Online Harms Consultation

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s overall support. On when this will be coming, the legislation will be brought before the House in 2021. He asked about economic crime, and other Members also raised that. [Interruption.] Well, to the extent that this comes from user-generated content, of course it will fall within scope, but if we seek to make this Bill deal with every harm on the internet, it will quickly become very unwieldy. Most fraud comes as a result of activities such as online advertising. We must try to have some sort of a scope around this.

The hon. Gentleman asked why we are delaying taking powers. We are not delaying taking powers: from the get-go, these enormous fines of up to 10% of global turnover will be imposed. If that is still not effective, we will have taken the power to use criminal sanctions for senior managers, and it will simply be a case of passing secondary legislation to bring that into force. As it is such a big step to have criminal liability, if we can avoid criminal liability I would like to do so. I believe the fines will be sufficient, but if they are not, then we will have taken those powers.

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

I welcome these robust proposals, particularly the focus on children, but they need to lead to robust legislation and robust practice. I particularly welcome the referral to the Law Commission about self-harm sites; will my right hon. Friend make sure they include so-called self-help sites on eating disorders, which are nothing of the sort and just promote those sorts of behaviour?

May I also return to the point of the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) about anonymity, because it is key? Whether it is hate speech, extremism, antisemitism or grooming sites, the perpetrators hide behind anonymity. When they get taken down, they reappear under a different name. Is it not possible for them to have to reveal their identity, and prove their identity to the platform providers only, so it does not involve whistleblowers revealing themselves, so that they cannot get away with it, they cannot keep reposting, and they can be referred to the police where necessary?

[Oliver Dowden]

I hear my hon. Friend’s points about anonymity, and, as he said, they were made very powerfully by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). We are seeking to get the balance right so that we protect victims of domestic violence and others who rely on anonymity; of course, there are the law enforcement powers, but we genuinely keep an open mind, and if we can find a way of doing this that is proportionate, we will continue to consider whether there are measures we can take as we go through pre-legislative scrutiny. We are grappling with that challenge.