Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay: ..., outlined, her Bill was due to be read a second time the day after the death of Her late Majesty the Queen. That very sad reason for delay has meant that we are able to look at it alongside the Online Safety Bill, now before your Lordships’ House, which is helpful. I will endeavour to explain why the Government think that Bill deals with many of the issues raised, while keeping an open...
Lord Clement-Jones: ...for children and vulnerable adults; transparency of systems and power for Ofcom to get to grips with the algorithms underlying them; that regulation is practical and privacy protecting; that online behaviour is treated on all fours with offline; and that there is a limitation of powers of the Secretary of State. We recognise the theme which has come through very strongly today: the...
Damian Collins: My right hon. Friend makes an important point about things that are illegal offline but legal online. The Bill has still not defined a lot of content that could be illegal and yet promoted through advertising. As part of their ongoing work on the Bill and the online advertising review, will the Government establish the general principle that content that is illegal will be regulated whether...
Caroline Dinenage: ...do not differentiate between harmful and harmless content. They see a pattern and they exploit it. We often talk about the parallels between the online and offline world—we say that what is illegal online should be illegal offline, and vice versa—but in reality the two worlds are fundamentally different. In the real world, for a young person struggling with an eating disorder or at...
Kirsty Blackman: On illegal content, is the Minister proposing that the Government will introduce new legislation to make, for example, holocaust denial and eating disorder content illegal, whether it is online or offline? If he is saying that the bar in the online and offline worlds should be the same, will the Government introduce more hate crime legislation?
Victoria Atkins: ...many in the consultation. I look forward to his future correspondence. The support package that we have introduced means that the revaluation will go some way to addressing the imbalance between online and offline retailers. On average, large distribution warehouses will see an increase in bills of about 27%, and bricks and mortar retailers will see decreases of about 20%. We recognise...
Kim Leadbeater: ...free from the dangerous toxicity we have seen in recent years. I believe we all have a responsibility in this regard, but, sadly, we have seen behaviour in this Chamber and outside that is clearly unacceptable, and we must raise the bar. That is why I am pleased to see us acting to strengthen the code of conduct, which I wholeheartedly support. We in this House have a sincere duty and...
Nigel Evans: ...services stakeholders. (4) In this section “fraud and associated financial crime” includes, but is not limited to authorised push payment fraud, unauthorised facility takeover fraud, and online and offline identity fraud. (5) In this section, “financial services stakeholders” includes banks, building societies, credit unions, investment firms, Electric Money Institutions, virtual...
Lucy Powell: ...) understood that this is not about thwarting the right to hold views that most of us find abhorrent, but about not allowing those views to be widely shared on a powerful platform that, in the offline world, just does not exist. She understood that the Online Safety Bill came from a fundamental recognition that the algorithms and the power of platforms to push people towards content that,...
Miriam Cates: ...stories of their children being drawn into this. Yes, in this country it is thankfully very difficult to get a double mastectomy when you are under 18, but it is incredibly easy to buy testosterone illegally online and to inject it, egged on by adults in other countries. Once a girl has injected testosterone during puberty, she will have a deep voice and facial hair for life and...
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay: ...offences in these Acts which criminalise false and threatening communications. Protection for Adults: The Triple Shield It is unquestionable that speech that is illegal in the street should also be illegal online, and that major platforms should remove illegal content from their sites. While most platforms, including social media sites, have robust terms of service detailing the types of...
Michelle Donelan: ...offences in these Acts which criminalise false and threatening communications. Protection for Adults: The Triple Shield It is unquestionable that speech that is illegal in the street should also be illegal online, and that major platforms should remove illegal content from their sites. While most platforms, including social media sites, have robust terms of service detailing the types of...
Baroness Barran: ...the work of Ofcom and has made no assessment of Ofcom’s progress on this matter. Ofsted sets clear expectations that schools teach pupils how to understand and recognise risks they may encounter online. This should include a well constructed relationship, sex and health education curriculum that addresses online abuse and harassment, online safeguarding risks, and what constitutes a...
Baroness Featherstone: ...their media are state-controlled, to contact the outside world. So, getting the balance right between freedom of speech and the need to qualify it is a very important task. Of course, what is illegal offline is illegal online: that is the easy bit and I guess that is where my preference lies, with very few exceptions. As the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, said, I want maximum controls in my...
Damian Collins: ...form part of the schedule of priority illegal offences. On priority harms, I would say that that is the stuff that the platforms have to proactively look for. Anything illegal could be considered illegal online, and the regulators could take action against it. Let me finish by thanking all the Members here, including my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), another...
Lord Morrow: My Lords, I hope the Minister will agree that keeping children safe online requires more than just age verification. What is illegal or prohibited content offline should also be illegal and prohibited online. Will the Government ensure that the new legislation currently in the other place will indeed ensure that protections offline will be the same for online content?
John Nicolson: ...standard for R18 classification. The point of the Bill, as the Minister has repeatedly said, is to make the online world a safer place, by doing what we all agree must be done—making what is illegal offline, illegal online. That is why so many Members think that the lack of regulation around pornography is a major omission in the Bill. The new clause stipulates age and consent checks for...
Joanna Cherry: ..., which the Bill seeks to impose on online services, will be a significant departure from existing legislation regulating online content. It will allow for a more preventative approach to regulating illegal online content and will form part of a unified regulatory framework applying to a wide range of online services. I welcome the benefits that this would represent, especially with...
Kemi Badenoch: ...bodies to do so. We also continue to support the independent adviser on Antisemitism, Lord Mann, to provide expert advice to Government on contemporary Antisemitism, and how best to tackle it. Online abuse of any kind, including antisemitic abuse, is unacceptable. We want the internet to be a safe space for all users - we are clear that what is unacceptable offline should be unacceptable...
Alex Davies-Jones: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. This new clause would apply provisions applied to priority illegal content also to content that constitutes, encourages or promotes violence against women and girls. As it stands, the Bill is failing women and girls. In an attempt to tackle that alarming gap, the new clause uses the Istanbul convention definition of VAWG, given that the...