Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal

Debate between Tom Collins and John Hayes

Monday 15th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tom Collins]

The Minister describes the review of the Act and how we have a rapidly growing list of potential harms. It strikes me that we are up against a very agile and rapidly developing world. I recently visited the BBC Blue Room and saw the leading edge of consumer-available technology, and it was quite disturbing to see the capabilities that are coming online soon. In the review of the Act, is there scope to move from a register of harms into perhaps domains of safety, such as trauma, addiction or attachment, where the obligation would be on service providers or manufacturers to ensure their products were safe across those domains? Once again, there could be security for smaller businesses available from the world of technical standards, where if a business is offering a simple service and meets an industry-developed standard, they have presumption of compliance. The British Standards Institution has demonstrated very rapid development of that through the publicly available specification system, and that is available to help us to navigate this rapidly. Could that be in scope?

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Interventions should be brief, but I am very kind.

Knife Crime: West Midlands

Debate between Tom Collins and John Hayes

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tom Collins (Worcester) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I recently met the young people representing our county in the Worcestershire Youth Cabinet, and they shared with us their priorities, the highest of which, to my shock, was crime and safety. They are very concerned by the issue, and knife crime was at the top of their list of concerns. They suggested actions, and we discussed all the things my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) raised: visible policing, prioritising the restriction of access to knives, and early intervention and education, including restoring youth centres and youth services. However, their key ask was that we do the work to understand the root causes and motivations behind knife crime among young people.

My first takeaway from that conversation was how keen young people are to collaborate on this issue as we start to tackle it. My second takeaway was how important it is that we do not work from assumptions, but really try to understand, from the perspective of young people, what is driving this problem—that we listen to, involve and empower young people. That is all the more important when we realise just how fuelled this issue is by fear, apathy and disenfranchisement.

Young people care deeply about this issue. They are ready to engage, and they deserve a voice. On behalf of the young people in Worcester, I want to echo their call and their offer: let us act urgently at all levels of policing, disrupting and preventing knife crime, but let us, as we do that, put young people at the very heart of that response. We will tackle this issue most effectively when we put our influence, power and resources in their hands, so let us put young people at the centre of what we do as we tackle and end the problem of knife crime.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, I thank hon. Members for their brevity and their co-operation in making sure that all colleagues contributed. I want to leave some time for the mover of the motion to speak at the end.