Online Safety Bill (Sixth sitting)
Chris Philp ExcerptsTuesday 7th June 2022
(1 year, 12 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 7 June 2022 - (7 Jun 2022)
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Amendment 14, in clause 8, page 6, line 33, at end insert—
“(4A) A duty for the illegal content risk assessment to be approved by either—
(a) the board of the entity; or, if the organisation does not have a board structure,
(b) a named individual who the provider considers to be a senior manager of the entity, who may reasonably be expected to be in a position to ensure compliance with the illegal content risk assessment duties, and reports directly into the most senior employee of the entity.”
This amendment seeks to ensure that regulated companies’ boards or senior staff have responsibility for illegal content risk assessments.
Amendment 25, in clause 8, page 7, line 3, after the third “the” insert “production,”.
This amendment requires the risk assessment to take into account the risk of the production of illegal content, as well as the risk of its presence and dissemination.
Amendment 19, in clause 8, page 7, line 14, at end insert—
“(h) how the service may be used in conjunction with other regulated user-to-user services such that it may—
(i) enable users to encounter illegal content on other regulated user-to-user services, and
(ii) constitute part of a pathway to harm to individuals who are users of the service, in particular in relation to CSEA content.”
This amendment would incorporate into the duties a requirement to consider cross-platform risk.
Clause stand part.
Amendment 20, in clause 9, page 7, line 30, at end insert—
“, including by being directed while on the service towards priority illegal content hosted by a different service;”.
This amendment aims to include within companies’ safety duties a duty to consider cross-platform risk.
Amendment 26, in clause 9, page 7, line 30, at end insert—
“(aa) prevent the production of illegal content by means of the service;”.
This amendment incorporates a requirement to prevent the production of illegal content within the safety duties.
Amendment 18, in clause 9, page 7, line 35, at end insert—
“(d) minimise the presence of content which reasonably foreseeably facilitates or aids the discovery or dissemination of priority illegal content, including CSEA content.”
This amendment brings measures to minimise content that may facilitate or aid the discovery of priority illegal content within the scope of the duty to maintain proportionate systems and processes.
Amendment 21, in clause 9, page 7, line 35, at end insert—
“(3A) A duty to collaborate with other companies to take reasonable and proportionate measures to prevent the means by which their services can be used in conjunction with other services to facilitate the encountering or dissemination of priority illegal content, including CSEA content,”.
This amendment creates a duty to collaborate in cases where there is potential cross-platform risk in relation to priority illegal content and CSEA content.
Clause 9 stand part.
Amendment 30, in clause 23, page 23, line 24, after “facilitating” insert—
“the production of illegal content and”.
This amendment requires the illegal content risk assessment to consider the production of illegal content.
Clause 23 stand part.
Amendment 31, in clause 24, page 24, line 2, after “individuals” insert “producing or”.
This amendment expands the safety duty to include the need to minimise the risk of individuals producing certain types of search content.
Clause 24 stand part.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees, and I am glad that this afternoon’s Committee proceedings are being broadcast to the world.
Before we adjourned this morning, I was in the process of saying that one of the challenges with public publication of the full risk assessment, even for larger companies, is that the vulnerabilities in their systems, or the potential opportunities to exploit those systems for criminal purposes, would then be publicly exposed in a way that may not serve the public interest, and that is a reason for not requiring complete disclosure of everything.
However, I draw the Committee’s attention to the existing transparency provisions in clause 64. We will come on to them later, but I want to mention them now, given that they are relevant to amendment 10. The transparency duties state that, once a year, Ofcom must serve notice on the larger companies—those in categories 1, 2A and 2B—requiring them to produce a transparency report. That is not a power for Ofcom—it is a requirement. Clause 64(1) states that Ofcom
“must give every provider…a notice which requires the provider to produce…(a ‘transparency report’).”
The content of the transparency report is specified by Ofcom, as set out in subsection (3). As Members will see, Ofcom has wide powers to specify what must be included in the report. On page 186, schedule 8—I know that we will debate it later, but it is relevant to the amendment—sets out the scope of what Ofcom can require. It is an extremely long list that covers everything we would wish to see. Paragraph 1, for instance, states:
“The incidence of illegal content, content that is harmful to children and priority content that is harmful to adults on a service.”
Therefore, the transparency reporting requirement—it is not an option but a requirement—in clause 64 addresses the transparency point that was raised earlier.
Amendment 14 would require a provider’s board members or senior manager to take responsibility for the illegal content risk assessment. We agree with the Opposition’s point. Indeed, we agree with what the Opposition are trying to achieve in a lot of their amendments.
Chris Philp
There is a “but” coming. We think that, in all cases apart from one, the Bill as drafted already addresses the matter. In the case of amendment 14, the risk assessment duties as drafted already explicitly require companies to consider how their governance structures may affect the risk of harm to users arising from illegal content. Ofcom will provide guidance to companies about how they can comply with those duties, which is very likely to include measures relating to senior-level engagement. In addition, Ofcom can issue confirmation decisions requiring companies to take specific steps to come into compliance. To put that simply, if Ofcom thinks that there is inadequate engagement by senior managers in relation to the risk assessment duties, it can require—it has the power to compel—a change of behaviour by the company.
I come now to clause 9—I think this group includes clause 9 stand part as well. The shadow Minister has touched on this. Clause 9 contains safety duties in relation to—
Chris Philp
I think the group includes clause 9 stand part, but I will of course be guided by you, Ms Rees.
Chris Philp
Very well; we will debate clause 9 separately. In that case, I will move on to amendments 19 and 20, which seek to address cross-platform risk. Again, we completely agree with the Opposition that cross-platform risk is a critical issue. We heard about it in evidence. It definitely needs to be addressed and covered by the Bill. We believe that it is covered by the Bill, and our legal advice is that it is covered by the Bill, because in clause 8 as drafted—[Interruption.] Bless you—or rather, I bless the shadow Minister, following Sir Roger’s guidance earlier, lest I inadvertently bless the wrong person.
Clause 8 already includes the phrase to which I alluded previously. I am talking about the requirement that platforms risk-assess illegal content that might be encountered
“by means of the service”.
That is a critical phrase, because it means not just on that service itself; it also means, potentially, via that service if, for example, that service directs users onward to illegal content on another site. By virtue of the words,
“by means of the service”,
appearing in clause 8 as drafted, the cross-platform risk that the Opposition and witnesses have rightly referred to is covered. Of course, Ofcom will set out further steps in the code of practice as well.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I was listening very closely to what the Minister was saying and I was hoping that he might be able to comment on some of the evidence that was given, particularly by Professor Lorna Woods, who talked about the importance of risk assessments being about systems, not content. Would the Minister pick up on that point? He was touching on it in his comments, and I was not sure whether this was the appropriate point in the Bill at which to bring it up.
Chris Philp
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that. The risk assessments and, indeed, the duties arising under this Bill all apply to systems and processes—setting up systems and processes that are designed to protect people and to prevent harmful and illegal content from being encountered. We cannot specify in legislation every type of harmful content that might be encountered. This is about systems and processes. We heard the Chairman of the Joint Committee on the draft Online Safety Bill, our hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), confirm to the House on Second Reading his belief—his accurate belief—that the Bill takes a systems-and-processes approach. We heard some witnesses saying that as well. The whole point of this Bill is that it is tech-agnostic—to future-proof it, as hon. Members mentioned this morning—and it is based on systems and processes. That is the core architecture of the legislation that we are debating.
Amendments 25 and 26 seek to ensure that user-to-user services assess and mitigate the risk of illegal content being produced via functions of the service. That is covered, as it should be—the Opposition are quite right to raise the point—by the illegal content risk assessment and safety duties in clauses 8 and 9. Specifically, clause 8(5)(d), on page 7 of the Bill—goodness, we are only on page 7 and we have been going for over half a day already—requires services to risk-assess functionalities of their service being used to facilitate the presence of illegal content. I stress the word “presence” in clause 8(5)(d). Where illegal content is produced by a functionality of the service—for example, by being livestreamed—that content will be present on the service and companies must mitigate that risk. The objective that the Opposition are seeking to achieve, and with which we completely agree with, is covered in clause 8(5)(d) by the word “presence”. If the content is present, it is covered by that section.
Kirsty Blackman
Specifically on that, I understand the point the hon. Gentleman is making and appreciate his clarification. However, on something such as Snapchat, if somebody takes a photo, it is sent to somebody else, then disappears immediately, because that is what Snapchat does—the photo is no longer present. It has been produced and created there, but it is not present on the platform. Can the Minister consider whether the Bill adequately covers all the instances he hopes are covered?
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady raises an interesting point about time. However, the clause 8(5)(d) uses the wording,
“the level of risk of functionalities of the service facilitating the presence or dissemination of illegal content”
and so on. That presence can happen at any time, even fleetingly, as with Snapchat. Even when the image self-deletes after a certain period—so I am told, I have not actually used Snapchat—the presence has occurred. Therefore, that would be covered by clause 8(5)(d).
Alex Davies-Jones
Will the Minister explain how we would be able to prove, once the image is deleted, that it was present on the platform?
Chris Philp
The question of proof is a separate one, and that would apply however we drafted the clause. The point is that the clause provides that any presence of a prohibited image would fall foul of the clause. There are also duties on the platforms to take reasonable steps. In the case of matters such as child sexual exploitation and abuse images, there are extra-onerous duties that we have discussed before, for obvious and quite correct reasons.
Kirsty Blackman
Will the Minister stress again that in this clause specifically he is talking about facilitating any presence? That is the wording that he has just used. Can he clarify exactly what he means? If the Minister were to do so, it would be an important point for the Bill as it proceeds.
Chris Philp
I am happy to follow your direction, Ms Rees. I find that that is usually the wisest course of action.
I will speak to amendment 18, which is definitely on the agenda for this grouping and which the shadow Minister addressed earlier. It would oblige service providers to put in place systems and processes
“to minimise the presence of content which reasonably foreseeably facilitates or aids the discovery or dissemination of priority illegal content, including CSEA content.”
The Government completely support that objective, quite rightly promoted by the Opposition, but it is set out in the Bill as drafted. The companies in scope are obliged to take comprehensive measures to tackle CSEA content, including where a service directs users on the first service to the second service.
Amendment 21, in a similar spirit, talks about cross-platform collaboration. I have already mentioned the way in which the referral of a user from one platform to another is within the scope of the Bill. Again, under its provisions, service providers must put in place proportionate systems and processes to mitigate identified cross-platform harms and, where appropriate, to achieve that objective service providers would be expected to collaborate and communicate with one another. If Ofcom finds that they are not engaging in appropriate collaborative behaviour, which means they are not discharging their duty to protect people and children, it can intervene. While agreeing completely with the objective sought, the Bill already addresses that.
Chris Philp
Obviously, I encourage the Committee to support those clauses standing part of the Bill. They impose duties on search services—we touched on search a moment ago—to assess the nature and risk to individuals of accessing illegal content via their services, and to minimise the risk of users encountering that illegal content. They are very similar duties to those we discussed for user-to-user services, but applied in the search context. I hope that that addresses all the relevant provisions in the group that we are debating.
Alex Davies-Jones
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to amendments to clause 9 and to clauses 23 and 24, which I did not speak on earlier. I am also very grateful that we are being broadcast live to the world and welcome that transparency for all who might be listening.
On clause 9, it is right that the user-to-user services will be required to have specific duties and to take appropriate measures to mitigate and manage the risk of harm to individuals and their likelihood of encountering priority illegal content. Again, however, the Bill does not go far enough, which is why we are seeking to make these important amendments. On amendment 18, it is important to stress that the current scope of the Bill does not capture the range of ways in which child abusers use social networks to organise abuse, including to form offender networks. They post digital breadcrumbs that signpost to illegal content on third-party messaging apps and the dark web, and they share child abuse videos that are carefully edited to fall within content moderation guidelines. This range of techniques, known as child abuse breadcrumbing, is a significant enabler of online child abuse.
Our amendment would give the regulator powers to tackle breadcrumbing and ensure a proactive upstream response. The amendment would ensure that tens of millions of interactions with accounts that actively enable the discovery and sharing of child abuse material will be brought into regulatory scope. It will not leave that as ambiguous. The amendment will also ensure that companies must tackle child abuse at the earliest possible stage. As it stands, the Bill would reinforce companies’ current focus only on material that explicitly reaches the criminal threshold. Because companies do not focus their approach on other child abuse material, abusers can exploit this knowledge to post carefully edited child abuse images and content that enables them to connect and form networks with other abusers. Offenders understand and can anticipate that breadcrumbing material will not be proactively identified or removed by the host site, so they are able to organise and link to child abuse in plain sight.
We all know that child abuse breadcrumbing takes many forms, but techniques include tribute sites where users create social media profiles using misappropriated identities of known child abuse survivors. These are used by offenders to connect with likeminded perpetrators to exchange contact information, form offender networks and signpost child abuse material elsewhere online. In the first quarter of 2021, there were 6 million interactions with such accounts.
Abusers may also use Facebook groups to build offender groups and signpost to child abuse hosted on third-party sites. Those groups are thinly veiled in their intentions; for example, as we heard in evidence sessions, groups are formed for those with an interest in children celebrating their 8th, 9th or 10th birthdays. Several groups with over 50,000 members remained alive despite being reported to Meta, and algorithmic recommendations quickly suggested additional groups for those members to join.
Lastly, abusers can signpost to content on third-party sites. Abusers are increasingly using novel forms of technology to signpost to online child abuse, including QR codes, immersive technologies such as the metaverse, and links to child abuse hosted on the blockchain. Given the highly agile nature of the child abuse threat and the demonstrable ability of sophisticated offenders to exploit new forms of technology, this amendment will ensure that the legislation is effectively futureproofed. Technological change makes it increasingly important that the ability of child abusers to connect and form offender networks can be disrupted at the earliest possible stage.
Turning to amendment 21, we know that child abuse is rarely siloed on a single platform or app. Well-established grooming pathways see abusers exploit the design features of social networks to contact children before they move communication across to other platforms, including livestreaming sites, as we have already heard, and encrypted messaging services. Offenders manipulate features such as Facebook’s algorithmic friend suggestions to make initial contact with a large number of children. They can then use direct messages to groom them and coerce children into sending sexual images via WhatsApp. Similarly, as we heard earlier, abusers can groom children through playing videogames and then bringing them on to another ancillary platform, such as Discord.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has shared details of an individual whose name has been changed, and whose case particularly highlights the problems that children are facing in the online space. Ben was 14 when he was tricked on Facebook into thinking he was speaking to a female friend of a friend, who turned out to be a man. Using threats and blackmail, he coerced Ben into sending abuse images and performing sex acts live on Skype. Those images and videos were shared with five other men, who then bombarded Ben with further demands. His mum, Rachel, said:
“The abuse Ben suffered had a devastating impact on our family. It lasted two long years, leaving him suicidal.
It should not be so easy for an adult to meet and groom a child on one site then trick them into livestreaming their own abuse on another app, before sharing the images with like-minded criminals at the click of a button.
Social media sites should have to work together to stop this abuse happening in the first place, so other children do not have to go through what Ben did.”
The current drafting of the Bill does not place sufficiently clear obligations on platforms to co-operate on the cross-platform nature of child abuse. Amendment 21 would require companies to take reasonable and proportionate steps to share threat assessments, develop proportionate mechanisms to share offender intelligence, and create a rapid response arrangement to ensure that platforms develop a coherent, systemic approach to new and emerging threats. Although the industry has developed a systemic response to the removal of known child abuse images, these are largely ad hoc arrangements that share information on highly agile risk profiles. The cross-platform nature of grooming and the interplay of harms across multiple services need to be taken into account. If it is not addressed explicitly in the Bill, we are concerned that companies may be able to cite competition concerns to avoid taking action.
Alex Davies-Jones
I completely agree with the hon. Member, and appreciate her intervention. It is fundamental for this point to be captured in the Bill because, as we are seeing, this is happening more and more. More and more victims are coming forward who have been subject to livestreaming that is not picked up by the technology available, and is then recorded and posted elsewhere on smaller platforms.
Legal advice suggests that cross-platform co-operation is likely to be significantly impeded by the negative interplay with competition law unless there is a clear statutory basis for enabling or requiring collaboration. Companies may legitimately have different risk and compliance appetites, or may simply choose to hide behind competition law to avoid taking a more robust form of action.
New and emerging technologies are likely to produce an intensification of cross-platform risks in the years ahead, and we are particularly concerned about the child abuse impacts in immersive virtual reality and alternative-reality environments, including the metaverse. A number of high-risk immersive products are already designed to be platform-agnostic, meaning that in-product communication takes place between users across multiple products and environments. There is a growing expectation that these environments will be built along such lines, with an incentive for companies to design products in this way in the hope of blunting the ability of Governments to pursue user safety objectives.
Separately, regulatory measures that are being developed in the EU, but are highly likely to impact service users in the UK, could result in significant unintended safety consequences. Although the interoperability provisions in the Digital Markets Act are strongly beneficial when viewed through a competition lens—they will allow the competition and communication of multiple platforms—they could, without appropriate safety mitigations, provide new means for abusers to contact children across multiple platforms, significantly increase the overall profile of cross-platform risk, and actively frustrate a broad number of current online safety responses. Amendment 21 will provide corresponding safety requirements that can mitigate the otherwise significant potential for unintended consequences.
The Minister referred to clauses 23 and 24 in relation to amendments 30 and 31. We think a similar consideration should apply for search services as well as for user-to-user services. We implore that the amendments be made, in order to prevent those harms from occurring.
Chris Philp
I have already commented on most of those amendments, but one point that the shadow Minister made that I have not addressed was about acts that are essentially preparatory to acts of child abuse or the exchange of child sexual exploitation and abuse images. She was quite right to raise that issue as a matter of serious concern that we would expect the Bill to prevent, and I offer the Committee the reassurance that the Bill, as drafted, does so.
Schedule 6 sets out the various forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse that are designated as priority offences and that platforms have to take proactive steps to prevent. On the cross-platform point, that includes, as we have discussed, things that happen through a service as well as on a service. Critically, paragraph 9 of schedule 6 includes “inchoate offences”, which means someone not just committing the offence but engaging in acts that are preparatory to committing the offence, conspiring to commit the offence, or procuring, aiding or abetting the commission of the offence. The preparatory activities that the shadow Minister referred to are covered under schedule 6, particularly paragraph 9.
Alex Davies-Jones
I thank the Minister for giving way. I notice that schedule 6 includes provision on the possession of indecent photographs of children. Can he confirm that that provision encapsulates the livestreaming of sexual exploitation?
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
As this is the first time I have spoken in the Committee, may I say that it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Rees? I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd that we are committed to improving the Bill, despite the fact that we have some reservations, which we share with many organisations, about some of the structure of the Bill and some of its provisions. As my hon. Friend has detailed, there are particular improvements to be made to strengthen the protection of children online, and I think the Committee’s debate on this section is proving fruitful.
Amendment 28 is a good example of where we must go further if we are to achieve the goal of the Bill and protect children from harm online. The amendment seeks to require regulated services to assess their level of risk based, in part, on the frequency with which they are blocking, detecting and removing child sexual exploitation and abuse content from their platforms. By doing so, we will be able to ascertain the reality of their overall risk and the effectiveness of their existing response.
The addition of livestreamed child sexual exploitation and abuse content not only acknowledges first-generation CSEA content, but recognises that livestreamed CSEA content happens on both public and private channels, and that they require different methods of detection.
Furthermore, amendment 28 details the practical information needed to assess whether the action being taken by a regulated service is adequate in countering the production and dissemination of CSEA content, in particular first-generation CSEA content. Separating the rates of terminated livestreams of CSEA in public and private channels is important, because those rates may vary widely depending on how CSEA content is generated. By specifying tools, strategies and interventions, the amendment would ensure that the systems in place to detect and report CSEA are adequate, and that is why we would like it to be part of the Bill.
Chris Philp
The Government support the spirit of amendments 17 and 28, which seek to achieve critical objectives, but the Bill as drafted delivers those objectives. In relation to amendment 17 and cross-platform risk, clause 8 already sets out harms and risks—including CSEA risks—that arise by means of the service. That means through the service to other services, as well as on the service itself, so that is covered.
Amendment 28 calls for the risk assessments expressly to cover illegal child sexual exploitation content, but clause 8 already requires that to happen. Clause 8(5) states that the risk assessment must cover the
“risk of individuals who are users of the service encountering…each kind of priority illegal content”.
If we follow through the definition of priority illegal content, we find all those CSEA offences listed in schedule 6. The objective of amendment 28 is categorically delivered by clause 8(5)(b), referencing onwards to schedule 6.
Kirsty Blackman
The amendment specifically mentions the level and rates of those images. I did not quite manage to follow through all the things that the Minister just spoke about, but does the clause specifically talk about the level of those things, rather than individual incidents, the possibility of incidents or some sort of threshold for incidents, as in some parts of the Bill?
Chris Philp
The risk assessments that clause 8 requires have to be suitable and sufficient; they cannot be perfunctory and inadequate in nature. I would say that suitable and sufficient means they must go into the kind of detail that the hon. Lady requests. More details, most of which relate to timing, are set out in schedule 3. Ofcom will be making sure that these risk assessments are not perfunctory.
Importantly, in relation to CSEA reporting, clause 59, which we will come to, places a mandatory requirement on in-scope companies to report to the National Crime Agency all CSEA content that they detect on their platforms, if it has not already been reported. Not only is that covered by the risk assessments, but there is a criminal reporting requirement here. Although the objectives of amendments 17 and 28 are very important, I submit to the Committee that the Bill delivers the intention behind them already, so I ask the shadow Minister to withdraw them.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Barbara Keeley
I will speak to other amendments in this group as well as amendment 15. The success of the Bill’s regulatory framework relies on regulated companies carefully risk-assessing their platforms. Once risks have been identified, the platform can concentrate on developing and implementing appropriate mitigations. However, up to now, boards and top executives have not taken the risk to children seriously. Services have either not considered producing risk assessments or, if they have done so, they have been of limited efficacy and failed to identify and respond to harms to children.
In evidence to the Joint Committee, Frances Haugen explained that many of the corporate structures involved are flat, and accountability for decision making can be obscure. At Meta, that means teams will focus only on delivering against key commercial metrics, not on safety. Children’s charities have also noted that corporate structures in the large technology platforms reward employees who move fast and break things. Those companies place incentives on increasing return on investment rather than child safety. An effective risk assessment and risk mitigation plan can impact on profit, which is why we have seen so little movement from companies to take the measures themselves without the duty being placed on them by legislation.
It is welcome that clause 10 introduces a duty to risk-assess user-to-user services that are likely to be accessed by children. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd said this morning, it will become an empty, tick-box exercise if the Bill does not also introduce the requirement for boards to review and approve the risk assessments.
The Joint Committee scrutinising the draft Bill recommended that the risk assessment be approved at board level. The Government rejected that recommendation on the grounds thar Ofcom could include that in its guidance on producing risk assessments. As with much of the Bill, it is difficult to blindly accept promised safeguards when we have not seen the various codes of practice and guidance materials. The amendments would make sure that decisions about and awareness of child safety went right to the top of regulated companies. The requirement to have the board or a senior manager approve the risk assessment will hardwire the safety duties into decision making and create accountability and responsibility at the most senior level of the organisation. That should trickle down the organisation and help embed a culture of compliance across it. Unless there is a commitment to child safety at the highest level of the organisation, we will not see the shift in attitude that is urgently needed to keep children safe, and which I believe every member of the Committee subscribes to.
On amendments 11 and 13, it is welcome that we have risk assessments for children included in the Bill, but the effectiveness of that duty will be undermined unless the risk assessments can be available for scrutiny by the public and charities. In the current version of the Bill, risk assessments will only be made available to the regulator, which we debated on an earlier clause. Companies will be incentivised to play down the likelihood of currently emerging risks because of the implications of having to mitigate against them, which may run counter to their business interests. Unless the risk assessments are published, there will be no way to hold regulated companies to account, nor will there be any way for companies to learn from one another’s best practice, which is a very desirable aim.
The current situation shows that companies are unwilling to share risk assessments even when requested. In October 2021, following the whistleblower disclosures made by Frances Haugen, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children led a global coalition of 60 child protection organisations that urged Meta to publish its risk assessments, including its data privacy impact assessments, which are a legal requirement under data protection law. Meta refused to share any of its risk assessments, even in relation to child sexual abuse and grooming. The company argued that risk assessments were live documents and it would not be appropriate for it to share them with any organisation other than the Information Commissioner’s Office, to whom it has a legal duty to disclose. As a result, civil society organisations and the charities that I talked about continue to be in the dark about whether and how Meta has appropriately identified online risk to children.
Making risk assessments public would support the smooth running of the regime and ensure its broader effectiveness. Civil society and other interested groups would be able to assess and identify any areas where a company might not be meeting its safety duties and make full, effective use of the proposed super-complaints mechanism. It will also help civil society organisations to hold the regulated companies and the regulator, Ofcom, to account.
As we have seen from evidence sessions, civil society organisations are often at the forefront of understanding and monitoring the harms that are occurring to users. They have an in depth understanding of what mitigations may be appropriate and they may be able to support the regulator to identify any obvious omissions. The success of the systemic risk assessment process will be significantly underpinned by and reliant upon the regulator’s being able to rapidly and effectively identify new and emerging harms, and it is highly likely that the regulator will want to draw on civil society expertise to ensure that it has highly effective early warning functions in place.
However, civil society organisations will be hampered in that role if they remain unable to determine what, if anything, companies are doing to respond to online threats. If Ofcom is unable to rapidly identify new and emerging harms, the resulting delays could mean entire regulatory cycles where harms were not captured in risk profiles or company risk assessments, and an inevitable lag between harms being identified and companies being required to act upon them. It is therefore clear that there is a significant public value to publishing risk assessments.
Amendments 27 and 32 are almost identical to the suggested amendments to clause 8 that we discussed earlier. As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd said in our discussion about amendments 25, 26 and 30, the duty to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment could be significantly strengthened by preventing the creation of illegal content, not only preventing individuals from encountering it. I know the Minister responded to that point, but the Opposition did not think that response was fully satisfactory. This is just as important for children’s risk assessments as it is for illegal content risk assessments.
Online platforms are not just where abusive material is published. Sex offenders use mainstream web platforms and services as tools to commit child sexual abuse. This can be seen particularly in the livestreaming of child sexual exploitation. Sex offenders pay to direct and watch child sexual abuse in real time. The Philippines is a known hotspot for such abuse and the UK has been identified by police leads as the third-largest consumer of livestreamed abuse in the world. What a very sad statistic that our society is the third-largest consumer of livestreamed abuse in the world.
Ruby is a survivor of online sexual exploitation in the Philippines, although Ruby is not her real name; she recently addressed a group of MPs about her experiences. She told Members how she was trafficked into sexual exploitation aged 16 after being tricked and lied to about the employment opportunities she thought she would be getting. She was forced to perform for paying customers online. Her story is harrowing. She said:
“I blamed myself for being trapped. I felt disgusted by every action I was forced to do, just to satisfy customers online. I lost my self-esteem and I felt very weak. I became so desperate to escape that I would shout whenever I heard a police siren go by, hoping somebody would hear me. One time after I did this, a woman in the house threatened me with a knife.”
Eventually, Ruby was found by the Philippine authorities and, after a four-year trial, the people who imprisoned her and five other girls were convicted. She said it took many years to heal from the experience, and at one point she nearly took her own life.
It should be obvious that if we are to truly improve child protection online we need to address the production of new child abuse material. In the Bill, we have a chance to address not only what illegal content is seen online, but how online platforms are used to perpetrate abuse. It should not be a case of waiting until the harm is done before taking action.
Chris Philp
As the hon. Lady said, we discussed in the groupings for clauses 8 and 9 quite a few of the broad principles relating to children, but I will none the less touch on some of those points again because they are important.
On amendment 27, under clause 8 there is already an obligation on platforms to put in place systems and processes to reduce the risk that their services will be used to facilitate the presence of illegal content. As that includes the risk of illegal content being present, including that produced via the service’s functionality, the terrible example that the hon. Lady gave is already covered by the Bill. She is quite right to raise that example, because it is terrible when such content involving children is produced, but such cases are expressly covered in the Bill as drafted, particularly in clause 8.
Amendment 31 covers a similar point in relation to search. As I said for the previous grouping, search does not facilitate the production of content; it helps people to find it. Clearly, there is already an obligation on search firms to stop people using search engines to find illegal content, so the relevant functionality in search is already covered by the Bill.
Amendments 15 and 16 would expressly require board member sign-off for risk assessments. I have two points to make on that. First, the duties set out in clause 10(6)(h) in relation to children’s risk assessments already require the governance structures to be properly considered, so governance is directly addressed. Secondly, subsection (2) states that the risk assessment has to be “suitable and sufficient”, so it cannot be done in a perfunctory or slipshod way. Again, Ofcom must be satisfied that those governance arrangements are appropriate. We could invent all the governance arrangements in the world, but the outcome needs to be delivered and, in this case, to protect children.
Beyond governance, the most important things are the sanctions and enforcement powers that Ofcom can use if those companies do not protect children. As the hon. Lady said in her speech, we know that those companies are not doing enough to protect children and are allowing all kinds of terrible things to happen. If those companies continue to allow those things to happen, the enforcement powers will be engaged, and they will be fined up to 10% of their global revenue. If they do not sort it out, they will find that their services are disconnected. Those are the real teeth that will ensure that those companies comply.
Barbara Keeley
I know that the Minister listened to Frances Haugen and to the members of charities. The charities and civil society organisations that are so concerned about this point do not accept that the Bill addresses it. I cannot see how his point addresses what I said about board-level acceptance of that role in children’s risk assessments. We need to change the culture of those organisations so that they become different from how they were described to us. He, like us, was sat there when we heard from the big platform providers, and they are not doing enough. He has had meetings with Frances Haugen; he knows what they are doing. It is good and welcome that the regulator will have the powers that he mentions, but that is just not enough.
Chris Philp
I agree with the hon. Lady that, as I said a second ago, those platforms are not doing enough to protect children. There is no question about that at all, and I think there is unanimity across the House that they are not doing enough to protect children.
I do not think the governance point is a panacea. Frankly, I think the boards of these companies are aware of what is going on. When these big questions arise, they go all the way up to Mark Zuckerberg. It is not as if Mark Zuckerberg and the directors of companies such as Meta are unaware of these risks; they are extremely aware of them, as Frances Haugen’s testimony made clear.
We do address the governance point. As I say, the risk assessments do need to explain how governance matters are deployed to consider these things—that is in clause 10(6)(h). But for me, it is the sanctions—the powers that Ofcom will have to fine these companies billions of pounds and ultimately to disconnect their service if they do not protect our children—that will deliver the result that we need.
Barbara Keeley
The Minister is talking about companies of such scale that even fines of billions will not hurt them. I refer him to the following wording in the amendments:
“a named individual who the provider considers to be a senior manager of the entity, who may reasonably be expected to be in a position to ensure compliance with the children’s risk assessment duties”.
That is the minimum we should be asking. We should be asking these platforms, which are doing so much damage and have had to be dragged to the table to do anything at all, to be prepared to appoint somebody who is responsible. The Minister tries to gloss over things by saying, “Oh well, they must be aware of it.” The named individual would have to be aware of it. I hope he understands the importance of his role and the Committee’s role in making this happen. We could make this happen.
Chris Philp
As I say, clause 10 already references the governance arrangements, but my strong view is that the only thing that will make these companies sit up and take notice—the only thing that will make them actually protect children in a way they are currently not doing—is the threat of billions of pounds of fines and, if they do not comply even after being fined at that level, the threat of their service being disconnected. Ultimately, that is the sanction that will make these companies protect our children.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South has said, the point here is about cultural change, and the way to do that is through leadership. It is not about shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. Fining the companies might achieve something, but it does not tackle the root of the problem. It is about cultural change and leadership at these organisations. We all agree across the House that they are not doing enough, so how do we change that culture? It has to come from leadership.
Chris Philp
Yes, and that is why governance is addressed in the clause as drafted. But the one thing that will really change the way the leadership of these companies thinks about this issue is the one thing they ultimately care about—money. The reason they allow unsafe content to circulate and do not rein in or temper their algorithms, and the reason we are in this situation, which has arisen over the last 10 years or so, is that these companies have consistently prioritised profit over protection. Ultimately, that is the only language they understand—it is that and legal compulsion.
While the Bill rightly addresses governance in clause 10 and in other clauses, as I have said a few times, what has to happen to make this change occur is the compulsion that is inherent in the powers to fine and to deny service—to pull the plug—that the Bill also contains. The thing that will give reassurance to our constituents, and to me as a parent, is knowing that for the first time ever these companies can properly be held to account. They can be fined. They can have their connection pulled out of the wall. Those are the measures that will protect our children.
Alex Davies-Jones
The Minister is being very generous with his time, but I do not think he appreciates the nature of the issue. Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth is $71.5 billion. Elon Musk, who is reported to be purchasing Twitter, is worth $218 billion. Bill Gates is worth $125 billion. Money does not matter to these people.
The Minister discusses huge fines for the companies and the potential sanction of bringing down their platforms. They will just set up another one. That is what we are seeing with the smaller platforms: they are closing down and setting up new platforms. These measures do not matter. What matters and will actually make a difference to the safety of children and adults online is personal liability—holding people personally responsible for the direct harm they are causing to people here in the United Kingdom. That is what these amendments seek to do, and that is why we are pushing them so heavily. I urge the Minister to respond to that.
Chris Philp
We discussed personal liability extensively this morning. As we discussed, there is personal liability in relation to providing information, with a criminal penalty of up to two years’ imprisonment, to avoid situations like the one we saw a year or two ago, where one of these companies failed to provide the Competition and Markets Authority with the information that it required.
The shadow Minister pointed out the very high levels of global turnover—$71.5 billion—that these companies have. That means that ultimately they can be fined up to $7 billion for each set of breaches. That is a vast amount of money, particularly if those breaches happen repeatedly. She said that such companies will just set up again if we deny their service. Clearly, small companies can close down and set up again the next day, but gigantic companies, such as Meta—Facebook—cannot do that. That is why I think the sanctions I have pointed to are where the teeth really lie.
I accept the point about governance being important as well; I am not dismissing that. That is why we have personal criminal liability for information provision, with up to two years in prison, and it is why governance is referenced in clause 10. I accept the spirit of the points that have been made, but I think the Bill delivers these objectives as drafted.
Chris Philp
One last time, because I am conscious that we need to make some progress this afternoon.
Dame Maria Miller
I have huge sympathy with the point that the Minister is making on this issue, but the hon. Member for Pontypridd is right to drive the point home. The Minister says there will be huge fines, but I think there will also be huge court bills. There will be an awful lot of litigation about how things are interpreted, because so much money will come into play. I just reiterate the importance of the guidance and the codes of practice, because if we do not get those right then the whole framework will be incredibly fragile. We will need ongoing scrutiny of how the Bill works or there will be a very difficult situation.
Chris Philp
My right hon. Friend, as always, makes a very good point. The codes of practice will be important, particularly to enable Ofcom to levy fines where appropriate and then successfully defend them. This is an area that may get litigated. I hope that, should lawyers litigating these cases look at our transcripts in the future, they will see how strongly those on both sides of the House feel about this point. I know that Ofcom will ensure that the codes of practice are properly drafted. We touched this morning on the point about timing; we will follow up with Ofcom to make sure that the promise it made us during the evidence session about the road map is followed through and that those get published in good time.
On the point about the Joint Committee, I commend my right hon. Friend for her persistence—[Interruption.] Her tenacity—that is the right word. I commend her for her tenacity in raising that point. I mentioned it to the Secretary of State when I saw her at lunchtime, so the point that my right hon. Friend made this morning has been conveyed to the highest levels in the Department.
I must move on to the final two amendments, 11 and 13, which relate to transparency. Again, we had a debate about transparency earlier, when I made the point about the duties in clause 64, which I think cover the issue. Obviously, we are not debating clause 64 now but it is relevant because it requires Ofcom—it is not an option but an obligation; Ofcom must do so—to require providers to produce a transparency report every year. Ofcom can say what is supposed to be in the report, but the relevant schedule lists all the things that can be in it, and covers absolutely everything that the shadow Minister and the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South want to see in there.
That requirement to publish transparently and publicly is in the Bill, but it is to be found in clause 64. While I agree with the Opposition’s objectives on this point, I respectfully say that those objectives are delivered by the Bill as drafted, so I politely and gently request that the amendments be withdrawn.
Kirsty Blackman
I have a couple of comments, particularly about amendments 15 and 16, which the Minister has just spoken about at some length. I do not agree with the Government’s assessment that the governance subsection is adequate. It states that the risk assessment must take into account
“how the design and operation of the service (including the business model, governance, use of proactive technology…may reduce or increase the risks identified.”
It is actually an assessment of whether the governance structure has an impact on the risk assessment. It has no impact whatever on the level at which the risk assessment is approved or not approved; it is about the risks that the governance structure poses to children or adults, depending on which section of the Bill we are looking at.
The Minister should consider what is being asked in the amendment, which is about the decision-making level at which the risk assessments are approved. I know the Minister has spoken already, but some clarification would be welcome. Does he expect a junior tech support member of staff, or a junior member of the legal team, to write the risk assessment and then put it in a cupboard? Or perhaps they approve it themselves and then nothing happens with it until Ofcom asks for it. Does he think that Ofcom would look unfavourably on behaviour like that? If he was very clear with us about that, it might put our minds at rest. Does he think that someone in a managerial position or a board member, or the board itself, should take decisions, rather than a very junior member of staff? There is a big spread of people who could be taking decisions. If he could give us an indication of what Ofcom might look favourably on, it would be incredibly helpful for our deliberations.
Chris Philp
I am anxious about time, but I will respond to that point because it is an important one. The hon. Lady is right to say that clause 10(6)(h) looks to identify the risks associated with governance. That is correct —it is a risk assessment. However in clause 11(2)(a), there is a duty to mitigate those risks, having identified what the risks are. If, as she hypothesised, a very junior person was looking at these matters from a governance point of view, that would be identified as a risk. If it was not, Ofcom would find that that was not sufficient or suitable. That would breach clause 10(2), and the service would then be required to mitigate. If it did not mitigate the risks by having a more senior person taking the decision, Ofcom would take enforcement action for its failure under clause 11(2)(a).
For the record, should Ofcom or lawyers consult the transcript to ascertain Parliament’s intention in the course of future litigation, it is absolutely the Government’s view, as I think it is the hon. Lady’s, that a suitable level of decision making for a children’s risk assessment would be a very senior level. The official Opposition clearly think that, because they have put it in their amendment. I am happy to confirm that, as a Minister, I think that. Obviously the hon. Lady, who speaks for the SNP, does too. If the transcripts of the Committee’s proceedings are examined in the future to ascertain Parliament’s intention, Parliament’s intention will be very clear.
Barbara Keeley
All I have to add is the obvious point—I am sure that we are going to keep running into this—that people should not have to look to a transcript to see what the Minister’s and Parliament’s intention was. It is clear what the Opposition’s intention is—to protect children. I cannot see why the Minister will not specify who in an organisation should be responsible. It should not be a question of ploughing through transcripts of what we have talked about here in Committee; it should be obvious. We have the chance here to do something different and better. The regulator could specify a senior level.
Chris Philp
Clearly, we are legislating here to cover, as I think we said this morning, 25,000 different companies. They all have different organisational structures, different personnel and so on. To anticipate the appropriate level of decision making in each of those companies and put it in the Bill in black and white, in a very prescriptive manner, might not adequately reflect the range of people involved.
Kirsty Blackman
I will first speak to our amendment 85, which, like the Labour amendment, seeks to ensure that the Bill is crystal clear in addressing intersectionality. We need only consider the abuse faced by groups of MPs to understand why that is necessary. Female MPs are attacked online much more regularly than male MPs, and the situation is compounded if they have another minority characteristic. For instance, if they are gay or black, they are even more likely to be attacked. In fact, the MP who is most likely to be attacked is black and female. There are very few black female MPs, so it is not because of sheer numbers that they are at such increased risk of attack. Those with a minority characteristic are at higher risk of online harm, but the risk facing those with more than one minority characteristic is substantially higher, and that is what the amendment seeks to address.
I have spoken specifically about people being attacked on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, but people in certain groups face an additional significant risk. If a young gay woman does not have a community around her, or if a young trans person does not know anybody else who is trans, they are much more likely to use the internet to reach out, to try to find people who are like them, to try to understand. If they are not accepted by their family, school or workplace, they are much more likely to go online to find a community and support—to find what is out there in terms of assistance—but using the internet as a vulnerable, at-risk person puts them at much more significant risk. This goes back to my earlier arguments about people requiring anonymity to protect themselves when using the internet to find their way through a difficult situation in which they have no role models.
It should not be difficult for the Government to accept this amendment. They should consider it carefully and understand that all of us on the Opposition Benches are making a really reasonable proposal. This is not about saying that someone with only one protected characteristic is not at risk; it is about recognising the intersectionality of risk and the fact that the risk faced by those who fit into more than one minority group is much higher than that faced by those who fit into just one. This is not about taking anything away from the Bill; it is about strengthening it and ensuring that organisations listen.
We have heard that a number of companies are not providing the protection that Members across the House would like them to provide against child sexual abuse. The governing structures, risk assessments, rules and moderation at those sites are better at ensuring that the providers make money than they are at providing protection. When regulated providers assess risk, it is not too much to ask them to consider not just people with one protected characteristic but those with multiple protected characteristics.
As MPs, we work on that basis every day. Across Scotland and the UK, we support our constituents as individuals and as groups. When protected characteristics intersect, we find ourselves standing in Parliament, shouting strongly on behalf of those affected and giving them our strongest backing, because we know that that intersection of harms is the point at which people are most vulnerable, in both the real and the online world. Will the Minister consider widening the provision so that it takes intersectionality into account and not only covers people with one protected characteristic but includes an over and above duty? I genuinely do not think it is too much for us to ask providers, particularly the biggest ones, to make this change.
Chris Philp
Once again, the Government recognise the intent behind these amendments and support the concept that people with multiple intersecting characteristics, or those who are members of multiple groups, may experience—or probably do experience—elevated levels of harm and abuse online compared with others. We completely understand and accept that point, as clearly laid out by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North.
There is a technical legal reason why the use of the singular characteristic and group singular is adopted here. Section 6(c) of the Interpretation Act 1978 sets out how words in Bills and Acts are interpreted, namely that such words in the singular also cover the plural. That means that references in the singular, such as
“individuals with a certain characteristic”
in clause 10(6)(d), also cover characteristics in the plural. A reference to the singular implies a reference to the plural.
Will those compounded risks, where they exist, be taken into account? The answer is yes, because the assessments must assess the risk in front of them. Where there is evidence that multiple protected characteristics or the membership of multiple groups produce compounded risks, as the hon. Lady set out, the risk assessment has to reflect that. That includes the general sectoral risk assessment carried out by Ofcom, which is detailed in clause 83, and Ofcom will then produce guidance under clause 84.
The critical point is that, because there is evidence of high levels of compounded risk when people have more than one characteristic, that must be reflected in the risk assessment, otherwise it is inadequate. I accept the point behind the amendments, but I hope that that explains, with particular reference to the 1978 Act, why the Bill as drafted covers that valid point.
Chris Philp
The Government obviously support the objective of these amendments, which is to prevent children from suffering the appalling sexual and physical abuse that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South outlined in her powerful speech. It is shocking that these incidents have risen in the way that she described.
To be clear, that sort of appalling sexual abuse is covered in clause 9—which we have debated already—which covers illegal content. As Members would expect, child sexual abuse is defined as one of the items of priority illegal content, which are listed in more detail in schedule 6, where the offences that relate to sexual abuse are enumerated. As child sexual exploitation is a priority offence, services are already obliged through clause 9 to be “proactive” in preventing it from happening. As such, as Members would expect, the requirements contained in these amendments are already delivered through clause 9.
The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South also asked when we are going to hear what the primary priority harms to children might be. To be clear, those will not include the sexual exploitation offences, because as Members would also expect, those are already in the Bill as primary illegal offences. The primary priority harms might include material promoting eating disorders and that kind of thing, which is not covered by the criminal matters—the illegal matters. I have heard the hon. Lady’s point that if that list were to be published, or at least a draft list, that would assist Parliament in scrutinising the Bill. I will take that point away and see whether there is anything we can do in that area. I am not making a commitment; I am just registering that I have heard the point and will take it away.
Barbara Keeley
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dame Maria Miller
I rise to speak to clause 11, because this is an important part of the Bill that deals with the safety duties protecting children. Many of us here today are spurred on by our horror at the way in which internet providers, platform providers and search engines have acted over recent years, developing their products with no regard for the safety of children, so I applaud the Government for bringing forward this groundbreaking legislation. They are literally writing the book on this, but in doing so, we have be very careful about the language we use and the way in which we frame our requirements of these organisations. The Minister has rightly characterised these organisations as being entirely driven by finance, not the welfare of their consumers, which must make them quite unique in the world. I can only hope that that will change: presumably, over time, people will not want to use products that have no regard for the safety of those who use them.
In this particular part of the Bill, the thorny issue of age assurance comes up. I would value the Minister’s views on some of the evidence that we received during our evidence sessions about how we ensure that age assurance is effective. Some of us who have been in this place for a while would be forgiven for thinking that we had already passed a law on age assurance. Unfortunately, that law did not seem to come to anything, so let us hope that second time is lucky. The key question is: who is going to make sure that the age assurance that is in place is good enough? Clause 11(3) sets out
“a duty to operate a service using proportionate systems and processes”
that is designed to protect children, but what is a proportionate system? Who is going to judge that? Presumably it will be Ofcom in the short term, and in the long term, I am sure the courts will get involved.
In our evidence, we heard some people advocating very strongly for these sorts of systems to be provided by third parties. I have to say, in a context where we are hearing how irresponsible the providers of these services are, I can understand why people would think that a third party would be a more responsible way forward. Can the Minister help the Committee understand how Ofcom will ensure that the systems used, particularly the age assurance systems, are proportionate—I do not particularly like that word; I would like those systems to be brilliant, not proportionate—and are actually doing what we need them to do, which is safeguard children? For the record, and for the edification of judges who are looking at this matter in future—and, indeed, Ofcom—will he set out how important this measure is within the Bill?
Chris Philp
I thank my right hon. Friend for her remarks, in which she powerfully and eloquently set out how important the clause is to protecting children. She is right to point out that this is a critical area in the Bill, and it has wide support across the House. I am happy to emphasise, for the benefit of those who may study our proceedings in future, that protecting children is probably the single-most important thing that the Bill does, which is why it is vital that age-gating, where necessary, is effective.
My right hon. Friend asked how Ofcom will judge whether the systems under clause 11(3) are proportionate to
“prevent children of any age from encountering”
harmful content and so on. Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating; it has to be effective. When Ofcom decides whether a particular company or service is meeting the duty set out in the clause, the simple test will be one of effectiveness: is it effective and does it work? That is the approach that I would expect Ofcom to take; that is the approach that I would expect a court to take. We have specified that age verification, which is the most hard-edged type of age assurance—people have to provide a passport or something of that nature—is one example of how the duty can be met. If another, less-intrusive means is used, it will still have to be assessed as effective by Ofcom and, if challenged, by the courts.
I think my right hon. Friend was asking the Committee to confirm to people looking at our proceedings our clear intent for the measures to be effective. That is the standard to which we expect Ofcom and the courts to hold those platforms in deciding whether they have met the duties set out in the clause.
Dame Maria Miller
For clarification, does the Minister anticipate that Ofcom might be able to insist that a third-party provider be involved if there is significant evidence that the measures put in place by a platform are ineffective?
Chris Philp
We have deliberately avoided being too prescriptive about precisely how the duty is met. We have pointed to age verification as an example of how the duty can be met without saying that that is the only way. We would not want to bind Ofcom’s hands, or indeed the hands of platforms. Clearly, using a third party is another way of delivering the outcome. If a platform were unable to demonstrate to Ofcom that it could deliver the required outcome using its own methods, Ofcom may well tell it to use a third party instead. The critical point is that the outcome must be delivered. That is the message that the social media firms, Ofcom and the courts need to hear when they look at our proceedings. That is set out clearly in the clause. Parliament is imposing a duty, and we expect all those to whom the legislation applies to comply with it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12
Adults’ risk assessment duties
Alex Davies-Jones
I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 12, page 12, line 10, at end insert—
“(4A) A duty to publish the adults’ risk assessment and proactively supply this to OFCOM.”
This amendment creates a duty to publish the adults’ risk assessment and supply it to Ofcom.
Chris Philp
Once again, I agree with the point about transparency and the need to have those matters brought into the light of day. We heard from Frances Haugen how Facebook—now Meta—actively resisted doing so. However, I point to two provisions already in the Bill that deliver precisely that objective. I know we are debating clause 12, but there is a duty in clause 13(2) for platforms to publish in their terms of service—a public document—the findings of the most recent adult risk assessment. That duty is in clause 13—the next clause we are going to debate—in addition to the obligations I have referred to twice already in clause 64, where Ofcom compels those firms to publish their transparency reports. I agree with the points that the shadow Minister made, but suggest that through clause 13(2) and clause 64, those objectives are met in the Bill as drafted.
Alex Davies-Jones
I thank the Minister for his comments, but sadly we do not feel that is appropriate or robust enough, which is why we will be pressing the amendment to a Division.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Committee divided.
Alex Davies-Jones
While I am at risk of parroting my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South on clause 11, it is important that adults and the specific risks they face online are considered in the clause. The Minister knows we have wider concerns about the specific challenges of the current categorisation system. I will come on to that at great length later, but I thought it would be helpful to remind him at this relatively early stage that the commitments to safety and risk assessments for category 1 services will only work if category 1 encapsulates the most harmful platforms out there. That being said, Labour broadly supports this clause and has not sought to amend it.
Chris Philp
I am eagerly awaiting the lengthy representations that the shadow Minister just referred to, as are, I am sure, the whole Committee and indeed the millions watching our proceedings on the live broadcast. As the shadow Minister said, clause 13 sets out the safety duties in relation to adults. This is content that is legal but potentially harmful to adults, and for those topics specified in secondary legislation, it will require category 1 services to set out clearly what actions they might be taking—from the actions specified in subsection (4) —in relation to that content.
It is important to specify that the action they may choose to take is a choice for the platform. I know some people have raised issues concerning free speech and these duties, but I want to reiterate and be clear that this is a choice for the platform. They have to be publicly clear about what choices they are making, and they must apply those choices consistently. That is a significant improvement on where we are now, where some of these policies get applied in a manner that is arbitrary.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 13 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 14
User empowerment duties
Alex Davies-Jones
I beg to move amendment 46, in clause 14, page 14, line 12, after “non-verified users” insert
“and to enable them to see whether another user is verified or non-verified.”
This amendment would make it clear that, as part of the User Empowerment Duty, users should be able to see which other users are verified and which are non-verified.
Chris Philp
I would be delighted to speak to the amendment, which would change the existing user empowerment duty in clause 14 to require category 1 services to enable adult users to see whether other users are verified. In effect, however, that objective already follows as a natural consequence of the duty in clause 14(6). When a user decides to filter out non-verified users, by definition such users will be able to see content only from verified users, so they could see from that who was verified and who was not. The effect intended by the amendment, therefore, is already achieved through clause 14(6).
Kirsty Blackman
I am sorry to disagree with the Minister so vigorously, but that is a rubbish argument. It does not make any sense. There is a difference between wanting to filter out everybody who is not verified and wanting to actually see if someone who is threatening someone else online is a verified or a non-verified user. Those are two very different things. I can understand why a politician, for example, might not want to filter out unverified users but would want to check whether a person was verified before going to the police to report a threat.
Chris Philp
When it comes to police investigations, if something is illegal and merits a report to the police, users should report it, regardless of whether someone is verified or not—whatever the circumstances. I would encourage any internet user to do that. That effectively applies on Twitter already; some people have blue ticks and some people do not, and people should report others to the police if they do something illegal, whether or not they happen to have a blue tick.
Amendment 47 seeks to create a definition of identity verification in clause 189. In addition, it would compel the person’s real name to be displayed. I understand the spirit of the amendment, but there are two reasons why I would not want to accept it and would ask hon. Members not to press it. First, the words “identity verification” are ordinary English words with a clear meaning and we do not normally define in legislation ordinary English words with a clear meaning. Secondly, the amendment would add the new requirement that, if somebody is verified, their real name has to be displayed, but I do not think that that is the effect of the drafting as it stands. Somebody may be verified, and the company knows who they are—if the police go to the company, they will have the verified information—but there is no obligation, as the amendment is drafted, for that information to be displayed publicly. The effect of that part of the amendment would be to force users to choose between disclosing their identity to everyone or having no control over who they interact with. That may not have been the intention, but I am not sure that this would necessarily make sense.
New clause 8 would place requirements on Ofcom about how to produce guidance on user identity verification and what that guidance must contain. We already have provisions on that in clause 58, which we will no doubt come to, although probably not later on today—maybe on Thursday. Clause 58 allows Ofcom to include in its regulatory guidance the principles and standards referenced in the new clause, which can then assist service providers in complying with their duties. Of course, if they choose to ignore the guidelines and do not comply with their duties, they will be subject to enforcement action, but we want to ensure that there is flexibility for Ofcom, in writing those guidelines, and for companies, in following those guidelines or taking alternative steps to meet their duty.
This morning, a couple of Members talked about the importance of remaining flexible and being open to future changes in technology and a wide range of user needs. We want to make sure that flexibility is retained. As drafted, new clause 8 potentially undermines that flexibility. We think that the powers set out in clause 58 give Ofcom the ability to set the relevant regulatory guidance.
Clause 14 implements the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud in her ten-minute rule Bill and the proposals made, as the shadow Minister has said, by a number of third-party stakeholders. We should all welcome the fact that these new user empowerment duties have now been included in the Bill in response to such widespread parliamentary lobbying.
Alex Davies-Jones
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I want to recount my own experience on this issue. He mentioned that anybody in receipt of anonymous abuse on social media should report it to the police, especially if it is illegal. On Thursday, I dared to tweet my opinions on the controversial Depp-Heard case in America. As a result of putting my head above the parapet, my Twitter mentions were an absolute sewer of rape threats and death threats, mainly from anonymous accounts. My Twitter profile was mocked up—I had devil horns and a Star of David on my forehead. It was vile. I blocked, deleted and moved on, but I also reported those accounts to Twitter, especially those that sent me rape threats and death threats.
That was on Thursday, and to date no action has been taken and I have not received any response from Twitter about any of the accounts I reported. The Minister said they should be reported to the police. If I reported all those accounts to the police, I would still be there now reporting them. How does he anticipate that this will be resourced so that social media companies can tackle the issue? That was the interaction resulting from just one tweet that I sent on Thursday, and anonymous accounts sent me a barrage of hate and illegal activity.
Chris Philp
The shadow Minister raises a very good point. Of course, what she experienced on Twitter was despicable, and I am sure that all members of the Committee would unreservedly condemn the perpetrators who put that content on there. Once the Bill is passed, there will be legal duties on Twitter to remove illegal content. At the moment, they do not exist, and there is no legal obligation for Twitter to remove that content, even though much of it, from the sound of it, would cross one of various legal thresholds. Perhaps some messages qualify as malicious communication, and others might cross other criminal thresholds. That legal duty does not exist at the moment, but when this Bill passes, for the first time there will be that duty to protect not just the shadow Minister but users across the whole country.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Kirsty Blackman
Sometimes we miss out the fact that although MPs face abuse, we have a level of protection as currently elected Members. Even if there were an election coming up, we have a level of security protection and access that is much higher than for anybody else challenging a candidate or standing in a council or a Scottish Parliament election. As sitting MPs, we already have an additional level of protection because of the security services we have in place. We need to remember, and I assume this is why the amendment is drawn in a pretty broad way, that everybody standing for any sort of elected office faces significant risk of harm—again, whether or not that meets the threshold for illegality.
There are specific things that have been mentioned. As has been said, epilepsy is specifically mentioned as a place where specific harm occurs. Given the importance of democracy, which is absolutely vital, we need to have a democratic system where people are able to stand in elections and make their case. Given the importance of democracy, which is absolutely vital, we need to have a democratic system where people are able to stand in elections and make their case. That is why we have election addresses and a system where the election address gets delivered through every single person’s door. There is an understanding and acceptance by people involved in designing democratic processes that the message of all candidates needs to get out there. If the message of all candidates cannot get out there because some people are facing significant levels of abuse online, then democracy is not acting in the way that it should be. These amendments are fair and make a huge amount of sense. They are protecting the most important tenets of democracy and democratic engagement.
I want to say something about my own specific experiences. We have reported people to the police and have had people in court over the messages they have sent, largely by email, which would not be included in the Bill, but there have also been some pretty creepy ones on social media that have not necessarily met the threshold. As has been said, it is my staff who have had to go to court and stand in the witness box to explain the shock and terror they have felt on seeing the email or the communication that has come in, so I think any provision should include that.
Finally, we have seen situations where people working in elections—this is not an airy-fairy notion, but something that genuinely happened—have been photographed and those pictures have been shared on social media, and they have then been abused as a result. They are just doing their job, handing out ballot papers or standing up and announcing the results on the stage, and they have to abide by the processes that are in place now. In order for us to have free and fair elections that are run properly and that people want to work at and support, we need to have that additional level of protection. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen made a very reasonable argument and I hope the Minister listened to it carefully.
Chris Philp
I have listened very carefully to both the hon. Member for Batley and Spen and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North. I agree with both of them that abuse and illegal activity directed at anyone, including people running for elected office, is unacceptable. I endorse and echo the comments they made in their very powerful and moving speeches.
In relation to the technicality of these amendments, what they are asking for is in the Bill already but in different places. This clause is about protecting content of “democratic importance” and concerns stopping online social media firms deleting content through over-zealous takedown. What the hon. Members are talking about is different. They are talking about abuse and illegal activities, such as rape threats, that people get on social media, particularly female MPs, as they both pointed out. I can point to two other places in the Bill where what they are asking for is delivered.
First, there are the duties around illegal content that we debated this morning. If there is content online that is illegal—some of the stuff that the shadow Minister referred to earlier sounds as if it would meet that threshold—then in the Bill there is a duty on social media firms to remove that content and to proactively prevent it if it is on the priority list. The route to prosecution will exist in future, as it does now, and the user-verification measures, if a user is verified, make it more likely for the police to identify the person responsible. In the context of identifying people carrying out abuse, I know the Home Office is looking at the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 as a separate piece of work that speaks to that issue.
So illegal content is dealt with in the illegal content provisions in the Bill, but later we will come to clause 150, which updates the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and creates a new harmful communications offence. Some of the communications that have been described may not count as a criminal offence under other parts of criminal law, but if they meet the test of harmful communication in clause 150, they will be criminalised and will therefore have to be taken down, and prosecution will be possible. In meeting the very reasonable requests that the hon. Members for Batley and Spen and for Aberdeen North have made, I would point to those two parts of the Bill.
Kirsty Blackman
But clause 150(5) says that if a message
“is, or is intended to be, a contribution to a matter of public interest”,
people are allowed to send it, which basically gives everybody a get-out clause in relation to anything to do with elections.
Kirsty Blackman
I know we are not discussing that part of the Bill, and if the Minister wants to come back to this when we get to clause 150, I have no problem with that.
Chris Philp
I will answer the point now, as it has been raised. Clause 150 categorically does not give a get-out-of-jail-free card or provide an automatic excuse. Clearly, there is no way that abusing a candidate for elected office with rape threats and so on could possibly be considered a matter of public interest. In fact, even if the abuse somehow could be considered as possibly contributing to public debate, clause 150(5) says explicitly in line 32 on page 127:
“but that does not determine the point”.
Even where there is some potentially tenuous argument about a contribution to a matter of public interest, which most definitely would not be the case for the rape threats that have been described, that is not determinative. It is a balancing exercise that gets performed, and I hope that puts the hon. Lady’s mind at rest.
Kim Leadbeater
The Minister makes a really valid point and is right about the impact on the individual. The point I am trying to make with the amendments is that this is about the impact on the democratic process, which is why I think it fits in with clause 15. It is not about how individuals feel; it is about the impact that that has on behaviours, and about putting the emphasis and onus on platforms to decide what is of democratic importance. In the evidence we had two weeks ago, the witnesses certainly did not feel comfortable with putting the onus on platforms. If we were to have a code of practice, we would at least give them something to work with on the issue of what is of democratic importance. It is about the impact on democracy, not just the harm to the individual involved.
Chris Philp
Clearly, if a communication is sufficiently offensive that it meets the criminal threshold, it is covered, and that would obviously harm the democratic process as well. If a communication was sufficiently offensive that it breached the harmful communication offence in clause 150, it would also, by definition, harm the democratic process, so communications that are damaging to democracy would axiomatically be caught by one thing or the other. I find it difficult to imagine a communication that might be considered damaging to democracy but that would not meet one of those two criteria, so that it was not illegal and would not meet the definition of a harmful communication.
My main point is that the existing provisions in the Bill address the kinds of behaviours that were described in those two speeches—the illegal content provisions, and the new harmful communication offence in clause 150. On that basis, I hope the hon. Member for Batley and Spen will withdraw the amendment, safe in the knowledge that the Bill addresses the issue that she rightly and reasonably raises.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Alex Davies-Jones
I will speak to clauses 15 and 16 and to new clause 7. The duties outlined in the clause, alongside clause 16, require platforms to have special terms and processes for handling journalistic and democratically important content. In respect of journalistic content, platforms are also required to provide an expedited appeals process for removed posts, and terms specifying how they will define journalistic content. There are, however, widespread concerns about both those duties.
As the Bill stands, we feel that there is too much discretion for platforms. They are required to define “journalistic” content, a role that they are completely unsuited to and, from what I can gather, do not want. In addition, the current drafting leaves the online space open to abuse. Individuals intent on causing harm are likely to apply to take advantage of either of those duties; masquerading as journalists or claiming democratic importance in whatever harm they are causing, and that could apply to almost anything. In the evidence sessions, we also heard about the concerns expressed brilliantly by Kyle Taylor from Fair Vote and Ellen Judson from Demos, that the definitions as they stand in the Bill thus far are broad and vague. However, we will come on to those matters later.
Ultimately, treating “journalistic” and “democratically important” content differently is unworkable, leaving platforms to make impossible judgments over, for example, when and for how long an issue becomes a matter of reasonable public debate, or in what settings a person is acting as a journalist. As the Minister knows, the duties outlined in the clause could enable a far-right activist who was standing in an election, or potentially even just supporting candidates in elections, to use all social media platforms. That might allow far-right figures to be re-platformed on to social media sites where they would be free to continue spreading hate.
The Bill indicates that content will be protected if created by a political party ahead of a vote in Parliament, an election or a referendum, or when campaigning on a live political issue—basically, anything. Can the Minister confirm whether the clause means that far-right figures who have been de-platformed for hate speech already must be reinstated if they stand in an election? Does that include far-right or even neo-Nazi political parties? Content and accounts that have been de-platformed from mainstream platforms for breaking terms of service should not be allowed to return to those platforms via this potential—dangerous—loophole.
As I have said, however, I know that these matters are complex and, quite rightly, exemptions must be in place to allow for free discussion around matters of the day. What cannot be allowed to perpetuate is hate sparked by bad actors using simple loopholes to avoid any consequences.
On clause 16, the Minister knows about the important work that Hope not Hate is doing in monitoring key far-right figures. I pay tribute to it for its excellent work. Many of them self-define as journalists and could seek to exploit this loophole in the Bill and propagate hate online. Some of the most high-profile and dangerous far-right figures in the UK, including Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, now class themselves as journalists. There are also far-right and conspiracy-theory so-called “news companies” such as Rebel Media and Urban Scoop. Both those replicate mainstream news publishers, but are used to spread misinformation and discriminatory content. Many of those individuals and organisations have been de-platformed already for consistently breaking the terms of service of major social media platforms, and the exemption could see them demand their return and have their return allowed.
New clause 7 would require the Secretary of State to publish a report reviewing the effectiveness of clauses 15 and 16. It is a simple new clause to require parliamentary scrutiny of how the Government’s chosen means of protecting content of democratic importance and content of journalistic content are working.
Hacked Off provided me with a list of people it found who have claimed to be journalists and who would seek to exploit the journalistic content duty, despite being banned from social media because they are racists or bad actors. First is Charles C. Johnson, a far-right activist who describes himself as an “investigative journalist”. Already banned from Twitter for saying he would “take out” a civil rights activist, he is also alleged to be a holocaust denier.
Secondly, we have Robert Stacy McCain. Robert has been banned from Twitter for participating in targeted abuse. He was a journalist for The Washington Post, but is alleged to have also been a member of the League of the South, a far-right group known to include racists. Then, there is Richard B. Spencer, a far-right journalist and former editor, only temporary banned for using overlapping accounts. He was pictured making the Nazi salute and has repeated Nazi propaganda. When Trump became President, he encouraged people to “party like it’s 1933”. Sadly, the list goes on and on.
Transparency is at the very heart of the Bill. The Minister knows we have concerns about clauses 15 and 16, as do many of his own Back Benchers. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen how extremist groups and individuals and foreign state actors are having a very real impact on the online space. If the Minister is unwilling to move on tightening up those concepts, the very least he could commit to is a review that Parliament will be able to formally consider.
Chris Philp
I thank the shadow Minister for her comments and questions. I would like to pick up on a few points on the clauses. First, there was a question about what content of democratic importance and content of journalistic importance mean in practice. As with many concepts in the Bill, we will look to Ofcom to issue codes of practice specifying precisely how we might expect platforms to implement the various provisions in the Bill. That is set out in clause 37(10)(e) and (f), which appear at the top of page 37, for ease. Clauses 15 and 16 on content of democratic and journalistic importance are expressly referenced as areas where codes of practice will have to be published by Ofcom, which will do further work on and consult on that. It will not just publish it, but will go through a proper process.
The shadow Minister expressed some understandable concerns a moment ago about various extremely unpleasant people, such as members of the far right who might somehow seek to use the provisions in clauses 15 and 16 as a shield behind which to hide, to enable them to continue propagating hateful, vile content. I want to make it clear that the protections in the Bill are not absolute—it is not that if someone can demonstrate that what they are saying is of democratic importance, they can say whatever they like. That is not how the clauses are drafted.
I draw attention to subsection (2) of both clauses 15 and 16. At the end of the first block of text, just above paragraph (a), it says “taken into account”: the duty is to ensure that matters concerning the importance of freedom of expression relating to content of democratic importance are taken into account when making decisions. It is not an absolute prohibition on takedown or an absolute protection, but simply something that has to be taken into account.
If someone from the far right, as the shadow Minister described, was spewing out vile hatred, racism or antisemitism, and tried to use those clauses, the fact that they might be standing in an election might well be taken into account. However, in performing that balancing exercise, the social media platforms and Ofcom acting as enforcers—and the court if it ever got judicially reviewed—would weigh those things up and find that taking into account content of democratic importance would not be sufficient to outweigh considerations around vile racism, antisemitism or misogyny.
Alex Davies-Jones
The Minister mentions that it would be taken into account. How long does he anticipate it would be taken into account for, especially given the nature of an election? A short campaign could be a number of weeks, or something could be posted a day before an election, be deemed democratically important and have very serious and dangerous ramifications.
Chris Philp
As I say, if content was racist, antisemitic or flagrantly misogynistic, the balancing exercise is performed and the democratic context may be taken into account. I do not think the scales would tip in favour of leaving the content up. Even during an election period, I think common sense dictates that.
To be clear on the timing point that the hon. Lady asked about, the definition of democratic importance is not set out in hard-edged terms. It does not say, “Well, if you are in a short election period, any candidate’s content counts as of democratic importance.” It is not set out in a manner that is as black and white as that. If, for example, somebody was a candidate but it was just racist abuse, I am not sure how even that would count as democratic importance, even during an election period, because it would just be abuse; it would not be contributing to any democratic debate. Equally, somebody might not be a candidate, or might have been a candidate historically, but might be contributing to a legitimate debate after an election. That might be seen as being of democratic importance, even though they were not actually a candidate. As I said, the concept is not quite as black and white as that. The main point is that it is only to be taken into account; it is not determinative.
Alex Davies-Jones
I appreciate the Minister’s allowing me to come back on this. During the Committee’s evidence sessions, we heard of examples where bad-faith state actors were interfering in the Scottish referendum, hosting Facebook groups and perpetuating disinformation around the royal family to persuade voters to vote “Yes” to leave the United Kingdom. That disinformation by illegal bad-faith actors could currently come under both the democratic importance and journalistic exemptions, so would be allowed to remain for the duration of that campaign. Given the exemptions in the Bill, it could not be taken down but could have huge, serious ramifications for democracy and the security of the United Kingdom.
Chris Philp
I understand the points that the hon. Lady is raising. However, I do not think that it would happen in that way.
Chris Philp
No, I don’t. First of all, as I say, it is taken into account; it is not determinative. Secondly, on the point about state-sponsored disinformation, as I think I mentioned yesterday in response to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton, there is, as we speak, a new criminal offence of foreign interference being created in the National Security Bill. That will criminalise the kind of foreign interference in elections that she referred to. Because that would then create a new category of illegal content, that would flow through into this Bill. That would not be overridden by the duty to protect content of democratic importance set out here. I think that the combination of the fact that this is a balancing exercise, and not determinative, and the new foreign interference offence being created in the National Security Bill, will address the issue that the hon. Lady is raising—reasonably, because it has happened in this country, as she has said.
I will briefly turn to new clause 7, which calls for a review. I understand why the shadow Minister is proposing a review, but there is already a review mechanism in the Bill; it is to be found in clause 149, and will, of course, include a review of the way that clauses 15 and 16 operate. They are important clauses; we all accept that journalistic content and content of democratic importance is critical to the functioning of our society. Case law relating to article 10 of the European convention on human rights, for example, recognises content of journalistic importance as being especially critical. These two clauses seek to ensure that social media firms, in making their decisions, and Ofcom, in enforcing the firms, take account of that. However, it is no more than that: it is “take account”, it is not determinative.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 15 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Steve Double.)
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Philp Excerpts(2 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and pay tribute to his tireless work campaigning on behalf of the horse-racing industry. The Government recognise the contribution that racing makes to our sporting culture and to the rural economy. We equally understand the critical importance of being able to move racehorses across international borders. We are aware that the industry has provided proposals to HMRC and the Treasury regarding the VAT arrangements, and I can tell the House that the Treasury is actively considering those proposals at the moment.
Mr Robertson
I thank the Minister for that encouraging answer. As he knows, the owners of racehorses coming to this country to race have to deposit a VAT-equivalent security, returnable when they leave, whereas the owners of horses coming to this country for what are classified as work purposes do not. Given that it would not cost the Exchequer anything to correct this anomaly, and that it would help cash flow and reduce the administrative burden on racehorse owners, I hope that the Minister will continue to speak to the Treasury with a view to correcting it.
Chris Philp
I thank my hon. Friend for his clear articulation of the issue and his powerful expression of it. I will certainly convey that to Treasury colleagues who are currently considering the matter.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Can I just say, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I really enjoyed the different tradition we had this morning when we entered the Chamber? It is the first time I have seen it, and I would like to say how well the House does it.
Racehorses are very important to my constituency; they are an integral part of some of my constituents’ lives. The Northern Ireland protocol has obviously complicated things, so can the Minister tell me how my constituents in the racehorse industry in Strangford and in Northern Ireland can get through the minefield of bureaucracy and red tape?
Chris Philp
The Government are extremely mindful of the challenges that the way the Northern Ireland protocol is being applied is imposing on communities across Northern Ireland. It clearly affects the horse-racing industry as it affects others. I know that my colleagues across Government are working extremely hard as we speak to find practical ways of fixing those problems, and I am sure that my colleague the Foreign Secretary will keep the hon. Member and the House updated on her efforts.
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
The anomaly on VAT, which ridiculously argues that a racehorse coming here to race or a brood mare coming here to breed is not coming for work, needs to be sorted.
Can the Minister also please ensure that the horserace betting levy is increased and reformed far sooner than is currently proposed? Although horse-racing is doing great at the moment, there is a significant challenge with the low level of prize money, which is leading to fewer runners and too many horses running overseas rather than here. We need to make sure we support the industry.
Chris Philp
I thank the former Secretary of State, who is a representative of a horse-racing constituency, for his question. Clearly quite a lot of money is going into the horse-racing industry via the levy. It is on track to raise about £100 million this year, most of which ends up in prize money. However, my right hon. Friend has made a number of powerful representations, both in this House and privately, about the need to review that levy earlier than was planned, and his powerful representations are being actively considered as we speak.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
The Online Safety Bill, which went into Committee on Tuesday, rightly has extremely strong protections for women and girls. The hon. Lady will have noticed that, in schedule 7, crimes such as harassment, stalking, revenge porn and extreme porn are designated as “priority offences” , and those measures protect women in particular. They are offences where social media firms have proactively to take steps to prevent that content appearing online. We have also added cyber-flashing as a new criminal offence to the Bill.
Catherine West
Will the Minister consider what penalties can be brought against social media companies that fail in their duty to protect young girls and women, given that the number of eating disorders have risen exponentially in the past few years and, sadly, young women and girls are having suicidal thoughts owing to the way these automatic artificial intelligence practices work? What action will the Minister take on that?
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady is raising an incredibly important issue. Both girls and boys are covered under the provisions that protect children from harms. When we designate the list of harms, I expect that it will include eating-related matters and suicide and self-harm content, mindful of the terrible case of Molly Russell, who committed suicide after being bombarded on Instagram. We will also be publishing, in due course, the list of harms applying to adults. The penalties that will be applied if companies breach these duties include fines of up to 10% of global revenue, which tends to be about 100% of UK revenue. In extreme cases, if they persistently fail to comply, there are denial of service provisions, where these platforms’ ability to—[Interruption.] This is an important question. Their ability to transmit into the UK can be completely disconnected.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the Minister consider amending the Online Safety Bill in the light of the Financial Conduct Authority’s recent warning that there has been an 86% increase in screen-sharing scams in just the past 12 months?
Chris Philp
Yes. The Bill is technology-agnostic, meaning that it does not refer specifically to technology because, obviously, technologies evolve all the time. My hon. Friend touches on fraud; the Bill was amended before its introduction to include in the scope of its duties advertisements that promote fraud, but I am happy to meet him to discuss further the particular issue he has raised.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Violence against women and girls is a systemic problem online, but the Government have failed even to name it in the Bill. The Minister knows that there is widespread support for tackling this issue in the sector and among his own Back Benchers, and I know that Members from all parties would welcome it if he went further. I ask once and for all: why have the Government failed to tackle violence against women and girls online in its most basic form and not included misogyny as a priority offence in the Bill?
Chris Philp
I strongly dispute the suggestion that the Bill does not protect women and girls. I have already said in response to the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) that we have created a new cyber-flashing offence and that we have named offences such as harassment, stalking and revenge porn as priority offences—
Chris Philp
Those things are already priority offences in schedule 7 to the Bill. The Bill went into Committee on Tuesday and I look forward to discussing with the shadow Minister and other Committee members ideas to improve the Bill as it goes through Parliament.
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
I warmly welcome what we are doing with the Online Safety Bill to protect people from harm, because tech companies have been far too lax at doing so for far too long, but there is concern in some quarters that we will unintentionally end up restricting freedom of speech by conflating opinions that people do not like to hear with actual harms that are done online. Will my hon. Friend reassure me that we will ensure that we stay on the right side of that line and protect freedom of speech in the Bill?
Chris Philp
Yes, I can categorically give that assurance. There has been some misinformation around this issue. First, there is nothing at all in the Bill that requires social media firms to censor or prohibit speech that is legal and that is harmless to children. Reports to the contrary are quite simply untrue. In fact, there is express provision in the Bill: clause 19(2) expressly provides for a new duty on social media firms to have regard to free speech. Such a provision does not currently exist.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and his long-standing interest in this area. Clause 50 of the Online Safety Bill already exempts recognised news publishers from the provisions of the Bill, and in clause 16 there are particular protections for content of journalistic importance. As we committed on Second Reading, I think in response to one of his interventions, we will be looking to go further to provide a right of appeal in relation to journalistic content. Work is going on to deliver that commitment right now, and we will bring forward further news as soon as possible. I will make sure that my right hon. Friend is the first to hear about it.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Online Safety Bill (Fourth sitting)
Chris Philp ExcerptsThursday 26th May 2022
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 26 May 2022 - (26 May 2022)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
Q
Stephen Almond: Thank you very much. I will start by explaining the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum. It is a voluntary, not statutory, forum that brings together ourselves, Ofcom, the Competition and Markets Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority—some of the regulators with the greatest interest in digital regulation—to make sure that we have a coherent approach to the regulation of digital services in the interests of the public and indeed the economy.
We are brought together through our common interest. We do not require a series of duties or statutory frameworks to make us co-operate, because the case for co-operation is very, very clear. We will deliver better outcomes by working together and by joining up where our powers align. I think that is what you are seeing in practice in some of the work we have done jointly—for example, around the implementation of the children’s code alongside Ofcom’s implementation of the video-sharing platform regime. A joined-up approach to questions about, for example, how you assure the age of children online is really important. That gives me real confidence in reassuring the Committee that the ICO, Ofcom and other digital regulators will be able to take a very joined-up approach to regulating in the context of the new online safety regime.
Chris Philp
Q
Stephen Almond: In our view, the Bill strikes an appropriate balance between privacy and online safety. The duties in the Bill should leave service providers in no doubt that they must comply with data protection law, and that they should guard against unwarranted intrusion of privacy. In my discourse with firms, I am very clear that this is not a trade-off between online safety and privacy: it is both. We are firmly expecting that companies take that forward and work out how they are going to adopt both a “privacy by design” and a “safety by design” approach to the delivery of their services. They must deliver both.
Chris Philp
Q
Stephen Almond: In brief, yes. We feel that the Bill has been designed to work alongside data protection law, for which we remain the statutory regulator, but with appropriate mechanisms for co-operation with the ICO—so, with this series of consultation duties where codes of practice or guidance that could be issued by Ofcom may have an impact on privacy. We think that is the best way of assuring regulatory coherence in this area.
The Chair
Mr Almond, we are trying to get a pint into a half-pint pot doing this, so we are rushing a bit. If, when you leave the room, you have a “I wish I’d said that” moment, please feel free to put it in writing to us. We are indebted to you. Thank you very much indeed.
Examination of Witnesses
Sanjay Bhandari and Lynn Perry gave evidence.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Lynn Perry: As a recommendation, we think that could only strengthen the protections of children.
Chris Philp
Q
Lynn Perry: We would welcome provision to be able to bring particularly significant evidence of concern. That is certainly something that organisations, large charities in the sector and those responsible for representing the rights of children and young people would welcome. On some of these issues, we work in coalition to make representations on behalf of children and young people, as well as of parents and carers, who also raise some concerns. The ability to do that and to strengthen the response is something that would be welcomed.
Chris Philp
Q
Sanjay Bhandari: Our beneficiaries are under-represented or minority communities in sports. I agree, I think that the Bill goes a substantial way to protecting them and to dealing with some of the issues that we saw most acutely after the Euro 2020 finals.
We have to look at the Bill in context. This is revolutionary legislation, which we are not seeing anywhere else in the world. We are going first. The basic sanctions framework and the 10% fines I have seen working in other areas—anti-trust in particular. In Europe, that has a long history. The definition of harm being in the manner of dissemination will pick up pile-ons and some forms of trolling that we see a lot of. Hate crime being designated as priority illegal content is a big one for us, because it puts the proactive duty on the platforms. That too will take away quite a lot of content, we think. The new threatening communications offence we have talked about will deal with rape and death threats. Often the focus is on, quite rightly, the experience of black professional footballers, but there are also other people who play, watch and work in the game, including our female pundits and our LGBT fan groups, who also get loads of this abuse online. The harm-based offence—communications sent to cause harm without reasonable excuse—will likely cover things such as malicious tagging and other forms of trolling. I have already talked about the identification, verification and anonymity provisions.
I think that the Bill will go a substantial way. I am still interested in what fits into that residual category of content harmful to adults, but rather than enter into an arid philosophical and theoretical debate, I will take the spirit of the Bill and try to tag it to real content.
Chris Philp
Q
Sanjay Bhandari: I do not think it was adequate because we still see stuff coming through. They have the greatest power to stop it. One thing we are interested in is improving transparency reporting. I have asked them a number of times, “Someone does not become a troll overnight, in the same way that someone does not become a heroin addict overnight, or commit an extremist act of terrorism overnight. There is a pathway where people start off, and you have that data. Can I have it?” I have lost count of the number of times that I have asked for that data. Now I want Ofcom to ask them for it.
Chris Philp
Q
Lynn Perry: We do. Barnardo’s really welcomes the Bill. We think it is a unique and once-in-a-generation opportunity to achieve some really long-term changes to protect children from a range of online harms. There are some areas in which the Bill could go further, which we have talked about today. The opportunity that we see here is to make the UK the safest place in the world for children to be online. There are some very important provisions that we welcome, not least on age verification, the ability to raise issues through super-complaints, which you have asked me about, and the accountability in various places throughout the Bill.
Chris Philp
Q
Sanjay Bhandari: As I said earlier, there are no absolute rights. There is no absolute right to freedom of speech— I cannot shout “Fire!” here—and there is no absolute right to privacy; I cannot use my anonymity as a cloak for criminality. It is question of drawing an appropriate balance. In my opinion, the Bill draws an appropriate balance between the right to freedom of speech and the right to privacy. I believe in both, but in the same way that I believe in motherhood and apple pie: of course I believe in them. It is really about the balancing exercise, and I think this is a sensible, pragmatic balancing exercise.
The Chair
Ms Perry, I am very pleased that we were finally able to hear from you. Thank you very much indeed—you have been very patient. Thank you very much, Mr Bhandari. If either of you, as a result of what you have heard and been asked today, have any further thoughts that you wish to submit, please do so.
Examination of Witnesses
Eva Hartshorn-Sanders and Poppy Wood gave evidence.
Chris Philp
Q
Eva Hartshorn-Sanders: Our “Hidden Hate” report was on DMs—direct messages—that were shared by the participants in the study. One in 15 of those broke the terms and conditions that Instagram had set out related to misogynist abuse—sexual abuse. That was in the wake of the World cup, so after Instagram had done a big promotion about how great it was going to be in having policies on these issues going forward. We found that 90% of that content was not acted on when we reported it. This was not even them going out proactively to find the content and not doing anything with it; it was raised for their attention, using their systems.
Chris Philp
Q
Eva Hartshorn-Sanders: That will depend on transparency, as Poppy mentioned. How much of that information can be shared? We are doing research at the moment on data that is shared personally, or is publicly available through the different tools that we have. So it is strengthening access to that data.
There is this information asymmetry that happens at the moment, where big tech is able to see patterns of abuse. In some cases, as in the misogyny report, you have situations where a woman might be subject to abuse from one person over and over again. The way that is treated in the EU is that Instagram will go back and look at the last 30 historically to see the pattern of abuse that exists. They are not applying that same type of rigorousness to other jurisdictions. So it is having access to it in the audits that are able to happen. Everyone should be safe online, so this should be a safety-by-design feature that the companies have.
Chris Philp
Q
Eva Hartshorn-Sanders: I think it depends on who the researchers are. I personally do not have experience of it, but I cannot speak to that. On transparency, at the moment, the platforms generally choose what they share. They do not necessarily give you the data that you need. You can hear from my accent that I am originally from New Zealand. I know that in the wake of the Christchurch mosque terrorist attack, they were not prepared to provide the independent regulator with data on how many New Zealanders had seen the footage of the livestream, which had gone viral globally. That is inexcusable, really.
The Chair
Q
Poppy Wood: On the point about access to data, I do not believe that the platforms go as far as they could, or even as far as they say they do. Meta have a tool called CrowdTangle, which they use to provide access to data for certain researchers who are privileged enough to have access. That does not even include comments on posts; it is only the posts themselves. The platforms pull the rug out all the time from under researchers who are investigating things that the platforms do not like. We saw that with Laura Edelson at New York University, who they just cut off—that is one of the most famous cases. I think it is quite egregious of Meta to say that they give lots of access to data.
We know from the revelations of whistleblowers that Meta do their own internal research, and when they do not like the results, they just bury it. They might give certain researchers access to data under certain provisions, but independent researchers who want to investigate a certain emergent harm or a certain problem are not being given the sort of access that they really need to get insights that move the needle. I am afraid that I just do not believe that at all.
The Bill could go much further. A provision on access to data in clause 136 states that Ofcom has two years to issue a report on whether researchers should get access to data. I think we know that researchers should have access to data, so I would, as a bare minimum, shorten the time that Ofcom has to do that report from two years to six months. You could turn that into a question of how to give researchers access to data rather than of whether they should get it. The Digital Services Act—the EU equivalent of the Bill—goes a bit further on access to data than our Bill. One result of that might be that researchers go to the EU to get their data because they can get it sooner.
Improving the Bill’s access to data provisions is a no-brainer. It is a good thing for the Government because we will see more stuff coming out of academia, and it is a good thing for the safety tech sector, because the more research is out there, the more tools can be built to tackle online harms. I certainly call on the Government to think about whether clause 136 could go further.
Chris Philp
Q
Poppy Wood: It is not an easy problem to solve, for sure. What everybody is saying is that you do it in a content-neutral way, so that you are not talking about listing specific types of misinformation but about the risks that are built into your system and that need to be mitigated. This is a safety by design question. We have heard a lot about introducing more friction into the system, checking the virality threshold, and being more transparent. If you can get better on transparency, I think you will get better on misinformation.
If there is more of an obligation on the platforms to, first, do a broader risk assessment outside of the content that will be listed as priority content and, secondly, introduce some “harm reduction by design” mechanisms, through friction and stemming virality, that are not specific to certain types of misinformation, but are much more about safety by design features—if we can do that, we are part of the way there. You are not going to solve this problem straightaway, but you should have more friction in the system, be it through a code of practice or a duty somewhere to account for risk and build safer systems. It cannot be a content play; it has to be a systems play.
The Chair
Thank you. I am sorry, but that brings us to the end of the time allotted to this session. Ladies, if either of you wishes to make a submission in writing in the light of what you have not answered or not been able to answer, please do. Ms Wood, Ms Hartsholm-Sanders, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
Examination of Witnesses
Owen Meredith and Matt Rogerson gave evidence.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Owen Meredith: I do not think that would be allowable under the Bill, because of the distinction between a recognised news publisher publishing what we would all recognise as journalistic content, versus the journalistic content exemption. I think that is why they are treated differently.
Chris Philp
Q
Owen Meredith: Yes. I think the issue is how that exemption will work in practice. I think that what the Government have said they are looking at and will bring forward does address the operating in practice.
Chris Philp
Q
Owen Meredith: As I alluded to earlier, it is a real challenge to set out this legal definition in a country that believes, rightly, in the freedom of the press as a fourth pillar of democracy. It is a huge challenge to start with, and therefore we have to set out criteria that cover the vast majority of news publishers but do not end up with a backdoor licensing system for the press, which I think we are all keen to avoid. I think it meets that criterion.
On the so-called bad actors seeking to abuse that, I have listened to and read some of the evidence that you have had from others—not extensively, I must say, due to other commitments this week—and I think that it would be very hard for someone to meet all those criteria as set out in order to take advantage of this. I think that, as Matt has said, there will clearly be tests and challenges to that over time. It will rightly be challenged in court or go through the usual judicial process.
Matt Rogerson: It seems to me that the whole Bill will be an iterative process. The internet will not suddenly become safe when the Bill receives Royal Assent, so there will be this process whereby guidance and case law are developed, in terms of what a newspaper is, against the criteria. There are exemptions for news publishers in a whole range of other laws that are perfectly workable. I think that Ofcom is perfectly well equipped to create guidance that enables it to be perfectly workable.
Chris Philp
Q
Matt Rogerson: Subject to the guidance developed by Ofcom, which we will be engaged in developing, I do think so. The other thing to bear in mind is that the platforms already have lists of trusted publishers. For example, Google has a list in relation to Google News—I think it has about 65,000 publishers—which it automates to push through Google News as trusted news publishers. Similarly, Facebook has a list of trusted news publishers that it uses as a signal for the Facebook newsfeed. So I do not buy the idea that you can’t automate the use of trusted news sources within those products.
Chris Philp
Q
Owen Meredith: If I can speak to the point that directly relates to my members and those I represent, which is “Does it protect press freedom?”, which is perhaps an extension of your question, I would say that it is seeking to. Given the assurances you have given about the detailed amendments that you intend to bring forward—if those are correct, and I am very happy to write to the Committee and comment once we have seen the detail, if it would be helpful to do so—and everything I have heard about what you are intending to do, I believe it will. But I do not believe that the current draft properly and adequately protects press freedom, which is why, I think, you will be bringing forward amendments.
Chris Philp
Q
Owen Meredith: Subject to seeing the drafting, but I believe the intention—yes.
Chris Philp
Thank you. That is very helpful. Mr Rogerson?
Matt Rogerson: As we know, this is a world first: regulation of the internet, regulation of speech acts on the internet. From a news publisher perspective, I think all the principles are right in terms of what the Government are trying to do. In terms of free speech more broadly, a lot of it will come down to how the platforms implement the Bill in practice. Only time will tell in terms of the guidance that Ofcom develops and how the platforms implement that at vast scale. That is when we will see what impact the Bill actually has in practice.
Chris Philp
Q
Matt Rogerson: Yes. With the development of the online platforms to the dominant position they are in today, that will be a big step forward. The only thing I would add is that, as well as this Bill, the other Bill that will make a massive difference when it comes through is the digital markets unit Bill. We need competition to Facebook so that consumers have a choice and so that they can decide which social network they want to be on, not just the one dominant social network that is available to them in this country.
Chris Philp
I commend your ingenuity in levering an appeal for more digital competition into this discussion. Thank you.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Tim Fassam: I believe that would be helpful. I think Ofcom is the right organisation to manage the relationship with the platforms, because it is going to be much broader than the topics we are talking about in our session, but we do think the FCA, Action Fraud and potentially the CMA should be able to direct, and be very clear with Ofcom, that action needs to be taken. Ofcom should have the ability to ask for things to be reviewed to see whether they break the rules.
The other area where we think action probably needs to be taken is where firms are under investigation, because the Bill assumes it is clear cut whether something is fraud, a scam, a breach of the regulations or not. In some circumstances, that can take six months or a year to establish through investigation. We believe that if, for example, the FCA feels that something is high risk, it should be able to ask Ofcom to suspend an advert, or a firm from advertising, pending an investigation to assess whether it is a breach of the regulation.
Rocio Concha: I agree that Ofcom is the right regulator, the main regulator, but it needs to work with the other regulators—with the FCA, ASA and CMA—to enforce the Bill effectively. There is another area. Basically, we need to make sure that Ofcom and all the regulators involved have the right resources. When the initial version of the Bill was published, Ofcom got additional resources to enable it to enforce the Bill. But the Bill has increased in scope, because now it includes fraud and fraudulent advertising. We need to make sure that Ofcom has the right resources to enforce the full Bill effectively. That is something that the Government really need to consider.
Martin Lewis: I was going to make exactly that point, but it has just been made brilliantly so I will not waste your time.
Chris Philp
Q
I will start by agreeing with the point that Martin Lewis made a minute or two ago—that we cannot trust these companies to work on their own. Mr Lewis, I am not sure whether you have had a chance to go through clause 34, which we inserted into the Bill following your evidence to the Joint Committee last year. It imposes a duty on these companies to take steps and implement systems to
“prevent individuals from encountering content consisting of fraudulent advertisements”.
There is a clear duty to stop them from doing this, rather as you were asking a minute ago when you described the presentation. Does that strong requirement in clause 34, to stop individuals from encountering fraudulent advertisement content, meet the objective that you were asking for last year?
Martin Lewis: Let me start by saying that I am very grateful that you have put it in there and thankful that the Government have listened to our campaign. What I am about to say is not intended as criticism.
It is very difficult to know how this will work in practice. The issue is all about thresholds. How many scam adverts can we stomach? I still have, daily—even from the platform that I sued, never mind the others—tens of reports directly to me of scam adverts with my face on. Even though there is a promise that we will try to mitigate that, the companies are not doing it. We have to have a legitimate understanding that we are not going to have zero scam adverts on these platforms; unless they were to pre-vet, which I do not think they will, the way they operate means that will not happen.
I am not a lawyer but my concern is that the Bill should make it clear, and that any interpretation of the Bill from Ofcom should be clear, about exactly what threshold of scam adverts is acceptable—we know that they are going to happen—and what threshold is not acceptable. I do not have the expertise to answer your question; I have to rely on your expertise to do that. But I ask the Committee to think properly about what the threshold level should be.
What is and is not acceptable? What counts as “doing everything they can”? They are going to get big lawyers involved if you say there must be zero scam adverts—that is not going to happen. How many scam adverts are acceptable and how many are not? I am so sorry to throw that back as a question when I am a witness, but I do not have the expertise to answer. But that is my concern: I am not 100% convinced of the threshold level that you are setting.
The Chair
Q
Tim Fassam: I think we are positive about the actions that have been taken regarding social media; our concern is that the clause is not applied to search and that it excludes paid-for ads that are also user-generated content—promoted tweets or promoted posts, for example. We would ensure that that applied to all paid-for adverts and that it was consistent between social media and search.
Chris Philp
Q
Tim Fassam: You absolutely do, but to a weaker standard than in clause 34.
Chris Philp
Q
Tim Fassam: Thank you.
Chris Philp
Q
The Chair
Mr Lewis, as you were named, I think you had better start.
Martin Lewis: Ten per cent. of the global revenue of a major social media or search player is a lot of money—it certainly would hit them in the pocket. I reiterate my previous point: it is all about the threshold at which that comes in and how rigidly Ofcom is enforcing it. There are very few organisations that have the resources, legally, to take on big institutions of state, regulators and Governments. If any does, it is the gigantic tech firms. Absolutely, 10% of global revenue sounds like a suitable wall to prevent them jumping over. That is the aim, because we want those companies to work for people; we don’t want them to do scam adds. We want them to work well and we want them never to be fined because is no reason to fine them.
The proof of the pudding will be in how robust Ofcom feels it can be, off the back of the Bill, taking those companies on. I go back to needing to understand how many scam ads you permit under the duty to prevent scam ads. It clearly is not zero—you are not going to tell me it is zero. So how many are allowed, what are the protocols that come into place and how quickly do they have to take the ads down? Ultimately, I think that is going to be a decision for Ofcom, but it is the level of stringency that you put on Ofcom in order for it to interpret how it takes that decision that is going to decide whether this works or not.
Rocio Concha: I completely agree with Martin. Ofcom needs to have the right resources in order to monitor how the platforms are doing that, and it needs to have the right powers. At the moment, Ofcom can ask for information in a number of areas, including fraud, but not advertising. We need to make sure that Ofcom can ask for that information so that it can monitor what the platforms are doing. We need to make sure that it has the right powers and the right resources to enforce the Bill effectively.
Tim Fassam: You would hope that 10% would certainly be a significant disincentive. Our focus would be on whether companies are contributing to compensating the victims of fraud and scams, and whether they have been brought into the architecture that is utilised to compensate victims of fraud and scams. That would be the right aim in terms of financial consequences for the firms.
Chris Philp
Q
Secondly, clauses 140 and 141 contain a procedure for so-called super-complaints, where a body that represents users—it could be Which? or an organisation like it—is able to bring something almost like a class action or group complaint to Ofcom if it thinks a particular social media firm has systemic problems. Will those two clauses address the issue of complaints not being properly handled or, in some cases, not being dealt with at all?
Martin Lewis: Everything helps. I think the super-complaint point is really important. We must remember that many victims of scams are not so good at complaining and, by the nature of the crossover of individuals, there is a huge mental health issue at stake with scams. There is both the impact on people with mental health issues and the impact on people’s mental health of being scammed, which means that they may not be as robust and up for the fight or for complaining. As long as it works and applies to all the different categories that are repeated here, the super-complaint status is a good measure.
We absolutely need proper reporting lines. I urge you, Minister—I am not sure that this is in the Bill—to standardise this so that we can talk about what someone should do when they report: the same imagery, the same button. With that, people will know what to do. The more we can do that, the easier and better the system will be.
Chris Philp
Q
“easy to access, easy to use (including by children) and transparent.”
The previous paragraph (b) states that the system must
“provides for appropriate action to be taken by the provider of the service in response to complaints of a relevant kind”.
The Bill is saying that a complaints process must do those two things, because if it does not, Ofcom will be on the company’s back.
Martin Lewis: I absolutely support all of that. I am just pushing for that tiny bit more leadership, whether it is from you or Ofcom, that comes up with a standardised system with standardised imagery and placing, so that everybody knows that on the top left of the advert you have the button that you click to fill in a form to report it. The more we have that cross-platform and cross-search and cross-social media, the easier it will be for people. I am not sure it is a position for the Bill in itself, but Government leadership would work really well on that.
Tim Fassam: They are both welcome—the super-complaint and the new complaints process. We want to ensure that we have a system that looks not just at weight of number of complaints, but at the content. In particular, you may find on the super-complaint point that, for example, the firm that a fraudster is pretending to be is the organisation that has the best grasp of the issue, so do not forget about commercial organisations as well as consumer organisations when thinking about who is appropriate to make super-complaints.
Chris Philp
Q
Tim Fassam: Absolutely. We suggested to Meta when we met them about 18 months ago that we could be a clearing house to identify for them whether they need to take something seriously, because our members have analysed it and consider it to represent a real risk.
The Chair
Last word to Rocio Concha.
Rocio Concha: I completely agree about the super-complaint. We as a consumer organisation have super-complaint powers. As with other regulators, we would like to have it in this context as well. We have done many super-complaints representing consumers in particular areas with the regulators, so I think we need it in this Bill as well.
On reporting, I want to clarify something. At the moment, the Bill does not have a requirement for users to complain and report to platforms in relation to fraudulent advertising. It happens for priority illegal content, but our assessment of the Bill is that it is unclear whether it applies to fraudulent advertising. We probably do not have time to look at this now, but we sent you amendments to where we thought the Bill had weaknesses. We agree with you that users should have an easy and transparent way to report illegal or fraudulent advertising, and they should have an easy way to complain about it. At the moment, it is not clear that the Bill will require that for fraudulent advertising.
Chris Philp
Q
Rocio Concha: My comment was in relation not to the super-complaints but to the requirements. We already sent you our comments with suggestions on how you can fix this in the Bill.
The Chair
Ms Concha and Mr Fassam, thank you very much. Do please write in if you have further comments. Mr Lewis, we are deeply grateful to you. You can now go back to your day job and tell us whether we are going to be worse or better off as a result of the statement today—please don’t answer that now.
Martin Lewis: I am interviewing the Chancellor in 15 minutes.
Chris Philp
Q
Frances Haugen: I think that shows a commendable level of chutzpah. Researchers have been trying to get really basic datasets out of Facebook for years. When I talk about a basic dataset, it is things as simple as, “Just show us the top 10,000 links that are distributed in any given week.” When you ask for information like that in a country like the United States, no one’s privacy is violated: every one of those links will have been viewed by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. Facebook will not give out even basic data like that, even though hundreds if not thousands of academics have begged for this data.
The idea that they have worked in close co-operation with researchers is a farce. The only way that they are going to give us even the most basic data that we need to keep ourselves safe is if it is mandated in the Bill. We need to not wait two years after the Bill passes—and remember, it does not even say that it will happen; Ofcom might say, “Oh, maybe not.” We need to take a page from the Digital Services Act and say, “On the day that the Bill passes, we get access to data,” or, at worst, “Within three months, we are going to figure out how to do it.” It needs to be not, “Should we do it?” but “How will we do it?”
Chris Philp
Q
Frances Haugen: First, I left the company a year ago. Because we have no transparency with these companies, they do not have to publish their algorithms or the consequences of their algorithms, so who knows? Maybe they use astrology now to rank the content. We have no idea. All I know is that Meta definitely still uses signals—did users click on it, did they dwell on it, did they re-share it, or did they put a comment on it? There is no way it is not using those. It is very unlikely that they do not still use engagement in their ranking.
The secondary question is, do they optimise for engagement? Are they trying to maximise it? It is possible that they might interpret that and say, “No, we have multiple things we optimise for,” because that is true. They look at multiple metrics every single time they try to decide whether or not to shift things. But I think it is very likely that they are still trying to optimise for engagement, either as their top metric or as one of their top metrics.
Remember, Meta is not trying to optimise for engagement to keep you there as long as possible; it is optimising for engagement to get you and your friends to produce as much content as possible, because without content production, there can be no content consumption. So that is another thing. They might say, “No, we are optimising for content production, not engagement,” but that is one step off.
Chris Philp
Q
Frances Haugen: I have a feeling that there is going to be a period of growing pains after the first time these risk assessments happen. I can almost entirely guarantee you that Facebook will try to give you very little. It will likely be a process of back and forth with the regulator, where you are going to have to have very specific standards for the level of transparency, because Facebook is always going to try to give you the least possible.
One of the things that I am actually quite scared about is that, in things like the Digital Services Act, penalties go up to 10% of global profits. Facebook as a company has something like 35% profit margins. One of the things I fear is that these reports may be so damning— that we have such strong opinions after we see the real, hard consequences of what they are doing—that Facebook might say, “This isn’t worth the risk. We’re just going to give you 10% of our profits.” That is one of the things I worry about: that they may just say, “Okay, now we’re 25% profitable instead of 35% profitable. We’re that ashamed.”
Chris Philp
Q
Frances Haugen: Oh, good. That’s wonderful.
Chris Philp
We had a case last year where Facebook—it was actually Facebook—failed to provide some information to the CMA in a takeover case, and it paid a £50 million fine rather than provide the information, hence the provision for personal criminal liability for failing to provide information that is now in this Bill.
My final question is a simple one. From your perspective, at the moment, when online tech companies are making product design decisions, what priority do they give to safety versus profit?
Frances Haugen: What I saw when I was at Facebook was that there was a culture that encouraged people to always have the most positive interpretation of things. If things are still the same as when I left—like I said, I do not know; I left last May—what I saw was that people routinely had to weigh little changes in growth versus changes in safety metrics, and unless they were major changes in safety metrics, they would continue to pursue growth. The only problem with a strategy like that is that those little deficits add up to very large harms over time, so we must have mandated transparency. The public have to have access to data, because unless Facebook has to add the public cost of the harm of its products, it is not going to prioritise enough those little incremental harms as they add up.
The Chair
Ms Haugen, thank you very much indeed for joining us today, and thank you also for the candour with which you have answered your questions. We are very grateful to you indeed.
The Committee will meet again on Tuesday 7 June at 9.25 am for the start of its line-by-line consideration of the Bill. That session will be in Committee Room 14.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Steve Double.)
Online Safety Bill (Third sitting)
Chris Philp ExcerptsThursday 26th May 2022
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 26 May 2022 - (26 May 2022)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
Q
William Moy: Essentially, the tests are such that almost anyone could pass them. Without opening the Bill, you have to have a standards code, which you can make up for yourself, a registered office in the UK and so on. It is not very difficult for a deliberate disinformation actor to pass the set of tests in clause 50 as they currently stand.
Chris Philp
Q
William Moy: This would need a discussion. I have not come here with a draft amendment—frankly, that is the Government’s job. There are two areas of policy thinking over the last 10 years that provide the right seeds and the right material to go into. One is the line of thinking that has been done about public benefit journalism, which has been taken up in the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee inquiry and the Cairncross review, and is now reflected in recent Charity Commission decisions. Part of Full Fact’s charitable remit is as a publisher of public interest journalism, which is a relatively new innovation, reflecting the Cairncross review. If you take that line of thinking, there might be some useful criteria in there that could be reflected in this clause.
I hate to mention the L-word in this context, but the other line of thinking is the criteria developed in the context of the Leveson inquiry for what makes a sensible level of self-regulation for a media organisation. Although I recognise that that is a past thing, there are still useful criteria in that line of thinking, which would be worth thinking about in this context. As I said, I would be happy to sit down, as a publisher of journalism, with your officials and industry representatives to work out a viable way of achieving your political objectives as effectively as possible.
William Perrin: Such a definition, of course, must satisfy those who are in the industry, so I would say that these definitions need to be firmly industry-led, not simply by the big beasts—for whom we are grateful, every day, for their incredibly incisive journalism—but by this whole spectrum of new types of news providers that are emerging. I have mentioned my experience many years ago of explaining what a blog was to DCMS.
The news industry is changing massively. I should declare an interest: I was involved in some of the work on public-benefit journalism in another capacity. We have national broadcasters, national newspapers, local papers, local broadcasters, local bloggers and local Twitter feeds, all of which form a new and exciting news media ecosystem, and this code needs to work for all of them. I suppose that you would need a very deep-dive exercise with those practitioners to ensure that they fit within this code, so that you achieve your policy objective.
Chris Philp
Q
We heard some commentary earlier—I think from Mr Moy—about the need to address misinformation, particularly in the context of a serious situation such as the recent pandemic. I think you were saying that there was a meeting, in March or April 2020, for the then Secretary of State and social media firms to discuss the issue and what steps they might take to deal with it. You said that it was a private meeting and that it should perhaps have happened more transparently.
Do you accept that the powers conferred in clause 146, as drafted, do, in fact, address that issue? They give the Secretary of State powers, in emergency situations—a public health situation or a national security situation, as set out in clause 146(1)—to address precisely that issue of misinformation in an emergency context. Under that clause, it would happen in a way that was statutory, open and transparent. In that context, is it not a very welcome clause?
William Moy: I am sorry to disappoint you, Minister, but no, I do not accept that. The clause basically attaches to Ofcom’s fairly weak media literacy duties, which, as we have already discussed, need to be modernised and made harms-based and safety-based.
However, more to the point, the point that I was trying to make is that we have normalised a level of censorship that was unimaginable in previous generations. A significant part of the pandemic response was, essentially, some of the main information platforms in all of our day-to-day lives taking down content in vast numbers and restricting what we can all see and share. We have started to treat that as a normal part of our lives, and, as someone who believes that the best way to inform debate in an open society is freedom of expression, which I know you believe, too, Minister, I am deeply concerned that we have normalised that. In fact, you referred to it in your Times article.
I think that the Bill needs to step in and prevent that kind of overreach, as well as the triggering of unneeded reactions. In the pandemic, the political pressure was all on taking down harmful health content; there was no countervailing pressure to ensure that the systems did not overreach. We therefore found ridiculous examples, such as police posts warning of fraud around covid being taken down by the internet companies’ automated systems because those systems were set to, essentially, not worry about overreach.
That is why we are saying that we need, in the Bill, a modern, open-society approach to misinformation. That starts with it recognising misinformation in the first place. That is vital, of course. It should then go on to create a modern, harms-based media literacy framework, and to prefer content-neutral and free-speech-based interventions over content-restricting interventions. That was not what was happening during the pandemic, and it is not what will happen by default. It takes Parliament to step in and get away from this habitual, content-restriction reaction and push us into an open-society-based response to misinformation.
William Perrin: Can I just add that it does not say “emergency”? It does not say that at all. It says “reasonable grounds” that “present a threat”—not a big threat—under “special circumstances”. We do not know what any of that means, frankly. With this clause, I get the intent—that it is important for national security, at times, to send messages—but this has not been done in the history of public communication before. If we go back through 50 or 60 years, even 70 years, of Government communication, the Government have bought adverts and put messages transparently in place. Apart from D-notices, the Government have never sought to interfere in the operations of media companies in quite the way that is set out here.
If this clause is to stand, it certainly needs a much higher threshold before the Secretary of State can act—such as who they are receiving advice from. Are they receiving advice from directors of public health, from the National Police Chiefs’ Council or from the national security threat assessment machinery? I should declare an interest; I worked in there a long time ago. It needs a higher threshold and greater clarity, but you could dispense with this by writing to Ofcom and saying, “Ofcom, you should have regard to these ‘special circumstances’. Why don’t you take actions that you might see fit to address them?”
Many circumstances, such as health or safety, are national security issues anyway if they reach a high enough level for intervention, so just boil it all down to national security and be done with it.
Professor Lorna Woods: If I may add something about the treatment of misinformation more generally, I suspect that if it is included in the regime, or if some subset such as health misinformation is included in the regime, it will be under the heading of “harmful to adults”. I am picking up on the point that Mr Moy made that the sorts of interventions will be more about friction and looking at how disinformation is incentivised and spread at an earlier stage, rather than reactive takedown.
Unfortunately, the measures that the Bill currently envisages for “harmful but legal” seem to focus more on the end point of the distribution chain. We are talking about taking down content and restricting access. Clause 13(4) gives the list of measures that a company could employ in relation to priority content harmful to adults.
I suppose that you could say, “Companies are free to take a wider range of actions”, but my question then is this: where does it leave Ofcom, if it is trying to assess compliance with a safety duty, if a company is doing something that is not envisaged by the Act? For example, taking bot networks offline, if that is thought a key factor in the spreading of disinformation—I see that Mr Moy is nodding. A rational response might be, “Let’s get rid of bot networks”, but that, as I read it, does not seem to be envisaged by clause 13(4).
I think that is an example of a more general problem. With “harmful but legal”, we would want to see less emphasis on takedown and more emphasis on friction, but the measures listed as envisaged do not go that far up the chain.
The Chair
Minister, we have just got a couple of minutes left, so perhaps this should be your last question.
Chris Philp
Q
“(b) restricting users’ access to the content;
(c) limiting the recommendation or promotion of the content;
(d) recommending or promoting the content.”
I would suggest that those actions are pretty wide, as drafted.
One of the witnesses—I think it was Mr Moy—talked about what were essentially content-agnostic measures to impede virality, and used the word “friction”. Can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by that in practical terms?
William Moy: Yes, I will give a couple of quick examples. WhatsApp put a forwarding limit on WhatsApp messages during the pandemic. We knew that WhatsApp was a vector through which misinformation could spread, because forwarding is so easy. They restricted it to, I think, six forwards, and then you were not able to forward the message again. That is an example of friction. Twitter has a note whereby if you go to retweet something but you have not clicked on the link, it says, “Do you want to read the article before you share this?” You can still share it, but it creates that moment of pause for people to make a more informed decision.
Chris Philp
Q
William Moy: But that is not what I am suggesting you do. I am suggesting you say that this Parliament prefers interventions that are content-neutral or free speech-based, and that inform users and help them make up their own minds, to interventions that restrict what people can see and share.
Chris Philp
Q
William Moy: I do not think it is any more challenging than most of the risk assessments, codes of practice and so on, but I am willing to spend as many hours as it takes to talk through it with you.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that we have come to the end of our allotted time for questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for all their evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Danny Stone MBE, Stephen Kinsella OBE and Liron Velleman gave evidence.
Chris Philp
Q
Stephen Kinsella: Yes. We think they are extremely helpful. We welcome what we see in clause 14 and clause 57. There is thus a very clear right to be verified, and an ability to screen out interactions with unverified accounts, which is precisely what we asked for. The Committee will be aware that we have put forward some further proposals. I would really hesitate to describe them as amendments; I see them as shading-in areas—we are not trying to add anything. We think that it would be helpful, for instance, when someone is entitled to be verified, that verification status should also be visible to other users. We think that should be implicit, because it is meant to act as a signal to others as to whether someone is verified. We hope that would be visible, and we have suggested the addition of just a few words into clause 14 on that.
We think that the Bill would benefit from a further definition of what it means by “user identity verification”. We have put forward a proposal on that. It is such an important term that I think it would be helpful to have it as a defined term in clause 189. Finally, we have suggested a little bit more precision on the things that Ofcom should take into account when dealing with platforms. I have been a regulatory lawyer for nearly 40 years, and I know that regulators often benefit from having that sort of clarity. There is going to be negotiation between Ofcom and the platforms. If Ofcom can refer to a more detailed list of the factors it is supposed to take into account, I think that will speed the process up.
One of the reasons we particularly welcomed the structure of the Bill is that there is no wait for detailed codes of conduct because these are duties that we will be executing immediately. I hope Ofcom is working on the guidance already, but the guidance could come out pretty quickly. Then there would be the process of—maybe negotiating is the wrong word—to-and-fro with the platforms. I would be very reluctant to take too much on trust. I do not mean on trust from the Government; I mean on trust from the platforms—I saw the Minister look up quickly then. We have confidence in Government; it is the platforms we are little bit wary of. I heard the frustration expressed on Tuesday.
Alex Davies-Jones
indicated assent.
Stephen Kinsella: I think you said, “If platforms care about the users, why aren’t they already implementing this?” Another Member, who is not here today, said, “Why do they have to be brought kicking and screaming?” Yet, every time platforms were asked, we heard them say, “We will have to wait until we see the detail of—”, and then they would fill in whatever thing is likely to come last in the process. So we welcome the approach. Our suggestions are very modest and we are very happy to discuss them with you.
Chris Philp
Q
Danny, we have had some fairly extensive discussions on the question of small but toxic platforms such as 4chan and BitChute—thank you for coming to the Department to discuss them. I heard your earlier response to the shadow Minister, but do you accept that those platforms should be subject to duties in the Bill in relation to content that is illegal and content that is already harmful to children?
Danny Stone: Yes, that is accurate. My position has always been that that is a good thing. The extent and the nature of the content that is harmful to adults on such platforms—you mentioned BitChute but there are plenty of others—require an additional level of regulatory burden and closer proximity to the regulator. Those platforms should have to account for it and say, “We are the platforms; we are happy that this harm is on our platform and”—as the Bill says—“we are promoting it.” You are right that it is captured to some degree; I think it could be captured further.
Chris Philp
Q
“proportionate systems and processes…to ensure that…content of democratic”—
or journalistic—
“importance is taken into account”.
That is not an absolute protection; it is simply a requirement to take into account and perform a proportionate and reasonable balancing exercise. Is that not reasonable?
Liron Velleman: I have a couple of things to say on that. First, we and others in civil society have spent a decade trying to de-platform some of the most harmful actors from mainstream social media companies. What we do not want to see after the Bill becomes an Act are massive test cases where we do not know which way they will go and where it will be up to either the courts or social media companies to make their own decisions on how much regard they place in those exemptions at the same time as all the other clauses.
Secondly, one of our main concerns is the time it takes for some of that content to be removed. If we have a situation in which there is an expediated process for complaints to be made, and for journalistic content to remain on the platform for an announced time until the platform is able take it down, that could move far outside the realms of that journalistic or democratically important content. Again, using the earlier examples, it does not take long for content such as a livestream of a terrorist attack to be up on the Sun or the Daily Mirror websites and for lots of people to modify that video and bypass content, which can then be shared and used to recruit new terrorists and allow copycat attacks to happen, and can go into the worst sewers of the internet. Any friction that is placed on stopping platforms being able to take down some of that harm is definitely of particular concern to us.
Finally, as we heard on Tuesday, social media platforms—I am not sure I would agree with much of what they would say about the Bill, but I think this is true—do not really understand what they are meant to do with these clauses. Some of them are talking about flowcharts and whether this is a point-scoring system that says, “You get plus one for being a journalist, but minus two for being a racist.” I am not entirely sure that platforms will exercise the same level of regard. If, with some of the better-faith actors in the social media space, we have successfully taken down huge reams of the most harmful content and moved it away from where millions of people can see it to where only tens of thousands can see it, we do not want in any way the potential to open up the risk that hundreds of people could argue that they should be back on platforms when they are currently not there.
Chris Philp
Q
Danny Stone: My take on this—I think people have misunderstood the Bill—is that it ultimately creates a regulated marketplace of harm. As a user, you get to determine how harmful a platform you wish to engage with—that is ultimately what it does. I do not think that it enforces content take-downs, except in relation to illegal material. It is about systems, and in some places, as you have heard today, it should be more about systems, introducing friction, risk-assessing and showing the extent to which harm is served up to people. That has its problems.
The only other thing on free speech is that we sometimes take too narrow a view of it. People are crowded out of spaces, particularly minority groups. If I, as a Jewish person, want to go on 4chan, it is highly unlikely that I will get a fair hearing there. I will be threatened or bullied out of that space. Free speech has to apply across the piece; it is not limited. We need to think about those overlapping harms when it comes to human rights—not just free speech but freedom from discrimination. We need to be thinking about free speech in its widest context.
Chris Philp
Q
Stephen Kinsella: I agree entirely with what Danny was saying. Of course, we would say that our proposals have no implications for free speech. What we are talking about is the freedom not to be shouted at—that is really what we are introducing.
On disinformation, we did some research in the early days of our campaign that showed that a vast amount of the misinformation and disinformation around the 5G covid conspiracy was spread and amplified by anonymous or unverified accounts, so they play a disproportionate role in disseminating that. They also play a disproportionate role in disseminating abuse, and I think you may have a separate session with Kick It Out and the other football bodies. They have some very good research that shows the extent to which abusive language is from unverified or anonymous accounts. So, no, we do not have any free speech concerns at Clean up the Internet.
Chris Philp
Q
Liron Velleman: We are satisfied that the Bill adequately protects freedom of speech. Our key view is that, if people are worried that it does not, beefing up the universal protections for freedom of speech should be the priority, instead of what we believe are potentially harmful exemptions in the Bill. We think that freedom of speech for all should be protected, and we very much agree with what Danny said—that the Bill should be about enhancing freedom of speech. There are so many communities that do not use social media platforms because of the harm that exists currently on platforms.
On children, the Bill should not be about limiting freedom of speech, but a large amount of our work covers the growth of youth radicalisation, particularly in the far right, which exists primarily online and which can then lead to offline consequences. You just have to look at the number of arrests of teenagers for far-right terrorism, and so much of that comes from the internet. Part of the Bill is about moderating online content, but it definitely serves to protect against some of the offline consequences of what exists on the platform. We would hope that if people are looking to strengthen freedom of speech, that is a universalist principle in the Bill, and not for some groups but not others.
Chris Philp
Good. Thank you. I hope the Committee is reassured by those comments on the freedom of speech question.
Alex Davies-Jones
Q
Danny Stone: I think that a media literacy strategy is really important. There is, for example, UCL data on the lack of knowledge of the word “antisemitism”: 68% of nearly 8,000 students were unfamiliar with the term’s meaning. Dr Tom Harrison has discussed cultivating cyber-phronesis—this was also in an article by Nicky Morgan in the “Red Box” column some time ago—which is a method of building practical knowledge over time to make the right decisions when presented with a moral challenge. We are not well geared up as a society—I am looking at my own kids—to educate young people about their interactions, about what it means when they are online in front of that box and about to type something, and about what might be received back. I have talked about some of the harms people might be directed to, even through Alexa, but some kind of wider strategy, which goes beyond what is already there from Ofcom—during the Joint Committee process, the Government said that Ofcom already has its media literacy requirements—and which, as you heard earlier, updates it to make it more fit for purpose for the modern age, would be very appropriate.
Stephen Kinsella: I echo that. We also think that that would be welcome. When we talk about media literacy, we often find ourselves with the platforms throwing all the obligation back on to the users. Frankly, that is one of the reasons why we put forward our proposal, because we think that verification is quite a strong signal. It can tell you quite a lot about how likely it is that what you are seeing or reading is going to be true if someone is willing to put their name to it. Seeing verification is just one contribution. We are really talking about trying to build or rebuild trust online, because that is what is seriously lacking. That is a system and design failure in the way that these platforms have been built and allowed to operate.
Chris Philp
Q
Liron Velleman: If the Bill is seeking to make the UK the safest place to be on the internet, it seems to be the obvious place to put in something about media literacy. I completely agree with what Danny said earlier: we would also want to specifically ensure—although I am sure this already exists in some other parts of Ofcom and Government business—that there is much greater media literacy for adults as well as children. There are lots of conversations about how children understand use of the internet, but what we have seen, especially during the pandemic, is the proliferation of things like community Facebook groups, which used to be about bins and a fair that is going on this weekend, becoming about the worst excesses of harmful content. People have seen conspiracy theories, and that is where we have seen some of the big changes to how the far-right and other hateful groups operate, in terms of being able to use some of those platforms. That is because of a lack of media literacy not just among children, but among the adult population. I definitely would encourage that being in the Bill, as well as anywhere else, so that we can remove some of those harms.
Danny Stone: I think it will need further funding, beyond what has already been announced. That might put a smile on the faces of some Department for Education officials, who looked so sad during some of the consultation process—trying to ensure that there is proper funding. If you are going to roll this out across the country and make it fit for purpose, it is going to cost a lot of money.
The Chair
Thank you. As there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. That concludes this morning’s sitting.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Steve Double.)
Online Safety Bill (Second sitting)
Chris Philp ExcerptsTuesday 24th May 2022
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 24 May 2022 - (24 May 2022)
The Chair
I am sorry, but I must move on. Minister, I am afraid you only have five minutes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
Q
Richard Earley: What information are you referring to?
Chris Philp
Data, in particular on the operation of algorithmic promotion of particular kinds of content.
Richard Earley: We already do things like that through the direct opportunity that anyone has to see why a single post has been chosen for them in their feed. You can click on the three dots next to any post and see that. For researcher access and support, as I mentioned, we have contributed to the publishing of more than 400 reports over the last year, and we want to do more of that. In fact, the Bill requires Ofcom to conduct a report on how to unlock those sorts of barriers, which we think should be done as soon as possible. Yes, in general we support that sort of research.
I would like say one thing, though. I have worked at Facebook—now Meta—for almost five years, and nobody at Facebook has any obligation, any moral incentive, to do anything other than provide people with the best, most positive experience on our platform, because we know that if we do not give people a positive experience, through algorithms or anything else, they will leave our platform and will not use it. They tell us that and they do it, and the advertisers who pay for our services do not want to see that harmful content on our platforms either. All of our incentives are aligned with yours, which are to ensure that our users have a safe and positive experience on our platforms.
Chris Philp
Q
Richard Earley: I am afraid to say that that is not correct. We have multiple algorithms on our services. Many of them, in fact, do the opposite of what you have just described: they identify posts that might be violent, misleading or harmful and reduce the prevalence of them within our feed products, our recommendation services and other parts of the service.
We optimise the algorithm that shows people things for something called meaningful social interaction. That is not just pure engagement; in fact, its focus—we made a large change to our algorithms in 2018 to focus on this—is on the kinds of activities online that research shows are correlated with positive wellbeing outcomes. Joining a group in your local area or deciding to go to an event that was started by one of your friends—that is what our algorithms are designed to promote. In fact, when we made that switch in 2018, we saw a decrease in more than 50 million hours of Facebook use every day as a result of that change. That is not the action of a company that is just focused on maximising engagement; it is a company that is focused on giving our users a positive experience on our platform.
Chris Philp
Q
Richard Earley: No, because as I just said, when we sent the algorithm this instruction to focus on social interaction it actually decreased the amount of time people spent on our platform.
Chris Philp
Q
Richard Earley: As I said, it is about ensuring that people who spend time on our platform come away feeling that they have had a positive experience.
Chris Philp
Q
Richard Earley: I think that a really valuable part of the Bill that we are here to discuss is the fact that Ofcom will be required, and we in our risk assessments will be required, to consider the impact on the experience of our users of multiple different algorithms, of which we have hundreds. We build those algorithms to ensure that we reduce the prevalence of harmful content and give people the power to connect with those around them and build community. That is what we look forward to demonstrating to Ofcom when this legislation is in place.
Chris Philp
Q
The Chair
Q
Katie O'Donovan: I welcome the opportunity to address the Committee. It is so important that this Bill has parliamentary scrutiny. It is a Bill that the DCMS has spent a lot of time on, getting it right and looking at the systems and the frameworks. However, it will lead to a fundamentally different internet for UK users versus the rest of the world. It is one of the most complicated Bills we are seeing anywhere in the world. I realise that it is very important to have scrutiny of us as platforms to determine what we are doing, but I think it is really important to also look at the substance of the Bill. If we have time, I would welcome the chance to give a little feedback on the substance of the Bill too.
Becky Foreman: I would add that the Committee spent a lot of time talking to Meta, who are obviously a big focus for the Bill, but it is important to remember that there are numerous other networks and services that potentially will be caught by the Bill and that are very different from Meta. It is important to remember that.
Chris Philp
While the Bill is proportionate in its measures, it is not designed to impose undue burdens on companies that are not high risk. I have one more question for Richard. I think Katie was saying that she wanted to make a statement?
The Chair
We are out of time. I am sorry about this; I regard it as woefully unsatisfactory. We have got three witnesses here, a lot of questions that need to be answered, and not enough time to do it. However, we have a raft of witnesses coming in for the rest of the day, so I am going to have to draw a line under this now. I am very grateful to you for taking the trouble to come—the Committee is indebted to you. You must have the opportunity to make your case. Would you be kind enough to put any comments that you wish to make in writing so that the Committee can have them. Feel free to go as broad as you would like because I feel very strongly that you have been short-changed this afternoon. We are indebted to you. Thank you very much indeed.
Richard Earley: We will certainly do that and look forward to providing comments in writing.
Examination of Witnesses
Professor Clare McGlynn, Jessica Eagelton and Janaya Walker gave evidence.
Chris Philp
Q
“only entitled to conclude that it is not possible for children to access a service…if there are systems or processes in place…that achieve the result that children are not normally able to access the service”.
Ofcom will then interpret in codes of practice what that means practically. Professor McGlynn, do you think that standard set out there—
“the result that children are not normally able to access the service or that part of it”
—is sufficiently high to address the concerns we have been discussing in the last few minutes?
Professor Clare McGlynn: At the moment, the wording with regard to age assurance in part 5—the pornography providers—is slightly different, compared with the other safety duties. That is one technicality that could be amended. As for whether the provision you just talked about is sufficient, in truth I think it comes down, in the end, to exactly what is required, and of course we do not yet know what the nature of the age verification or age assurance requirements will actually be and what that will actually mean.
I do not know what that will actually mean for something like Twitter. What will they have to do to change it? In principle, that terminology is possibly sufficient, but it kind of depends in practice what it actually means in terms of those codes of practice. We do not yet know what it means, because all we have in the Bill is about age assurance or age verification.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Clare McGlynn: My understanding as well is that those terms are, at the moment, being interpreted slightly differently in terms of the requirements that people will be under. I am just making a point about it probably being easier to harmonise those terms.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Clare McGlynn: I read your piece in The Times this morning, which was a robust defence of the legislation, in that it said that it is no threat to freedom of speech, but I hope you read my quote tweet, in which I emphasised that there is a strong case to be made for regulation to free the speech of many others, including women and girls and other marginalised people. For example, the current lack of regulation means that women’s freedom of speech is restricted because we fear going online because of the abuse we might encounter. Regulation frees speech, while your Bill does not unduly limit freedom of speech.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Clare McGlynn: There are many ways in which speech is regulated. The social media companies already make choices about what speech is online and offline. There are strengths in the Bill, such as the ability to challenge when material is taken offline, because that can impact on women and girls as well. They might want to put forward a story about their experiences of abuse, for example. If that gets taken down, they will want to raise a complaint and have it swiftly dealt with, not just left in an inbox.
There are lots of ways in which speech is regulated, and the idea of having a binary choice between free speech and no free speech is inappropriate. Free speech is always regulated, and it is about how we choose to regulate it. I would keep making the point that the speech of women and girls and other marginalised people is minimised at the moment, so we need regulation to free it. The House of Lords and various other reports about free speech and regulation, for example, around extreme pornography, talk about regulation as being human-rights-enhancing. That is the approach we need to take.
The Chair
Thank you very much indeed. Once again, I am afraid I have to draw the session to a close, and once again we have probably not covered all the ground we would have liked. Professor McGlynn, Ms Walker, Ms Eagleton, thank you very much indeed. As always, if you have further thoughts or comments, please put them in writing and let us know. We are indebted to you.
Examination of Witnesses
Lulu Freemont, Ian Stevenson and Adam Hildreth gave evidence.
Chris Philp
Q
Adam Hildreth: I had covid at the time, yes.
Chris Philp
Covid struck. I would like to ask Adam and Ian in particular about the opportunities provided by emerging and new technology to deliver the Bill’s objectives. I would like you both to give examples of where you think new tech can help deliver these safety duties. I ask you to comment particularly on what it might do on, first, age assurance—which we debated in our last session—and secondly, scanning for child sexual abuse images in an end-to-end encrypted environment. Adam, do you want to go first?
Adam Hildreth: Well, if Ian goes first, the second question would be great for him to answer, because we worked on it together.
Chris Philp
Fair enough. Ian?
Ian Stevenson: Yes, absolutely. The key thing to recognise is that there is a huge and growing cohort of companies, around the world but especially in the UK, that are working on technologies precisely to try to support those kinds of safety measures. Some of those have been supported directly by the UK Government, through the safety tech challenge fund, to explore what can be done around end-to-end encrypted messaging. I cannot speak for all the participants, but I know that many of them are members of the safety tech industry association.
Between us, we have demonstrated a number of different approaches. My own company, Cyacomb, demonstrated technology that could block known child abuse within encrypted messaging environments without compromising the privacy of users’ messages and communications. Other companies in the UK, including DragonflAI and Yoti, demonstrated solutions based on detecting nudity and looking at the ages of the people in those images, which are again hugely valuable in this space. Until we know exactly what the regulation is going to demand, we cannot say exactly what the right technology to solve it is.
However, I think that the fact that that challenge alone produced five different solutions looking at the problem from different angles shows just how vibrant the innovation ecosystem can be. My background in technology is long and mixed, but I have seen a number of sectors emerge—including cyber-security and fintech—where, once the foundations for change have been created, the ability of innovators to come up with answers to difficult questions is enormous. The capacity to do that is enormous.
There are a couple of potential barriers to that. The strength of the regulation is that it is future proof. However, until we start answering the question, “What do we need to do and when? What will platforms need to do and when will they need to do it?” we do not really create in the commercial market the innovation drivers for the technical solutions that will deliver this. We do not create the drivers for investment. It is really important to be as specific as we can about what needs to be done and when.
The other potential barrier is regulation. We have already had a comment about how there should be a prohibition of general monitoring. We have seen what has happened in the EU recently over concerns about safety technologies that are somehow looking at traffic on services. We need to be really clear that, while safety technologies must protect privacy, there needs to be a mechanism so that companies can understand when they can deploy safety technologies. At the moment there are situations where we talk to potential customers for safety technologies and they are unclear as to whether it would be proportionate to deploy those under, for example, data protection law. There are areas, even within the safety tech challenge fund work on end-to-end encrypted messaging, where it was unclear whether some of the technologies—however brilliant they were at preventing child abuse in those encrypted environments —would be deployable under current data protection and privacy of electronic communications regulations.
There are questions there. We need to make sure that when the Online Safety Bill comes through, it makes clear what is required and how it fits together with other regulations to enable that. Innovators can do almost anything if you give them time and space. They need the certainty of knowing what is required, and an environment where solutions can be deployed and delivered.
Chris Philp
Q
Adam Hildreth: I agree with Ian that the level of innovation is amazing. If we start talking about age verification and end-to-end encryptions, for me—I am going to say that same risk assessment phrase again—it absolutely depends on the type of service, who is using the service and who is exploiting the service, as to which safety technologies should be employed. I think it is dangerous to say, “We are demanding this type of technology or this specific technology to be deployed in this type of instance,” because that removes the responsibility from the people who are creating it.
Chris Philp
Q
Adam Hildreth: Absolutely. Sorry, I was saying that I agree with how it has been worded. We know what is available, but technology changes all the time and solutions change all the time—we can do things in really innovative ways. However, the risk assessment has to bring together freedom of speech versus the types at risk of abuse. Is it children who are at risk, and if so, what are they at risk from? That changes the space massively when compared with some adult gaming communities, where what is harmful to them is very different from what harms other audiences. That should dictate for them what system and technology is deployed. Once we understand what best of breed looks like for those types of companies, we should know what good is.
Chris Philp
Q
Adam Hildreth: The technology is there. It exists and it is absolutely deployable in the environments that need it. I am sure Ian would agree; we have seen it and done a lot of testing on it. The technology exists in the environments that need it.
Chris Philp
Q
Adam Hildreth: There are ways that can work. Again, it brings in freedom of expression, global businesses and some other areas, so it is more about regulation and consumer concerns about the security of data, rather than whether technological solutions are available.
The Chair
Ms Freemont, Mr Hildreth and Mr Stevenson, thank you all very much indeed. We have run out of time. As ever, if you have any further observations that you wish to make, please put them in writing and let the Committee have them; we shall welcome them. Thank you for your time this afternoon. We are very grateful to you.
Examination of Witnesses
Jared Sine, Nima Elmi and Dr Rachel O’Connell gave evidence.
The Chair
Right. For once, we seem to have run out of questions. Minister, do you wish to contribute?
Chris Philp
Everything I was going to ask has already been asked by my colleagues, so I will not duplicate that.
The Chair
Q
Jared Sine: I would just make one brief comment. I think it has been mentioned by everyone here. Everyone has a role to play. Clearly, the Government have a role in proposing and pushing forward the legislation. The platforms that have the content have an obligation and a responsibility to try to make sure that their users are safe. One of the things that Dr O’Connell mentioned is age verification and trying to make sure that we keep young kids off platforms where they should not be.
I think there is a big role to play for the big tech platforms—the Apples and Googles—who distribute our apps. Over the years, we have said again and again to both of those companies, “We have age-gated our apps at 18, yet you will allow a user you know is 15, 14, 16—whatever it is—to download that app. That person has entered that information and yet you still allow that app to be downloaded.” We have begged and pleaded with them to stop and they will not stop. I am not sure that that can be included in the Bill, but if it could be, it would be powerful.
If Apple and Google could not distribute any of our apps—Hinge, Match, Tinder—to anyone under the age of 18, that solves it right there. It is the same methodology that has been used at clubs with bouncers—you have a bouncer at the door who makes sure you are 21 before you go in and have a drink. It should be the same thing with these technology platforms. If they are going to distribute and have these app stores, the store should then have rules that show age-gated apps—“This is for 17-plus or 18-plus”—and should also enforce that. It is very unfortunate that our calls on this front have gone unanswered. If the Bill could be modified to include that, it would really help to address the issue.
Dr Rachel O'Connell: Absolutely. I 100% support that. There is a tendency for people to say, “It is very complex. We need a huge amount of further consultation.” I started my PhD in 1996. This stuff has been going on for all that time. In 2008, there was a huge push by the Attorneys General, which I mentioned already, which brought all of the industry together. That was 2008. We are in 2022 now. 2017 was the Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper. We know what the risks are. They are known; we understand what they are. We understand the systems and processes that facilitate them. We understand what needs to be done to mitigate those risks and harms. Let’s keep on the track that we are going on.
Regarding industry’s concerns, a lot of them will be ironed out when companies are required to conduct risk assessments and impact assessments. They might ask, what are the age bands of your users? What are the risks associated with the product features that you are making available? What are the behaviour modification techniques that you are using, like endless scroll and loot boxes that get kids completely addicted? Are those appropriate for those ages? Then you surface the decision making within the business that results in harms and also the mitigations.
I urge you to keep going on this; do not be deterred from it. Keep the timeframe within which it comes into law fairly tight, because there are children out there who are suffering. As for the harassment—I have experienced it myself, it is horrible.
Those would be my final words.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Rhiannon-Faye McDonald: It is incredibly important that we have this education piece. Like Susie said, we cannot rely on technology or any single part of this to solve child sexual abuse, and we cannot rely on the police to arrest their way out of the problem. Education really is the key. That is education in all areas—educating the child in an appropriate way and educating parents. We hold parenting workshops. Parents are terrified; they do not know what to do, what platforms are doing what, or what to do when things go wrong. They do not even know how to talk to children about the issue; it is embarrassing for them and they cannot bring it up. Educating parents is a huge thing. Companies have a big responsibility there. They should have key strategies in place on how they are going to improve education.
Chris Philp
Q
I would like to pick up on a point that has arisen in the discussion so far—the point that Susie raised about the risks posed by Meta introducing end-to-end encryption, particularly on the Facebook Messenger service. You have referenced the fact that huge numbers of child sexual exploitation images are identified by scanning those communications, leading to the arrests of thousands of paedophiles each year. You also referenced the fact that when this was temporarily turned off in Europe owing to the privacy laws there—briefly, thankfully—there was a huge loss of information. We will come on to the Bill in a minute, but as technology stands now, if Meta did proceed with end-to-end encryption, would that scanning ability be lost?
Susie Hargreaves: Yes. It would not affect the Internet Watch Foundation, but it would affect the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Facebook, as a US company, has a responsibility to do mandatory reporting to NCMEC, which will be brought in with the Bill in this country. Those millions of images would be lost, as of today, if they brought end-to-end encryption in now.
Chris Philp
Q
Susie Hargreaves: Because they are scanning Facebook—sorry, I am just trying to unpack the way it works. It will affect us, actually. Basically, when we provide our hash list to Facebook, it uses that to scan Messenger, but the actual images that are found—the matches—are not reported to us; they are reported into NCMEC. Facebook does take our hash list. For those of you who do not know about hashing, it is a list of digital fingerprints—unique images of child sexual abuse. We currently have about 1.3 million unique images of child sexual abuse. Facebook does use our hash list, so yes it does affect us, because it would still take our hash list to use on other platforms, but it would not use it on Messenger. The actual matches would go into NCMEC. We do not know how many matches it gets against our hash list, because it goes into NCMEC.
Chris Philp
Q
Susie Hargreaves: Yes, sorry—I was unclear about that. Yes, it would on Messenger.
Chris Philp
Q
Susie Hargreaves: As I said before, it is essential that we do not demonise end-to-end encryption. It is really important. There are lots of reasons why, from a security and privacy point of view, people want to be able to use end-to-end encryption.
In terms of whether the technology is there, we all know that there are things on the horizon. As Ian said in the previous session, the technology is there and is about to be tried out. I cannot give any update at this meeting, but in terms of what we would do if end-to-end encryption is introduced and there is no ability to scan, we could look at on-device scanning, which I believe you mentioned before, Minister.
Chris Philp
Yes.
Susie Hargreaves: That is an option. That could be a backstop position. I think that, at the moment, we should stand our ground on this and say, “No, we need to ensure that we have some form of scanning in place if end-to-end encryption is introduced.”
Chris Philp
Q
Susie Hargreaves: I agree 100%.
The Chair
Thank you very much indeed, Ms McDonald and Ms Hargreaves. We are most grateful to you; thank you for your help.
Examination of Witnesses
Ellen Judson and Kyle Taylor gave evidence.
Barbara Keeley
Q
Ellen Judson: At the moment, no. The rights that are discussed in the Bill at the minute are quite limited: primarily, it is about freedom of expression and privacy, and the way that protections around privacy have been drafted is less strong than for those around freedom of expression. Picking up on the question about setting precedents, if we have a Bill that is likely to lead to more content moderation and things like age verification and user identity verification, and if we do not have strong protections for privacy and anonymity online, we are absolutely setting a bad precedent. We would want to see much more integration with existing human rights legislation in the Bill.
Kyle Taylor: All I would add is that if you look at the exception for content of democratic importance, and the idea of “active political issue”, right now, conversion therapy for trans people—that has been described by UN experts as torture—is an active political issue. Currently, the human rights of trans people are effectively set aside because we are actively debating their lives. That is another example of how minority and marginalised people can be negatively impacted by this Bill if it is not more human rights-centred.
Chris Philp
Q
Ellen Judson: I accept that that is what the Bill currently says. Our point was thinking about how it will be implemented in practice. If platforms are expected to prove to a regulator that they are taking certain steps to protect content of democratic importance—in the explanatory notes, that is content related to Government policy and political parties—and they are expected to prove that they are taking a special consideration of journalistic content, the most straightforward way for them to do that will be in relation to journalists and politicians. Given that it is such a broad category and definition, that seems to be the most likely effect of the regime.
Kyle Taylor: It is potentially—
Chris Philp
Q
Is it not true that a member of the public or anyone debating a legitimate political topic would also benefit from these measures? It is likely that MPs would automatically benefit—near automatically—but a member of the public might equally benefit if the topic they are talking about is of democratic or journalistic importance.
Ellen Judson: Our concern is that defining what is a legitimate political debate is itself already privileging. As you said, an MP is very likely automatically to benefit.
Chris Philp
Well, it is likely; I would not say it is guaranteed.
Ellen Judson: A member of the public may be discussing something—for example, an active political debate that is not about the United Kingdom, which I believe would be out of scope of that protection. They would be engaged in political discussion and exercising freedom of expression, and if they were not doing so in a way that met the threshold for action based on harm, their speech should also come under those protections.
Kyle Taylor: I would add that the way in which you have described it would be so broad as to effectively be meaningless in the context of the Bill, and that instead we should be looking for universal free expression protections in that part of the Bill, and removing this provision. Because what is not, in a liberal democracy, speech of democratic importance? Really, that is everything. When does it reach the threshold where it is an active political debate? Is it when enough people speak about it or enough politicians bring it up? It is so subjective and so broad effectively to mean that everything could qualify. Again, this is not taking a harms-based approach to online safety, because the question is not “Who is saying it?” or “In what context?”; the question is, “Does this have the propensity to cause harm at scale?”
Chris Philp
Q
Kyle Taylor: Can I respond to that?
Chris Philp
Yes, sure.
Kyle Taylor: My point is that if there is a provision in the Bill about freedom of expression, it should be robust enough that this protection does not have to be in the Bill. To me, this is saying, “Actually, our free expression bit isn’t strong enough, so we’re going to reiterate it here in a very specific context, using very select language”. That may mean that platforms decide not to act for fear of reprisal, as opposed to pursuing online safety. I suggest strengthening the freedom of expression section so that it hits all the points that the Government intend to hit, and removing those qualifiers that create loopholes and uncertainty for a regime that, if it is systems-based, does not have loopholes.
Chris Philp
Q
Ellen Judson: We absolutely recognise that. There is discussion in terms of meeting certain standards of responsible journalism in relation to those protections. Our concern is very much that the people and actors who would most benefit from the journalistic protections specifically would be people who do not meet those standards and cannot prove that they meet those standards, because the standards are very broad. If you intend your content to be journalistic, you are in scope, and that could apply to extremists as much as to people meeting standards of responsible journalism.
Chris Philp
Q
Kyle Taylor: Remove the exemption.
Chris Philp
Q
Kyle Taylor: Well, I am struggling to understand how we can look at the Bill and say, “If this entity says it, it is somehow less harmful than if this entity says it.” That is a two-tiered system and that will not lead to online safety, especially when those entities that are being given privilege are the most likely and largest sources and amplifiers of harmful content online. We sit on the frontlines of this every day, looking at social media, and we can point to countless examples from around the world that will show that, with these exemptions, exceptions and exclusions, you will actually empower those actors, because you explicitly say that they are special. You explicitly say that if they cause harm, it is somehow not as bad as if a normal user with six followers on Twitter causes harm. That is the inconsistency and incoherency in the Bill.
Chris Philp
We are talking here about the press, not about politicians—
Kyle Taylor: Yes, but the press and media entities spread a lot of disinformation—
Chris Philp
Q
Kyle Taylor: Except that that is inconsistent in the Bill, because you are saying that for broadcast, they must have a licence, but for print press, they do not have to subscribe to an independent standards authority or code. Even within the media, there is this inconsistency within the Bill.
Chris Philp
That is a point that applies regardless of the Bill. The fact is that UK broadcast is regulated whereas UK newspapers are not regulated, and that has been the case for half a century. You can debate whether that is right or wrong, but—
Kyle Taylor: We are accepting that newspapers are not regulated then.
Chris Philp
Q
Kyle Taylor: I am not suggesting that the freedom of the press is not sacrosanct. Actually, I am expressing the opposite, which is that I believe that it is so sacrosanct that it should be essential to the freedom-of-expression portion of the Bill, and that the press should be set to a standard that meets international human rights and journalistic standards. I want to be really clear that I absolutely believe in freedom of the press, and it is really important that we don’t leave here suggesting that we don’t think that the press should be free—
Chris Philp
Q
Ellen Judson: To the media exemption—
Chris Philp
To clause 50, “Recognised news publisher”.
Ellen Judson: One of the changes that the Government have indicated that they are minded to make—please correct me if I misunderstood—is to introduce a right to appeal.
Chris Philp
Correct.
Ellen Judson: Content having to stay online while the appeal was taking place I would very much urge not to be introduced, on the grounds that the content staying online might then be found to be incredibly harmful, and by the time you have got through an appeals process, it will already have done the damage it was going to do. So, if there is a right to appeal—I would urge there not to be a particular right to appeal beyond what is already in the Bill, but if that is to be included, not having the restriction that the platforms must carry the content while the appeal process is ongoing would be important.
Kyle Taylor: You could require an independent standards code as a benchmark at least.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. It also brings us to the end of the day’s sitting. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for your evidence. As you ran out of time and the opportunity to frame answers, if you want to put them in writing and offer them to the Minister, I am sure they will be most welcome. The Committee will meet again on Thursday at 11.30 am in this room to hear further evidence on the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Steve Double.)
Online Safety Bill (First sitting)
Chris Philp ExcerptsTuesday 24th May 2022
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 24 May 2022 - (24 May 2022)
Dean Russell
Q
Kevin Bakhurst: This is a really important point, which Richard just tried to make. The Bill gives us a great range of tools to try and prevent harm as far as possible; I just think we need to get expectations right here. Unfortunately, this Bill will not result in no harm of any type, just because of the nature of the internet and the task that we face. We are ambitious about driving constant improvement and stopping and addressing the main harms, but it is not going to stop any particular harm. We will absolutely focus on the ones that have a significant impact, but unfortunately that is the nature of the web.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
Q
“psychological harm amounting to serious distress”?
Therefore, sending somebody a flashing image with the intention of inducing an epileptic fit would be likely caught under this new harmful communications offence in clause 150, even before a separate future offence that may be introduced.
Richard Wronka: I think we can certainly understand the argument. I think it is important that the Bill is as clear as possible. Ultimately, it is for the courts to decide whether that offence would pick up these kinds of issues that we are talking about around flashing imagery.
Chris Philp
Q
You mentioned that you met recently with European regulators. Briefly, because we are short of time, were there any particular messages, lessons or insights you picked up in those meetings that might be of interest to the Committee?
Kevin Bakhurst: Yes, there were a number, and liaising with European regulators and other global regulators in this space is a really important strand of our work. It often said that this regime is a first globally. I think that is true. This is the most comprehensive regime, and it is therefore potentially quite challenging for the regulator. That is widely recognised.
The second thing I would say is that there was absolute recognition of how advanced we are in terms of the recruitment of teams, which I touched on before, because we have had the funding available to do it. There are many countries around Europe that have recruited between zero and 10 and are imminently going to take on some of these responsibilities under the Digital Services Act, so I think they are quite jealous.
The last thing is that we see continued collaboration with other regulators around the world as a really important strand, and we welcome the information-sharing powers that are in the Bill. There are some parallels, and we want to take similar approaches on areas such as transparency, where we can collaborate and work together. I think it is important—
The Chair
Order. I am afraid we have come to the end of the allotted time for questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Dame Rachel de Souza, Lynn Perry MBE and Andy Burrows gave evidence.
Kirsty Blackman
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: It is a massive concern to parents. Parents talk to me all the time about their worries: “Do we know enough?” They have that anxiety, especially as their children turn nine or 10; they are thinking, “I don’t even know what this world out there is.” I think that our conversations with 16 to 21-year-olds were really reassuring, and we have produced a pamphlet for parents. It has had a massive number of downloads, because parents absolutely want to be educated in this subject.
What did young people tell us? They told us, “Use the age controls; talk to us about how much time we are spending online; keep communication open; and talk to us.” Talk to children when they’re young, particularly boys, who are likely to be shown pornography for the first time, even if there are parental controls, around the age of nine or 10. So have age-appropriate conversations. There was some very good advice about online experiences, such as, “Don’t worry; you’re not an expert but you can talk to us.” I mean, I did not grow up with the internet, but I managed parenting relatively well—my son is 27 now. I think this is a constant concern for parents.
I do think that the tech companies could be doing so much more to assist parents in digital media literacy, and in supporting them in how to keep their child safe. We are doing it as the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. I know that we are all trying to do it, but we want to see everyone step up on this, particularly the tech companies, to support parents on this issue.
Chris Philp
Q
Could you outline for the Committee the areas where you think the Bill, as currently drafted, contains the most important provisions to protect children?
Dame Rachel de Souza: I was really glad to see, in the rewrite of the Online Safety Bill, a specific reference to the role of age assurance to prevent children from accessing harmful content. That has come across strongly from children and young people, so I was very pleased to see that. It is not a silver bullet, but for too long children have been using entirely inappropriate services. The No. 1 recommendation from the 16 to 21-year-olds, when asked what they wish their parents had known and what we should do, was age assurance, if you are trying to protect a younger sibling or are looking at children, so I was pleased to see that. Companies cannot hope to protect children if they do not know who the children are on their platforms, so I was extremely pleased to see that.
Chris Philp
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: Absolutely. I have called together the tech companies. I have met the porn companies, and they reassured me that as long as they were all brought into the scope of this Bill, they would be quite happy as this is obviously a good thing. I brought the tech companies together to challenge them on their use of age assurance. With their artificial intelligence and technology, they know the age of children online, so they need to get those children offline. This Bill is a really good step in that direction; it will hold them to account and ensure they get children offline. That was a critically important one for me.
I was also pleased to see the holding to account of companies, which is very important. On full coverage of pornography, I was pleased to see the offence of cyber-flashing in the Bill. Again, it is particularly about age assurance.
What I would say is that nudge is not working, is it? We need this in the Bill now, and we need to get it there. In my bit of work with those 2,000 young people, we asked what they had seen in the last month, and 40% of them have not had bad images taken down. Those aspects of the Bill are key.
Andy Burrows: This is a landmark Bill, so we thank you and the Government for introducing it. We should not lose sight of the fact that, although this Bill is doing many things, first and foremost it will become a crucial part of the child protection system for decades to come, so it is a hugely important and welcome intervention in that respect.
What is so important about this Bill is that it adopts a systemic approach. It places clear duties on platforms to go through the process of identifying the reasonably foreseeable harms and requiring that reasonable steps be taken to mitigate them. That is hugely important from the point of view of ensuring that this legislation is future-proofed. I know that many companies have argued for a prescriptive checklist, and then it is job done—a simple compliance job—but a systemic approach is hugely important because it is the basis upon which companies have very clear obligations. Our engagement is very much about saying, “How can we make sure this Bill is the best it can possibly be?” But that is on the bedrock of that systemic approach, which is fundamental if we are to see a culture shift in these companies and an emphasis on safety by design—designing out problems that do not have to happen.
I have engaged with companies where child safety considerations are just not there. One company told me that grooming data is a bad headline today and tomorrow’s chip shop wrapper. A systemic approach is the key to ensuring that we start to address that balance.
Chris Philp
Q
I would like to turn to a one or two points that came up in questioning, and then I would like to probe a couple of points that did not. Dame Rachel mentioned advocacy and ensuring that the voice of particular groups—in this context, particularly that of children—is heard. In that context, I would like to have a look at clause 140, which relates to super-complaints. Subsection (4) says that the Secretary of State can, by regulations, nominate which organisations are able to bring super-complaints. These are complaints whereby you go to Ofcom and say that there is a particular company that is failing in its systemic duties.
Subsection (4) makes it clear that the entities nominated to be an authorised super-complainant would include
“a body representing the interests of users of regulated services”,
which would obviously include children. If an organisation such as the Office of the Children’s Commissioner or the NSPCC—I am obviously not prejudicing the future process—were designated as a super-complainant that was able to bring super-complaints to Ofcom, would that address your point about the need for proper advocacy for children?
Dame Rachel de Souza: Absolutely. I stumbled over that a bit when Maria asked me the question, but we absolutely need people who work with children, who know children and are trusted by children, and who can do that nationally in order to be the super-complainants. That is exactly how I would envisage it working.
Andy Burrows: The super-complaint mechanism is part of the well-established arrangements that we see in other sectors, so we are very pleased to see that that is included in the Bill. I think there is scope to go further and look at how the Bill could mirror the arrangements that we see in other sectors—I mentioned the energy, postal and water sectors earlier as examples—so that the statutory user advocacy arrangements for inherently vulnerable children, including children at risk of sexual abuse, mirror the arrangements that we see in those other sectors. That is hugely important as a point of principle, but it is really helpful and appropriate for ensuring that the legislation can unlock the positive regulatory outcomes that we all want to see, so I think it contributes towards really effective regulatory design.
Chris Philp
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: Yes, and I was so pleased to see that. The regulator needs to have teeth for it to have any effect—I think that is what we are saying. I want named senior managers to be held accountable for breaches of their safety duties to children, and I think that senior leaders should be liable to criminal sanctions when they do not uphold their duty of care to children.
Chris Philp
Q
I will put my last two questions together. Are you concerned about the possibility that encryption in messaging services might impede the automatic scanning for child exploitation and abuse images that takes place, and would you agree that we cannot see encryption happen at the expense of child safety? Secondly, in the context of the Molly Russell reference earlier, are you concerned about the way that algorithms can promote and essentially force-feed children very harmful content? Those are two enormous questions, and you have only two minutes to answer them, so I apologise.
Dame Rachel de Souza: I am going to say yes and yes.
Andy Burrows: I will say yes and yes as well. The point about end-to-end encryption is hugely important. Let us be clear: we are not against end-to-end encryption. Where we have concerns is about the risk profile that end-to-end encryption introduces, and that risk profile, when we are talking about it being introduced into social networking services and bundled with other sector functionality, is very high and needs to be mitigated.
About 70% of child abuse reports that could be lost with Meta going ahead. That is 28 million reports in the past six months, so it is very important that the Bill can require companies to demonstrate that if they are running services, they can acquit themselves in terms of the risk assessment processes. We really welcome the simplified child sexual exploitation warning notices in the Bill that will give Ofcom the power to intervene when companies have not demonstrated that they have been able to introduce end-to-end encryption in a safe and effective way.
One area in which we would like to see the Bill—
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence, and I am really sorry that we could not get Lynn Perry online. Could we move on to the last panel? Thank you very much.
Examination of Witnesses
Ben Bradley and Katy Minshall gave evidence.
Chris Philp
Q
Katy Minshall: As I say, we share your policy objective of giving users more choice. For example, at present we are testing a tool where Twitter automatically blocks abusive accounts on your behalf. We make the distinction based on an account’s behaviour and not on whether it has verified itself in some way.
Chris Philp
Q
I do not think that the concept would necessarily operate as you suggested at the beginning. You suggested that people might end up not seeing content posted by the Prime Minister or another public figure. The concept is that, assuming a public figure would choose to verify themselves, content that they posted would be visible to everybody because they had self-verified. The content in the other direction may or may not be, depending on whether the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition chose to see all content or just verified content, but their content—if they verified themselves—would be universally visible, regardless of whatever choice anyone else exercised.
Katy Minshall: Yes, sorry if I was unclear. I totally accept that point, but it would mean that some people would be able to reply to Boris Johnson and others would not. I know we are short on time, but it is worth pointing out that in a YouGov poll in April, nearly 80% of people said that they would not choose to provide ID documents to access certain websites. The requirements that you describe are based on the assumption that lots of people will choose to do it, when in reality that might not be the case.
A public figure might think, “Actually, I really appreciate that I get retweets, likes and people replying to my tweets,” but if only a small number of users have taken the opportunity to verify themselves, that is potentially a disincentive even to use this system in the first place—and all the while we were creating a system, we could have been investing in or trying to develop new solutions, such as safety mode, which I described and which tries to prevent abusive users from interacting with you.
Chris Philp
Q
Ben, you talked about the age verification measures that TikTok currently takes. For people who do not come via an age-protected app store, it is basically self-declared. All somebody has to do is type in a date of birth. My nine-year-old children could just type in a date of birth that was four years earlier than their real date of birth, and off they would go on TikTok. Do you accept that that is wholly inadequate as a mechanism for policing the age limit of 13?
Ben Bradley: That is not the end of our age assurance system; it is just the very start. Those are the first two things that we have to prevent sign-up, but we are also proactive in surfacing and removing under-age accounts. As I said, we publish every quarter how many suspected under-13s get removed.
Chris Philp
Q
Ben Bradley: It is based on a range of signals that they have available to them. As I said, we publish a number every quarter. In the last quarter, we removed 14 million users across the globe who were suspected to be under the age of 13. That is evidence of how seriously we take the issue. We publish that information because we think it is important to be transparent about our efforts in this space, so that we can be judged accordingly.
Chris Philp
Q
Earlier, we debated content of democratic importance and the protections that that and free speech have in the Bill. Do you agree that a requirement to have some level of consistency in the way that that is treated is important, particularly given that there are some glaring inconsistencies in the way in which social media firms treat content at the moment? For example, Donald Trump has been banned, while flagrant disinformation by the Russian regime, lying about what they are doing in Ukraine, is allowed to propagate—including the tweets that I drew to your attention a few weeks ago, Katy.
Katy Minshall: I agree that freedom of expression should be top of mind as companies develop safety and policy solutions. Public interest should always be considered when developing policies. From the perspective of the Bill, I would focus on freedom of expression for everyone, and not limit it to content that could be related to political discussions or journalistic content. As Ben said, there are already wider freedom of expression duties in the Bill.
Chris Philp
Q
Katy Minshall: Sorry, but I do not know the Bill in those terms, so you would have to tell me the definition.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions in this morning’s sitting. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence. We will meet again at 2 pm in this room to hear further oral evidence.
Online Safety Bill
Chris Philp ExcerptsTuesday 19th April 2022
(2 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Online Safety Act 2023 View all Online Safety Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
In the interest of time, I will just pose a number of questions, which I hope the Minister might address in summing up. The first is about the scope of the Bill. The Joint Committee of which I was a member recommended that the age-appropriate design code, which is very effectively used by the Information Commissioner, be used as a benchmark in the Bill, so that any services accessed or likely to be accessed by children are regulated for safety. I do not understand why the Government rejected that suggestion, and I would be pleased to hear from the Minister why they did so.
Secondly, the Bill delegates lots of detail to statutory instruments, codes of practice from the regulator, or later decisions by the Secretary of State. Parliament must see that detail before the Bill becomes an Act. Will the Minister commit to those delegated decisions being published before the Bill becomes an Act? Could he explain why the codes of practice are not being set as mandatory? I do not understand why codes of practice, much of the detail of which the regulator is being asked to set, will not be made mandatory for businesses. How can minimum standards for age or identity verification be imposed if those codes of practice are not made mandatory? Perhaps the Minister could explain.
Many users across the country will want to ensure that their complaints are dealt with effectively. We recommended an ombudsman service that dealt with complaints that were exhausted through a complaints system at the regulated companies, but the Government rejected it. Please could the Minister explain why?
I was pleased that the Government accepted the concept of the ability for a super-complaint to be brought on behalf of groups of users, but the decision as to who will be able a bring a super-complaint has been deferred, subject to a decision by the Secretary of State. Why, and when will that decision be taken? If the Minister could allude to who they might be, I am sure that would be welcome.
Lastly, there is a number of exemptions and more work to be done, which leaves significant holes in the legislation. There is much more work to be done on clauses 5, 6 and 50—on democratic importance, journalism and the definition of journalism, on the exemptions for news publishers, and on disinformation, which is mentioned only once in the entire Bill. I and many others recognise that these are not easy issues, but they should be considered fully before legislation is proposed that has gaping holes for people who want to get around it, and for those who wish to test the parameters of this law in the courts, probably for many years. All of us, on a cross-party basis in this House, support the Government’s endeavours to make it safe for children and others to be online. We want the legislation to be implemented as quickly as possible and to be as effective as possible, but there are significant concerns that it will be jammed up in the judicial system, where this House is unacceptably giving judges the job of fleshing out the definition of what many of the important exemptions will mean in practice.
The idea that the Secretary of State has the power to intervene with the independent regulator and tell it what it should or should not do obviously undermines the idea of an independent regulator. While Ministers might give assurances to this House that the power will not be abused, I believe that other countries, whether China, Russia, Turkey or anywhere else, will say, “Look at Great Britain. It thinks this is an appropriate thing to do. We’re going to follow the golden precedent set by the UK in legislating on these issues and give our Ministers the ability to decide what online content should be taken down.” That seems a dangerous precedent.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
indicated dissent.
Darren Jones
The Minister is shaking his head, but I can tell him that the legislation does do that, because we looked at this and took evidence on it. The Secretary of State would be able to tell the regulator that content should be “legal but harmful” and therefore should be removed as part of its systems design online. We also heard that the ability to do that at speed is very restricted and therefore the power is ineffective in the first place. Therefore, the Government should evidently change their position on that. I do not understand why, in the face of evidence from pretty much every stakeholder, the Government agree that that is an appropriate use of power or why Parliament would vote that through.
I look forward to the Minister giving his answers to those questions, in the hope that, as the Bill proceeds through the House, it can be tidied up and made tighter and more effective, to protect children and adults online in this country.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
The piece of legislation before the House this evening is truly groundbreaking, because no other jurisdiction anywhere in the world has attempted to legislate as comprehensively as we are beginning to legislate here. For too long, big tech companies have exposed children to risk and harm, as evidenced by the tragic suicide of Molly Russell, who was exposed to appalling content on Instagram, which encouraged her, tragically, to take her own life. For too long, large social media firms have allowed illegal content to go unchecked online.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I have spoken before about dangerous suicide-related content online. The Minister mentions larger platforms. Will the Government go away and bring back two amendments based on points made by the Samaritans? One would bring smaller platforms within the scope of sanctions, and the second would make the protective aspects of the Bill cover people who are over 18, not just those who are under 18. If the Government do that, I am sure that it will be cause for celebration and that Members on both sides of the House will give their support.
Chris Philp
It is very important to emphasise that, regardless of size, all platforms in the scope of the Bill are covered if there are risks to children.
A number of Members, including the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), have raised the issue of small platforms that are potentially harmful. I will give some thought to how the question of small but high-risk platforms can be covered. However, all platforms, regardless of size, are in scope with regard to content that is illegal and to content that is harmful to children.
For too long, social media firms have also arbitrarily censored content just because they do not like it. With the passage of this Bill, all those things will be no more, because it creates parliamentary sovereignty over how the internet operates, and I am glad that the principles in the Bill command widespread cross-party support.
The pre-legislative scrutiny that we have gone through has been incredibly intensive. I thank and pay tribute to the DCMS Committee and the Joint Committee for their work. We have adopted 66 of the Joint Committee’s recommendations. The Bill has been a long time in preparation. We have been thoughtful, and the Government have listened and responded. That is why the Bill is in good condition.
Chris Philp
I must make some progress, because I am almost out of time and there are lots of things to reply to.
I particularly thank previous Ministers, who have done so much fantastic work on the Bill. With us this evening are my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) and for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), but not with us this evening are my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), who I think is in America, and my right hon. Friends the Members for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) and for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), all of whom showed fantastic leadership in getting the Bill to where it is today. It is a Bill that will stop illegal content circulating online, protect children from harm and make social media firms be consistent in the way they handle legal but harmful content, instead of being arbitrary and inconsistent, as they are at the moment.
Chris Philp
I have so many points to reply to that I have to make some progress.
The Bill also enshrines, for the first time, free speech—something that we all feel very strongly about—but it goes beyond that. As well as enshrining free speech in clause 19, it gives special protection, in clauses 15 and 16, for content of journalistic and democratic importance. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State indicated in opening the debate, we intend to table a Government amendment—a point that my right hon. Friends the Members for Maldon and for Ashford (Damian Green) asked me to confirm—to make sure that journalistic content cannot be removed until a proper right of appeal has taken place. I am pleased to confirm that now.
We have made many changes to the Bill. Online fraudulent advertisers are now banned. Senior manager liability will commence immediately. Online porn of all kinds, including commercial porn, is now in scope. The Law Commission communication offences are in the Bill. The offence of cyber-flashing is in the Bill. The priority offences are on the face of the Bill, in schedule 7. Control over anonymity and user choice, which was proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) in her ten-minute rule Bill, is in the Bill. All those changes have been made because this Government have listened.
Let me turn to some of the points made from the Opposition Front Bench. I am grateful for the in-principle support that the Opposition have given. I have enjoyed working with the shadow Minister and the shadow Secretary of State, and I look forward to continuing to do so during the many weeks in Committee ahead of us, but there were one or two points made in the opening speech that were not quite right. This Bill does deal with systems and processes, not simply with content. There are risk assessment duties. There are safety duties. There are duties to prevent harm. All those speak to systems and processes, not simply content. I am grateful to the Chairman of the Joint Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), for confirming that in his excellent speech.
If anyone in this House wants confirmation of where we are on protecting children, the Children’s Commissioner wrote a joint article with the Secretary of State in the Telegraph—I think it was this morning—confirming her support for the measures in the Bill.
When it comes to disinformation, I would make three quick points. First, we have a counter-disinformation unit, which is battling Russian disinformation night and day. Secondly, any disinformation that is illegal, that poses harm to children or that comes under the definition of “legal but harmful” in the Bill will be covered. And if that is not enough, the Minister for Security and Borders, who is sitting here next to me, intends to bring forward legislation at the earliest opportunity to cover counter-hostile state threats more generally. This matter will be addressed in the Bill that he will prepare and bring forward.
I have only four minutes left and there are so many points to reply to. If I do not cover them all, I am very happy to speak to Members individually, because so many important points were made. The right hon. Member for Barking asked who was going to pay for all the Ofcom enforcement. The taxpayer will pay for the first two years while we get ready—£88 million over two years—but after that Ofcom will levy fees on these social media firms, so they will pay for regulating their activities. I have already replied to the point she rightly raised about smaller but very harmful platforms.
My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti) has been campaigning tirelessly on the question of combating racism. This Bill will deliver what he is asking for.
The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) and my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) asked about Zach’s law. Let me take this opportunity to confirm explicitly that clause 150—the harmful communication clause, for where a communication is intended to cause psychological distress—will cover epilepsy trolling. What happened to Zach will be prevented by this Bill. In addition, the Ministry of Justice and the Law Commission are looking at whether we can also have a standalone provision, but let me assure them that clause 150 will protect Zach.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon asked a number of questions about definitions. Companies can move between category 1 and category 2, and different parts of a large conglomerate can be regulated differently depending on their activities. Let me make one point very clear—the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) also raised this point. When it comes to the provisions on “legal but harmful”, neither the Government nor Parliament are saying that those things have to be taken down. We are not censoring in that sense. We are not compelling social media firms to remove content. All we are saying is that they must do a risk assessment, have transparent terms and conditions, and apply those terms and conditions consistently. We are not compelling, we are not censoring; we are just asking for transparency and accountability, which is sorely missing at the moment. No longer will those in Silicon Valley be able to behave in an arbitrary, censorious way, as they do at the moment—something that Members of this House have suffered from, but from which they will no longer suffer once this Bill passes.
The hon. Member for Bristol North West, who I see is not here, asked a number of questions, one of which was about—[Interruption.] He is here; I do apologise. He has moved—I see he has popped up at the back of the Chamber. He asked about codes of practice not being mandatory. That is because the safety duties are mandatory. The codes of practice simply illustrate ways in which those duties can be met. Social media firms can meet them in other ways, but if they fail to meet those duties, Ofcom will enforce. There is no loophole here.
When it comes to the ombudsman, we are creating an internal right of appeal for the first time, so that people can appeal to the social media firms themselves. There will have to be a proper right of appeal, and if there is not, they will be enforced against. We do not think it appropriate for Ofcom to consider every individual complaint, because it will simply be overwhelmed, by probably tens of thousands of complaints, but Ofcom will be able to enforce where there are systemic failures. We feel that is the right approach.
I say to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Borders will meet him about the terrible Keyham shooting.
The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) raised a question about online fraud in the context of search. That is addressed by clause 35, but we do intend to make drafting improvements to the Bill, and I am happy to work with her on those drafting improvements.
I have been speaking as quickly as I can, which is quite fast, but I think time has got away from me. This Bill is groundbreaking. It will protect our citizens, it will protect our children—[Hon. Members: “Sit down!”]—and I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The Minister just made it. I have rarely seen a Minister come so close to talking out his own Bill.
Online Safety Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Online Safety Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 30 June 2022.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
Online Safety Bill (Money)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Online Safety Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:
(1) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State, and
(2) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
Online Safety Bill (Ways and Means)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Online Safety Bill, it is expedient to authorise:
(1) the charging of fees under the Act, and
(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
Deferred Divisions
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 41A(3)),
That at this day’s sitting, Standing Order 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply to the Motion in the name of Secretary Nadine Dorries relating to Online Safety Bill: Carry-over.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Philp Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
As my hon. Friend knows, the review of the Gambling Act 2005 is under way and will conclude imminently. Part of that is about the legislation governing casinos. We have received detailed evidence from the casinos sector—I have made a few visits to the sector—and we will publish our White Paper in the near future.
Scott Benton
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The Gambling Act review provides a golden opportunity to review the legislation governing casinos and to bring that into the modern age. Allowing for sports betting and electronic payments and reviewing the current machine-to-table ratio will all help to create new jobs, investment and additional tax receipts for the Exchequer. Will the Minister commit to examining the case for the changes, as well as for allowing additional large casinos in locations such as Blackpool as part of the review?
Chris Philp
The matters that my hon. Friend has raised are being considered in the review. We need to balance the ability of casinos to be economically viable with the need to keep players safe, and we are looking into how the current rules can be improved for those purposes. I know that there are seven unused Gambling Act 2005 casino licences, and I have heard my hon. Friend’s powerful representations on behalf of Blackpool, particularly with the levelling-up agenda in mind.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The Minister is well aware of the costs of delaying action to tackle problem gambling. When the Government’s long-awaited White Paper is finally published, it must go further to tackle issues with gambling licences, including those relating to the national lottery. In recent weeks, concerns have been raised about the Gambling Commission’s decision to award the new licence to a company with reported links to Gazprom. Given the extremely concerning situation in Ukraine, can the Minister confirm that he is confident that the new provider has no links to the Russian regime, and if so, why?
Chris Philp
As part of its licence awarding process, the Gambling Commission has a statutory obligation to ensure that anyone to whom it gives a licence meets the fit and proper person test. I have asked the commission to assure me that it has conducted thorough inquiries to establish that the provisional licence awardee meets the test, and it has given me that assurance. There are also arrangements for the proposed licence holder to undergo the UK secure vetting process, and that work will begin shortly.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
Bingo halls and adult gaming centres are important to seaside towns and high streets, and particularly important to tackling isolation among the elderly. Sadly, Redcar lost Beacon Bingo during the pandemic, but we still have some fantastic adult gaming centres, such as Playland Amusements. May I invite the Minister to come to Redcar and Cleveland and see our amusement centres in action, which might help to inform his decisions in the forthcoming gambling review?
Chris Philp
I entirely recognise the importance of bingo halls and adult gaming as elements of vibrant communities up and down the country, often providing places where people can socialise. We are certainly trying to find ways in the review of ensuring that they are able to prosper and thrive, especially given that the risks posed to game players in those settings are at the lower end of the spectrum. I know that Redcar is famous not just for its bingo and gaming centres but for its lemon top ice cream, and I look forward greatly to enjoying that.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Despite its glaring omission of fixed odds betting terminals, the Gambling Act was largely successful, but it predates online gambling by a very long way, and it is therefore essential that we update gambling legislation to deal with that issue. When will we be able to see the White Paper so that we can start the discussion?
Chris Philp
The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that online gambling exploded some time after the 2005 Act, and it does pose a number of serious risks. On Monday, in an Adjournment debate initiated by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), we discussed the tragic suicide of Jack Ritchie as a result of gambling addiction, and Jack’s parents, Liz and Charles, were in the Gallery listening to the debate. That case underlines the importance of taking action, particularly in relation to the online element. We are thinking about this very carefully and we do not want to rush it, but the publication of the White Paper is imminent.
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
The Department is delighted to be supporting Buckingham Palace’s delivery of celebrations to commemorate the exceptional service of Her Majesty the Queen over seven decades. She has a special place in the heart of the nation. Lottery distributors are providing £22 million to help communities become involved, and there will be a series of events between 2 and 6 June, including a special Trooping the Colour event and a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s cathedral.
Suzanne Webb
The summer of 1977 was truly magical for me, as a young girl—a very young girl, I should add—because it was the year of the silver jubilee, celebrating 25 glorious years of the Queen’s reign. I remember the street parties, and designing a card fit for a queen, and I still have the pencil. Will my hon. Friend join me in launching my very own card for the Queen, some 45 years later, and will he encourage young children in my constituency to enter my competition to design a card so that we can send it to the Queen from Stourbridge to mark her long and glorious reign?
Chris Philp
I was only one year old in 1977, so my memory of that is somewhat hazy, but I am delighted to strongly endorse my hon. Friend’s card for the Queen campaign. I am sure that her constituents will embrace it with enthusiasm and that cards for the Queen will come flooding in from Stourbridge.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
As I said a moment ago, bingo clubs are very important. They are part of the social fabric of our country, and we acknowledge that the risks from gambling are very low in the bingo club environment. We will be looking at what we can do to help and support bingo clubs through the very imminent Gambling Act 2005 review.
Alex Norris
I am glad to hear the Minister talk about the brilliant benefits of bingo clubs to communities such as mine and about the low risk. Will he give an assurance to bingo players that in review of the Gambling Act, bingo will be assessed on its own merits based on the evidence and not just chucked in with the rest as an afterthought?
Chris Philp
I can categorically give that assurance. I have met members of the relevant industry association, and we recognise that the risks posed by bingo hall gaming are at the very low end of the spectrum. We are distinguishing between forms of gambling that are very high risk, of which there are many, and those that are low risk such as bingo.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
The Online Safety Bill was published last week. MPs on both sides of the House wanted Zach’s law to be included, to protect children with epilepsy from cruel thugs who send flashing images online to trigger epileptic attacks. How many children would this measure save, and why was it not included in the Bill?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
The epilepsy measures are being considered by the Ministry of Justice, but the new communications offence in clause 150 will capture epilepsy trolling because it is engaged where a communication is sent with the intention of causing serious distress.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Julian Knight.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
Chris Philp
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his tireless campaigning on this issue. We are very conscious of the debate on the voluntary levy and the effectiveness of treatment. I have met and discussed this with clinicians such as Dr Matt Gaskell from the Leeds gambling centre and, of course, Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones from the London clinic. I assure the hon. Gentleman that his question is under active consideration.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
This would have been my follow-up to Question 10. Which organisations need to do what to improve further the roll-out of gigabit-capable broadband?
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
Chris Philp
The hon. Gentleman raises a good question. Matters concerning identifying potential suspects are, generally speaking, dealt with under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which I know the Home Office is considering taking a look at. He is right to say that it is important for the police to be able to identify perpetrators where allegations are made, and the Government, particularly the Home Office and the Security Minister, are looking into that question carefully.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
On Saturday, on a visit to Northwood football club in my constituency, Ian Barry and the directors showed me a site where there is bowls, football, cricket, tennis and a number of other activities. What opportunities does the Minister see to join up the grant funding streams across different sports so that we can create enhanced, multi-sport facilities at community level?
Chris Philp
I am delighted to report to my hon. Friend that the measures he is calling for are in the Online Safety Bill, which was introduced to Parliament just last Thursday. I believe it will have its Second Reading shortly after the Easter recess, and I look forward to debating those matters with him then, but they are in the Bill.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
Jack Ritchie: Gambling Act Review
Chris Philp Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this important and moving debate, inspired by a young man, Jack Ritchie, whose life was tragically lost as a result of gambling addiction. I join him in paying tribute to Jack’s brave and determined parents, Liz and Charles, who as he says are with us this evening and whom I have had the privilege of meeting on at least three occasions since becoming the Minister responsible in this area, about six months ago, for their campaigning and work to bring something constructive and positive from their son’s tragic death. They have pursued their campaign with great vigour and have succeeded in getting the attention of Government and Parliament, as this evening’s debate clearly demonstrates.
The coroner’s report into Jack’s tragic death is very powerful, and I will turn to its contents in a moment. Clearly, the coroner’s report lays out, as the hon. Member said very eloquently and powerfully, a number of inadequacies and failings. I have in front of me a copy of the coroner’s Regulation 28 report, which says that
“the system of regulation in force at the time of his death did not stop Jack gambling at a point when he was obviously addicted to gambling.”
That was a point that the hon. Member cited in his speech. The second point that it makes, under its section “Matters of Concern” says:
“The warnings Jack received were insufficient to prevent him gambling.”
The record of inquest, a separate document, says:
“The evidence was that gambling contributed to Jack’s death.”
It makes it very clear that there was a link between the two.
I thank the senior coroner for the South Yorkshire West area, David Urpeth, for the time and trouble that he took in preparing this thoughtful report and in writing to us. He said in his report:
“I issue this preventing future death report in the hope that Government finds the concerns raised informative and of assistance, especially at a time they are considering the whole issue of gambling and its regulation.”
We do find the report informative and of assistance, and I am grateful to the coroner, to the family, Liz and Charles, and to everyone who played a part in that inquest for their work in bringing this report to the attention of the House and to the attention of Government.
It is worth putting it on record that there have been some positive changes since 2017, but, clearly, these do not go far enough. Just for the record, it is worth emphasising what those changes are. Clearly, this House voted a couple of years ago, after a powerful public campaign, to reduce the stake on fixed odds betting terminals—the B2 machines—from £100 down to £2 because of the overwhelming evidence that they were causing and fuelling gambling addiction. Gambling on credit cards has now been banned, online slot games have been made safer by design, the age limit for the National Lottery has been increased to 18, and there are tighter restrictions on the VIP scheme. In addition, there are currently two, about to be five, and there will be 15 gambling addiction treatment clinics funded by the NHS long-term plan, but, as I will say in a moment, these measures are not enough by a long chalk and we need to go further.
Ronnie Cowan
I welcome all those measures, but the Government have brought every single one of them to the table kicking and screaming. They have all been from pressure groups outside looking in and saying, “You must change this.” What I want to see is the Government leading by example, particularly when it comes to the entire review of the Gambling Act 2005.
Chris Philp
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I hope that he has heard me speak on these topics relatively frequently, including just a week or two ago, and I hope that he will gather from those comments that he has heard me make—families will say the same thing, as I have spent time with many families over the past few months—that there will not be any kicking or screaming required when it comes to the Gambling Act review, which is now imminent. The evidence that we have seen, including from this coroner’s report and from many other sources, makes the case that we need to go significantly further to make sure that people are appropriately protected.
As Members will appreciate, I cannot pre-announce all the proposals on which we are working that will form part of the White Paper, the Gambling Act review. Clearly, a great deal has changed in the 17 years since 2005 when that Act was passed, not least the explosion of internet gambling, which was not really a phenomenon back in 2005. Since then though, it has exploded. It now represents about half of all gross gambling yield. The nature of the online games, the fact that people can access them 24/7, the fact that frequency of play is very high, and the look and feel of some of the features make them significantly more risky than other forms of gambling, such as gambling in person at a racecourse, playing bingo or playing the National Lottery. All those things can be addictive, but the online games have a much higher risk.
Of course, when the 2005 Act was conceived, that was not appreciated or understood, but it is appreciated and understood now. That is why the gambling review will take the significant additional steps needed to protect people like Jack and to protect everybody who is gambling. We want to be proportionate in taking those steps—we do not want to prevent people who want to gamble on a leisure basis from doing so or put unreasonable obstacles in the way—but we do need to take action.
Another piece of evidence we should all consider in making the case for action is that of the failures being committed today by gambling operators. For example, just a couple of weeks ago one of the major operators —I think it was 888—was fined £9.4 million by the Gambling Commission for a series of failures. Those failures included allowing someone to lose £37,000—not to gamble £37,000, but to lose it—in a very short space of time without any checks or intervention. Obviously, that is an unaffordable amount for almost anybody. It also allowed an NHS worker to have a loss limit set at approximately 90% of their monthly salary.
There was another case where a gentleman was eventually jailed, I think, because he had stolen £15 million to fund a gambling addiction. How can it be possible that someone can be allowed to lose £15 million without appropriate checks? It is just absurd. A further fine was levied against a major gambling operator, which I think was owned as part of the Flutter Entertainment group, which had sent marketing material actively promoting gambling products and promotions to recovering addicts.
Ronnie Cowan
The Minister is correct to point out that 888 was fined £9.4 million for its tardiness, but the point behind this is that the operators decide what rules they implement, because they are governed by their own body, the Gambling Commission, which they fund. 888 is a gambling firm—a bookmaker. It will have weighed up the odds: “Fine me £9 million? I’m making £29 million. I’m making £200 million. If you’re going to fine me £9 million for breaking the rules, I’ll do that anyway.” 888 is a bookie. That is what it does.
Chris Philp
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The reason I highlighted those failings was to make the point that proportionate reform is needed. I agree with him that it is no good the Gambling Commission’s identifying some of those cases after the event—and it by no means identifies all of them; these are just the cases it finds. They are just the tip of the iceberg. The fact that these examples were found after the event is further evidence of the need for appropriate reform. It needs to be proportionate, as I say, but reform is needed.
One area where we can go is using data. I mentioned that online gambling is one of the areas that carry higher risk, unlike betting at a racecourse, for example, which carries a risk, but a significantly lower one. Data should and will enable the Gambling Commission to do a much better job at identifying what the operators are really doing and getting a complete picture of whether they are intervening when people’s gambling patterns of behaviour indicate that there is a problem, which clearly did not happen in Jack Ritchie’s case.
I take the point about the single customer view that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central made. We are watching that extremely carefully and will be commenting further on that in the White Paper. I also take his points about timing and about the need for it to be effective and appropriately overseen and governed.
I also take the hon. Gentleman’s point about the importance of affordability checks. They need to be proportionate and pitched at the right level, but they have a really important role in making sure that some of the situations that I have mentioned, and situations like Jack Ritchie’s, do not occur. The data is available if operators properly use it and if the Gambling Commission has proper access to it to deliver that result. That should be a very significant area of attention in the Gambling Act review that is coming up very shortly.
I repeat my thanks to the hon. Gentleman for convening this debate and for speaking so powerfully and eloquently on this topic. I look forward to working with him, with the shadow Minister and with other colleagues across the House on this issue, which I think commands cross-party support. As we seek to reform our country’s gambling legislation through the review, we do so with cases like Jack Ritchie’s in mind. I know that all of us in this House will be profoundly and powerfully conscious of our duty and our obligation to protect young people like Jack Ritchie and many, many others to make sure that we learn the lessons from his tragic death and so protect our fellow citizens. I conclude by saying once again how grateful we all are for the campaigning and courage of Charles and Liz in bringing this important issue to the attention of the Government and of the House.
Question put and agreed to.
National Lottery Update
Chris Philp Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
The Gambling Commission has today announced the outcome of its competition to run the 4th National Lottery licence, covering the 10-year period from 2024 to 2034. In accordance with relevant legislation, this decision has been made by the Gambling Commission’s Board. DCMS and Ministers have not been involved in the decision-making process.
Today’s announcement marks an important moment in the history of the National Lottery, which has raised over £45 billion for good causes across the United Kingdom since its launch in 1994. The National Lottery has made over 660,000 individual grants to communities and to the arts, heritage and sports sectors. In recent years this included over £1.2 billion to support the UK’s Covid response and recovery.
The 4th National Lottery licence competition was launched by the Gambling Commission in August 2020. Following extensive market engagement, the Commission received four final applications to operate the licence—the highest number since the first licence was awarded in 1994. Following a thorough evaluation process, the Commission has chosen Allwyn Entertainment Ltd. as the preferred applicant to operate the licence and Camelot UK Lotteries Ltd. as the reserve applicant. Pending a legal standstill period, which will last for at least 10 days, Allwyn Entertainment Ltd. will be confirmed as the incoming licensee and will, following the signing of an enabling agreement, work with the Commission to ensure a smooth transition from the 3rd to the 4th licence, which will operate from 1 February 2024. The details of the Commission’s announcement can be found at: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk.
The award of the 4th National Lottery licence is made under provisions in the National Lottery etc. Act 1993. That legislation sets out the roles and responsibilities of the Government and the Gambling Commission and gives the Commission the power to award the licence to run the National Lottery. It also enshrines the principles underpinning the UK’s National Lottery: that it be run with due propriety, that the interests of all players be protected and that, within these parameters, returns to good causes are maximised. These principles are at the heart of the 4th licence, which will see operator profits more closely aligned with good causes than under the 3rd licence, while also continuing to hold the operator to account for protecting players and maintaining the highest standards of propriety.
This award does not change the principles governing the distribution of funding to good causes across the UK, which is the responsibility of 12 public bodies acting as National Lottery Distributors, as set out in legislation.
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