Asked by: Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether it is her Department's policy that Non-Fungible Tokens or any aspect of the mechanisms of their transfer are considered to be user-to-user regulated content under the terms set out in the Online Safety Bill.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
We introduced the Online Safety Bill to Parliament on 17 March 2022 and it passed its second reading in the House of Commons on 19 April.
The Bill will apply to a range of services that allow users to interact with each other and post content online. Companies will have duties to take action to prevent the proliferation of illegal content and to protect children from harmful content. This will include taking action against harmful content within Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), such as preventing users from encountering them where these are shared on in scope services.
Asked by: Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many black and white TV licences have been paid for in each of the last five years.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The BBC is responsible for administration of TV licences and, therefore, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport does not hold this information. However, the below figures from the BBC’s Annual Reports show the number of monochrome TV licences in force for each of the last five financial years, to the nearest thousand.
2020/21: 4,000
2019/20: 5,000
2018/19: 5,000
2017/18: 6,000
2016/17: 6,000
Asked by: Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to hold social media platforms accountable for content promoting eating disorders and self-harm on their platforms.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The strongest protections in the Online Safety Bill will be for children. Services in scope of the Bill which are likely to be accessed by children will need to do much more to protect them from harmful content. This includes content promoting eating disorders or self-harm content.
Major platforms will also need to address legal but harmful content accessed by adults.
The Government will set out in secondary legislation priority categories of harmful material for children and adults. If platforms fail in their duties under the Bill, they will face tough enforcement action including fines of up to 10% of global annual qualifying turnover.
The Government asked the Law Commission to review current legislation on harmful online communications. It has now published final recommendations, which includes a proposed new offence to address the encouragement of self-harm. The Government is considering the Law Commission’s recommendations and will set out our position in due course.