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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will re-evaluate extending the scope of the forthcoming Online Safety Bill to include regulation of paid-for advertisements on online platforms in the context of user-generated content.

The Online Safety Bill has been designed to tackle harms that are facilitated by user-generated content. Some types of advertising will therefore be in scope of the new regulatory framework. This includes posts by influencers and posts by companies on their social media feeds.

The legislation will not cover adverts which are placed directly or indirectly through a contract between an advertiser and an advertising service. This is to ensure that the scope of the framework remains targeted.

Government plans to address harms associated with paid-for advertising holistically, via the Online Advertising Programme. We issued a call for evidence on this last year, a consultation is planned before the end of the year.