Online Safety Bill

Debate between Priti Patel and Paul Scully

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

We will certainly work with others to address that, and if there is a loophole, we will seek to act, because we want to ensure—

[Priti Patel]

rose—

[Paul Scully]

I will not give way for the moment. Oh, actually I will.

[Priti Patel]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He was commenting on my earlier remarks about new clause 2 and the specifics around a timetable. I completely recognise that much of this work is under development. In my remarks, I asked for a timetable on engagement with the tech firms as well as transparency to this House on the progress being made on developing the regulations around criminal liability. It is important that this House sees that, and that we follow every single stage of that process.

[Paul Scully]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. We want to have as many conversations as possible in this area with Members on all sides, and I hope we can be as transparent as possible in that operation. We have already started the conversation. The Secretary of State and I met some of the big tech companies just yesterday to talk about exactly this area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover, my right hon. Friends the Members for South Holland and The Deepings and for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and others are absolutely right to highlight concerns about illegal small boat crossings and the harm that can be caused to people crossing in dangerous situations. The use of highly dangerous methods to enter this country, including unseaworthy, small or overcrowded boats and refrigerated lorries, presents a huge challenge to us all. Like other forms of serious and organised crime, organised immigration crime endangers lives, has a corrosive effect on society, puts pressure on border security resources and diverts money from our economy.

As the Prime Minister has said, stopping these crossings is one of the Government’s top priorities for the next year. The situation needs to be resolved and we will not hesitate to take action wherever that can have the most effect, including through this Bill. Organised crime groups continue to facilitate most migrant journeys to the UK and have no respect for human life, exploiting vulnerable migrants, treating them as commodities and knowingly putting people in life-threatening situations. Organised crime gangs are increasingly using social media to facilitate migrant crossings and we need to do more to prevent and disrupt the crimes facilitated through these platforms. We need to share best practice, improve our detection methods and take steps to close illegal crossing routes as the behaviour and methods of organised crime groups evolve.

However, amendment 82 risks having unforeseen consequences for the Bill. It could bring into question the meaning of the term “content” elsewhere in the Bill, with unpredictable implications for how the courts and companies would interpret it. Following constructive discussions with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, I can now confirm that in order to better tackle illegal immigration encouraged by organised gangs, the Government will add section 2 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to the list of priority offences. Section 2 makes it an offence to arrange or facilitate the travel of another person, including through recruitment, with a view to their exploitation.

We will also add section 24 of the Immigration Act to the priority offences list in schedule 7. Although the offences in section 2 cannot be carried out online, paragraph 33 of the schedule states the priority illegal content includes the inchoate offences relating to the offences listed. Therefore aiding, abetting, counselling and conspiring in those offences by posting videos of people crossing the channel that show the activity in a positive light could be an offence that is committed online and therefore fall within what is priority illegal content. The result of this amendment would therefore be that platforms would have to proactively remove that content. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and my right hon. Friends the Members for South Holland and The Deepings and for Maidenhead for raising this important issue and I would be happy to offer them a meeting with my officials to discuss the drafting of this amendment ahead of it being tabled in the other place.

We recognise the strength of feeling on the issue of harmful conversion practices and remain committed to protecting people from these practices and making sure that they can live their lives free from the threat of harm or abuse. We have had constructive engagement with my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) on her amendment 84, which seeks to prevent children from seeing harmful online content on conversion practices. It is right that this issue is tackled through a dedicated and tailored legislative approach, which is why we are announcing today that the Government will publish a draft Bill to set out a proposed approach to banning conversion practices. This will apply to England and Wales. The Bill will protect everybody, including those targeted on the basis of their sexuality or being transgender. The Government will publish the Bill shortly and will ask for pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee in this parliamentary Session.

This is a complex area and pre-legislative scrutiny exists to help ensure that any Bill introduced to Parliament does not cause unintended consequences. It will also ensure that the Bill benefits from stakeholder expertise and input from parliamentarians. The legislation must not, through a lack of clarity, harm the growing number of children and young adults experiencing gender-related distress through inadvertently criminalising or chilling legitimate conversations that parents or clinicians may have with children. This is an important issue, and it needs the targeted and robust approach that a dedicated Bill would provide.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Priti Patel and Paul Scully

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I was about to speak to the programme motion, Mr Speaker, but you have outlined exactly what I was going to say, so thank you for that—I am glad to get the process right.

I am delighted to bring the Online Safety Bill back to the House for the continuation of Report stage. I start by expressing my gratitude to colleagues across the House for their contributions to the Bill through pre-legislative scrutiny and before the summer recess, and for their engagement with me since I took office as the Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy.

The concept at the heart of this legislation is simple: tech companies, like those in every other sector, must take responsibility for the consequences of their business decisions. As they continue to offer users the latest innovations, they must consider the safety of their users as well as profit. They must treat their users fairly and ensure that the internet remains a place for free expression and robust debate. As Members will be aware, the majority of the Bill was discussed on Report before the summer recess. Our focus today is on the provisions that relate to the regulator’s power and the criminal law reforms. I will take this opportunity also to briefly set out the further changes that the Government recently committed to making later in the Bill’s passage.

Let me take the Government amendments in turn. The Government’s top priority for this legislation has always been the protection of children. We recognise that the particularly abhorrent and pernicious nature of online child sexual exploitation and abuse—CSEA—demands the most robust response possible. Throughout the passage of the Bill, we have heard evidence of the appalling harm that CSEA causes. Repeatedly, we heard calls for strong incentives for companies to do everything they can to innovate and make safety technologies their priority, to ensure that there is no place for offenders to hide online. The Bill already includes a specific power to tackle CSEA, which allows Ofcom, subject to safeguards, to require tech companies to use accredited technology to identify and remove illegal CSEA content in public and private communications. However, we have seen in recent years how the online world has evolved to allow offenders to reach their victims and one another in new ways.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I am listening to my hon. Friend with great interest on this aspect of child sexual abuse and exploitation, which is a heinous crime. Will he go on to speak about how the Ofcom role will interact with law enforcement, in particular the National Crime Agency, when dealing with these awful crimes?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

Because if those companies do not, they will get a fine of up to £18 million or 10% of their global turnover, whichever is higher. As we are finding with Twitter, there is also a commercial impetus, because advertisers are fleeing that platform as they see the uncertainty being caused by those changes. A lot of things are moving here to ensure that safety is paramount; it is not just for the Government to act in this area. All we are doing is making sure that those companies enforce their own terms and conditions.

[Priti Patel]

This point is important: we are speaking about terrorism and counter-terrorism and the state’s role in preventing terrorist activity. For clarity, will the Minister update the House later on the work that takes place between his Department and the platforms and, importantly, between the Home Office and the security services. In particular, some specialist work takes place with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which looks at online terrorist and extremist content. That work can ensure that crimes are prevented and that the right kinds of interventions take place.

[Paul Scully]

My right hon. Friend talks with experience from her time at the Home Office. She is absolutely right that the Bill sets a framework to adhere to the terms and conditions of the platforms. It also sets out the ability for the services to look at things such as terrorism and CSEA, which I have been talking about—for example, through the evidence of photos being exchanged. The Bill is not re-examining and re-prosecuting the interaction between all the agencies, however, because that is apparent for all to see.

New clauses 11 and 12 bring those powers in line with the wider safety duties by making it clear that the tools may seek to proactively prevent CSEA content from appearing on a service, rather than focusing only on identification and removal after the fact. That will ensure the best possible protection for children, including on services that offer livestreaming.

The safeguards around those powers remain as strong as before to protect user privacy. Any tools that are developed will be accredited using a rigorous assessment process to ensure that they are highly accurate before the company is asked to use them. That will avoid any unnecessary intrusions into user privacy by minimising the risk that the tools identify false positives.

Crucially, the powers do not represent a ban on or seek to undermine any specific type of technology or design, such as end-to-end encryption. They align with the UK Government’s view that online privacy and cyber-security must be protected, but that technological changes should not be implemented in a way that diminishes public safety.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will give way first to one of my predecessors.

[Paul Scully]

If my hon. Friend will bear with me—I need to make some progress—I think that will be teased out today and in Committee, should the Bill be recommitted, as we amend the clauses relating directly to what she is talking about, and then as the Bill goes through the other place.

[Priti Patel]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will give way a final time before I finish.

[Priti Patel]

I am grateful to the Minister, who has taken a number of interventions. I fully agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage). This is a grey area and has consistently been so—many Members have given their views on that in previous stages of the Bill. Will the Minister come back in the later stages on tackling violence against women and girls, and show how the Bill will incorporate key aspects of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and tie up with the criminal justice system and the work of the forthcoming victims Bill? We cannot look at these issues in isolation—I see that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) is also on the Front Bench. Rather, they all have to be put together in a golden thread of protecting victims, making sure that people do not become victims, and ensuring that we go after the perpetrators—we must not forget that at all. The Minister will not be able to answer that now, but I would ask him to please do so in the latter stages.