Online Safety Bill

Vicky Ford Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lia Nici]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. If freedom means that our children become collateral damage for harmful and dangerous people, we need to have some real conversations about what freedom is all about.

Thankfully, as a child of the 1970s, my only experience was of three television channels. My hon. Friends the Members for Stone and for Penistone and Stocksbridge are like Zorro and Tonto coming to save the villagers in a wild west town where all the baddies are waiting to annihilate them. I thank them for that and I look forward to supporting the Bill all the way.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Legislating in an online world is incredibly complex and full of pitfalls, because the digital world moves so fast that it is difficult to make effective and future-proof legislation. I do not want to wind up my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) by mentioning Europe, but I am proud to have worked alongside other British MEPs to introduce the GDPR, which the tech companies hated—especially the penalties.

The GDPR is not perfect legislation, but it fundamentally transformed how online actors think about the need to protect personal data, confidentiality and privacy. The Bill can do exactly the same and totally transform how online safety is treated, especially for children. I have been a proud champion of the Internet Watch Foundation for more than a decade and I have worked with it to tackle the hideous sexual abuse of children online. As a children’s Minister during the Bill’s passage, I am aware of the serious harms that the online world can and does pose, and I am proud that Ministers have put protecting children at the front of the Bill.

Along with other hon. Members, I have signed new clause 2. If, God forbid, hospital staff were constantly and repeatedly causing harm to children and the hospital boss was aware of it but turned a blind eye and condoned it, we would all expect that hospital boss to end up in the courts and, if necessary, in prison. Tech bosses should have the same. I thank the Government for saying that they will go along with the Irish style legislation here, and I look forward to their doing so.

My amendments—amendment 83 and new clause 8, which was not in scope—relate to eating disorders. Amendment 83 is intended to make it very clear that eating disorders should be treated as seriously as other forms of self-harm. I would like to thank everybody in the Chamber who spoke to me so kindly after I spoke in the last debate about my own experience as a former anorexic and all those outside the Chamber who have since contacted me.

Anorexia is the biggest killer of all mental illnesses. It is a sickness that has a slow and long-burning fuse, but all too often that fuse is deadly. There has been a terrifying rise in the number of cases, and it is very clear that social media posts that glamorise eating disorders are helping to fuel this epidemic. I am talking not about content that advertises a diet, but egregious content that encourages viewers to starve themselves in some cases—too many cases—to death. Content promoting eating disorders is no less dangerous than other content promoting other forms of self-harm; in fact, given the huge numbers of people suffering from eating disorders—about 1.25 million people in this country—it may be considered the most dangerous. It is dangerous not only for children, but for vulnerable adults.

My amendment, as I have said, endeavours to make it clear that content promoting eating disorders should be treated in the same way and as seriously as content promoting other forms of self-harm. I thank all those who signed it, including former Health Ministers and Digital Ministers, the current Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) and the current and former Chairs of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friends the Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller). I hope the fact that MPs of such experience have signed these amendment sends a clear message to those in the other place that we treat this issue very seriously.

My amendment 83 is not the clearest legal way in which to manage the issue, so I do not intend to press it today. I thank the Secretary of State, the Minister responsible for the Bill and the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), who I know want to move on this, for meeting me earlier today and agreeing that we will find a way to help protect vulnerable adults as well as children from being constantly subjected to this type of killing content. I look forward to continuing to work with Ministers and Members of the other place to find the best legally watertight way forward.

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), who made a very powerful speech, and I completely agree with her about the importance of treating eating disorders as being of the same scale of harm as other things in the Bill.

I was the media analyst for Merrill Lynch about 22 years ago, and I made a speech about the future of media in which I mentioned the landscape changing towards one of self-generated media. However, I never thought we would get to where it is now and what the effect is. I was in the Pizza Express on Gloucester Road the other day at birthday party time, and an 11-year-old boy standing in the queue was doomscrolling TikTok videos rather than talking to his friends, which I just thought was a really tragic indication of where we have got to.

Digital platforms are also critical sources of information and our public discourse. Across the country, people gather up to 80% of information from such sources, but we should not have trust in them. Their algorithms, which promote and depromote, and their interfaces, which engage, are designed, as we have heard, to make people addicted to the peer validation and augmentation of particular points of view. They are driving people down tribal rabbit holes to the point where they cannot talk to each other or even listen to another point of view. It is no wonder that 50% of young people are unhappy or anxious when they use social media, and these algorithmic models are the problem. Trust in these platforms is wrong: their promotion or depromotion of messages and ideas is opaque, often subjective and subject to inappropriate influence.

It is right that we tackle illegal activity and that harms to children and the vulnerable are addressed, and I support the attempt to do that in the Bill. Those responsible for the big platforms must be held to account for how they operate them, but trusting in those platforms is wrong, and I worry that compliance with their terms of service might become a tick-box absolution of their responsibility for unhappiness, anxiety and harm.

What about harm to our public sphere, our discourse, and our processes of debate, policymaking and science? To trust the platforms in all that would be wrong. We know they have enabled censorship. Elon Musk’s release of the Twitter files has shown incontrovertibly that the big digital platforms actively censor people and ideas, and not always according to reasonable moderation. They censor people according to their company biases, by political request, or with and on behalf of the three-letter Government agencies. They censor them at the behest of private companies, or to control information on their products and the public policy debate around them. Censorship itself creates mistrust in our discourse. To trust the big platforms always to do the right thing is wrong. It is not right that they should be able to hide behind their terms of service, bury issues in the Ofcom processes in the Bill, or potentially pay lip service to a tick-box exercise of merely “having regard” to the importance of freedom of expression. They might think they can just write a report, hire a few overseers, and then get away scot-free with their cynical accumulation, and the sale of the data of their addicted users and the manipulation of their views.

The Government have rightly acknowledged that addressing such issues of online safety is a work in progress, but we must not think that the big platforms are that interested in helping. They and their misery models are the problem. I hope that the Government, and those in the other place, will include in the Bill stronger duties to stop things that are harmful, to promote freedom of expression properly, to ensure that people have ready and full access to the full range of ideas and opinions, and to be fully transparent in public and real time about the way that content is promoted or depromoted on their platforms. Just to trust in them is insufficient. I am afraid the precedent has been set that digital platforms can be used to censor ideas. That is not the future; that is happening right now, and when artificial intelligence comes, it will get even worse. I trust that my colleagues on the Front Bench and in the other place will work hard to improve the Bill as I know it can be improved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

I am afraid I have only three minutes, so I am not able to give way.

The Government cannot accept the Labour amendments that would re-add the adult safety duties and the concept of content that is harmful to adults. These duties and the definition of harmful content were removed from the Bill in Committee to protect free speech and to ensure that the Bill does not incentivise tech companies to censor legal content. It is not appropriate for the Government to decide whether legal content is harmful to adult users, and then to require companies to risk assess and set terms for such content. Many stakeholders and parliamentarians are justifiably concerned about the consequences of doing so, and I share those concerns. However, the Government recognise the importance of giving users the tools and information they need to keep themselves safe online, which is why we have introduced to the Bill a fairer, simpler approach for adults—the triple shield.

Members have talked a little about user empowerment. I will not have time to cover all of that, but the Government believe we have struck the right balance of empowering adult users on the content they see and engage with online while upholding the right to free expression. For those reasons, I am not able to accept these amendments, and I hope the hon. Members for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) will not press them to a vote.

The Government amendments are consequential on removing the “legal but harmful” sections, which were debated extensively in Committee.

The Government recognise the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud about anonymous online abuse, and I applaud her important campaigning in this area. We expect Ofcom to recommend effective tools for compliance, with the requirement that these tools can be applied by users who wish to filter out non-verified users. I agree that the issue covered by amendment 52 is important, and I am happy to continue working with her to deliver her objectives in this area.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford spoke powerfully, and we take the issue incredibly seriously. We are committed to introducing a new communications offence of intentional encouragement and assistance of self-harm, which will apply whether the victim is a child or an adult.

[Vicky Ford]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Paul Scully]

I do not have time, but I thank all Members who contributed to today’s debate. I pay tribute to my officials and to all the Ministers who have worked on this Bill over such a long time.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Michelle Donelan)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

It has been a long road to get here, and it has required a huge team effort that has included Members from across the House, the Joint Committee, Public Bill Committees, the Ministers who worked on this over the years in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and my predecessors as Secretaries of State. Together, we have had some robust and forthright debates, and it is thanks to Members’ determination, expertise and genuine passion on this issue that we have been able to get to this point today. Our differences of opinion across the House have been dwarfed by the fact that we are united in one single goal: protecting children online.

I have been clear since becoming Secretary of State that protecting children is the very reason that this Bill exists, and the safety of every child up and down the UK has driven this legislation from the start. After years of inaction, we want to hold social media companies to account and make sure that they are keeping their promises to their own users and to parents. No Bill in the world has gone as far as this one to protect children online. Since this legislation was introduced last year, the Government have gone even further and made a number of changes to enhance and broaden the protections in the Bill while also securing legal free speech. If something should be illegal, we should have the courage of our convictions to make it illegal, rather than creating a quasi-legal category. That is why my predecessor’s change that will render epilepsy trolling illegal is so important, and why I was determined to ensure that the promotion of self-harm, cyber-flashing and intimate image abuse are also made illegal once and for all in this Bill.

[Vicky Ford]

Will my right hon. Friend make it clear, when the Bill gets to the other place, that content that glamorises eating disorders will be treated as seriously as content glamorising other forms of self-harm?

[Michelle Donelan]

I met my right hon. Friend today to discuss that very point, which is particularly important and powerful. I look forward to continuing to work with her and the Ministry of Justice as we progress this Bill through the other place.

The changes are balanced with new protections for free speech and journalism—two of the core pillars of our democratic society. There are amendments to the definition of recognised news publishers to ensure that sanctioned outlets such as RT must not benefit.

Since becoming Secretary of State I have made a number of my own changes to the Bill. First and foremost, we have gone even further to boost protections for children. Social media companies will face a new duty on age limits so they can no longer turn a blind eye to the estimated 1.6 million underage children who currently use their sites. The largest platforms will also have to publish summaries of their risk assessments for illegal content and material that is harmful for children—finally putting transparency for parents into law.

I believe it is blindingly obvious and morally right that we should have a higher bar of protection when it comes to children. Things such as cyber-bullying, pornography and posts that depict violence do enormous damage. They scar our children and rob them of their right to a childhood. These measures are all reinforced by children and parents, who are given a real voice in the legislation by the inclusion of the Children’s Commissioner as a statutory consultee. The Bill already included provisions to make senior managers liable for failure to comply with information notices, but we have now gone further. Senior managers who deliberately fail children will face criminal liability. Today, we are drawing our line in the sand and declaring that the UK will be the world’s first country to comprehensively protect children online.

Those changes are completely separate to the changes I have made for adults. Many Members and stakeholders had concerns over the “legal but harmful” section of the Bill. They were concerned that it would be a serious threat to legal free speech and would set up a quasi-legal grey area where tech companies would be encouraged to take down content that is perfectly legal to say on our streets. I shared those concerns, so we have removed “legal but harmful” for adults. We have replaced it with a much simpler and fairer and, crucially, much more effective mechanism that gives adults a triple shield of protection. If it is illegal, it has to go. If it is banned under the company’s terms and conditions, it has to go.

Lastly, social media companies will now offer adults a range of tools to give them more control over what they see and interact with on their own feeds.