UK Parliament / Open data

Online Safety Bill

Proceeding contribution from Maria Miller (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 19 April 2022. It occurred during Debate on bills on Online Safety Bill.

I will come on to that shortly, and the hon. Lady knows I agree with her. This is something the Government need to take seriously.

The second thing I support in this Bill is limiting anonymous online abuse. Again, I pay tribute to the Football Association, with which I have worked closely, Glitch, the Centenary Action Group, Compassion in Politics, Hope not Hate and Kick It Out. They have all done a tremendous job, working with many of us in this place, to get to this point.

Finally, I support preventing children from accessing pornography, although I echo what we heard earlier about it being three years too late. It is shameful that this measure was not enacted earlier.

The Minister knows that three demands are coming his way from me. We need to future-proof our approach to the law in this area. Tech moves quickly—quicker than the Government’s approach to legislation, which leaves us playing whack-a-mole. The devious methods of causing harm change rapidly, as do the motivations of perpetrators, to answer the point raised by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). What stays the same is the lack of consent from victims, so will the Government please look at that as a way of future-proofing our law? A worrying example of that is deepfake technology that creates pornographic images of women. That is currently totally lawful. Nudification software is commercially available and uses images—only of women —to create nude images. I have already stated publicly that that should be banned. It has been in South Korea and Taiwan, yet our law is playing catch-up.

The second issue that the Government need to address is the fact that they are creating many more victims as a result of this Bill. We need to make sure that victim support is in place to augment the amazing work of organisations such as the Revenge Porn Helpline. Finally, to echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell), let me say that this is a complex area, as we are proving with every speech in this debate. I pay tribute to the Select Committee Chair, who is no longer in his place, and the Joint Committee Chair, but I believe that we need a joint standing committee to scrutinise the implementation of this Bill when it is enacted. This is a world-class piece of legislation to change culture, but we also need other countries to adopt a similar approach. A global approach is needed if this is to work to end the wild west.

9.25 pm

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

712 cc124-5 

Session

2021-22

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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