Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Loughton and Tracey Crouch

Thursday 16th March 2017 Commons Chamber

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

In a woeful performance before the Home Affairs Committee earlier this week, managers from Google, Twitter and Facebook admitted that they do virtually nothing proactively to reduce hate speech, extremism or child abuse from being hosted on their sites. Is it not time that we proactively pursued a policy similar to German proposals that would see social media companies penalised with large fines if they failed to take down such sites within 24 hours, or to prevent them in the first place?

[Tracey Crouch]

I saw my hon. Friend’s comments about this in the newspapers this morning, and I reassure him that the Government are determined to do everything that we can to stamp out hate crime, which has absolutely no place in society. We have some of the strongest legislation on hate crime, and we expect social media companies to respond quickly to incidents of abusive behaviour on their networks. However, there is much more that we can do. We have just announced work on an internet safety strategy, which I will take forward with other colleagues, that is aimed at making Britain the safest country in the world for children and young people online.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Loughton and Tracey Crouch

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch]

I certainly join the hon. Gentleman in praising rugby league for all its efforts to make progress on this issue. Homophobia should not be allowed in sport. We share the same rugby league team, Leeds, and we wish them well this evening against St Helens.

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

T4. English and Welsh wine is a great British quality success story and will be producing more than 12 million bottles by 2020. I know that the Secretary of State personally does her bit to boost wine consumption, but what is she doing to promote the use of English wine as standard in her Department and across Departments, and its tourist value in attracting visitors to our emerging wine regions?

[Tracey Crouch]

I have in my constituency Chapel Down, one of the finest English wines that we sell in this country. I am certainly very passionate about English wine, for all the right reasons, and we must ensure that it is a key part of the tourism offer.