen for the Government not to miss this opportunity. I know that the Minister takes it very seriously and I look forward to his response, which I hope will include reassuring words that the amendments on over-18s and smaller platforms will both be adopted when the Bill returns next week.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

The Front-Bench speeches will begin at 3.28 pm and quite a number of people still wish to speak. I will not impose a formal limit, but if Members could keep to three to four minutes that would be helpful.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order. Regrettably, I now have to impose a formal three-minute limit on speeches.

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[Simon Fell]

I thank my right hon. Friend for clarifying that for me—although I would be better off now had I been on the other side of the fence.

Fraud is at epidemic levels. Which? research recently found that six in 10 people who have been victims of fraud suffered significant mental health harms as a result. I use this example repeatedly in this place. In my past life I met, through a safeguarding group, an old lady who accessed the world through her landline telephone. She was scammed out of £20,000 or so through that phone, and then disconnected from the rest of the world afterwards because she simply could not trust that phone when it rang anymore.

We live in an increasingly interconnected world where we are pushing our services online. As we are doing that we cannot afford to be disconnecting people from the online world and taking away from them the services we are opening up to them. That is why it is essential to have vital protections against fraud and fraudulent adverts on some of the larger social platforms and search engines. I know it is out of the scope of this debate but, on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), that is also why it is crucial to fund the law enforcement agencies that go after the people responsible.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire is right: banks have a financial motivation to act on fraud. They are losing money. They have the incentive. Where that motivation is not there, and where there is a disincentive for organisations to act, as is especially the case with internet advertising, we have to move forward with the legislation and remove those disincentives.

On harms, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire is right to mention the harmful but legal. We have to act on this stuff and we have to do it quickly. We cannot stray away from the problems that currently exist online. I serve on the Home Affairs Committee and we have seen and examined the online hate being directed at footballers; the platforms are not acting on it, despite it being pointed out to them.

When it comes to disinformation and small, high-harm platforms—

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Luke Evans.

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[Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, Mr Dowd. I follow a number of excellent speeches. The most excellent was from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). He said many of the things that I would say, which is just as well given the time constraint I face.

Many people have said that the Bill will be back on Tuesday. I do not expect the Minister to confirm the business for next week, but if it does not come back next Tuesday, we will have a difficulty. The delay to the Bill must be either because people in the Government believe that it can be made perfect, or because they believe that it can be made less difficult. Neither of those two things are possible.

The Bill will always be imperfect. However hard many of us have worked to get it there, it will never be perfect, and it needs to be brought forward anyway. If people think the Bill’s fundamental choices will become easier by the passage of time, they are fundamentally mistaken. This will always be a difficult set of choices, but those choices need to be made. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said, when it comes to the most contentious part of the Bill—which is only about eight, nine or maybe 10 clauses of 190 or so—on what we shall now refer to as “harmful but legal” material, three things need to be understood by those who believe that that part of it is unacceptable.

First, as others have said, we should start with what the Bill actually says—always a good place to start. There is an important balancing duty on all platforms to protect freedom of speech, in addition to the duties they have to protect others from harm.

Secondly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said, the platform is required to describe how it will handle harmful material; it is not required to remove that material automatically. That is not well understood. I would add that if the Government are to do any more work on the Bill, a definition of what is meant by harmful would be helpful and necessary.

We must understand that we regulate in other environments beyond the confines of the criminal law. The objective of this legislation has always been to create a more level playing field between the online world and every other world. We should remind ourselves that that is where the Bill starts and continues.

Thirdly, as my right hon. Friend also said, the status quo does not restrict the platforms from taking down whatever they like now. Anyone worried about freedom of speech should worry about the situation that we have today, not the situation that we will have under this legislation.

The fundamental point is that we have to get on with it. People have talked about the Bill being world leading, and it is, but we can only lead if we go first. Many others are also developing legislation. If we do not succeed in being world leading, we will miss an opportunity to set the standard in this legislation and regulation. Most importantly, we will let down our own citizens, who have a right to be kept safer online than they are.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

The right hon. Member for East Hampshire has indicated that he recuses himself from his closing remarks. I call Kirsty Blackman.

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[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Minister, can I just say that there may be votes very shortly? That means that we will be suspending the sitting and coming back, so if you can—

[Damian Collins]

Wrap it up in the next—

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Preferably.

[Damian Collins]

I will just touch on a couple of other points that have been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) and other Members raised the point about the abuse of footballers. The abuse suffered by England footballers after the final of the European championship is a very good example. Some people have been charged and prosecuted for what they posted. It was a known-about risk; it was avoidable. The platform should have done more to stop it. This Bill will make sure that they do.

That shows that we have many offences where there is already a legal threshold, and we want them to be included in the regulatory systems. For online safety standards, it is important that the minimum thresholds are based on our laws. In the debate on “legal but harmful”, one of the key points to consider, and one that many Members have brought up, is what we base the thresholds on. To base them on the many offences that we already have written into law is, I think, a good starting point. We understand what those thresholds are. We understand what illegal activity is. We say to the platforms, “Your safety standards must, at a minimum, be at that level.” Platforms do go further in their terms of service. Most terms of service, if properly enforced, would deal with most of the sorts of content that we have spoken about. That is why, if the platforms are to enforce their terms of service properly, the provisions on traceability and accountability are so important. I believe that that will capture the offences that we need.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) rightly said—if I may paraphrase slightly—that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There will always be new things that we wish to add and new offences that we have not yet thought about that we need to include, and the structure of the Bill creates the framework for that. In the future, Parliament can create new offences that can form part of the schedule of priority illegal offences. On priority harms, I would say that that is the stuff that the platforms have to proactively look for. Anything illegal could be considered illegal online, and the regulators could take action against it.

Let me finish by thanking all the Members here, including my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), another former Minister. A very knowledgeable and distinguished group of Members have taken part in this debate. Finally, I thank the officials at the Department. Until someone is actually in the Department, they can never quite know what work is being done—that is the nature of Government—but I know how personally dedicated those officials are to the Bill. They have all gone the extra mile in the work they are doing for it. For their sakes and all of ours, I want to make sure that we pass it as soon as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered online harms.