Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of trends in the number of instances of (a) antisemitism (b) Islamophobia (c) other forms of race and religion based hate on social media platforms; and what discussions have taken place with platform owners on this issue since July 2024.

Under the Online Safety Act, in-scope services must protect all users from illegal abusive and hateful content, and children from abusive content where it does not reach the criminal threshold.

In October, the Secretary of State wrote to Ofcom and asked it to use all its levers to tackle antisemitic content online and hate speech more widely.

The government supports Ofcom’s intention to publish a report in December which will assess the impact of the Act’s duties so far. The government and Ofcom are carefully monitoring the impact of the Act.