Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2022-05-12
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord. On conversion therapy, it seems that, if ever a Bill needed to be published in draft form and subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, this is it. It is a great pity that the Government decided not to go down that route, not least on the issue of gender, which the Government say they will not be dealing with. One of the big issues will be the role of doctors and what will be legitimate as advice to be given to them. The report by Hilary Cass into GIDS lays out some of the issues that need to be considered, particularly in relation to the drugs given to young people. I believe this warrants careful attention. Even now, I say to the Minister that surely this ought to be subject to proper pre-legislative scrutiny I want to talk about the Online Safety Bill. I absolutely understand the reasons why it has been brought forward and that we have to do everything we can to protect the safety of users from some of the vile abuse that appears online every day, causing suffering for people. My noble friend Lady Merron was absolutely right to point out the urgent need for action. But there is a paradox at the heart of the problem which the Government have been attempting to solve, for while social media companies have been slow to act against much of this vile online abuse, particularly some of the material aimed at children, they have been keen to impose their own social values on users of their services. In clamping down on legal but harmful content online, the Bill carries a risk to freedom of expression, since the Government are essentially legitimising the major tech companies to impose their values on us even more. As the British and Irish Law Education and Technology Association told the pre-legislative scrutiny committee on the Bill: "In being asked to make determinations of legal speech, commercial platforms are being trusted with decisions on what is—or is not—permitted speech." Big Brother Watch points out that platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become de facto arbiters of speech online, making judgments about the permissibility of citizens’ speech without due process—and not only citizens but politicians of the highest office too The Government’s proposal to remove offensive material is of course reinforcing the companies’ powers and inclination to impose west coast norms on us and impede or ban perfectly legitimate debate. The risk here is that to meet the regulator’s requirements on the "legal but harmful" provisions, and under threat of looming penalties, those tech companies will be quicker than ever to enforce censorious policies, with freedom of expression the victim and algorithms the final arbiter The Government argue that protections have been built into the Bill to give greater clarity about what harmful content is covered. Specifically, platforms will have to explain why they have removed content, with duties to protect journalistic and democratically important content. They also claim to have removed any incentives or pressures for platforms to over-remove legal or controversial content I draw Ministers’ attention to analysis by Gavin Millar QC for Index on Censorship, which argues that, despite almost seven years of debate, there is still significant uncertainty about how the Bill will work in practice. As he said: "The Government is still not able to define terms at the heart of the legislation such as ‘legal but harmful’ or give … technology companies … clear guidance on how this landmark legislation should operate." In summary, he found: "Harmful speech has no legal basis and risks restrictions on speech that are too broad and therefore open to abuse through selective enforcement." The Minister’s department has rejected that analysis out of hand. Could the Minister explain why? What is his response to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, on the sweeping powers being taken by the Executive in recent legislation, of which this Bill is an example Can the Minister also comment on the advice of Professor Kathleen Stock, a former professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex? She has been subject to considerable abuse online because of her views about biology and the importance of women’s rights and might have been expected to be emphatically in favour of attempts to remove what the Online Safety Bill calls "harmful communications" from the internet. Referring to the power of the safety service providers, however, she warns: "If their recent behaviour proves anything, it’s that these online giants don’t need another reason to crack down on content they think will distress certain groups of people. After all, they are already doing this, albeit in a way which reflects the priorities of Silicon Valley technocrats" One example of this is Twitter’s own policy, which does not accept that it is bound by the Equality Act in this country. Will that be put right in the Bill? The Bill hands huge powers to the Secretary of State through statutory instruments and codes of practice. It is unacceptable that the House should be asked to pass the Bill without knowing many more facets of what is included, and I hope it is subject to the kind of scrutiny that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, requires.