Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to tackle online (a) homophobia, (b) biphobia and (c) transphobia.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The government is committed to tackling misogyny, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, including the spread of such content online. On 12 May 2021, we published the draft Online Safety Bill, which sets out new expectations on companies to keep their users safe online. Under a new legal duty of care, in-scope companies, including social media, will need to tackle misogynistic, homophobic, biphobic and transphobic content and activity that is illegal, if it is on their services.
In addition, companies with the largest audiences and with high-risk features will need to assess the risk to adults of legal but harmful content on their services. They must also set clear terms and conditions stating what legal but harmful material they accept (and do not accept) on their service. Companies will have to do this for both priority harms which the government will set out in secondary legislation and for any emerging harms they identify in their risk assessments.
These duties will apply to misogynistic, homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate speech, which do not meet the threshold of a criminal offence. Companies will need to enforce their terms and conditions consistently and transparently, and could face enforcement action if they do not. All companies in scope will be required to have effective and accessible user reporting and redress mechanisms.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much her Department has spent from the public purse on its proposals for age verification for online pornography .
Answered by Matt Warman
Since 2016, the government has spent approximately £2.2million on this policy. These objectives will now be delivered through our wider online harms work. It is only right that government has invested to prepare for a child protection measure. This is now a key part of our online harms agenda and we will be reviewing how our work so far can be incorporated into the proposed online harms regime.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many youth projects are supported by Erasmus Plus (Youth), and how many British young people have been supported by those projects since the start of that programme.
Answered by Tracey Crouch
Details of the number of youth projects can be found at https://www.erasmusplus.org.uk/statistics-0 under ‘Projects funded’ - ‘Data Tables’, Table 1.
There are no records of the nationality of participants, but details of the number of participants funded in the UK can be found at https://www.erasmusplus.org.uk/statistics-0 under ‘Project Mobilities and Outputs’ - ‘Data Tables’, Table 1.
Copies of the information have been placed in the Libraries of the House.