I am happy to reassure my noble friend that the director of the Dawes Centre for Future Crime sits on the Home Office’s Science Advisory Council, whose work is very usefully fed into the work being done at the Home Office. Colleagues at the Ministry of Justice keep criminal law under constant review, in light of research by such bodies and what we see in the courts and society. I hope that reassures my noble friend that the points she raised, which are covered by organisations such as the Dawes Centre, are very much in the mind of government.
The noble Lord, Lord Allan of Hallam, explained very effectively the nuances of how behaviour translates to the virtual world. He is right that we will need to keep both offences and the framework under review. My noble friend Lady Berridge asked a good and clear question, to which I am afraid I do not have a similarly concise answer. I can reassure her that generated child sexual abuse and exploitation material is certainly illegal, but she asked about sexual harassment via a haptic suit; that would depend on the specific circumstances. I hope she will allow me to respond in writing, at greater length and more helpfully, to the very good question she asked.
Under Clause 56, Ofcom will also be required to undertake periodic reviews into the incidence and severity of content that is harmful to children on the in-scope services, and to recommend to the Secretary of State any appropriate changes to regulations based on its findings. Clause 141 also requires Ofcom to carry out research into users’ experiences of regulated services, which will likely include experiences of services such as the metaverse and other online spaces that allow user interaction. Under Clause 147, Ofcom may also publish reports on other online safety matters.
The questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, about international engagement are best addressed in a group covering regulatory co-operation,
which I hope we will reach later today. I can tell him that we have introduced a new information-sharing gateway for the purpose of sharing information with overseas regulators, to ensure that Ofcom can collaborate effectively with its international counterparts. That builds on existing arrangements for sharing information that underpin Ofcom’s existing regulatory regimes.
The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, relate to providers’ judgments about when content produced by bots is illegal content, or a fraudulent advertisement, under the Bill. Clause 170 sets out that providers will need to take into account all reasonably available relevant information about content when making a judgment about its illegality. As we discussed in the group about illegal content, providers will need to treat content as illegal when this information gives reasonable grounds for inferring that an offence was committed. Content produced by bots is in scope of providers’ duties under the Bill. This includes the illegal content duties, and the same principles for assessing illegal content will apply to bot-produced content. Rather than drawing inferences about the conduct and intent of the user who generated the content, the Bill specifies that providers should consider the conduct and the intent of the person who can be assumed to have controlled the bot at the point it created the content in question.
The noble Lord’s amendment would set out that providers could make judgments about whether bot-produced content is illegal, either by reference to the conduct or mental state of the person who owns the bot or, alternatively, by reference to the person who controls it. As he set out in his explanatory statement and outlined in his speech, I understand he has brought this forward because he is concerned that providers will sometimes not be able to identify the controller of a bot, and that this will impede providers’ duties to take action against illegal content produced by them. Even when the provider does not know the identity of the person controlling the bot, however, in many cases there will still be evidence from which providers can draw inferences about the conduct and intent of that person, so we are satisfied that the current drafting of the Bill ensures that providers will be able to make a judgment on illegality.