Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of introducing fines for social media companies which fail to remove hate material from their online platforms.

This Government has recognised the harm caused by hate on the internet and committed to take action to reduce this harm in the recently published Hate Crime Action Plan. Despite the challenges we face, we have made considerable progress in addressing hate on the internet. The Director of Public Prosecutions has published guidance to prosecutors on when it is in the public interest to take perpetrators to court. We also continue to support the police hate crime web-facility, True Vision to provide information to victims and professionals and to allow on-line reporting of hate crime. The College of Policing has included guidance to police and partners on responding to internet hate crime in their Hate Crime Strategy and Guidance. This guidance was downloaded over 4,700 times from True Vision in the first five months, in addition to the physical documents circulated to individual agencies.

We have supported the establishment of the UK No Hate Speech Movement which equips, trains and supports young volunteers to operate on the internet, supporting victims, reporting damaging material and challenging hate-fuelled perpetrators through ‘counter-narrative’ activity.