My Lords, I must first apologise for my slightly dishevelled appearance as I managed to spill coffee down my shirt on my way to the Chamber. I apologise for that—as the fumes from the dried coffee suffuse the air around me. It will certainly keep me caffeinated for the day ahead.
Search services play a critical role in users’ online experience, allowing them easily to find and access a broad range of information online. Their gateway function, as we have discussed previously, means that they also play an important role in keeping users safe online because they have significant influence over the content people encounter. The Bill therefore imposes stringent requirements on search services to tackle the risks from illegal content and to protect children.
Amendments 13, 15, 66 to 69 and 73 tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan seek to narrow the scope of the Bill so that its safety search duties apply only to the largest search services—categorised in the Bill as category 2A services—rather than to all search services. Narrowing the scope in this way would have an adverse impact on the safety of people using search services, including children. Search services, including combined services, below the category 2A threshold would no longer have a duty to minimise the risk of users encountering illegal content or children encountering harmful content in or via search results. This would increase the likelihood of users, including children, accessing illegal content and children accessing harmful content through these services.
The Bill already takes a targeted approach and the duties on search services will be proportionate to the risk of harm and the capacity of companies. This means that services which are smaller and lower-risk will have a lighter regulatory burden than those which are larger and higher-risk. All search services will be required to conduct regular illegal content risk assessments and, where relevant, children’s risk assessments, and then implement proportionate mitigations to protect users, including children. Ofcom will set out in its codes of practice specific steps search services can take to ensure compliance and must ensure that these are proportionate to the size and capacity of the service.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe asked how search services should conduct their risk assessments. Regulated search services will have a duty to conduct regular illegal content risk assessments, and where a service is likely to be accessed by children it will have a duty to conduct regular children’s risk assessments, as I say. They will be required to assess the level and nature of the risk of individuals encountering illegal content on their service, to implement proportionate mitigations to protect people from illegal content, and to monitor them for effectiveness. Services likely to be accessed by children will also be required to assess the nature and level of risk of their service specifically for children to identify and implement proportionate mitigations to keep children safe, and to monitor them for effectiveness as well.
Companies will also need to assess how the design and operation of the service may increase or reduce the risks identified and Ofcom will have a duty to issue guidance to assist providers in carrying out their risk assessments. That will ensure that providers have, for instance, sufficient clarity about what an appropriate risk assessment looks like for their type of service.
The noble Lord, Lord Allan, and others asked about definitions and I congratulate noble Lords on avoiding the obvious
“To be, or not to be”
pun in the debate we have just had. The noble Lord, Lord Allan, is right in the definition he set out. On the rationale for it, it is simply that we have designated as category 1 the largest and riskiest services and as category 2 the smaller and less risky ones, splitting them between 2A, search services, and 2B, user-to-user services. We think that is a clear framework. The definitions are set out a bit more in the Explanatory Notes but that is the rationale.