Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to tackle vaccine misinformation.
We are working with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to help social media platforms identify and take action against incorrect claims about the virus in line with their terms and conditions. This includes anti-vaccination narratives that could endanger people’s health.
The Government created the cross-Whitehall Counter Disinformation Unit in March 2020, bringing together cross-Government monitoring and analysis capabilities to tackle online misinformation and disinformation. The Counter Disinformation Unit looks for trends on social media platforms so that we can work with them and other partners to respond to misleading content rapidly. Given the importance of protecting freedom of expression, this can be a range of actions from labelling, to downranking, to removal where there is significant risk of harm, in line with a platform’s terms and conditions.