My Lords, I am probably going to echo quite a lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, had to say, and I also pay tribute to him. This is an absolutely crucial piece of cross-party-supported legislation that many said was impossible. I believe that it is a landmark, and we should all take huge encouragement from seeing it pass through this House.
We started with the Green Paper, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, back in 2017. Many of us have been living with this issue since then, and I hope that therefore the House will not mind if I make a few more extended remarks than usual on the Motion that the Bill do now pass. I will not disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, because I will quote from the original Joint Committee report. As we said in the introduction to our Joint Committee report back in 2021:
“The Online Safety Bill is a key step forward for democratic societies to bring accountability and responsibility to the internet”.
We said that the most important thing was to
“hold online services responsible for the risks created by their design and operation”.
Our children and many others will be safer online as a result.
Across the House, this has been a huge joint venture. We made some very good progress, with the Minister and the Secretary of State demonstrating considerable flexibility. I thank them sincerely for that. We have tightened the Bill up, particularly regarding harms and risks, while, I believe, ensuring that we protect freedom of expression. Many Members of this House, including former Members of the Joint Committee, can take some pride in what has been achieved during the passage of the Bill through the House. I will add my thanks to some of them individually shortly.
The Minister mentioned a relatively short list; he was actually rather modest in mentioning some of the concessions that have been given while the Bill has passed through the House. For instance, the tightening up of the age-assurance measures and the adding of a schedule of age-assurance principles are really important additions to the Bill.
Risk assessment of user empowerment tools is very important, and I believe that the provisions about app stores and future regulation are an important aspect of the Bill. The freedom of expression definition has been inserted into the Bill. We have had new offences, such as facilitating self-harm and intimate image abuse, added during the passage of the Bill. I am delighted to say that, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, we expect to hear further concessions in the Commons on both the functionality issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the category 1 aspects raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan.
We very much welcome the amendments that have been tabled today, including the remote-viewing clarification. We wait to hear what the Government’s position will be—I am sure that discussions are ongoing
since the House voted to include a provision to review whether animal cruelty offences online should be brought into scope, and I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, here—and whether they will preserve the amendment and perhaps also include wildlife-trafficking offences in order to ensure that we avoid ping-pong on that last issue.
We on these Benches have never been minded to spoil the ship for a halfpenny-worth of tar, but that is not to say that there are not areas where we would have liked to have seen a bit more progress. I do not think the Minister will be surprised to hear me say that there are one or two such areas, such as: risk assessment, where we believe that the terms of service should be subject to a mandatory risk assessment; the threshold of evidence required for illegality; the prosecution threshold as regards the encouragement of non-fatal self-harm; the intent requirement for cyber flashing; and verification status and visibility, and whether Ofcom can actually introduce requirements.
I heard what the Minister had to say about AI-generated pornography but, like the NSPCC, I am not convinced that we have adequately covered the features provided as part of a service in the metasphere with which users interact. Bots in the metaverse are demonstrating an extraordinary level of autonomy that could potentially be harmful and, it seems, may not be covered by the Bill. Time will tell, and we will see whether that is the case.
Then of course there is the lack of legislative teeth for the review of research access and no requirement for guidance afterwards. I very much hope that will happen, despite there being no obligation at the end of the day.
I have mentioned Clauses 176 and 177. We wait to see how those will pan out. Then of course there is the issue on which these Benches have spoken virtually alone: the question of news publisher definition and exemption.
I very much welcome the last piece of assurance that the Minister gave in terms of Ofcom’s powers under Clause 122. Even as late as last night we heard news reports and current affairs programmes discussing the issue, and I genuinely believe that what the Minister said will be reassuring. Certainly I took comfort from what he had to say, and I thank him for agreeing to say it at a pretty late stage in the proceedings.
I think we all recognise that in many ways the Bill is just the beginning. There will be much further work to be done. We need to come back on misinformation when the committee set up under Clause 153 has reported. I hope that in particular it will look at issues such as provenance solutions such as those provided by the Content Authenticity Initiative. Fundamental changes will be needed to our electoral law in order to combat misinformation in the course of our elections, because we have had several Select Committees say that, and I believe the misinformation advisory committee will come to the same conclusion.
It is also clear that Parliament itself needs to decide how best to scrutinise the Bill in both its operation and its effectiveness. As we in the Joint Committee sought to suggest, there could be a Joint Committee of both Houses to carry on that scrutiny work, but I very
much hope that will not be the case. I hope the SIT Select Committee in the Commons will pick up the cudgel and that the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, the Communications and Digital Select Committee, will do likewise in the House of Lords.
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There are going to be many codes. The Minister talked about this, and we very much welcome his statement about the intent to consult and lay the codes in good time. I hope the committees will engage in the scrutiny of those as we go through, because the codes will be absolutely crucial to how this Bill will be implemented. The timing of the implementation of the Bill’s provisions will be crucial. I hope that Ofcom and DSIT will be very clear in their guidance about the timings and how the different parts of the Bill will be brought into operation and the codes of conduct drafted.
I know it is invidious in these proceedings to single out individuals but, as everybody who has spent time here during the course of this Bill will know, this has been a Back-Bench inspired set of amendments. In many ways, it is not really the Front Benches that have made a lot of the running; the passion and expertise of so many Back-Benchers has driven so many of the amendments. I pay tribute to all of them without, sadly, being able to read out all their names. I think they should know that they have the gratitude of everybody who has had anything to do with this Bill.
I do, however, want to single out my friend the Labour Front-Bench spokesman, who has spent so much time on this Bill: the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. In particular, his dispute-resolution skills have been to the fore. He set the tone at the very beginning of our proceedings in this House, which is highly unusual; I do not think we will be expecting similar behaviour any time soon. His open offer at the very beginning was highly significant and has coloured our proceedings. Of course, we all need to single out the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. She is a total force of nature, and we all stand in awe of what she has managed to achieve with this Bill.
I thank my noble friend Lord Allan, who identified the marshmallow problem, for his considerable expertise and practical experience, which has been totally invaluable. I thank my noble friends Lords McNally and Lady Burt and, in absentia, my noble friend Lady Featherstone, who has now returned to her place; I am delighted to see that. I thank our extraordinarily hard-working Sarah Pughe, who is ably assisted by Mohamed-Ali Souidi in our Whips’ Office, and my former senior researcher, Zoë Asser, from Queen Mary University of London.
I also—finally, noble Lords will be pleased to hear—pay my own tribute to Carnegie UK, especially Will Perrin, Maeve Walsh and Professor Lorna Woods, for having the vision five years ago as to what was possible around the construction of a duty of care and for being by our side throughout the creation of this Bill. I also thank Reset, which has helped co-ordinate our activities, and the huge number of organisations that have briefed us on issues ranging from children’s safety to freedom of speech throughout our proceedings.
I echo our thanks to Sir Jeremy Wright and the all-party group, and to Damian Collins, who has been a tower of strength in helping us. Quite often, the other end ceases to take much interest in what we do as soon as a Bill comes here, but we have gone through this Bill hand-in-hand and that has been of huge usefulness and importance.
We are entering unknown territory in many ways, but with a huge amount of good will to make this Bill work.