Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of the Online Safety Bill on free speech.

Protecting freedom of expression online is a core objective of the Online Safety Bill and we have included significant safeguards to ensure users can engage in robust debate online.

In carrying out their safety duties, all services in scope must consider and implement safeguards for freedom of expression. Ofcom must also carry out its new duties in a way that protects freedom of expression.

The Bill will not require platforms to remove legal content that is accessed by adults. Rather, they will need to be clear what content is acceptable on their services, and enforce the rules consistently. This will prevent the arbitrary removal of harmful content. The Bill also ensures users have effective mechanisms to appeal content takedown. This is a significant improvement on the status quo, where companies remove significant amounts of content with no accountability.

Category 1 services also have additional duties to protect democratic and journalistic content, and must consider whether the public interest in such content outweighs the potential harm it could cause.