Online Safety Bill

Debate between Siobhan Baillie and Maria Miller

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Siobhan Baillie]

I am interested in that intervention, but I fear it would lead us into a very long discussion and I want to keep my comments focused on my amendment. However, it would be interesting to hear from the Minister in response to that point, because it is a huge topic for debate.

On the point about whether someone is real or not real online, I believe passionately that not only famous people or those who can afford it should be able to show that they are a real and verified person. I say, “Roll out the blue ticks.”—or the equivalents—and not just to make the social media performs more money; as we have seen, we need it as a safety mechanism and a personal responsibility mechanism.

All the evidence and endless polling show that the public want to know who is and who is not real online, and it does not take rocket science to understand why. Dealing with faceless, anonymous accounts is very scary and anonymous abusers are terrifying. Parents are worried that they do not know who their children are speaking to, and anonymous, unverified accounts cannot be traced if details are not held.

That is before we get to how visible verification can help to tackle fraud. We should empower people to avoid fake accounts. We know that people are less likely to engage with an unverified account, and it would make it easy to catch scammers. Fraud was the most common form of crime in 2022, with 41% of all crimes being fraud, 23% of all reported fraud being initiated on social media and 80% of fraud being cyber-related. We can imagine just how fantastically clever the scams will become through AI.

Since we started this process, tech companies have recognised the value of identity verification to the public, so much so that they now sell it on Twitter as blue ticks, and the Government understand the benefits of identity verification options. The Government have done a huge amount of work on that. I thank them for agreeing to two of the three pillars of my campaign, and I believe we can get there on visibility; I know from discussions with Government that Ofcom will be looking carefully at that.

Making things simple for social media users is incredibly important. For the user verification provisions in this Bill to fulfil their potential and prevent harm, including illegal harm, we believe that users need to be able to see who is and is not verified—that is, who is a real person—and all the evidence says that that is what the public wants.

While Ministers in this place and the other place have resisted putting visible verification on the face of the Bill, I am grateful to the Government for their work on this. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, we are reassured that the Bill as now worded gives Ofcom the powers to do what the public wants and what we are suggesting through codes and guidance. We hope that Ofcom will consider the role of anonymous, inauthentic and non-verified accounts as it prepares its register of risks relating to illegal content and in its risk profiles.

[Dame Maria Miller]

I pay tribute to the way my hon. Friend has focused on this issue through so many months and years. Does she agree that, in light of the assurances that she has had from the Minister, this is just the sort of issue that either a stand-alone committee or some kind of scrutiny group could keep an eye on? If those guidelines do not work as the Minister is hoping, the action she has suggested will need to be taken.

[Siobhan Baillie]

Absolutely. Given the fast nature of social media and the tech world, and how quickly they adapt—often for their own benefit, sadly—I think that a committee with that focus could work.

To wrap up, I thank MPs from across the House, and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your grace today. I have had help from my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in particular, for which I am very grateful. In the other place, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Stevenson, Baroness Morgan, Baroness Fall and Baroness Wyld have all been absolutely excellent in pushing through these matters. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says, and thank everybody for their time.

International Women’s Day

Debate between Siobhan Baillie and Maria Miller

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered International Women’s Day.

May I say how great it is to see you in the Chair for this now annual event on the Floor of the House of Commons, Madam Deputy Speaker? I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting us this time, and also members of the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament, who yet again proposed the debate.

It is a great privilege to be able to open today’s debate. I will start by recognising the incredible achievements of every single female Member of Parliament in the House of Commons and every female parliamentarian, not just in this Chamber but at the other end as well. I have been fortunate to have so many women helping me throughout my life: family, friends, work colleagues and fellow parliamentarians. I would particularly like to say how inspired I am by my colleagues on both sides of the House—their tenacity, their ability to make change happen and their resilience, getting anything that gets in their way out of the way so that they can get things done. I salute them all for what they have already achieved, and for what they will go on to achieve in the future.

I pay a particularly fond tribute to two women in my party: my right hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest (Dame Eleanor Laing) and for Maidenhead (Mrs May). Both have gone out of their way to make sure that they encourage women in my party to be the best they can be. It would not be proper to not also remember the late Cheryll Gillan. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] On the Conservative side of the House, she was the mother of our party, and we miss her greatly. She was an amazing colleague.

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) is one of my inspirations in this House, but I think it is really important that we are able to talk openly about how much respect we have for colleagues across the House. I can see a number of women on the Opposition Benches whose work I have followed, not only since I have been in this place, but before I became an MP. I remind everybody that, as much as we see the ding-dongs on the tellybox, a lot of us get on and are trying to make big changes here together.

[Dame Maria Miller]

That is an excellent friend— I mean that is an excellent comment from my hon. Friend, and she is absolutely right. I should at this stage point out that there are a couple of us on the Government Benches who have not slept overnight, so please forgive us, Madam Deputy Speaker, if we stumble over our words. [Interruption.] No, a lot tamer than that; we flew back on the red-eye from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.