Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the impact on children. Important work on this has already been done and this Government have passed legislation on the design of services, which is known as the age-appropriate design code. In our report and in the Bill, we stress the importance of risk assessment by the regulator of the different services that are offered, and of the principles of safety by design, particularly in regard to services that are accessed by children and products that are designed for and used by children. I spoke earlier about the regulator’s power to seek data and information from companies about younger users and to challenge companies whose platform policy is that those under 13 cannot access their content and ask whether they have research showing that they know people under that age are using it but allow them to keep their accounts open anyway. Keeping children off the systems that are not designed for them, and from which they are supposed to be deliberately excluded, could be an important role for the regulator to take on.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

I add my own party’s grateful thanks to the Committee for the diligent and thorough way in which it has gone about compiling the report, and we hope to see that feed through into the legislation that eventually comes forward. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, with the enhanced role that is envisaged for Ofcom, it is all the more important that, whoever heads Ofcom, the regulator can act as a genuinely independent regulator?

[Damian Collins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We are also grateful to the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson), who is a member of the Committee. He is not in his place today. The question of the next chair of Ofcom was not one that the Committee was asked to consider. The Government will run a process, and the DCMS Committee will hold a hearing for the pre-appointment scrutiny of the new candidates. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that online safety will be a big job for Ofcom. The world will be watching, and we have to get the legislation right and ensure that Ofcom has the resources it needs to do the job. It believes that it has, and that it has the powers to do the job, but it should be an ongoing role for this House to scrutinise that process and ensure that it is being run effectively.