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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans his Department has to make all racially discriminatory user-generated content illegal content in the draft Online Harms Bill.

To ensure the criminal law is fit for purpose to deal with online harms, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport sponsored the Law Commission to review the criminal law relating to harmful online communications. The Law Commission has consulted on proposed reforms and will publish their final report this summer. We will carefully consider using the online safety legislation to bring the Law Commission’s final recommendations into law, where it is necessary and appropriate to do so.

In addition, the Law Commission is undertaking a separate review sponsored by the Home Office, which is considering the adequacy and parity of protection offered by the law relating to hate crime. The Law Commission has consulted on their proposals and aims to publish a final report later this year.

The Online Safety Bill will ensure that racially discriminatory content that is illegal offline, is illegal online. Under the Online Safety Bill, services in scope will need to minimise and remove illegal content. Major platforms will also need to address legal but harmful content for adults. Priority categories of legal but harmful content for adults will be set out in secondary legislation and are likely to include online racist abuse.