Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether she has had recent discussions with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the potential merits of including provisions in the Online Safety Bill on tackling online hate language targeted at religious groups.

Under the Online Safety Bill, all user-to-user and search services will need to put in place systems and processes to prevent their users from encountering priority illegal offences, including religiously aggravated public order and harassment offences. They must also swiftly remove other illegal content once it has been reported or they become aware of its presence.

Services which are likely to be accessed by children will also be required to protect child users from content and activity that is harmful to children, including content that is abusive or incites hatred on the basis of religion.

Where content does not meet the criminal threshold and is accessed by adults, the Bill will ensure that the largest services remove content that is prohibited in their terms of service, such as hate speech. These services must also offer their adult users tools which reduce the likelihood that they see certain categories of content, or alert them to the nature of it. These tools will specifically apply to content which is abusive, or incites hatred, on the basis of religion.