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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether she plans to include provisions to protect internet users from illegal advertisements in the Online Safety Bill.

Under the Online Safety Bill, companies will have duties with regard to user-generated content advertising, such as posts by influencers and posts by companies on their social media feeds. Companies will need to minimise the risk of illegal user-generated content appearing on their services, and take swift action to remove it once alerted to it.

The legislation will not cover adverts which are placed directly or indirectly through a contract between an advertiser and an advertising service. It is important to keep the scope of the Bill manageable, to ensure its success in regulating the most harmful forms of user-generated content. We are however awaiting the report from the Joint Committee scrutinising the Draft Bill and will carefully examine any recommendations in this area.

Harms associated with paid-for advertising will be addressed holistically via the Online Advertising Programme. In February 2019, we announced that we will consider how online advertising is regulated. In 2020 we launched a call for evidence and we will be launching a public consultation on the Online Advertising Programme in the coming months.