Online Safety Super-Complaints (Eligibility and Procedural Matters) Regulations 2025

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome these regulations and congratulate the Minister on introducing them. I have a couple of questions and will also support some of the comments made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

Can the Minister tell us when the department will undertake the guidance that it has committed to produce before the regulations come into effect? Will the House have sight of that before they come into effect?

Paragraph 5.8 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“The whole super-complaints process must … typically be completed within 120 days, which reduces to 105 days in the event that an entity has retained eligibility status”.


Is that feasible? Can that actually be delivered within the procedure? I understand from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that this is meant to be a streamlined procedure, but it is important that, if someone is limited to one complaint in a six-month period, they have the time to develop that complaint to the full, and 120 days might be quite a tight timetable.

Paragraph 5.9 of the Explanatory Memorandum says:

“Entities must not submit more than one complaint in a six-month period”.


Again, this may mean that a genuine complaint that is completely different from the complaint already before Ofcom will be delayed, so it is not streamlining the procedure at all. It also says, “except in specific circumstances”—I wonder what those circumstances might be—and goes on to say:

“Super-complaints should not merely repeat the substance of another complaint that has been made publicly available by Ofcom within the last two years and Ofcom will reject a complaint on this basis”.


On the two points from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I share the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that there is neither an appeals mechanism nor the intervention of an ombudsman. For what reason was an ombudsman not considered appropriate in these circumstances? Given the pressure on Ofcom and the restrictions placed on it, particularly following on from the Online Safety Act, does the Minister feel absolutely convinced that Ofcom has all the resources that it needs at its disposal to deal with the super-complainants? Paragraph 49 of the committee’s report says:

“We note the Department’s explanation but remain concerned about the adequacy of the resources available to Ofcom, given its already extensive online safety responsibilities would be expanded further by this instrument”.


I have one final question, as I was not as closely involved in this Bill as others were. What happens to those individual complainants who do not fall within the super-complaint? Do they have a separate procedure under separate regulations? With those fair words, I welcome the opportunity to scrutinise these regulations.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive introduction. These regulations aim to establish a formal mechanism for super-complaints to be made to Ofcom under Section 169 of the 2023 Act, as we have heard. Potentially, this represents a significant step forward in implementing the Act’s vision for civil society oversight of our online landscape. The underlying purpose is clear: to enable eligible entities to raise systemic online safety issues, alerting Ofcom to significant risks or harms that might not otherwise come to its attention. These super-complaints are indeed a vital mechanism.

I welcome the clear intent behind these regulations and acknowledge the responsiveness of the Government and Ofcom to the consultation process—not always the case. Several positive changes have been made in response to stakeholder feedback, strengthening the regime’s accessibility and effectiveness. The removal of a statutory pre-notification period is a crucial improvement, enabling more timely responses to urgent online safety issues. There is the reduced administrative burden for organisations that have previously been deemed eligible. The reduction in assessment periods from 30 to 15 days demonstrates a certain sensitivity to concerns about administrative burden and procedural delays. Then there are restrictions on Ofcom’s ability to pause timelines; placing limits on Ofcom’s ability to stop the clock when seeking further information from complainants is a welcome development, addressing fears about unnecessary delays in addressing urgent harms and improving transparency.

The regulations have expanded the eligibility criteria to include newer expert organisations, which directly addresses concerns about barriers facing emerging voices in what is a rapidly evolving field, in our view allowing for greater inclusivity. This approach seeks to provide a future-proofed way of enabling a range of organisations to access the super-complaints mechanism in a fast-changing online environment. Then there is the flexibility in complaints submission. The ability for an eligible entity to withdraw an initial complaint and submit a replacement, effectively prioritising a different issue, is a helpful measure to ensure that the most important concerns are addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, asked about the ombudsman issue. Individual user complaints are likely to be complex but also very time sensitive, and it would be unlike other situations in which ombudsmen operate. In addition, the scope of the OSA means that the ombudsman would need to consider whether providers had taken correct decisions about whether to moderate content that was, for example, illegal or harmful to children. However, under the Act, the Secretary of State could bring in an alternative dispute resolution duty or ombudsman service after Ofcom publishes its user redress report. We currently estimate that this report will be published in early 2028. As noble Lords will know, I am a great fan of ombudsman services—

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but she said 2028. When will the actual review begin? That sounds an impossible end date for anybody to be satisfied with progress on an ombudsman being considered, let alone appointed. Does the review start in 2028, or in 2026? When does it start taking input?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The only information that I have is that we are anticipating that the report would be published and available in early 2028—so, obviously, it would need to start well before then. The noble Lord will know that setting up ombudsman schemes is not a simple process. However, we look forward to the outcome of that report, because we recognise some of the issues being raised.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

But if the report will be available only then and the regulations need to be made, the prospect of having an ombudsman is not there until 2029—something like that—or maybe 2030. Does not the Minister find that rather unsatisfactory, especially given her knowledge of the benefits of ombudsman services?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I can only repeat what I said. Ofcom is going to produce a report on this; it will look at the pros and cons of the issue and it may decide that there are other ways in which to deal with individual complaints that would not necessarily be an ombudsman service. We have to give it the space to do that thinking and develop that work; it will also need to look at how the tech companies themselves respond to complaints and what gaps need to be filled by that process. So it is not a simple process—but I understand the noble Lord’s frustration with this. If we have any more information about the timescale for this, I shall write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I am sorry to interrupt again, but it partly depends on how much confidence we have in the tech companies in terms of how they deal with complaints.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

We will know the outcome of that much sooner than 2028, because I am sure that we will all have experience of complaints that go forward and whether they are responded to efficiently in the coming months, because there will be the opportunity to do that. In the regulations, as the noble Lord knows, all the regulated companies are required to have a named individual and a process for people to raise complaints.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked about appeals. I reassure noble Lords that Ofcom’s response will be informed by its regulatory experience, as well as the information presented as part of the complaint and any additional information that has been requested, before arriving at an appropriate determination. I also remind the Committee that the objective of a super-complaint is, ultimately, to bring to the attention of Ofcom an issue, a risk or a harm that it might otherwise have been unaware of. It is not to adjudicate an individual decision or necessarily to trigger enforcement action. Ofcom has the flexibility to use any of its online safety regulatory powers to address issues raised by the super-complaint. This may include a formal enforcement action, a change in guidance or codes of practice or, indeed, no action at all.