Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions she has had with independent news publishers regarding the news publisher definition in the Online Safety Bill; and if she will make a statement.

Ministers and officials have consulted extensively with a wide range of stakeholders during the drafting of the Bill.

Online Safety legislation has been designed to safeguard access to journalistic content. News publishers’ content will be exempted from platforms’ new online safety duties. The criteria against which an organisation qualifies as a publisher is set in the draft Online Safety Bill. If an organisation meets these criteria, then its content will be exempt.

The Bill will also impose a duty on the biggest and riskiest companies, Category 1 companies, to safeguard all journalistic content shared on their platform. Through this duty, these platforms will need to have systems in place to ensure they take into account the importance of the free expression of journalistic content when operating their services.