UK Parliament / Open data

Online Safety Bill

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 218JA, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Allan. My name is attached to it online but has not made it on to the printed version. He introduced it so ably and comprehensively that I will not say much more, but I will be more direct with my noble friend the Minister.

This amendment would remove Clause 133(11). The noble Lord, Lord Allan, mentioned that BT has raised with us—I am sure that others have too—that the subsection gives examples of access facilities, such as ISPs and application stores. However, as the noble Lord said, there are other ways that services could use operating systems, browsers and VPNs to evade these access restriction orders. While it is convention for me to say that I would support this amendment should it be moved at a later stage, this is one of those issues that my noble friend the Minister could take off the table this afternoon—he has had letters about it to which there have not necessarily been replies—just by saying that subsection (11) does not give the whole picture, that there are other services and that it is misleading to give just these examples. Will he clarify at the Dispatch Box and on the record, for the benefit of everyone using the Bill now and in future, what broader services are caught? We could then take the issue off the table on this 10th day of Committee.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

831 c363 

Session

2022-23

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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