Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of prosecution under Section 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006 of (a) social media platforms and (b) their owners for facilitating (i) the dissemination of terrorist materials and (ii) incitements to terrorism by far right groups.

Section 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006 contains offences relating to the sale and other dissemination of books and other publications, including material on the internet by an individual, that encourage people to engage in terrorism, or provide information that could be useful to terrorists. Section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2006 also provides a power for a constable to, in certain circumstances, give a notice to a person that a statement, article or record is unlawfully terrorism-related.

It is a matter for the police to consider whether to open a criminal investigation into an offence. It is then for the Crown Prosecution Service to make a charging decision. Both the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service are independent of Government.