Social Media and Health

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The regulation of online harms will indeed be statutory. As I said, we are in the middle of a consultation on how, rather than whether, to put that in place. I am sure the hon. Lady will want to feed back, although I know her SNP colleagues in the Scottish Government in Edinburgh have been kept abreast of developments.

The hon. Lady raises complacency and financial resources. I will address both points. She is absolutely right that part of the problem is a complacency about some killer diseases, partly because we have hardly known them in this country for generations. As I said in my statement, measles is a horrible disease and a killer; it is deeply unpleasant. So, too, is rubella. Rubella might be hardly noticed by a pregnant woman. There might be a rash for three or four days which comes and goes, but the impact on the baby is permanent and very, very serious. On measles, rubella and other diseases, we have to be absolutely clear with the public about the consequences not only for their children but, even worse, for vulnerable children and adults who, maybe because they are immunosuppressed or very young, cannot have the vaccination. Their lives are directly threatened by a parent who chooses not to vaccinate. We need to be very clear and stark about that.

The hon. Lady mentions that the social media companies have contributed to Samaritans. That was Samaritans’ ask for this stage of putting together the organisation and experts it needs to provide clarity on the boundary of what is and is not acceptable in this space. I would, of course, be perfectly prepared to go and ask for more if more is needed. What is more, we are bringing forward a digital services tax. Historically, the global tax system has not worked well in taxing such companies fairly, because of the nature of how they make their money. We have worked for years to try to get a global consensus on how to tax them. We are now clear that we will bring forward the tax next year in the UK, regardless of whether we can get global consensus.

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

I applaud the Secretary of State for taking this initiative, and I certainly endorse the comments about the good of vaccination. However, I hope that the warm words of the social media companies that he recounted are matched by actions, because I am afraid that that is not the experience of the Home Affairs Committee, which again saw a woeful performance from the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube representatives who appeared before us last week.

Is the Secretary of State aware that it is not only a question of taking down or not allowing content on which those companies are not doing their job properly, but of the algorithms that they use actively promoting more extreme versions of what people may be searching for, whether that is material on the extreme right wing, terrorism, radicalisation or self-harm? Is he convinced that those companies will actually put their considerable money where he thinks their mouths are and make sure that serious interventions are made to stop this stuff being promoted to some of our most vulnerable citizens?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is a man after my own heart on this. Am I convinced? I am convinced that social media companies have committed to it, and it is our job to keep them to those commitments. That is why I have pushed for a long time for a statutory regulator in this space, and I am delighted that the Government are bringing one forward.

For years, we in the House asked social media companies to do something, and there was an argument that, because they are global, we cannot really impact how their algorithms work. That is just rubbish. We are the legislator for this country—we set the rules, and we have a big role in setting the norms and expectations of what happens here. Just because a platform is global does not mean that it can be outside the rule of law of this country, so we will legislate in this space, and there will be a regulator that will be able precisely to keep track of those commitments and make sure that they are followed up. Having said that, the last two meetings have been positive, and we have seen changes as a result. What we have not yet seen is all this content being removed, so there is clearly a long way to go.