With respect, I do not think that that is a perfect comparison. The Strategic Policing Requirement is an operational policing document intended for chief constables and police and crime commissioners in the important work that they do, to make sure they have due regard for national threats as identified by the Home Secretary. It is not something designed for commercial technology companies. The approach we are taking in the Bill is to address harms that can affect all people and which we know disproportionately affect women and girls, and harms that we know disproportionately affect other groups of people as well.
We have made changes to the Bill: the consultation with the Victims’ Commissioner and the domestic abuse commissioner, the introduction of specific offences to deal with cyber-flashing and other sorts of particular harms, which we know disproportionately affect women and girls. We are taking an approach throughout the work of the Bill to reflect those harms and to deal with them. Because of that, respectfully, I do not think we need a specific code of practice for any particular group of people, however large and however disproportionately they are affected. I will say a bit more about our approach. I have said throughout, including at Second Reading, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has been very clear in another place as well, that the voices of women and girls have been heard very strongly and have influenced the approach that we have taken in the Bill. I am very happy to keep talking to noble Lords about it, but I do not think that the code my noble friend sets out is the right way to go about solving this issue.
Amendment 304 seeks to adopt the Istanbul convention definition of violence against women and girls. The Government are already compliant with the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, which was ratified last year. However, we are unable to include the convention’s definition of violence against women and girls in the Bill, as it extends to legal content and activity that is not in scope of the Bill as drafted. Using that definition would therefore cause legal uncertainty for companies. It would not be appropriate for the Government to require companies to remove legal content accessed by adults who choose to access it. Instead, as noble Lords know, the Government have brought in new duties to improve services’ transparency and accountability.
Amendment 104 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, seeks to require user-to-user services to provide a higher standard of protection for women, girls and vulnerable adults than for other adults. The Bill already places duties on service providers and Ofcom to prioritise responding to content and activity that presents the highest risk of harm to users. This
includes users who are particularly affected by online abuse, such as women, girls and vulnerable adults. In overseeing the framework, Ofcom must ensure that there are adequate protections for those who are most vulnerable to harm online. In doing so, Ofcom will be guided by its existing duties under the Communications Act, which requires it to have regard when performing its duties to the
“vulnerability of children and of others whose circumstances appear to OFCOM to put them in need of special protection”.
The Bill also amends Ofcom’s general duties under the Communications Act to require that Ofcom, when carrying out its functions, considers the risks that all members of the public face online, and ensures that they are adequately protected from harm. This will form part of Ofcom’s principal duty and will apply to the way that Ofcom performs all its functions, including when producing codes of practice.
In addition, providers’ illegal content and child safety risk assessment duties, as well as Ofcom’s sectoral risk assessment duties, require them to understand the risk of harm to users on their services. In doing so, they must consider the user base. This will ensure that services identify any specific risks facing women, girls or other vulnerable groups of people.
As I have mentioned, the Bill will require companies to prioritise responding to online activity that poses the greatest risk of harm, including where this is linked to vulnerability. Vulnerability is very broad. The threshold at which somebody may arguably become vulnerable is subjective, context-dependent and maybe temporary. The majority of UK adult users could be defined as vulnerable in particular circumstances. In practice, this would be very challenging for Ofcom to interpret if it were added to the safety objectives in this way. The existing approach allows greater flexibility so that companies and Ofcom can focus on the greatest threats to different groups of people at any given time. This allows the Bill to adapt to and keep pace with changing risk patterns that may affect different groups of people.
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I am conscious that, for understandable reasons, the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, is not here to speak to her Amendment 171. I will touch on it briefly in her absence. It relates to platform transparency about providers’ approaches to content that promotes violence against women, girls and vulnerable groups. Her amendment raises an extremely important issue. It is essential that the Bill increase transparency about the abuse of women, girls and vulnerable people online. This is why the Bill already empowers Ofcom to request extensive information about illegal and harmful online abuse of women, girls and vulnerable groups in transparency reports. Accepting this amendment would therefore be duplicative. I hope that the noble Baroness would agree that it is not needed.
I hope that I have given some reassurance that the Bill covers the sort of violent content about which noble Lords are rightly concerned, no matter against whom it is directed. The Government recognise that many of these offences and much of the violence does disproportionately affect women and girls in the way that has been correctly pointed out. We have reflected this in the way in which the Bill and its regulatory
framework are to operate. I am happy to keep discussing this matter with my noble friend. She is right that it is important, but I hope that, at this juncture, she will be content to withdraw her amendment.