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 help tackle (a) disinformation and (b) abuse on the commenting forums of newspaper websites.

The Government takes the issue of disinformation very seriously. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been vitally important that the public has accurate information and DCMS is leading work across Government to tackle disinformation.

The Cross-Whitehall Counter Disinformation Unit was stood up on 5 March, bringing together cross-Government monitoring and analysis capabilities. The Unit’s primary function is to provide a comprehensive picture of the extent, scope and impact of disinformation and misinformation regarding Covid-19 and to work with partners to ensure appropriate action is taken.

More generally, the Government’s Online Harms White Paper, published in April 2019, set out our plans for world-leading legislation to make companies more responsible for their users’ safety online. We intend to establish in law a new duty of care on companies towards their users which will be overseen by an independent regulator. This regulator will set clear safety standards, backed up by mandatory reporting requirements and strong enforcement powers to deal with non-compliance.

However, Online Harms regulation will not seek to duplicate existing regulation on moderated comment sections on news sites. The government is committed to independent self-regulation of the press. Complaints about user-generated comments on news websites can be directed to the publication itself, or to the appropriate self-regulator. The majority of traditional publishers—including 95% of national newspapers by circulation—are members of IPSO. A small number of publishers have joined IMPRESS