My Lords, I thank noble Lords from all sides of the House for their contributions and for shining a light on the point the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, made near the end of his remarks about the need to equip adults with the tools to protect themselves.
It is helpful to have these amendments, because they give the Minister the opportunity to accept—as I hope he will—a number of the points raised. It seems
a long time since the noble Lord, Lord McNally, introduced this group, but clearly it has given us all much time to reflect. I am sure we will see the benefits of that in the response from the Minister. Much of the debate on the Bill has focused on child safety and general practicalities, but this group helpfully allows us to focus on adults and the operation of the Government’s replacement for the legal but harmful section of the Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, rightly said, perhaps some tightening up of the legislation before us would be helpful. These amendments give us that chance.
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My noble friend Lord Lipsey has put forward a number of amendments, which helpfully focus on the whole area of adult risk assessments, which were required under the previous iteration of the Bill but have since been drastically watered down. I would be grateful if the Minister could give some explanation as to why we find ourselves in that situation, and perhaps take the opportunity to pick up a number of the points raised in the amendments.
Quite a lot of the debate has focused around the amendments put forward in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. These amendments take a somewhat different approach, because they require service providers to assess the extent to which their user empowerment tools are meeting the obligations laid out in Clause 12. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, in his helpful remarks, said that it was right to keep up to date with the trends in abuse. This is a point that has come up repeatedly in our discussion: the need to make sure that this legislation is entirely fit for purpose and is able to move with the kind of changes that he referred to.
My noble friend Lord Stevenson has four very helpful amendments in this group, which focus on the minimum standards in platforms’ terms of service. This is an area we began to probe during a debate last week, where the answer seemed to be that, because terms of service are already complicated, we should not add to them. The issue here is really how we get the terms of service in the right place. All these amendments, again, take us there.
I was interested in the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about enforceability, but again, on the issue of terms of service, the problem for me is inconsistency. We should seek to bring consistency as well as usefulness and applicability into those terms of service.
We will come on to broader amendments about user empowerment tools in the next group, but there clearly is a gap between what the Government have promised adult users, and what they are likely to end up with when the new regime is fully operational. I hope we will hear from the Minister how that gap may be closed.
I listened with great interest to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. It is important to say that the issue here is whether algorithms should power the amount and nature of materials that come the way of users. The amendments seek to assist users to have that control, not to just be at the mercy of algorithms. It is about not individual pieces but what people can have control on. The amendments are useful in that respect. We know
that there is much legal content which carries a risk of harm to adults, particularly vulnerable adults, who are not actually helped by the Bill. We need confidence that filters and other empowerment tools will make a genuine difference.
I hope that the Minister will accept that a number of these amendments are particularly helpful in strengthening the Bill, and that he will find a way to accept that form of strengthening.