Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to ensure that social media platforms enforce their own (a) hate speech and (b) child protection policies.

Under the Online Safety Act, the largest services will need to put in place processes to enforce any Terms of Service they set for legal content for adults, including legal hate speech. Platforms likely to be accessed by children must also protect children from content that is harmful to them, including hateful content.

Services must have clear and accessible Terms of Service about how they fulfil their illegal content and child safety duties and apply them consistently.

Ofcom has robust enforcement powers to use against services that fail to fulfil duties. This includes fines of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue.