Online Safety Bill Back in Action
This week, the Online Safety Bill returned to the House of Commons after much delay. In this Boxnote, we summarise the main outcomes of the parliamentary debate.
The re-tabled Online Safety Bill promises to get ‘back to basics’, requiring tech companies to clamp down on child sexual abuse material and content promoting terrorism while enshrining individual rights online. However, with harmful communications legislation still proving controversial, the bill’s journey through parliament will be anything but ‘basic’.
On Monday 5th, the Online Safety Bill made its return to parliament with a cross-party debate, attended by the families of children who tragically lost their lives due to experience of online harms. The appearance of these bereaved relatives, including Ian Russell, father of Molly Russell, was symbolic. It was a promise that the memories of the children they had lost would be honoured with action to prevent any more harm to young lives. It was also a sign that MPs are going to ‘get real’ with the bill – this time, no more delays.
This is the hope, in any case. Originating in the 2019 Online Harms White Paper, the Online Safety Bill requires owners of online platforms to take accountability for the safety of their users, particularly children, and do all in their power to prevent exposure to harmful content. The bill is intended as a corrective to years’ worth of neglect towards young people’s safety from the tech sphere.
However, despite best intentions, the bill has experienced a long gestation period and multiple delays in this year alone. To some, it may have seemed that the bill was finally going out with a whimper after a raft of criticism towards its ‘legal but harmful’ content requirements, which MP Kemi Badenoch infamously argued were ‘legislation for hurt feelings.’
However, true to PM Rishi Sunak’s campaign promises and the word of Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan, the bill is back. Yet even with amendments made, Monday’s debate suggests there is still a difficult road ahead before this bill becomes law.
A refreshed Online Safety Bill?
Parliamentary Under Secretary Paul Scully opened the debate keen to show that while this was the return of the much-delayed bill, it was also a clean slate. His argument that “protection of children” was always the “top priority” suggests the government wants to cut through the noise of controversy and get ‘back to basics’ with the bill; that is to say, refocusing on its crucial core purpose of formulating the “most robust response possible” to “online child sexual exploitation and abuse,” or CSEA.
This, along with preventing the spread of content promoting terrorism, is the impetus behind the new clauses 11 and 12 which empower Ofcom to require companies to use “accredited technology” to identify harmful content, prevent users from encountering it, and to use their “best endeavours” to source or develop new technology to combat CSEA specifically. This new technology would prevent the uploading and dissemination of CSEA from the outset, rather than responding to it when it is already online.
However, this is not all the bill holds, nor was the debate so simple, despite the intention to get ‘back to basics.’
Keeping tech in check
Scully emphasised that these provisions were only intended for “companies [to] enforce their own terms and conditions” and that any tools to proactively prevent CSEA would be subject to a “rigorous assessment process” to “avoid any unnecessary intrusions into user privacy.” Ultimately, according to Scully, the purpose of the bill is not to be “prescriptive”; it will provide a “minimum standard” for removing illegal content and protecting children, while offering a flexible approach for companies to source the most effective safety solutions for their services.
Kit Malthouse MP raised the question of whether we can rely on a tech industry that has allowed things to get this bad, necessitating the bill in the first place, to meet its obligations of accountability and design its own solutions to the problems of child safety and harmful content. Some may echo his concerns, when Scully argues that the bill will not be “prescriptive.” This tension between doing enough and not overstepping the mark in enforcing powers lies at the heart of the bill in its present form, which was made abundantly clear as the debate shifted focus to user privacy.
Striking the balance on privacy
As Scully put it, “the bill will be amended to strengthen its provisions relating to children and to ensure that [its] protections for adults strike the right balance with its protections for free speech.” With this, the MP referred to the decision not to take forward the “harmful communications offence.” With the announcement of the bill’s return to parliament came the news that the controversial ‘legal but harmful’ requirements had been dropped; clearly the government did not want to invite any more criticism from the likes of Kemi Badenoch and be compared to a nanny state.
However, Dame Caroline Dinenage raised the valuable point that these regulations could have been helpful for navigating the “opaque place in the online world between what is legal and illegal,” while Dame Margaret Hodge pointed out that bad actors online will often use innuendos and dog whistles to share harmful viewpoints, something the legislation could have addressed.
Shadow Minister for DCMS Alex Davies-Jones MP took things a step further and argued that removing the harmful communications offenses would permit hoax bomb threats, abusive social media pile-ons, and the type of behaviour we have seen recently from Ye (FKA Kanye West). Scully claims these issues will be teased out and was forced to admit the bill wouldn’t be a ‘silver bullet.’
While Scully argued that the provisions to prevent harmful content would not undermine end-to-end encryption, former Home Secretary Priti Patel MP argued that there was a balance to be struck here as well, as criminals use this encryption to abuse children and share content promoting terrorism. It’s clear that user privacy will continue to be a point of contention as the bill progresses.
Advanced threats and protecting women and girls
Scully also affirmed that addressing “violence against women and girls is a key priority for the Government,” which is why the commissioner for victims and witnesses and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner will be named as “statutory consultees for the code of practice” and “coercive or controlling behaviour” will be made a priority offence in the bill. Amongst other pieces of legislation, cyber-flashing will also be criminalised, as well “non-consensual sharing of manufactured intimate images… more commonly known as deepfakes.”
Would you bill-ieve it…?
At the end of the day, the bill was recommitted to a short Committee stage to allow the House to scrutinise the changes, which Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan promised would not “put the bill at risk” as the Opposition argued.
Striking the balance between the protection of children and protecting individual rights online is as difficult as it sounds, and how the government will achieve this before spring as promised by the prime minister remains to be seen. Despite what the Culture Secretary says, there is a risk that this could keep the bill held back.
But, with a renewed sense of focus and a sense of its importance for young people shared across party divides, let us hope this really is the Online Safety Bill back in action, rather than inaction.
By Harri Adams, Junior Associate at Audley.