Online Safety Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda). I congratulate him on his moving tribute to his constituent’s son. It is a terrible story.

This Bill will be life changing for many, but I am sorry to say that it has taken far too long to get to this point. The Government promised in 2015 to end children’s exposure to harmful online material, and in 2017 they committed to making the UK the safest place for children to be online. This morning, as I waited in the freezing cold on the station platform for a train that was late, a fellow passenger spoke to me about the Bill. He told me how happy he is that action is, at last, under way to protect children from the dangers of the internet. As a father of three young children, he told me that the internet is one of his greatest concerns.

I am afraid that, at the moment, the internet is as lawless as the wild west, and children are viewing images of abuse, addiction and self-harm on a daily basis. As others have said, the stats are shocking. Around 3,500 online child sex offences are recorded by police each month, and each month more than a million UK children access online pornography. It has been said that, in the time it takes to make a cup of tea, a person who joins certain popular social media platforms will have been introduced to suicidal content, “Go on, just kill yourself. You know you want to.”

I am incredibly proud that our Government have introduced a Bill that will change lives for the better, and I hope and expect it will be a “best in class” for other Governments to do likewise. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and her predecessors for their ruthless focus on making the online world a safer place. Ultimately, improving lives is what every MP is here to do, and on both sides of the House we should take great delight that, at last, this Bill will have its remaining Commons stages today.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) and for Stone (Sir William Cash) for their determination to give the Bill even more teeth, and I sincerely thank the Secretary of State for her willingness not only to listen but to take action.

New clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friends, will not be pressed because the Secretary of State has agreed to table a Government amendment when the Bill goes to the other place. New clause 2 sought to create a backstop so that, if a senior manager in a tech firm knowingly allows harm to be caused to a child that results in, for example their abuse or suicide, the manager should be held accountable and a criminal prosecution, with up to two years in prison, should follow. I fully appreciate that many in the tech world say, first, that that will discourage people from taking on new senior roles and, secondly, that it will discourage inward investment in the UK tech sector. Those serious concerns deserve to be properly addressed.

First, with regard to the potential for senior tech staff to be unwilling to take on new roles where there is this accountability, I would argue that from my experience as City Minister in 2015 I can provide a good example of why that is an unnecessary concern. We were seeking to address the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and we established the possibility of criminal liability for senior financial services staff. It was argued at the time that that would be highly damaging to UK financial services and that people would be unwilling to take on directorships and risk roles. I think we can all see clearly that those concerns were unfounded. Some might even say, “Well, tech firms would say that, wouldn’t they?”. The likelihood of a criminal prosecution will always be low, but the key difference is that in the future tech managers, instead of waking up each day thinking only about business targets, will wake up thinking, “Have I done enough to protect children, as I meet my business targets?”. I am sure we can agree that that would be a very good thing.

Secondly, there are those who argue that inward investment to the UK’s tech sector would be killed off by this move, and that would indeed be a concern. The UK tech sector leads in Europe, and at the end of 2022 it retained its position as the main challenger to the US and China. Fast-growing UK tech companies have continued to raise near-record levels of investment—more than France and Germany combined. The sector employs 3 million people across the UK and continues to thrive. So it is absolutely right that Ministers take seriously the concerns of these major employers.

However, I think we can look to Ireland as a good example of a successful tech hub where investment has not stopped as a result of strong accountability laws. The Irish Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022 carries a similar criminal responsibility to the one proposed in new clause 2, yet Ireland remains a successful tech hub in the European Union.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is rightly dispelling all these scare stories we have heard. One brief we had warned that if new clause 2 were to go through, it would portend the use of upload filters, where the system sweeps in and removes content before it has been posted. That would be a good thing, would it not? We need social media companies to be investing in more moderators in order to be more aware of the harmful stuff before it goes online and starts to do the damage. This should lead to more investment, but in the right part—in the employees of these social media companies. Facebook—Meta, as it now is—made $39 billion profit in 2021, so they are not short of money to do that, are they?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course, as I have said, tech managers who wake up trying to meet business targets will now look at meeting them in a way that also protects children. That is a good thing.

We will look back on this period since the real rise of social media and simply not be able to believe what millions of children have been subjected to every day. As the Government’s special adviser on early years, it seems to me that all the work we are doing to give every baby the best start for life will be in vain if we then subject them during their vulnerable childhood years to the daily onslaught of appalling vitriol, violence, abuse and sordid pornography that is happening right now. It is little wonder that the mental health of young people is so poor. So it is my hope that this Bill will truly support our attempts to build back better after the covid lockdown. The Government’s clear commitment to families and children, and the Prime Minister's own personal commitment to the vision for “The Best Start for Life” is apparent for all to see. Keeping children safe online will make a radical improvement to all their lives.