Online Harms

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered online harms.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am delighted to have secured this debate this afternoon. I know that lots of colleagues are keen to participate, and many of them have much greater expertise in this policy area than I do. I have never been more overwhelmed on securing a debate by offers of briefings, information, research and support from organisations that are dedicated to trying to make a difference in this area. Given the strength of feeling and the depth of the evidence base, it is remarkable that we have not made more progress.

I was approached by the Petitions Committee who asked if four online petitions could be considered as part of this debate. Those petitions are entitled: “Make online abuse a specific criminal offence and create a register of offenders,” “Make online homophobia a specific criminal offence,” “Hold online trolls accountable for their online abuse via their IP address” and “Ban anonymous accounts on social media”. The petitions have collectively been signed by more than half a million people and I am pleased to say that there were 773 signatories from my Halifax constituency.

I had intended to include a list and thank all those who sent briefings, but there were so many, it would take me about 12 hours to read out that list. I would therefore just like to mention the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Barnardo’s, the Antisemitism Policy Trust, John Carr OBE, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and my good and honourable Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), who has a vast knowledge and expertise in this area, not least in his capacity as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on social media. I will reference others throughout my speech. I thank them all for the information and support in shaping the focus of my efforts.

During lockdown, we have seen how the internet has facilitated digital connection and social media has provided a lifeline to the outside world for so many. None of us in this room is ignorant of the good that social media can do; however, as lawmakers, we are all collectively responsible for the utter failure to regulate it and for the societal damage that that is causing.

The online harms White Paper published last year confirms that nearly nine in 10 UK adults and 99% of 12 to 15-year-olds are online. The NSPCC estimates that in the first three months of 2020, online sex crimes recorded against children surpassed 100 a day—that is roughly one every 14 minutes. Barnardo’s also contacted me about some of the harrowing online experiences it has been supporting children through as part of its new “See, Hear, Respond” campaign over the course of the lockdown—the sorts of experiences that would significantly damage adults, let alone children.

As MPs, we all know what it is like to be in the public eye and to be on the receiving end of online abuse, but I started to ramp up my work in this area when I was approached by a brilliant woman, Nicky Chance-Thompson, who is the chief exec of the magnificent Piece Hall in my constituency, which everyone should come and visit when they have the opportunity. She is a deputy lieutenant and the Yorkshire Choice Awards Business Woman of the Year 2019. She is also on Northern Power Women’s power list.

When Caroline Flack tragically died in February this year, Nicky bravely approached me and others to share her own experiences of women in the public eye and to call on all of us to get a grip of online abuse before any further lives are lost. Nicky published an article with the Yorkshire Evening Post describing how she was a victim and survivor of online abuse, which rides high on social media. She said:

“Cowards hiding behind fake profiles can say anything they like about anyone, and there appears to be no consequences for them nor recourse for the victims…Misogyny is unpalatably frequent. Many women in high profile or public positions cop it simply for doing their jobs or being successful.”

She urged everyone involved to speak up and take action because “silence is killing people.”

Nicky’s article was published by the Yorkshire Evening Post as part of their “Call It Out” campaign, which has been spearheaded by editor, Laura Collins. It proved to be the catalyst for a broader initiative between Nicky, myself, editors of the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post, James Mitchinson and Laura Collins, Stop Funding Hate, the Conscious Advertising Network and the Journalism Trust Initiative, led by Reporters Without Borders. We came together to agree a constructive way forward to make progress on cleaning up the internet. We interrogated the online harms White Paper; its joint ministerial statement bears the names of two former Cabinet Members who both left Government over a year ago, which hardly screams urgency, but it does state:

“While some companies have taken steps to improve safety on their platforms, progress has been too slow and inconsistent overall.”

I am afraid that, in itself, is a reflection of the Government’s inaction.

We talk a great deal about public health right now, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) said in a discussion I had with her about her Petitions Committee investigation into online abuse, we will look back on this period in history with disbelief and shame that we did nothing in the face of what can only be described as a public health ticking time bomb. She compared unregulated online abuse and hate to smoking, and that analogy is entirely right.

Until a landmark study in the 1950s, whether a person chose to smoke was nothing to do with Government, and even when the body of research provided evidence for the link between tobacco use and lung cancer and other chronic diseases, Governments were slow to involve themselves in efforts to stop people smoking, or to get them to smoke less or not to start in the first place. If we think about where we are now on smoking, although smoking cessation budgets have been slashed in recent years, we proactively fund stop smoking services, have school education programmes and heavily regulate what is available to purchase and how it is advertised.

We do that because we recognised that smoking was having a detrimental impact on physical health. We invested, not only because it was the right thing to do, but because it was more cost-effective to intervene than to allow so many people to become so unwell as a consequence. Compare that with online abuse and hate and the impact we know it is having on the wellbeing and mental health of society, particularly young people.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. She mentioned the importance of regulation, and as she was speaking I was reflecting on the regulation that is in place to govern the BBC and broadcast media, because it was felt that, if communication was going straight into the living room of every home in this country, it needed to have a firm regulatory footing. Does she not think that a similar approach to this sector could have prevented some of the harms that she is talking about today?

[Holly Lynch]

The right hon. Lady makes an important point. I am about to come on to some of the different ways that we need to extend the regulation that is already there. She makes the point that that information was going straight into homes; information online is coming straight into somebody’s hand in front of their face, so why do we not extend the same types of regulation to it? I will come on to that in more detail, but I thank her for that point.

As I said, 99% of 12 to 15-year-olds are online, and seven in 10 young people have experienced cyber-bullying, with nearly 40% of young people saying they experienced cyber-bullying on a high-frequency basis, according to the Royal Society for Public Health’s “#StatusofMind” report. Those of us in this Chamber know better than anyone the impact that social media is having on public discourse and on the ability to have safe spaces for the exchange of different opinions, which are vital in any democracy.

One of the reasons the Yorkshire Evening Post was so motivated to launch the Call It Out campaign was realising the impact of the barrage of online abuse directed predominantly, but not exclusively, towards their its female journalists. Editor Laura Collins, who I commend for her leadership on this issue, told me this week that the sentiment of one comment on Facebook responding to an article about the local restrictions in Leeds was not uncommon: it said, “Whoever is publishing these articles needs executing by firing squad”. The newspaper reported it to Facebook on 28 September and nine days later is yet to receive a response.

Our “Clean Up The Internet” initiative, somewhat underwhelmed by the White Paper, feared that the Government did not have the will to truly transform the way the internet is used, so we considered what else would need to happen. Online social media platforms have said far too often that they just provide the platform and can only do so much to oversee the content shared on it, but that holds no water at all where paid ads are concerned. It is a glaring omission from the White Paper that it does not consider misinformation and disinformation, which can be not only shared widely for free, but promoted through online advertising.

As we have heard, advertising in print or on broadcast platforms is regulated through Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority, and it must be pre-approved by a number of relevant bodies. There are clear rules, powers and consequences. The internet, however, to quote the NSPCC campaign, is the “wild west”. We must therefore extend that regulation to online advertising as a matter of urgency.

The urgency is twofold. The spread of misinformation and disinformation relating to the pandemic, whether it is conspiracy theories about its origins or even its existence, fake cures or promoting the sale of personal protective equipment by bogus companies, when we are trying to combat a virus, can have fatal consequences. So-called clickbait advertising and the monetisation of items dressed up as news, with the most outrageous and sensational teasers inevitably receiving the most clicks and generating the most income, means that credible news from real journalists with integrity to both their conduct and their content, like those at the Yorkshire Post and the Yorkshire Evening Post, is being driven out of that space. The online business model does not work for those who play by the rules, because there simply are not any.

Let us move on to what else would make a difference. I hope that the Minister will be able to answer a number of questions today about the progress of legislation and regulation. We have had the initial response to the White Paper, but when can we expect to see the Bill published? If we consider that the process began when the Green Paper was published in October 2017 and that the Government have suggested it may be 2023 before new legislation comes into effect, that will be six years, which is an incredibly long time in the life of a child—almost an entire generation.

Opportunities to strengthen protections for children online have been continually missed. During lockdown, large numbers of children have been harmed by entirely avoidable online experiences. If the Government had acted sooner, those consequences may not have been as severe or widespread.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on securing the debate. I also thank the NSPCC, CARE, UK Safer Internet Centre, Girlguiding and Refuge for their excellent briefings. As the hon. Lady pointed out, this is an enormously complex issue. A number of petitions touching on areas of online harm have attracted around half a million signatories in total, as she said. That shows the Minister not only the strength of feeling but the importance of the Government’s providing a comprehensive response to this.

Let us be honest: when this sector wants to act, it does. It acted back in 2010 on online child abuse images, by putting in place protocols around splash pages, and it has acted on some issues around electoral fraud and fake news. However, the problem is that the industry does not consistently react, because it does not feel that it needs to. That has to change.

The Government have shown a clear intent to act in this area, through the 2017 Green Paper, the White Paper and the promise of legislation. The core concept that the Government want to put forward—as we understand it, anyway—is a duty of care: to make companies take responsibility for the safety of their users and to tackle the harm caused by their content, their activities and their services. Those are basic things that one would think were already in place, but they are not. They are to be applauded as a starting point, but again let us be clear that it is only a starting point, because setting up a regulator and regulatory frameworks do not provide a route of redress for victims. Lawyers know that a duty of care will not enable people to pursue a complaint to the regulator about an individual problem; it will just give the regulator an opportunity to fine companies or hit them over the head with a big stick.

People can bring a claim through ordinary legal proceedings, but that is limited by the existing legal framework, which we know is inadequate. The Law Commission is belatedly looking at a number of these areas, but it feels like the horse has already bolted. We might have to wait months or even years for its recommendations to come through, be reviewed and then be put forward in further legislation. It would be wholly unacceptable for the Government to bring forward a Bill with only measures to regulate, not legislation that actually has teeth.

We also need to deal with the inadequacies of the legislation, and I suggest that the Government should focus on at least three areas. When it comes to image-based abuse, the law is a mess. We have layer upon layer of legislation that does not give the police the necessary tools to protect victims. The second area is age verification, which my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) has already gone through. That is a promise we have not yet delivered on, and this Bill has to deliver on it. The third area is the importance of putting in place legislation that protects victims of intimidation during elections, which again the Government have promised to look at.

In conclusion, the coronavirus lockdown has served to create a perfect storm for online abuse. The Government have to act, and act quickly. Regulation alone is not enough; we need legislative reform as well.