Sir Jeremy Wright
MP for Kenilworth and Southam · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I applaud my right hon. Friend’s passion and clarity on this issue. On the subject of democratic accountability, he knows that if, as the hon.”
“I welcome the intent that the Secretary of State has set out this afternoon, and the urgency with which she will require the relevant companies to act.”
“The Electoral Commission has made no formal assessment of this. It would be a matter for Parliament to introduce such legal protections. It is prescribed in law that poll cards and ballot papers must be provided in English or Welsh, but there are no other prescribed language requirements relating to election materials.”
“We can all cynically speculate about the reasons why this sudden about-turn has taken place this week, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who spoke from the Front Bench, said earlier, it is our job to scrutinise this legislation and to ensure that whatever we put in place does justice to the determination o…”
“In today’s version of the amendment paper, for the first time, that amendment has disappeared and been replaced not with the detailed compromise that Intelligence and Security Committee members, who have been engaged with this process, have been working towards, along with many others, but with Government amendment 157.”
“As the House would expect, we engaged with that process as diligently as we could, with no partisan politics, in an effort to make good law in the pursuit of greater state transparency while preserving our national security equities. As the hon.”
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“I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Abuse and intimidation are of course covered in this White Paper, and it is important that online platforms do what they can to minimise that kind of activity. As he will recognise, harassment and intimidation can be criminal offences. Where they are or may be criminal offences, powers already exist to seek to identify those who may be responsible, and we should be making full use of them.”
“I would also say that some of the other sanctions we are considering, including ISP blocking—although it would never be used except in the most extreme circumstances, and it does have technical challenges—would be applicable even to platforms that do not have a corporate presence in the UK.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Lady and, indeed, the APPG for its work. I hope she will have the chance, with her colleagues, to look carefully at what we propose, respond to the consultation and give us her views. On what the hon. Lady says about some of this content being hosted outside the UK, the important point is that companies that offer services to UK citizens will be within scope of these proposals. There is an enforcement challenge for some of the sanctions we have set out, but it is worth keeping in mind that some 85% or so of the traffic we are concerned about comes through platforms that have a significant corporate presence in the United Kingdom. That does give us a purchase on them, and it is important that we make use of it.”
“I do not promise that any of this will be a magic bullet or that things will be transformed overnight, but I do think that the approach we are setting out will start to change the culture of these companies and start to make them think about how they meet their responsibilities more effectively.”
“On anonymity, as the hon. Gentleman has heard me say and as he recognises, there are powers available; the issue is how quickly they can be used. When we come to consider a duty of care, it seems to me and my colleagues that one of the advantages of the duty of care approach is that it should bring about a change of attitude across a whole range of activities among the online companies. It will no longer be sufficient for online companies to say, “Well, we’ve met this rule or that rule.” Instead, they must demonstrate to a regulator that they are doing all they reasonably can to keep their users safe, and that includes being safe from some of the activities the hon. Gentleman has in mind.”
“My right hon. Friend identifies one of the most troublesome aspects of online harm—that encryption is extraordinarily difficult for us to wrestle with. That is of course because there are advantages to encryption, and we use it all the time in our daily lives, but he is right that those who choose to use it for criminal purposes must also be challenged. In relation to this White Paper, I would say to him that harms at the top end of the seriousness spectrum, including the promotion of terrorism, will receive the greatest possible attention from the regulator, and our expectations from the Government will also be higher, hence the Home Secretary’s close interest in the way in which codes of practice are developed, so that online companies are doing their utmost to ensure that this kind of behaviour is challenged.”
“I have had no specific conversation with the Home Secretary on exactly that point, although the hon. Lady will recognise, when she has a chance to look at it, that the White Paper refers specifically to catfishing. If these are offences of fraud and misrepresentation, they may already be on the statute book, so it is worth looking at what the overlaps might be. However, I will take away what she says and make sure we discuss it with our colleagues in the Home Office.”
“Yes, I can confirm that. It is important to repeat that this is a process that we believe is necessary to level the playing field. These are abuses that, if they were happening in any other environment, would be controlled, and it is important that we do the same online. The point my hon. Friend makes about the abuse that female politicians have to endure very much echoes the point made by the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell), who speaks for the Scottish National party, and she is right. Of course, it is not just politicians—female journalists and others in public life have to endure the same. It is unacceptable and it must stop.”
“I certainly hope the hon. Gentleman will not have to wait months. He raises fair concerns, and I have indicated that the Government are not blind to them. This particular White Paper does not deal with that subject, but the Government will produce very shortly a document that does.”
“I can confirm that. We are concerned here with user-generated content, not with the activities of journalists or their editors. I would go further and say that it seems to me that the press—both local and national—and recognised journalists who do a good job of producing authoritative, sourced work are part of the solution, not part of the problem, particularly to the disinformation that has been identified across the House as one of the fundamental harms we are concerned about.”
“The duty does not rely on the codes of practice for its ongoing effectiveness.”
“I think there are two points worth making in response to the right hon. Lady. First, how well the platforms hold to their own terms and conditions may well give the regulator a good indication of how well they are complying with their overarching duty of care. Secondly, she is right that the White Paper envisages that a platform might say to a regulator, “We don’t wish to follow the codes of practice,” but if a platform chooses that path, it must be able to demonstrate to the regulator that the approach it takes instead is at least as effective in dealing with online harms as the codes of practice would have been. Of course, if the platform did not succeed in persuading the regulator that it had done that, the overarching duty of care would continue to apply to it.”
“The answer to my hon. Friend’s second question is yes. The Law Commission is looking now at exactly how we may refresh the law on online harassment. On his first question, I think he refers to what are commonly described as deepfakes, which are technologically very challenging. As I said earlier, it is important that the process we suggest encourages online platforms to use technology to provide solutions as well as to recognise problems. We expect that, as technology develops to create deepfakes, so should technology develop to help identify them. This duty of care will put the onus on online platforms to do just that.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support. He makes a fair point. He is of course right that there will be opposition to what is proposed, but it is worth noting that online companies, including Facebook, have recognised that forms of regulation are inevitable, and we shall expect them to co-operate in the design of these processes. If they choose not to, they will find that we shall regulate anyway.”
“The onus will be very clearly on those who provide the service to satisfy the regulator that they are doing all they can. If they are not, the consequences I described earlier can follow.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is right that we should be particularly concerned with the most vulnerable in our society—especially children. The way we envisage the duty of care operating is that online companies should do all they reasonably can to keep their users safe. The greater the user’s vulnerability, the more care they should take to do so. It follows that, in relation to children who may be using those services—of course, this will apply particularly to services that are attractive to children—there will be a greater onus on those responsible to act. We want to see a regulator pay close attention to what has been done—proactively, not simply reactively—to ensure that that harm can be avoided, whether by the use of algorithms or by other methods.”
“I reassure her that the international conversation will continue.”
“The straight answer to the hon. Lady’s question about my level of optimism is that it is limited but it exists. It is probably necessary for us all to recognise that the online companies are making progress in the right direction, but not fast enough. We need to take action ourselves to ensure that the proper protections are in place for our citizens. As she says, we need a cultural change. We in the United Kingdom have every reason to act first and to be proud of doing so, but we must ensure—we certainly intend to do so—that we explain to our international colleagues the way we are approaching this, in the expectation and hope that, as they face similar challenges, they will want to take note of the way we have approached these subjects and approach them in a very similar way.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend that that is indeed the balance to be struck. I hope that I can reassure him that it is our intention to do so and that we believe that free speech and safety online are not mutually exclusive. We can do both; we must do both. That is what the White Paper intends to do. As he says, it simply would not be right for Government to seek to determine the answers to the questions that we are concerned with. There must be an independent regulator to do so. It must be properly funded and must be properly robust in the opportunities that it has to hold online companies to account.”
“I do not wish to damage the atmosphere of consensus that has helpfully emerged this afternoon, but I have to say that I think that the hon. Lady is completely wrong. What we have set out is exactly designed to deal with the problem that she has identified: that if we are reactive—if we chase harms that emerged some time ago and do not think about harms that are yet to emerge—we will indeed miss the point. However, that is exactly what a duty of care is designed to do. Those who are subject to a duty of care will be obliged not just to look at the harms that they already know about, but to scan the horizon. If they see a harm coming and choose to do nothing about it, they will be answerable for that failure. That is exactly one of the advantages of the duty of care model.”
“Friend’s point about education and how it might be funded, it will of course be open to the regulator—we will encourage it to consider this—to spend some of its revenue on education, which we think is a key component of the White Paper.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he says and, if I may say so, his help and his contribution during his time in the Department. I am privileged to lead in developing this piece of work; he deserves a share of the credit too, and he is right. This is not a challenge to freedom of speech. As we were discussing earlier, if we do not make the online environment safer for everyone, whoever they are, we will be damaging freedom of speech, not enhancing it. It is important that we all recognise that this is a proposal to apply the same levels of activity, control and restriction to the online world that already exist everywhere else. Our freedom of speech thrives well in this place and elsewhere within the confines of the law. The same will be true online. In relation to my hon.”
“We do not, as I have said, believe that everything in it will yet be perfect, but it is important that she and others contribute to the process over the next period of consultation and make it better.”
“The hon. Lady will see that there is a fairly extensive list of online harms in the White Paper already, and we do not regard it as exhaustive. As she heard me say to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), we think it is important that the process should be able to deal with new harms as they emerge. However, she will recognise that it is important to ensure that we preserve what is good and special about the internet—the capacity for people to come up with new ideas, to have discussion and to have a free flow and exchange—while ensuring that the harms that she rightly points to are controlled. That is exactly what the White Paper seeks to do.”
“Harking back to a former life, in my experience there is always a risk of court involvement, but we should seek to be as clear as possible about the responsibilities of online companies. Whatever we choose to call them—platform, publisher or something else—it is their responsibilities and what they are engaged in doing that matter. That is what we are seeking to achieve, and once we have defined that with clarity, the necessary powers will need to be available to a regulator to deal with when that does not happen.”
“We think it is important to get those codes of practice right; therefore, it would not be feasible to produce them overnight. However, the hon. Lady makes a fair point, which is that we should not be waiting for these measures to be taken to see an improvement in the behaviour of online platforms. Online companies will be able to see the nature of the regulation that will come—they will also hear from this Chamber the support that exists for this kind of approach—so they will need to start to change their behaviour now. That is because when a regulator starts its work, it will want to know not just whether the online company has behaved itself for a week but for how long it has had in place the practices and procedures that we and the regulator will expect to show that it is doing its best to keep its users safe from harm.”
“The hon. Lady will recognise that there are a number of ways in which we might approach the problem that she describes, but the process that we are looking at relates to user-generated content, not necessarily commercial activities. I will have a look at what she says and perhaps write to her about how we might expect the White Paper to help.”
“The right hon. Gentleman will see among the list of harms exactly this type of activity. It is important that we place the obligation on those who operate online platforms to take their responsibilities seriously. I stress that we are predominantly interested in user-generated content, not so much the sales platforms, but he will see what is said in the White Paper. We will be grateful for his input on where he thinks we might develop ideas. I hope he will choose to respond to the consultation accordingly.”
“The hon. Lady makes a very important point. She will see in the White Paper that we think the prohibition of material that promotes suicide is exactly something that the online platforms should concern themselves with. They need to think why it is that in some cases when people enter certain search terms what comes up is material promoting suicide, rather than advice and guidance on what could be done to help. That is exactly the kind of action we will expect online companies to take. If they do not, it will be hard for them to persuade the regulator that they are doing all they reasonably can to keep their users safe.”
“There is no vagueness here. We know what we are dealing with, and both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) have identified the issue. It is not a lack of powers; it is how quickly those powers can be used. I can assure him that the Government are already in conversation with the law enforcement authorities and the online platforms about how that can be done more quickly.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman because he gives me a chance to pay tribute to ChildLine. I was at its London centre last week. Those who volunteer and those who work for it professionally do remarkable work to help our young people deal with some of the challenges of our modern existence. He is right that cyber-bullying is particularly pernicious; it does not go away and it happens to young people whether they are at school or not. It is having a serious effect on their mental health. I hope that he will see in the White Paper, and what will follow it, a clear commitment to say to online platforms that they must do all they can to protect users from this kind of abuse. We do not expect anything unreasonable and we do not expect anything impossible, but where they can address this issue they must.”
“One only has to think about the sheer volume of material being considered to realise how impractical it would be for the online regulator to decide in each and every instance. So this is really about whether online companies have in place systems to keep their users safe in the majority of cases. The regulator will have to determine that when it looks into the matter and speaks to online companies individually.”
“I hope this House will have a role not just in holding the regulator to account but in the design of codes of practice. We will consult on, among other things, how that might be done. We look forward to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution to that process. It is of course worth saying—the hon. Gentleman and others have expressed a concern—how judgments on individual pieces of content might be made. It is much more likely, in my view, that the regulator will be deciding whether or not the systems that an online platform puts in place are adequate or not in protecting their users from harm, than it is that the online regulator will be making a judgment on individual pieces of content.”
“The hon. Gentleman will recognise, because he is a fair man, that the Furman review was produced only in the past few weeks, and it is important that the Government take the time to look properly at its conclusions. He is right, however, that one of the significant aspects that Professor Furman and his panel picked up on was the potential advantage of users having more control over their data and the impact that that might have on the competition questions he was concerning himself with. The hon. Gentleman has my assurance that we will look carefully at the recommendations and respond to them fully.”
“I am very sorry to hear about what has happened to the hon. Lady. As she knows and as others have said, she is sadly not alone. It is important that we consider what online platforms can do. As I have said, closed groups and encrypted communications are a particular challenge. None the less, we think that online companies should do everything they can, with the restrictions that apply to encrypted communications, to keep their users as safe as they possibly can. The regulator will be entitled to ask, as it is entitled to ask in relation to other matters, whether the platform really is doing everything it could. If it is not, there will be consequences.”
“When I visited the west coast to discuss these matters with a number of online companies, I had the privilege of meeting the inventor of the infinite scroll. He was, I am pleased to report, suitably apologetic. The hon. Gentleman is right. There are a certain number of technological responses that we might expect online platforms to adopt to deal with some of the harms we will expect them to tackle. As I have said, that will be a significant part of what the regulator should do to encourage those technological developments and ensure they are widely implemented.”
“I agree, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work and that of his colleagues. I hope that the House recognises that within the White Paper there are contributions from a large number of Members of the House. That is as it should be, because this is a shared challenge that we must address together. I agree with the hon. Gentleman on research. It is important that we understand these problems properly, and we will do all that we can to encourage that research to take place.”
“More needs to be done to tackle harmful online content and to make it clear that social media platforms have responsibilities to their users. Our forthcoming White Paper will set out those responsibilities, how they should be met and what should happen if they are not.”
“I agree with the Health Secretary, and I have made it clear on a number of occasions that I believe the era of self-regulation must come to an end in this space. But the hon. Gentleman will understand that this is not just a complex matter, but a subject on which it is important to put forward our proposals in the round. We will do that in the White Paper that he will see shortly, and in that he will see what proposals we make for further legislation.”
“The Science and Technology Committee report to which my hon. Friend refers makes an important and worthwhile contribution to this debate, and I am grateful to her and her colleagues for it. Again, I hope she will forgive me if I do not set out at this Dispatch Box now precisely what the White Paper will say, but perhaps I can reassure her by saying that we are strongly considering a duty of care as part of the proposals we seek to make, and we believe it is important that responsibilities are taken seriously to protect not only young people but everyone from the harms that the internet may provide.”
“I believe it is not what a company calls itself that matters, but what it does. What we will seek to do in the White Paper and anything that follows it is make sure that we can tackle the harms we define as in scope of that White Paper, wherever they may lie on the internet. I understand that the game the hon. Lady mentions has now been withdrawn; quite right too—I think all of us would have been horrified had any other course been taken.”
“Again, my hon. Friend will have to wait for the detail of the White Paper, but I have made it, I hope, very clear, and am happy to make it clear again, that I believe that social media companies have responsibilities in this space. They should take those responsibilities seriously, and if they do not there should be consequences.”
“Yes. The hon. Lady makes a good point, and I think that we should ask questions about this. It is profoundly unacceptable that material such as this should be available to young people, and older people, and we must worry about the sense it creates of proper relationships and the way in which these types of activity should be regarded by any fundamentally decent society. Of course, we must understand exactly how it has got to this point in relation to this game. As I have said, I welcome the fact that the game has been withdrawn. I think we would all have been having a very different conversation this morning if it had not been.”
“In this House, we all believe in freedom of speech, but we also believe that that freedom of speech has limits, and that when people seek to intimidate others, and potentially to break the law—the description that the hon. Gentleman has given the House this morning is potentially a description of criminal behaviour—it is unacceptable. It is beyond the reach of the type of freedom of speech that we believe should be protected. As I have said, all internet companies and all platforms for this kind of speech need to take their responsibilities seriously, and I hope that YouTube will consider carefully what the hon. Gentleman and I have said, and reconsider its judgment.”
“I will of course consider what the hon. Gentleman has said, but we must ensure that we preserve our ability, online as everywhere else, to debate and discuss issues that are sometimes uncomfortable and certainly controversial. I repeat, however, that no freedom of speech can survive in this country if we do not protect people’s ability to feel free to say what they think, free of intimidation and free of the threat of violence. Those who engage in intimidation or threats of violence should not find succour online or anywhere else.”
“Sport is a devolved matter in Scotland, but through Sport England we fund 45 different sporting governing bodies that support grassroots participation and talented athletes. When people watch broadcast sport, they should see women and disabled people, too. Although progress has been made over the last few years, especially in women’s sport, there is scope to do better. I met broadcasters and sporting organisations recently to discuss with them what more they can do.”
“I am happy to join my hon. Friend in offering congratulations on that significant step forward, and we want to see more. I am sure that I or my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), who is the Minister responsible for sport, will be happy to meet him to discuss the matter further.”
“Again, I am happy to agree to that proposal. It is worth our understanding more clearly the exact picture in Scotland, as the hon. Gentleman says. Broadcasting is a reserved matter and sport is a devolved matter, so we must make sure that the two work in sync. In England, we support a range of sports—I am sure that the same thing happens in Scotland—and we want to see whether we can give such sports greater prominence so that people can find a sport that they get on with, that they want to do and that they enjoy, in order to promote greater participation in sport more broadly.”
“I am very happy to do that, and I wish Megan and the rest of the side the very best of luck. My hon. Friend is a doughty champion of women’s cricket. He makes the case for it very well and often, and we hear him. We are also talking about the broadcast of women’s sport, and I know that he will recognise that it is a step forward that the first stand-alone women’s world T20 competition this year will be broadcast on British free-to-air television.”
“We are certainly having conversations with all the broadcasters about what more they can do. By the way, I should correct myself: I think it is in fact Sky that will be broadcasting the women’s world T20, not a free-to-air broadcaster as I suggested. Sky is doing a good deal, and we welcome that. We hope it will do more. I am having conversations about how we can broaden the scope of women’s sport and disability sport that people see on television so that they can see a variety of different sports, perhaps including in the highlights packages they may see. That is an important way of engaging people with a broader understanding of what is happening in the sporting environment.”