Online Safety Bill
Public Bill Committee, 24 May 2022.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we begin, I have a few announcements. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Please switch electronic devices to silent. Tea, coffee, and other drinks, apart from the water provided, are not allowed during sittings.
Today, we will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication, and a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about our questions before the oral evidence session. In view of the timetable available, I hope that we can take these matters formally without debate. I first call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in his name, which was discussed on Thursday by the Programming Sub-Committee for this Bill.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
The Committee will therefore proceed to line-by-line consideration of the Bill on Tuesday 7 June at 9.25 am. I call the Minister to move the motion about written evidence.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Copies of written evidence to the Committee will be made available in the Committee room each day and will be circulated to Members by email. I call the Minister to move the motion about deliberating in private.
Examination of Witnesses
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
We are now sitting in public again, and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we start hearing from the witnesses, do any Members wish to make declarations of interest in connection with the Bill?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
The witness on Thursday’s sitting, Danny Stone from the Antisemitism Policy Trust, is an informal secretariat in a personal capacity to the all-party parliamentary group on wrestling, which I co-chair.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
That is noted.
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests regarding work I did six months ago for a business called DMA.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
We will now hear oral evidence from Kevin Bakhurst, group director of broadcasting and online content at Ofcom, and Richard Wronka, director of Ofcom’s online harms policy. Before calling the first Member to ask a question, I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill, and we must stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee has agreed. For this witness panel, we have until 10.05 am. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
I will open up to the floor for questions now. I call Alex Davies-Jones.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Good morning, both, and welcome to the Committee. The Bill as it stands places responsibility on Ofcom to regulate the 25,000 tech companies and the tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of websites within the UK. How does that look in practice? What technical and administrative capacity do you have to carry that function out, realistically?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you, Kevin. You mentioned the categorisation of platforms. A number of stakeholders, including the platforms themselves and charities, have quite rightly raised some serious concerns around the categorisation of platforms. Would you, the regulator, prefer a risk-based approach, or the categorisation as it stands within the Bill?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q May I bring you back to putting this into practice, and to the recategorisation of platform and practice? If a category 2B platform as it stands in the Bill grows exponentially in size, and is spreading disinformation and incredibly harmful content quite quickly, how quickly would you be able to react as a regulator to recategorise that platform and bring it into scope as a category 1 platform? How long would that process take, and what would happen in the interim?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q So while that process is under way, there is no mechanism for you to take action against the platform.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Maria Miller has indicated that she would like to ask a question, so if I may, I will bring her in.
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Not immediately —go on please.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Maria.
I am just trying to get to the intricacies of this, and of what would happen during the time that it would take for you to recategorise. This platform, which is disseminating harm to both children and adults, would be allowed to carry on while the recategorisation process is under way. There is no mechanism in the Bill to stop that from happening.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q May I bring you on to the powers of the Secretary of State and the question of the regulator’s independence? The Bill will see the Secretary of State, whoever that may be, have a huge amount of personal direction over Ofcom. Do you have any other experience of being directed by a Secretary of State in this way, and what are the consequences of such an approach?
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q Thank you very much to the witnesses who have taken the time to be with us today. We are really grateful. You have already alluded to the fact that you have quite extensive experience in regulation, even in social media spaces. I think the Committee would be really interested in your view, based on your experience, about what is not in the Bill that should be.
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q You talk about illegal content and that Ofcom would not have a view on particular laws, but do you think there are harmful areas of content that are not currently covered by the law? I am thinking particularly about the issue of intimate image abuse, which is currently under Law Commission review, with recommendations expected very soon. Have you had any thoughts, particularly in the area of policy, about how you deal with issues that should be against the law but currently are not, given that part of your regulatory process is to determine whether companies are operating within the law?
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q May I press a little further? The four new offences that you talked about, and others, and just the whole approach of regulation will lead more individuals to seek redress and support. You are not responsible for individuals; you are responsible for regulation, but you must have some thoughts on whether the current system of victim support will cope with the changes in the law and the new regulatory process. What might you want to see put in place to ensure that those victims are not all landing at your door, erroneously thinking that Ofcom will provide them with individual redress? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
To what extent do you think services should publish publicly the transparency and risk assessments that they will be providing to OfcomQ ?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q That was to be my next question: do you think it is an issue that category 1 services will not have to publish child risk assessments? It seems to me that it would be better if they did.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q But would it not improve transparency if they did have to publish them? Why would they not want to publish them?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q May I ask follow-up some questions about resources and timing once the Bill has gone through? You said you are going to open a new digital and technology hub in Manchester, with the creation of 150 jobs. I have a couple of questions on that. Do you think that what is set out in the proposal will be enough? Will you have the resources to carry out the duties set out in the Bill? This is a follow-up point from my colleague’s question earlier.
There is also a question of timing. The reports suggested that the new hub and jobs will come into play in 2025. I am sure that everyone here wants to see the Bill taking effect sooner. Ofcom will need to do a lot of reviews and reporting in the first year after the Bill receives Royal Assent. How will that be possible if people are not in post until 2025?
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Thank you. I intend to bring in the Minister at about 10 o’clock. Kirsty Blackman, Kim Leadbeater and Dean Russell have indicated that they wish to ask questions, so let us try to keep to time.
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
I have a few questions, but I will ask them in a short way, and hopefully the witnesses can answer them in a fairly short way too. The chief executive of Ofcom told the Joint Committee on the draft Bill that the Secretary of State’s powers were extremely open ended. You have already touched on this, but do you feel that this will impede Ofcom’s independence as a regulatorQ ?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Do you feel that the Bill will allow you to adequately regulate online gaming, which is how an awful lot of young people use the internet, in a way that will keep them safer than they currently are?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q My last question is about future-proofing the Bill. Obviously, an awful lot of things will happen in the online world that do not currently happen there, and some of those we cannot foresee. Do you think the Bill is wide enough and flexible enough to allow changes to be made so that new and emerging platforms can be regulated?
Kim Leadbeater (Labour, Batley and Spen)
Ofcom is required to produce certain codes, for example on terrorism, but others that were floated in the Green Paper are no longer in the Bill. Are you working on such codes, for example on hate crime and wider harm, and if not, what happens in the meantime? I guess that links to my concerns about the democratic importance and journalistic content provisions in the Bill, to which you have alluded. They are very vague protections and I am concerned that they could be exploited by extremists who suddenly want to identify as a journalist or a political candidate. Could you say a little about the codes and about those two particular clauses and what more you think we could do to help you with thoseQ ?
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q Do the powers in the Bill cover enough to ensure that people will not be sent flashing images if they have photosensitive epilepsy?
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q But as the Bill stands, there is a very clear point about stopping harmful content being sent to people, so I imagine that would cover it at least in that sense, would it not?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Just to continue the point made by my colleague, you are right to say that Ministry of Justice colleagues are considering the flashing image offence as a separate matter. But would you agree that clause 150, on harmful communications, does criminalise and therefore place into the scope of the Bill communications intended to cause harm to a “likely audience” where such harm is
“psychological harm amounting to serious distress”?
Therefore, sending somebody a flashing image with the intention of inducing an epileptic fit would be likely caught under this new harmful communications offence in clause 150, even before a separate future offence that may be introduced.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q I would suggest that the definition in clause 150 would cover epilepsy trolling.
You mentioned that you met recently with European regulators. Briefly, because we are short of time, were there any particular messages, lessons or insights you picked up in those meetings that might be of interest to the Committee?
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Order. I am afraid we have come to the end of the allotted time for questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
We will now hear from the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza; Lynn Perry, chief executive officer of Barnardo’s, who will be appearing via Zoom; and Andy Burrows, head of child safety at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Could the new witnesses take their places, please?
We have until 10.50 am for this panel. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record? We will take the witnesses in the room first.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
And on the screen—[Interruption.] Uh-oh, it has frozen. We will have to come back to that. We will take evidence from the witnesses in the room until we have sorted out the problem with the screen.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q Do you think there is enough in the Bill to make sure that the voices of children at risk of online harms are heard? There is a super-complaints mechanism, but do you think it goes far enough for children, and are you confident that the regime will be able to quickly respond to new and emerging harms to children? Could Andy Burrows start?
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Lynn Perry is back on the screen—welcome. Would you like to introduce yourself for the record and then answer the question? [Interruption.] Oh, she has gone again. Apparently the problem is at Lynn’s end, so we will just have to live with it; there is nothing we can do on this side.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q Is the Bill future-proof? If you think it is not, how can we ensure that it is responsive to future risks and harms?
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
I will bring in Kim Leadbeater and then Maria Miller and Kirsty Blackman, but I will definitely bring in the Minister at 10.45 am.
Kim Leadbeater (Labour, Batley and Spen)
Q Thank you, Ms Rees, and thank you to the witnesses. Many websites host pornography without necessarily being pornographic websites, meaning that children can easily stumble across it. Does the Bill do enough to tackle pornography when it is hosted on mainstream websites?
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
I think Lynn Perry is back. Are you with us, Lynn? [Interruption.] No—okay. We will move on to Maria Miller.
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q I have a question for the Children’s Commissioner. You talked just now about doing more on the advocacy of individual cases. I asked a question of Ofcom in the first panel about the issue of support for victims. Its response was that complaints processes will be part of what it will regulate. Do you think that will be enough to answer your concerns, or are you expecting more than simply ensuring that platforms do what they should do?
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q Is there capacity in the sector to deliver what you are talking about?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q There has not been a huge amount of discussion of online gaming in the context of the Bill, despite the fact that for many young people that is the way in which they interact with other people online. Do you think the Bill covers online gaming adequately? A lot of interaction in online gaming is through oral communication—voice chat messages. Do you think that it is possible to properly regulate oral communications in gaming?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Do you think it would be reasonable for gaming companies in particular to have a setting whereby children or young people can choose to interact only with people in their friends list? Would that be helpful?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Finally, could you explain breadcrumbing a little further? What does it mean and does the Bill tackle it adequately?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q You mostly talked about Facebook. Is it mostly the largest social media platforms, or are we talking about some of the smaller ones, such as Discord, which you mentioned? Would you like to see those in scope as well, or is it just the very biggest ones?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Thank you.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q I want to ask about the many tragic cases of teenagers who have died by suicide after viewing self-harm material online. Do you think coroners have sufficient powers to access digital data after the death of a child, and should parents have the right to access their children’s digital data following their death?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Just quickly, do coroners have sufficient powers? Should they have more powers to access digital data after the death of a child?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Very briefly, Dame Rachel, I will build on what you were just saying, based on your experience as a headteacher. When I make my school visits, the teachers overwhelmingly tell me how, on a daily basis, they have to deal with the fallout from an issue that has happened online or on social media. On that matter, the digital media literacy strategy is being removed from the Bill. What is your thinking on that? How important do you see a digital media literacy strategy being at the heart of whatever policy the Government try to make regarding online safety for children?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q I have a quick question on parental digital literacy. You mentioned the panel that you put together of 16 to 21-year-olds. Do you think that today’s parents have the experience, understanding, skills and tools to keep their children properly safe online? Even if they are pretty hands-on and want to do that, do you think that they have all the tools they need to be able to do that?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Can I start by thanking the NSPCC and you, Dame Rachel, and your office for the huge contribution that you have made to the Bill as it has developed? A number of changes have been made as a result of your interventions, so I would just like to start by putting on the record my thanks to both of you and both your organisations for the work that you have done so far.
Could you outline for the Committee the areas where you think the Bill, as currently drafted, contains the most important provisions to protect children?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Sorry to interject, Dame Rachel, but do you agree that it is not just about stopping under-18s viewing pornography; it also includes stopping children under 13 accessing social media entirely, as per those companies’ purported terms and conditions, which are frequently flouted?Q
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you. I obviously strongly agree with those comments.
I would like to turn to a one or two points that came up in questioning, and then I would like to probe a couple of points that did not. Dame Rachel mentioned advocacy and ensuring that the voice of particular groups—in this context, particularly that of children—is heard. In that context, I would like to have a look at clause 140, which relates to super-complaints. Subsection (4) says that the Secretary of State can, by regulations, nominate which organisations are able to bring super-complaints. These are complaints whereby you go to Ofcom and say that there is a particular company that is failing in its systemic duties.
Subsection (4) makes it clear that the entities nominated to be an authorised super-complainant would include
“a body representing the interests of users of regulated services”,
which would obviously include children. If an organisation such as the Office of the Children’s Commissioner or the NSPCC—I am obviously not prejudicing the future process—were designated as a super-complainant that was able to bring super-complaints to Ofcom, would that address your point about the need for proper advocacy for children?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you, Andy. I am conscious of the time, so I will be brief with my final three questions. You made a valid point about large social media platforms receiving complaints generally, but in this case from children, about inappropriate content, such as photographs of them on a social media platform that do not get taken down—the complaint gets ignored, or it takes a very long time. In clause 18, we have duties on the complaints procedures that the big social media firms will now have to follow. I presume that you would join me in urging Ofcom to ensure that how it enforces the duties in clause 18 includes ensuring that big social media firms are responsive and quick in how they deal with complaints. Children are specifically referred to in the clause—for example, in subsection (3) and elsewhere.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Good—thank you. I want to say something about gaming, because Kirsty Blackman asked about it. If messages are being sent back and forth in a gaming environment, which is probably the concern, those are in scope of the Bill, because they are user-to-user services.
I will put my last two questions together. Are you concerned about the possibility that encryption in messaging services might impede the automatic scanning for child exploitation and abuse images that takes place, and would you agree that we cannot see encryption happen at the expense of child safety? Secondly, in the context of the Molly Russell reference earlier, are you concerned about the way that algorithms can promote and essentially force-feed children very harmful content? Those are two enormous questions, and you have only two minutes to answer them, so I apologise.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence, and I am really sorry that we could not get Lynn Perry online. Could we move on to the last panel? Thank you very much.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
We will now hear from Ben Bradley, government relations and public policy manager at TikTok, and Katy Minshall, head of UK public policy at Twitter. We have until 11.25 for this panel of witnesses. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Good morning, both. Thank you for joining us today. We have recently had it confirmed by the Minister in a written parliamentary question that NFTs—non-fungible tokens—will be included in the scope of the Bill. Concerns have been raised about how that will work in practice, and also in relation to GIFs, memes and other image-based content that is used on your platforms, Twitter specifically. Katy, how do you see that working in practice? Is the Bill workable in its current form to encapsulate all of that?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q You brought up the Prime Minister, so we’ll carry on down that route. One of the concerns about the Bill is the issue of protecting democratic importance. If there is an exemption for content of democratic importance, would your platforms be able to take that down?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Would you be able to remove the content?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q That brings me to my next question. Because what would be classed as content of democratic importance is so ambiguous, would your platforms even be able to detect it?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you. Given the media carve-out and the journalism exemption in the Bill, how could you detect state actors that are quoting disinformation, or even misinformation?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you. Just one final question for Twitter. A query we raised with the Children’s Commissioner and the NSPCC is about pornography and children accessing it. A person needs to be 13 years old to join Twitter—to host a profile on the site—but you do host pornographic content; it is used mainly by sex workers to promote their trade. How does the proposed provision affect your model of business in allowing 13-year-olds and above to access your platform?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q So you are not predominantly aimed at children? If you are an adult service, why is it that people aged 13 or above can access your platform?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Okay. Thank you, Chair.
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q Before Christmas, I was involved in the Joint Committee that carried out pre-legislative work on the Bill. We heard platforms repeatedly state their belief that they are doing all they can to ensure safety and protect from harm. Actually, they do not even come close. My question to both platforms—and the others we are hearing from later today—is to what extent are you going to have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to make sure these measures are put in place, or are you willing to work with Ofcom and other organisations to make sure that that is done?
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q In terms of the timing, once the Bill comes into law, there may be a period where it is enforced to set everything up. Are both your platforms already gearing up to make sure you fulfil the requirements of the Bill from day one?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q I have a few questions, starting with Twitter, in relation to young people using the platform. How do you currently make sure that under-13s do not use the platform? What actions do you take to ensure that happens? Going forward, will that change?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q To follow up on that, you said that there is agreement internally and externally that your service is mostly used by over-18s. Does that mean that you do not think you will have a responsibility to undertake the child safety duties?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Okay. Ben, for TikTok, how do you currently ensure that under-13s are not using your service, and how is that likely to change with the Bill coming in?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Both of your sites work very heavily on algorithms for the content that is put towards people. If you are in the top tweets feed on Twitter, you get algorithmically derived or chosen content, and TikTok is even more heavily involved in algorithms. How will this Bill affect the algorithms that you use, particularly regarding some of the content that may get more and more extreme, for example, if people are going down that route? In terms of the legal but harmful stuff that is likely to come through, how will the Bill affect the algorithms that you use, and is it possible to do that? Does it work?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Just one more question. We know that women and minorities face more abuse online than men do. Is that something that you have found in your experience, particularly Twitter? What are you doing to ensure that the intersectionality of harms is considered in the work that you are doing to either remove or downgrade content?
Kim Leadbeater (Labour, Batley and Spen)
Q Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses. I share your concerns about the lack of clarity regarding the journalistic content and democratic content exemptions. Do you think those exemptions should be removed entirely, or can you suggest what we might do to make them clearer in the Bill?
Kim Leadbeater (Labour, Batley and Spen)
That is really helpful, thank you. A quick question—
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
I am sorry, I have to interrupt because of time. Maria Miller.
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q Two hopefully quick questions. I have been listening carefully. Could you summarise the main changes you will make to your products that your users will notice make them safer, whether they are children or adults? I have heard a lot about problems, but what are the changes you will actually make? Within that, could you talk about how you will improve your complaints system, which earlier witnesses said is inadequate?
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q I want to probe you a little on that. Harmful content not being defined means that you will not make any changes other than around that. It is quite a large Bill; surely there are other things you will do differently, no?
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q So the bill is irrelevant to you.
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q But you cannot give any further detail about specific changes you will make as a result of this legislation because you have not seen the guidance and the codes.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Barbara, you have just a couple of minutes.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q Can I ask about children’s risk assessments? Who in your organisation will write the children’s risk assessments, and at what level in your organisation will they be signed off?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q No, I mean the children’s risk assessment you will have to do as part of what the Bill will bring in.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q Okay. At what level in the organisation do you anticipate children’s risk assessment would be signed off? Clearly, this is a very important aspect of the Bill.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q Do you think it should be signed off at a senior level—board level—in your organisation?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Do you think you would be likely to sign it off at the board level—
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Sorry, I have to interrupt you there. I call the Minister.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you for coming to give evidence to the Committee. On the question about user choice around identity verification, is this not conceptually quite similar to the existing blue tick regime that Twitter operates successfully?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Well, I’d be grateful if you applied that to my account as quickly as possible!
I do not think that the concept would necessarily operate as you suggested at the beginning. You suggested that people might end up not seeing content posted by the Prime Minister or another public figure. The concept is that, assuming a public figure would choose to verify themselves, content that they posted would be visible to everybody because they had self-verified. The content in the other direction may or may not be, depending on whether the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition chose to see all content or just verified content, but their content—if they verified themselves—would be universally visible, regardless of whatever choice anyone else exercised.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q I want to move on to the next question because we only have two minutes left.
Ben, you talked about the age verification measures that TikTok currently takes. For people who do not come via an age-protected app store, it is basically self-declared. All somebody has to do is type in a date of birth. My nine-year-old children could just type in a date of birth that was four years earlier than their real date of birth, and off they would go on TikTok. Do you accept that that is wholly inadequate as a mechanism for policing the age limit of 13?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q If I understood your answer correctly, that is only if a particular piece of content comes to the attention of your moderators. I imagine that only 0.01% or some tiny fraction of content on TikTok comes to the attention of your moderators.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you. Forgive me for moving on in the interests of time.
Earlier, we debated content of democratic importance and the protections that that and free speech have in the Bill. Do you agree that a requirement to have some level of consistency in the way that that is treated is important, particularly given that there are some glaring inconsistencies in the way in which social media firms treat content at the moment? For example, Donald Trump has been banned, while flagrant disinformation by the Russian regime, lying about what they are doing in Ukraine, is allowed to propagate—including the tweets that I drew to your attention a few weeks ago, Katy.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q To be clear, those freedom of expression duties in clause 19(2) do apply to everyone.
Christina Rees (Labour/Co-operative, Neath)
Order. I am afraid that that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions in this morning’s sitting. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence. We will meet again at 2 pm in this room to hear further oral evidence.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Q 68 Good afternoon. We are now sitting in public and these proceedings are being broadcast. This afternoon, we will first hear oral evidence from Richard Earley, the UK public policy manager of Meta, Becky Foreman, the UK corporate affairs director at Microsoft, and Katie O’Donovan, the director of Government affairs and public policy at Google and YouTube. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for joining us. For the sake of the record, could I just ask you to identify yourselves?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
May I just ask you, for the benefit of Hansard, to try to speak up a little? The sound system is not all that it might be in this room, and the acoustics certainly are not.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Thank you to our witnesses for joining us this afternoon. Quite bluntly, I will get into it, because what is frustrating for us, as Parliamentarians, and for our constituents, is the fact that we need this legislation in the first place. Why are you, as platforms, allowing harmful and illegal content to perpetuate on your platforms? Why do we need this legislation for you to take action? It is within your gift to give, and despite all the things I am sure you are about to tell me that you are doing to prevent this issue from happening, it is happening and we are needing to legislate, so why?Q
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Mr Earley, I will go left to right to start with, if that is all right with you, so you have drawn the short straw.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Before I bring in Becky and Katie to answer that, I just want to bring you back to something you said about social media and your platforms reflecting society like a mirror. That analogy is used time and again, but actually they are not a mirror. The platforms and the algorithms they use amplify, encourage and magnify certain types of content, so they are not a mirror of what we see in society. You do not see a balanced view of two points of an issue, for example.
You say that work is already being done to remove this content, but on Instagram, for example, which is a platform predominantly used by women, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate has exposed what they term an “epidemic of misogynistic abuse”, with 90% of misogynistic abuse being sent via direct messaging. It is being ignored by the platform even when it is being reported to the moderators. Why is that happening?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q So the responsibility is on the user, rather than the platform, to take action against abuse?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
We must allow the other witnesses to participate.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you, both, for adding context to that. If I can bring you back to what is not being done and why we need to legislate, Richard, I come back to you. You mentioned some of the tools and systems that you have put in place so users can stop abuse from happening. Why is it that that 90% of abuse on Instagram in direct messages is being ignored by your moderators?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Quite briefly, because I know we are short on time, exactly how many human moderators do you have working to take down disinformation and harmful illegal content on your platforms?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q How many of those are directly employed by you and how many are third party?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q On that technology, we have been told that you are not doing enough to remove harmful and illegal content in minority languages. This is a massive gap. In London alone, more than 250 languages are spoken on a regular basis. How do you explain your inaction on this? Can you really claim that your platform is safe if you are not building and investing in AI systems in a range of languages? What proactive steps are you taking to address this extreme content that is not in English?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Finally, which UK organisations that you use have quality assured any of their moderator training materials?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
The vast majority of people are third party. They are not employed directly by Meta to moderate content, so how many of the UK organisations you use have been quality assured to ensure that the training they provide in order to spot this illegal and harmful content is taken on board?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
You do not have the figures, so you cannot tell me.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q But that is only for those employed directly by Meta.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Thank you very much. Don’t worry, ladies; I am sure other colleagues will have questions that they wish to pursue. Dean Russell, please.
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
ThankQ you, Chair. I guess this is for all three of you, but it is actually directed primarily at Richard—apologies. I do not mean to be rude—well, I am probably about to be rude.
One of the reasons why we are bringing in this Bill is that platforms such as Facebook—Meta, sorry—just have not fulfilled their moral obligations to protect children from harm. What commitment are you making within your organisation to align yourself to deliver on the requirements of the Bill?
To be frank, the track record up until now is appalling, and all I hear when in these witness sessions, including before Christmas on the Joint Committee, is that it is as though the big platforms think they are doing a good job—that they are all fine. They have spent billions of pounds and it is not going anywhere, so I want to know what practical measures you are going to be putting into place following this Bill coming into law.
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q But do you accept that there is a massive gap between those who you perhaps have been protecting and those who are not protected, hence the need for us to put this law in place?
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q I am conscious of the time, sorry. I know colleagues want to come in, but what are the practical measures? What will you be doing differently moving forward following this Bill?
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q Which will do what, sorry? I do not mean to be rude, but what will they be?
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q May I ask you a specific question? Will that include enabling bereaved parents to see their children’s Facebook posts and profile?
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Okay, so there is a compassion element. I am conscious of time, so I will stop there.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
One moment, please. I am conscious of the fact that we are going to run out of time. I am not prepared to allow witnesses to leave without feeling they have had a chance to say anything. Ms Foreman, Ms O’Donovan, is there anything you want to comment on from what you have heard so far? If you are happy, that is fine, I just want to make sure you are not being short-changed.
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Given the size of Facebook, a lot of our questions will be focused towards it—not that you guys do not have very large platforms, but the risks with social media are larger. You mentioned, Richard, that three in every 10,000 views are hate speech. If three in every 10,000 things I said were hate speech, I would be arrested. Do you not think that, given the incredibly high number of views there are on Facebook, there is much more you need to do to reduce the amount of hate speech?Q
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q I would like to follow up with a question about responding to complaints. The complaints process is incredibly important. Reports need to be made and Facebook needs to respond to those reports. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate said that it put in 100 complaints and that 51 did not get any response from Facebook. It seems as though there is a systemic issue with a lack of response to complaints.
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Does the response just say, “Thanks for your report”?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q One of the things that has been recommended by a number of charities is increasing cross-platform and cross-company work to identify and take action on emerging threats. Do you think there would be the level of trust necessary for cross-platform co-operation with your competitors in the light of reports that, for example, Facebook employed somebody to put out negative things about TikTok in the US? Do you think that cross-platform working will work in that environment?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q I have a question for Katie on the algorithms that produce suggestions when you begin to type. It has been raised with me and in the evidence that we have received that when you begin to type, you might get a negative suggestion. If somebody types in, “Jews are”, the algorithm might come up with some negative suggestions. What has Google done about that?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Would it be technically possible for all of the protected characteristics, for example, to have no auto-complete prompts come up?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Would it not be easier to define all the protected characteristics and have a list of associated words than to define every possible instance of hate speech in relation to each?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Thank you very much. Ms Foreman, do you want to add anything to that? You do not have to.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
I want to come back to transparency, which we touched on with my colleagueQ Alex Davies-Jones earlier. Clearly, it is very important, and I think we could take a big step forward with the Bill. I want to ask you about child risk assessments, and whether they should be available publicly. I also want to ask about reports on the measures that you will have to take, as platforms, to manage the risks and mitigate the impact of harm. Harm is occurring at the moment—for example, content that causes harm is being left up. We heard earlier from the NSPCC that Facebook would not take down birthday groups for eight, nine and 10-year-old children, when it is known what purpose those birthday groups were serving for those young children. I guess my question on transparency is, “Can’t you do much better, and should there be public access to reports on the level of harm?”
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q I am not talking here about general figures for what you have removed. I am talking about giving real access to the data on the risks of harm and the measures to mitigate harm. You could make those reports available to academics—we could find a way of doing that—and that would be very valuable. Surely what we want to do is to generate communities, including academics and people who have the aim of improving things, but you need to give them access to the data. You are the only ones who have access to the data, so it will just be you and Ofcom. A greater community out there who can help to improve things will not have that access.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q My question is, will you publish the risk assessment and the measures you are taking to mitigate?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
No, I am not just asking about the Bill. Will you do that?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q It would be good to have that goal. Can I come to you, Katie O’Donovan?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q I was not just asking about Ofcom; I was wanting to go further than that and have wider access.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Okay. Kim Leadbetter, one very quick question. We must move on—I am sorry.
Kim Leadbeater (Labour, Batley and Spen)
Okay, I will try to be very quick. The draft Bill contained a proposed new media literacy duty. That seems to have now disappeared. What are your digital media literacy strategiesQ ?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
I am sorry, but I must move on. Minister, I am afraid you only have five minutes.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Welcome to the Committee’s proceedings and thank you for joining us this afternoon. I would like to start on the question of the algorithmic promotion of content. Last week, I met with the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, who spoke in detail about she had found when working for Facebook, so I will start with you, Richard. On the question of transparency, which other Members of the Committee have touched on, would you have any objection to sharing all the information you hold internally with trusted researchers?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Data, in particular on the operation of algorithmic promotion of particular kinds of content.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Yet the algorithms that select particular content for promotion are optimised for user engagement —views, likes and shares—because that increases user stickiness and keeps them on the site for longer. The evidence seems to suggest that, despite what people say in response to the surveys you have just referenced, what they actually interact with the most—or what a particular proportion of the population chooses to interact with the most—is content that would be considered in some way extreme, divisive, or so on, and that the algorithms, which are optimised for user engagement, notice that and therefore uprank that content. Do you accept that your algorithms are optimised for user engagement?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q You have alluded to some elements of the algorithmic landscape, but do you accept that the dominant feature of the algorithm that determines which content is most promoted is based on user engagement, and that the things you have described are essentially second-order modifications to that?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q It might have decreased it, but the meaningful social interaction score is, not exclusively, as you said, but principally based on user engagement, isn’t it?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q That does not quite answer the question.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Yes, but in her testimony to, I think, the Joint Committee and the US Senate, in a document that she released to The Wall Street Journal, and in our conversation last week, Frances Haugen suggested that the culture inside Facebook, now Meta, is that measures that tend to reduce user engagement do not get a very sympathetic hearing internally. However, I think we are about to run out of time. I have one other question, which I will direct, again, to Richard. Forgive me, Katie and Becky, but it is probably most relevant for Meta.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Q Just one moment, please. Is there anything that the other witnesses need to say about this before we move on? It will have to be very brief.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
While the Bill is proportionate in its measures, it is not designed to impose undue burdens on companies that are not high risk. I have one more question for Richard. I think Katie was saying that she wanted to make a statement?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
We are out of time. I am sorry about this; I regard it as woefully unsatisfactory. We have got three witnesses here, a lot of questions that need to be answered, and not enough time to do it. However, we have a raft of witnesses coming in for the rest of the day, so I am going to have to draw a line under this now. I am very grateful to you for taking the trouble to come—the Committee is indebted to you. You must have the opportunity to make your case. Would you be kind enough to put any comments that you wish to make in writing so that the Committee can have them. Feel free to go as broad as you would like because I feel very strongly that you have been short-changed this afternoon. We are indebted to you. Thank you very much indeed.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Good afternoon. We now hear oral evidence from Professor Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University, Jessica Eagleton, policy and public affairs manager at Refuge, and Janaya Walker, public affairs manager at End Violence Against Women. Ladies, thank you very much for taking the trouble to join us this afternoon. We look forward to hearing from you.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you, Sir Roger, and thank you to the witnesses for joining us. We hear a lot about the negative experiences online of women, particularly women of colour. If violence against women and girls is not mentioned directly in the Bill, if misogyny is not made a priority harm, and if the violence against women and girls code of practice is not adopted in the Bill, what will that mean for the experience of women and girls?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q To what extent do you think that the provisions on anonymity will assist in reducing online violence against women and girls? Will the provisions currently in the Bill make a difference?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Professor McGlynn and Ms Eagelton, you must feel free to come in if you wish to.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
My final question is probably directed at you, Professor McGlynn. Although we welcome the new communications offence of cyber-flashing, one of the criticisms is that it will not actually make a difference because of the onus on proving intent to cause harm, rather than the sender providing consent to receive the material. How do you respond to that?Q
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
You are nodding, Ms Eagelton.
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Thank you to all the panellists; it is incredibly helpful to have you here. The strength of the Bill will really be underpinned by the strength of the criminal law that underpins it, and schedule 7 lists offences that relate to sexual images, including revenge pornography, as priority offences. Can the witnesses say whether they think the law is sufficient to protect women from having their intimate pictures shared without their consent, or indeed whether the Bill will do anything to prevent the making and sharing of deepfake images? What would you like to see?Q
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q Would the other panellists like to comment on this?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Ms Walker?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q Why is it important that we have this? Is this a big thing? What are you guys actually seeing here?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q How does the proposed code of practice—or, I suppose, how could the Bill—tackle intersectionality of harms?
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
I have a quite specific question on something that is a bit tangential.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Last one, please.
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q If someone has consented to take part in pornography and they later change their mind and would like it to be taken down, do you think they should have the right to ask a porn website, for example, to take it down?
Kim Leadbeater (Labour, Batley and Spen)
Q Thank you very much—this is extremely interesting and helpful. You have covered a lot of ground already, but I wonder whether there is anything specific you think the Bill should be doing more about, to protect girls—under-18s or under-16s—in particular?
Kim Leadbeater (Labour, Batley and Spen)
That is fine.
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q We are talking here about pornography when it is hosted on mainstream websites, as opposed to pornographic websites. Could I ask you to confirm what more, specifically, you think the Bill should do to tackle pornography on mainstream websites, as you have just been describing with Twitter? What should the Bill be doing here?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Do any other panellists want to add to that?
Barbara Keeley (Labour, Worsley and Eccles South)
Q Thank you. Can I ask for a bit more detail on a question that you touched on earlier with my colleague Kirsty Blackman? It is to Professor McGlynn, really. I think you included in your written evidence to the Committee a point about using age and consent verification for pornography sites for people featured in the content of the site—not the age verification assurance checks on the sites, but for the content. Could I just draw out from you whether that is feasible, and would it be retrospective for all videos, or just new ones? How would that work?
Nicholas Fletcher (Conservative, Don Valley)
I think that it would have been better to hear from you three before we heard from the platforms this morning. Unfortunately, Q you have opened my eyes to a few things that I wish I did not have to know about—I think we all feel the same.
I am concerned about VPNs. Will the Bill stop anyone accessing through VPNs? Is there anything we can do about that? I googled “VPNs” to find out what they were, and apparently there is a genuine need for them when using public networks, because it is safer. Costa Coffee suggests that people do so, for example. I do not know how we could work that.
You have obviously educated me, and probably some of my colleagues, about some of the sites that are available. I do not mix in circles where I would be exposed to that, but obviously children and young people do and there is no filter. If I did know about those things, I would probably not speak to my colleagues about it, because that would probably not be a good thing to do, but younger people might think it is quite funny to talk about. Do you think there is an education piece there for schools and parents? Should these platforms be saying to them, “Look, this is out there, even though you might not have heard of it—some MPs have not heard of it.” We ought to be doing something to protect children by telling parents what to look out for. Could there be something in the Bill to force them to do that? Do you think that would be a good idea? There is an awful lot there to answer—sorry.
Nicholas Fletcher (Conservative, Don Valley)
Q This might sound like a silly question. Can we not just put age verification on VPN sites, so that you can only have VPN access if you have gone through age verification? Do you understand what I am saying?
Nicholas Fletcher (Conservative, Don Valley)
You have gone beyond mine anyway.
Nicholas Fletcher (Conservative, Don Valley)
Can we have them back in, Sir Roger?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Minister?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you, Sir Roger, and thank you to the witnesses for coming in and giving very clear, helpful and powerful evidence to the Committee this afternoon. On the question of age verification or age assurance that we have just spoken about, clause 11(14) of the Bill sets a standard in the legislation that will be translated into the codes of practice by Ofcom. It says that, for the purposes of the subsection before on whether or not children can access a particular set of content, a platform is
“only entitled to conclude that it is not possible for children to access a service…if there are systems or processes in place…that achieve the result that children are not normally able to access the service”.
Ofcom will then interpret in codes of practice what that means practically. Professor McGlynn, do you think that standard set out there—
“the result that children are not normally able to access the service or that part of it”
—is sufficiently high to address the concerns we have been discussing in the last few minutes?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Yes, you are quite right that the Ofcom codes of practice will be important. As far as I can see, the difference between clauses 68 and 11(14) is that one uses the word “access” and the other uses the word “encounter”. Is that your analysis of the difference as well?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you very much. I wanted to ask you a different question—one that has not come up so far in this session but has been raised quite frequently in the media. It concerns freedom of speech. This is probably for Professor McGlynn again. I am asking you this in your capacity as a professor of law. Some commentators have suggested that the Bill will have an adverse impact on freedom of speech. I do not agree with that. I have written an article in The Times today making that case, but what is your expert legal analysis of that question?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Okay, I take your second point, but did you agree with the point that the Bill as crafted does not restrict what you would ordinarily consider to be free speech?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Thank you very much indeed. Once again, I am afraid I have to draw the session to a close, and once again we have probably not covered all the ground we would have liked. Professor McGlynn, Ms Walker, Ms Eagleton, thank you very much indeed. As always, if you have further thoughts or comments, please put them in writing and let us know. We are indebted to you.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
We will now hear oral evidence from Lulu Freemont, head of digital regulation at techUK; Ian Stevenson, the chairman of OSTIA; and Adam Hildreth, chief executive officer of Crisp, who is appearing by Zoom—and it works. Thank you all for joining us. I will not waste further time by asking you to identify yourselves, because I have effectively done that for you. Without further ado, I call Alex Davies-Jones.
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you, Sir Roger; thank you, witnesses. We want the UK to become a world leader in tech start-ups. We want those employment opportunities for the future. Does this legislation, as it currently stands, threaten that ability?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you, Lulu. Adam and Ian, if either of you want to come in at any point, please just indicate that and I will bring you in.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
May I just apologise before we go any further, because I got you both the wrong way round? I am sorry. It is Mr Stevenson who is online and it is Adam Hildreth who is here in body and person.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Mr Stevenson, you are nodding. Do you want to come in?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q Thank you all. Lulu, you mentioned concerns about the Secretary of State’s powers and Ofcom’s independence. Other concerns expressed about Ofcom include its ability to carry out this regulation. It is being hailed as the saviour of the internet by some people. Twenty-five thousand tech companies in the UK will be under these Ofcom regulations, but questions have been asked about its technical and administrative capacity to do this. Just today, there is an online safety regulator funding policy adviser role being advertised by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Part of the key roles and responsibilities are:
“The successful post holder will play a key role in online safety as the policy advisor on Funding for the Online Safety Regulator.”
Basically, their job is to raise money for Ofcom. Does that suggest concerns about the role of Ofcom going forward, its funding, and its resource and capacity to support those 25,000 platforms?
Alex Davies-Jones (Labour, Pontypridd)
Q On that point, you mentioned that it is hard to predict the future and to regulate on the basis of what is already there. We have waited a long time for the Bill, and in that time we have had new platforms and new emerging technology appear. How confident are you that the Bill allows for future-proofing, in order that we can react to anything new that might crop up on the internet?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
I have four Members plus the Minister to get in, so please be brief. I call Dean Russell.
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Q Thank you, Sir Roger. My question builds on the future-proofing. Obviously, the big focus now is the metaverse and a virtual reality world. My question has two parts. First, is the Bill helping already by encouraging the new start-ups in that space to put safety first? Secondly, do you agree that a Joint Committee of the Houses of Parliament that continued to look at the Act and its evolution over the long term once it had been passed would be beneficial? I will come to you first, Lulu.
Dean Russell (Conservative, Watford)
Thank you.
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen North)
Q My first question is for Lulu. Do small tech companies have enough staff with technical expertise to be able to fulfil their obligations under the Bill?
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q Adam, you said a few moments ago that companies are starting to put safety at the core of what they do, which will be welcome to us all—maybe it should have happened a lot earlier. I know you have worked a lot in that area. Regulators and company owners will have to depend on an ethical culture in their organisations if they are going to abide by the new regulations, because they cannot micromanage and regulators cannot micromanage. Will the Bill do enough to drive that ethical culture? If not, what more could it do or could the industry do? I would be really interested in everybody’s answer to this one, but I will start with Adam.
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q Lulu, how do you drive a culture change?
Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke)
Q Ian, how do you drive a culture change in the sector?
Kim Leadbeater (Labour, Batley and Spen)
Q In your view, what needs to be added or taken away from the Bill to help it achieve the Government’s aim of making the UK
“the safest place in the world to be online”?
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Thank you. I call the Minister.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you, Sir Roger, and thank you very much indeed for joining us for this afternoon’s session. Adam, we almost met you in Leeds last October or November, but I think you were off with covid at the time.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Covid struck. I would like to ask Adam and Ian in particular about the opportunities provided by emerging and new technology to deliver the Bill’s objectives. I would like you both to give examples of where you think new tech can help deliver these safety duties. I ask you to comment particularly on what it might do on, first, age assurance—which we debated in our last session—and secondly, scanning for child sexual abuse images in an end-to-end encrypted environment. Adam, do you want to go first?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Fair enough. Ian?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Ian, thank you very much. I am encouraged by your optimism about what innovation can ultimately deliver. Adam, let me turn to you.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Sorry to interject, but to be clear, the Bill does not do that. The Bill specifies the objectives, but it is tech agnostic. The manner of delivering those is, of course, not specified, either in the Bill or by Ofcom.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you, Adam. We only have one minute left, so what is your prediction for the potential possibilities that emerging tech presents to deal with the issues of age assurance, which are difficult, and CSEA scanning, given end-to-end encrypted environments?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Including inside the end-to-end encrypted environment, rather than just at the device level? Quite a few of the safety challenge solutions that Ian mentioned are at the device level; they are not inside the encryption.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
Ms Freemont, Mr Hildreth and Mr Stevenson, thank you all very much indeed. We have run out of time. As ever, if you have any further observations that you wish to make, please put them in writing and let the Committee have them; we shall welcome them. Thank you for your time this afternoon. We are very grateful to you.
Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)
We are now going to hear from Jared Sine, who is the chief business affairs and legal officer at Match Group, and Nima Elmi, the head of public policy in Europe at Bumble, who is appearing by Zoom. Thank you for joining us. I hope you can hear us all right. Wave if you can.