Online Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2022-07-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jeremy Paul Wright (Conservative, Centre-right): I shall speak to the amendments in my name and the names of other right hon. and hon. Members, to whom I am grateful for their support. I am also grateful to the organisations that helped me to work through some of the problems I am about to identify, including the Carnegie Trust, Reset and the Antisemitism Policy Trust On the first amendments I shall talk about, amendments 42 and 43, I have been able to speak to Lego, so I can honestly say that these amendments were put together with Lego. Let me explain. The focus of the Bill, quite rightly, is on safety, and there is no safety more important than the safety of children. In that respect, the Bill is clear: platforms must give the safety of children the utmost priority and pay close attention to ways to enhance it. In other parts of the Bill, however, there are countervailing duties—for example, in relation to freedom of speech and privacy—where, predominantly in relation to adults, we expect platforms to conduct a balancing exercise. It seems right to me to think about that in the context of children, too As I said, the emphasis is rightly on children’s safety, but the safest approach would be to prohibit children from any online activity at all. We would not regard such an approach as sensible, because there are benefits to children in being able to engage—safely, of course—in online activity and to use online products and services. It seems to me that we ought to recognise that in the language of the Bill. Amendment 42 would do that when consideration is given to the safety duties designed to protect children set out in clause 11, which requires that "proportionate measures" must be taken to protect children’s safety and goes on to explain what factors might be taken into account when deciding what is proportionate, by adding "the benefits to children’s well-being" of the product or service in that list of factors. Amendment 43 would do the same when consideration is given to the online safety objectives set out in schedule 4. Both amendments are designed to ensure that the appropriate balance is struck when judgments are taken by platforms Others have spoken about journalistic content, and I am grateful for what the Minister said about that, but my amendment 10 is aimed at the defect that I perceive in clause 16. The Bill gives additional protections and considerations to journalists, which is entirely justifiable, given the important role that journalism plays in our society, but those extra protections mean that it will be harder for platforms to remove potentially harmful content that is also journalistic content. We should be sure, therefore, that the right people get the benefit of that protection It is worth having look at what clause 16 says and does. It sets out that a platform—a user-to-user service—in category 1 will have "A duty to operate a service using proportionate systems and processes designed to ensure that the importance of the free expression of journalistic content is taken into account when making decisions about…how to treat such content (especially decisions about whether to take it down or restrict users’ access to it), and…whether to take action against a user generating, uploading or sharing such content." So it is important, because of the significance of those protections, that we get right the definitions of those who should benefit from them. Amendment 10 would amend clause 16(8), which states that: "For the purposes of this section content is "journalistic content", in relation to a user-to-user service, if…the content is" either "news publisher content in relation to that service"— the definition of which I will return to— "or…regulated user-generated content in relation to that service" That is the crucial point. The content also has to be "generated for the purposes of journalism" and be linked to the UK The first problem here is that journalism is not defined in the Bill. There are definitions of journalism, but none appears in the text of this Bill. "UK-linked" does not narrow it down much, and "regulated user-generated content" is a very broad category indeed. Clause 16 as drafted offers the protection given to journalistic content not just to news publishers, but to almost everybody else who chooses to define themselves as a journalist, whether or not that is appropriate. I do not think that that is what the Bill is intended to do, or an approach that this House should endorse. Amendment 10 would close the loophole by removing the second limb, regulated user-generated content that is not news publisher content. Let me be clear: I do not think that that is the perfect answer to the question I have raised, but it is better than the Bill as it stands, and if the Government can come up with a way of reintroducing protections of this kind for types of journalistic content beyond news publisher content that clearly deserve them, I will be delighted and very much open to it. Currently, however, the Bill is defective and needs to be remedied That brings us to the definition of news publisher content, because it is important that if we are to give protection to that category of material, we are clear about what we mean by it. Amendments 11 and 12 relate to the definition of news publisher content that arises from the definition of a recognised news publisher in clauses 49 and 50. That matters for the same reason as I just set out: we should give these protections only to those who genuinely deserve them. That requires rigorous definition. Clause 50 states that if an entity is not named in the Bill, as some are, it must fulfil a set of conditions set out in subsection (2), which includes having a standards code and policies and procedures for handling and resolving complaints. The difficulty here is that in neither case does the Bill refer to any quality threshold for those two things, so having any old standards code or any old policy for complaints will apparently qualify. That cannot be right I entirely accept that inserting a provision that the standards code and the complaints policies and procedures should be both "suitable and sufficient" opens the question whose job it becomes to decide what is suitable and sufficient. I am familiar with all the problems that may ensue, so again, I do not say that the amendment is the final word on the subject, but I do say that the Government need to look more carefully at what the value of those two items on the list really is if the current definition stands. If we are saying that we want these entities to have a standards code and a complaints process that provide some reassurance that they are worthy of the protections the Bill gives, it seems to me that meaningful criteria must apply, which currently they do not The powers of the Secretary of State have also been discussed by others, but I perhaps differ from their view in believing that there should be circumstances in which the Secretary of State should hold powers to act in genuine emergency situations. However, being able to direct Ofcom, as the Bill allows the Secretary of State to do, to modify a code of practice "for reasons of public policy" is far too broad. Amendment 13 would simply remove that capacity, with amendment 14 consequential upon it I accept that on 7 July the Secretary of State issued a written statement that helps to some extent on that point—it was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South South (Chris Philp). First, it states that the Secretary of State would act only in "exceptional circumstances", although it does not say who defines what exceptional circumstances are, leaving it likely that the Secretary of State would do so, which does not help us much. Secondly, it states the intention to replace the phrase "for reasons of public policy" with a list of circumstances in which the Secretary of State might act. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) that that is still too broad. The proposed list comprises "national security, public safety, public health, the UK’s international relations and obligations, economic policy and burden to business."—[Official Report, 7 July 2022; Vol. 717, c. 69WS.] The platforms we are talking about are businesses. Are we really saying that a burden on them would give the Secretary of State reason to say to Ofcom, the independent regulator, that it must change a code of practice? That clearly cannot be right. This is still too broad a provision. The progress that has been made is welcome, but I am afraid that there needs to be more to further constrain this discretion. That is because, as others have said, the independence of the regulator is crucial not just to this specific part of the Bill but to the credibility of the whole regulatory and legislative structure here, and therefore we should not undermine it unless we have to.