My Lords, this group of government amendments relates to risk assessments; it may be helpful if I speak to them now as the final group before the dinner break.
Risk management is at the heart of the Bill’s regulatory framework. Ofcom and services’ risk assessments will form the foundation for protecting users from illegal content and content which is harmful to children. They will ensure that providers thoroughly identify the risks on their own websites, enabling them to manage and mitigate the potential harms arising from them. Ofcom will set out the risks across the sector and issue guidance to companies on how to conduct their assessments effectively. All providers will be required to carry out risk assessments, keep them up-to-date and update them before making a significant change to the design or operation of their service which could put their users at risk. Providers will then need to put in place measures to manage and mitigate the risks they identify in their risk assessments, including any emerging risks.
Given how crucial the risk assessments are to this framework, it is essential that we enable them to be properly scrutinised by the public. The government amendments in this group will place new duties on providers of the largest services—that is, category 1 and 2A services—to publish summaries of their illegal and child safety risk assessments. Through these amendments, providers of these services will also have a new duty to send full records of their risk assessments to Ofcom. This will increase transparency about the risk of harm on the largest platforms, clearly showing how risk is affected by factors such as the design, user base or functionality of their services. These amendments will further ensure that the risk assessments can be properly assessed by internet users, including by children and their parents and guardians, by ensuring that summaries of the assessments are publicly available. This will empower users to make informed decisions when choosing whether and how to use these services.
It is also important that Ofcom is fully appraised of the risks identified by service providers. That is why these amendments introduce duties for both category 1 and 2A services to send their records of these risk assessments, in full, to Ofcom. This will make it easier for Ofcom to supervise compliance with the risk assessment duties, as well as other duties linked to the findings of the risk assessments, rather than having to request the assessments from companies under its information-gathering powers.
These amendments also clarify that companies must keep a record of all aspects of their risk assessments, which strengthens the existing record-keeping duties on services. I hope that noble Lords will welcome these amendments. I beg to move.