Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of recent changes to Meta guidelines on hateful conduct which allow Facebook users to refer to LGBT+ people as mentally ill.

The government is aware of the changes Meta has made to its guidelines. This change does not affect the strong protections the Online Safety Act will bring in for UK users online. The Act will oblige all social media companies to remove illegal content and content harmful to children and will give adult users more control over the type of content they see, including that which is hateful or abusive.