My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 97 and 304, and I support the others in this group. It seems to be a singular failure of any version of an Online Safety Bill if it does not set itself the task of tackling known harms—harms that are experienced daily and for which we have a phenomenal amount of evidence. I will not repeat the statistics given in the excellent speeches made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the right reverend Prelate, but will instead add two observations.
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I am of the generation that saw women break gender barriers and glass ceilings. We were ourselves the beneficiaries of the previous generation, which both intellectually and practically pushed the cause of gender equality. Many of us are also employers, mothers, aunties or friends of a generation in which the majority of the young favour a more gender-equal world. Yet we have seen online the amplification of those who hold a profound resentment of what I would characterise as hard-won and much-needed progress. The vileness and violence of their fury is fuelled by the rapacious appetite of algorithms that profit from engagement, which has allowed gender-based detractors, haters and abusers to normalise misogyny to such a degree that rape threats and threats of violence are trotted out against women for the mildest of perceived infractions. In the case of an academic colleague of mine, her crime—for which she received rape threats—was offering a course in women’s studies.
If the price of having a voice online continues to be that you have to withstand a supercharged swarm of abuse then for many women it is simply not worth it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, they are effectively silenced. This sadly extends to girls, who repeatedly say that, as the statistics persistently show,
they are put off any kind of public role and even expressing a view because they fear both judgment on how they look and abuse for what they say. How heart- breaking it is that the organising technology of our time is so regressive for women and girls that the gains we have made in our lifetime are being denied them. This is why I believe that Parliament must be clear that an environment in which women and girls are routinely silenced or singled out for abuse is not okay.
My second observation is slightly counterintuitive, because I so wish for these amendments to find their way into the Bill. I have a sense of disquiet that there will be no similar consideration of other exposed or vulnerable groups that are less well-represented in Parliament. I therefore want to take this opportunity to say once again that we have discussed in our debates on previous groups amendments that would commit the Bill to the Equality Act 2010, with the expectation that companies will adhere to UK law across all groups with protected characteristics, including those who may have more than one protected characteristic, and take note that—this point has been made in a number of briefings—women with disabilities and mixed or global-majority heritage come in for double, sometimes triple, doses of abuse. In saying that, I wish to acknowledge that the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, which make it clear that the discussion of protected characteristics does not in and of itself constitute harm. I very much agree with her on that.
Perhaps this is a good moment to remember that the Bill is proposed as a systems and processes regime—no single piece of content will be at stake but rather, if a company is amplifying and promoting at scale behaviours that hound women and girls out of the public space, Ofcom will have the tools to deal with it. At the risk of repeating myself, these are not open spaces; they are 100% engineered and largely privately owned. I fail to see another environment in which it is either normal or lawful to swarm women with abuse and threat.
On our first day in Committee, the Minister said in his response to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that the Government are very clear on the Bill’s purposes. Among the list of purposes that he gave was
“to protect people who face disproportionate harm online including, for instance, because of their sex or their ethnicity or because they are disabled”.—[Official Report, 19/4/23; col. 724.]
I ask the Minister to make this Bill come true on that purpose.