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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“Having been a member of that Committee, I do agree with its recommendations—although it did not make them when I was a member. As I have said, the Electoral Commission, for which I speak today, has made clear its views. I hope that he will make clear his views to Ministers because, in the end, this requires legislative change that only the Government can make.”
“The hon. Gentleman will know that the situation in Northern Ireland is slightly different from that in the rest of the UK. Across the UK, the Electoral Commission’s view is that there should be transparency. That is the obligation of political parties, and it is the job of the Electoral Commission to make sure it does what it can to support that transparency across the system.”
“Before I call Dr Luke Evans to move the motion, it will be apparent to everyone that a good number of speakers want to participate. To give fair warning to all Back-Bench speakers, I am afraid we will have to limit you to about two and a half minutes. We will start doing so informally, and if everyone can keep to that, we should be able to get everyone in. If not, we will have to impose a formal time limit.”
“Order. I am very grateful to the hon. Member. I remind everyone to continue to stand if they wish to contribute and that, if they stick to two and half minutes, we will try to get everybody in.”
“Order. We have three speakers left. I ask you to limit yourselves to three minutes each, and then, with the forbearance of the Front Bench speakers, we will get everybody in.”
“I thank all Members for their self-discipline and co-operation, which allowed me to call everyone who wanted to contribute. We now come to the Front-Bench speeches, and we begin with the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.”
“I am very grateful to the hon. Member, and to all who have contributed to this understandably popular debate. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the contribution of the Royal British Legion.”
“I will call Grahame Morris to move the motion; I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”
“I remind all hon. Members that they should continue to stand if they wish to contribute to the debate. Given the number of those who have indicated that they wish to contribute, I ask people to limit themselves to about four minutes, and I hope we will be able to get everybody in.”
“Order. I am going to save the hon. Gentleman from himself. I remind him that we need to proceed to other speakers, so I ask him to draw his remarks to a close.”
“I will try to call the Opposition Front Benchers, who will have five minutes each, from 5.08 pm, and then the Minister after that. I am afraid we can therefore no longer allow four minutes per speaker if everyone is to get in; speeches that last nearer to three minutes will help. I ask all colleagues to adhere to that.”
“We do not have enough time for the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) to wind up the debate, I am afraid, but I will put the Question. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered relationship education in schools.”
“The Secretary of State will recognise that it is very difficult for private landowners and local authorities along the line of High Speed 2 to plan future development when they do not know what will happen to land that is necessary for construction but is not needed for the long-term operation of the line. A land disposal strategy for HS2 is overdue. Can she produce one urgently? When she does so, will she seek opportunities to benefit communities like those I represent, which are suffering the disruption of the line but will not benefit from its operation?”
“The Secretary of State has, perfectly fairly, said that some of the specific learning about the incident will have to wait until we know more, but she also said that she has been told that, as a matter of design, the back-up power arrangements for Heathrow were not intended to cover all airport operations until, as we know, a significant reconfiguration took place over a matter of hours. Will she assure that she can and will begin the work of considering whether that is the right position, not just for Heathrow but for other airports? I make no predetermination on her behalf on whether it is or is not, but she can surely do that now without waiting for the specifics of this incident all to be clear.”
“As the Secretary of State looks at reform, is she considering the PIP reassessment process? For people whose conditions will not get any better, would it not be sensible to relieve them of the burden of that reassessment process unless they wish to be reassessed? That would be less distressing for them, it would save money in the system, and it would allow people who do need reassessment to be reassessed faster.”
“Whatever the rights and wrongs of this debate, is it not important that the Sentencing Council makes clear that what is important in deciding whether to ask for a pre-sentence report is whether that extra information is needed and not anything else, including protected characteristics?”
“The Minister is right to stress the independence of the Sentencing Council, but would he accept that he cannot criticise the shadow Secretary of State for having a view on these draft guidelines when the Secretary of State herself did exactly that? I also ask him to consider in this debate the real purpose of a pre-sentence report. It is there to give more information about an offender, but it also enables a judge to impose a non-custodial sentence if they believe that is the appropriate course. It is hard for a sentencer to do that, unless someone has been assessed as suitable for a community penalty.”
“I will call Lisa Smart to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”
“That brings the curtain down on this debate. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have participated, both in leading roles and walk-on parts. Question put and agreed to .”
“The Lord Chancellor will accept that the effective use of electronic tags will not only make the criminal justice system more efficient, but mitigate the need for expensive prison places. Does she agree that two things are necessary for that effective use? First, the tags must be technically reliable; secondly, officials in her Department must have the commercial capacity to manage the contracts efficiently. If she agrees, what can be done to improve both those things?”
“Order. I thank the hon. Member for introducing the debate. I remind all Back-Bench Members that if they want to contribute, they should keep bobbing so I know. I am afraid insights will have to be limited to about two and a half minutes if we are to get everyone in.”
“In the spirit of working together, I will call the Front Benchers at 10.28 am. There are still eight people who want to speak, so I am afraid speeches will have to be less than two minutes or someone will be disappointed.”
“I will call Andy MacNae to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for a 30-minute debate.”
“The first and current strategy and policy statement for the Electoral Commission was published by the previous Government in February last year. The commission passed its report to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission this week, setting out how it has had regard to the statement as required by law. The commission will publish that report in due course.”
“I can tell the hon. Gentleman that that is the commission’s view. He will know that the commission remains opposed to the principle of a strategy and policy statement, and views such a mechanism as inconsistent with its independent role.”
“My hon. Friend is right that more can always be done to ensure that all those eligible for the franchise, which now includes a substantial number of overseas voters, understand what they are entitled to, and that we offer them all the assistance we can to participate in the process.”
“Because we should want online platforms and services to be innovative in how they fulfil their safety objectives, especially in the fast-moving landscape of online harms. I fear that Ofcom’s interpretation of proportionality, as requiring evidence of effectiveness, will achieve the opposite. There will only be an evidence base on effectiveness for a measure that is already being taken somewhere, and that has been taken for long enough to generate that evidence of effectiveness. If we limit recommended actions to those that have evidence of success, we effectively set the bar for safety measures at current best practice. Given the safe harbour offered by measures recommended in codes of practice, that could mean services being deterred from innovating, because they get the protection only by doing things that are already being done.”
“Similarly, when it comes to measures recommended in a code of practice, schedule 4(2)(b) states those measures must be “sufficiently clear, and at a sufficiently detailed level, that providers understand what those measures entail in practice”, and schedule 4(2)(c) states that recommended measures must be “proportionate and technically feasible”, based on the size and capacity of the service. We should not ask anything of services they cannot do, and it should be clear what they have to do to comply. That is what the Act says proportionality means. I cannot find in the Act support for the idea that we have to know something will work before we try it in order for that action to be proportionate and therefore recommended in a code of practice. Why does that disagreement on interpretation matter?”
“It states: “In determining what is proportionate for the purposes of section 12, the following factors, in particular, are relevant— (a) all the findings of the most recent children’s risk assessment (including as to levels of risk and as to nature, and severity, of potential harm to children), and (b) the size and capacity of the provider of a service.” In other words, a measure that would be ruinously expensive or disruptive, especially for a smaller service, and which would deliver only a marginal safety benefit, should not be mandated, but a measure that brings a considerable safety improvement in responding to an identified risk, even if expensive, might well be justified.”
“In later iterations of the legislation, that balance is represented by the concept of proportionality in the measures that the regulator could require services to take. Again, Ofcom has been given much latitude to interpret proportionality. I am afraid that I do not believe it has done so consistently with Parliament’s intention. Ofcom’s view appears to be that for a measure to be proportionate there must be a substantial amount of evidence to demonstrate its effectiveness. That is not my reading of it. Section 12 of the Act sets out the obligation on services to take proportionate measures to mitigate and manage risks to children. Section 13(1) offers more on what proportionate means in that context.”
“If in the code of practice Ofcom asks services to act only on content harms, it is highly likely that that is all services will do because it is compliance with the code that provides regulatory immunity. If it is not in the code, services probably will not do it. Codes that ignore some of the Act’s provisions to improve children’s safety means the online services that children use will ignore those provisions, too. We should all be worried about that. That brings me to the second area where I believe that Ofcom has misinterpreted the Act. Throughout the passage of the Act, Parliament accepted that the demands that we make of online services to improve the safety of their users would have to be reasonable, not least to balance the risks of online activity with its benefits.”
“This debate is timely because the final version of the code of practice is due in the next couple of months. If Ofcom is to change course and broaden its characterisation of the risks that online services must act on—as I believe it should—now is the time. Many of the children’s welfare organisations that we all worked with so closely to deliver the Act in the first place are saying the same. If Ofcom’s view of the harms to children on which services should act falls short of what the Act covers, why does it matter? Again, the answer lies in the architecture of the Act. The codes of practice that Ofcom drafts set out actions that services could take to meet their online safety duties. If they do the things that they set out, they are taken to have met the relevant safety duty and are safe from regulatory penalty.”
“It is talking about damaging behaviours deliberately instigated by the design and operation of the online service, and the way its algorithms are designed to make us interact with it. That is a problem not just with excessive screen time, on which Ofcom has been conspicuously reluctant to engage, but with the issue of children being led from innocent material to darker and darker corners of the internet. We know that that is what happened to several of the young people whose suicides have been connected to their online activity. Algorithms designed to keep the user on the service for longer make that risk greater, and Ofcom seems reluctant to act on them despite the Act giving it powers to do so. We can see that from the draft code of practice on harm to children, which Ofcom published at the end of last year.”
“Section 11(6)(e), for example, refers to “the extent to which the design of the service, in particular its functionalities” affects the risk of adults searching for and contacting children online. That is not a risk related to individual bits of content. It is worth looking at section 11(6)(f), which, if colleagues will indulge me, I want to quote in full. It says that a risk assessment should include “the different ways in which the service is used, including functionalities or other features of the service that affect how much children use the service (for example a feature that enables content to play automatically), and the impact of such use on the level of risk of harm that might be suffered by children”. I think that that paragraph is talking about harms well beyond individual pieces of bad content.”
“Specifically, my conversations with Ofcom suggest to me that it believes the Act only gives it power to act on harms that arise from the viewing of individual pieces of bad content. I do not agree, and let me explain why. With limited exceptions, if an online service has not identified a risk in its risk assessment, it does not have to take action to reduce or eliminate that risk, so which risks are identified in the risk assessment really matters. That is why the Act sets out how a service should go about its risk assessment and what it should look out for. For services that may be accessed by children, the relevant risk assessment duties are set out in section 11 of the Act. Section 11(6) lists the matters that should be taken into account in a children’s risk assessment. Some of those undoubtedly refer to content, but some do not.”
“That means that the eventual version of the Act does not cover everything that is bad online and, of necessity, sets up a framework within which the regulator is required to fill in the gaps and has considerable latitude in doing so. The architecture of that framework is important. Because we recognised that emerging harms would be more clearly and quickly seen by online services themselves than by legislators or regulators, in broad terms the Act requires online services to properly assess the risk of harms arising on their service and then to mitigate those risks. My concern is that Ofcom has taken an unnecessarily restrictive view of the harms it is asking services to assess and act on and, indeed, a view that is inconsistent with the terms of the Act.”
“I also have great regard for the diligence and expertise of many at Ofcom who are now charged with these new responsibilities. However, I am concerned that Ofcom appears unwilling to use all the tools that the Act gives it to make the online world a safer place, and I am concerned that the Government appear unwilling to press Ofcom to be more ambitious. I want to explain why I am concerned, why I think it matters and what can be done about it. Let me start with what I am worried about. There was a great deal of consensus about the passing of the Online Safety Act, and all of us involved in its development recognised both the urgent need to act on online harms and the enormity of the task.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and I am grateful for the opportunity to open the debate. Let me start with some positives. The Online Safety Act 2023 is certainly not the last word on the subject, but it is, in my view, a big step forward in online safety, providing a variety of tools that allow the regulator to make the online world safer, particularly for children. I remain of the view that Ofcom is the right regulator for the task, not least because it can start its work sooner as an existing regulator and given the overlap with its existing work—for example, on video-sharing platforms.”
“That may be because the subject is incredibly complex, or because the subject is fast-moving. In the case of online safety, it is both. Framework legislation raises serious questions about how Parliament ensures its intentions are followed through in all the subsequent work on implementation. What do we do if we have empowered regulators to act but their actions do not fulfil the expectations that we set out in legislation?”
“There is a further risk not that we might just fix the bar at status quo but that, because of the opportunity that platforms have to innovate, some might go backwards on new safety measures that they are already implementing because they are not recommended or encouraged by Ofcom’s code of practice. That cannot be what we want to happen. Those are two areas where I believe Ofcom’s interpretation of the Act is wrong and retreats in significant ways from Parliament’s intention to give the regulator power to act to enhance children’s online safety. I also believe it matters that it is wrong. The next question is what should be done about it. I accept that sometimes, as legislators, we have no choice but to pass framework legislation, with much of the detail on implementation to come later.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. We have to balance two things, though. We want consistency, as he suggests, but we also want platforms to respond to the circumstances of their own service, and to push the boundaries of what they can achieve by way of safety measures. As I said, they are in a better position to do so than legislators or regulators are to instruct them. The Act was always intended to put the onus on the platforms to take responsibility for their own safety measures. Given the variety of actors and different services in this space, we are probably not going to get a uniform approach, nor should we want one. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the regulator needs to ensure that its expectations of everyone are high.”
“We must do the most we can with the legislation we have, and I fear that we are not. Given the efforts that were made all across the House and well beyond it to deliver the best possible set of legislative powers in this vital area, timidity and lack of ambition on the part of Ministers or regulators—leading to a pulling back from the borders of this Act—is not just a challenge to parliamentary sovereignty but, much more importantly, a dereliction of duty to the vulnerable members of our society, whose online safety is our collective responsibility. There is still time to be braver and ensure that the Online Safety Act fulfils its potential. That is what Ofcom and the Government need to do.”
“The children’s safety codes will be finalised within weeks, and will set the tone for how ambitious and innovative—or otherwise—online services will be in keeping our children safe online. We should want the highest possible ambition, not a reinforcement of the status quo. Ofcom will say, and has said, that it can always do more in future iterations of the codes, but realistically the first version will stand for years before it is revised, and there will be many missed opportunities to make a child’s online world safer in that time. It is even less likely that new primary legislation will come along to plug any gaps anytime soon. As the responsible Secretary of State, I signed off the online harms White Paper in 2019. Here we are in 2025, and the Online Safety Act is still not yet fully in force.”
“Many of these areas overlap, of course, as regulators have recognised. They established the Digital Regulation Co-operation Forum to deal with the existing need to collaborate, which of course is only likely to grow with the pervasive development of artificial intelligence. Surely we should think about parliamentary oversight along the same lines. That is why I am not the first, nor the only, parliamentarian to be in favour of a new parliamentary Committee—preferably a Joint Committee, so that the expertise of many in the other place can be utilised—to scrutinise digital legislation. The Government have set their face against that idea so far, but I hope they will reconsider. My final point is that there is urgency.”
“I am sure the Minister will say in due course that it falls within the remit of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. I mean no disrespect to that Committee, but it has a lot on its plate already and supervision of the fast-moving world of online safety regulation is a big job in itself. It is not, by the way, the only such job that needs doing. We have passed, or are in the process of passing, several other pieces of similar framework legislation in this area, including the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the Data (Use and Access) Bill and the Media Act 2024, all of which focus on regulators’ power to act and on the Secretary of State’s power to direct them. Parliament should have the means to oversee how that legislation is being implemented too.”
“The previous Government accepted that amendment in this House, and the current Government actively supported it in opposition. I am afraid, however, that Ofcom has now advised the Government to disregard that change, and the Government accepted that advice and brought a statutory instrument to Committee on 4 February that blatantly contravenes the will of Parliament and the content of primary legislation. It was a clear test case of the Government’s willingness to defend the ambition of the Online Safety Act, and I am afraid they showed no willingness to do so. If we cannot rely on the Government to protect the extent of the Act—perhaps we should not, because regulatory independence from the Executive is important—who should do it?”
“As some Members in Westminster Hall this morning know because they were present during the debates on it, elsewhere in the Online Safety Act there is provision to bring forward secondary legislation to determine how online services are categorised, with category 1 services being subject to additional duties and expectations. That process was discussed extensively during the passage of the Act, and an amendment was made to it in the other place to ensure that smaller platforms with high incidences of harmful content could be included in category 1, along with larger platforms. That is an important change, because some of the harm that we are most concerned about may appear on smaller specialist platforms, or may go there to hide from the regulation of larger platforms.”
“The hon. Gentleman identifies a real risk in this space: we are always playing catch-up, and so are the regulators. That is why we have tried—perhaps not entirely successfully—to design legislation that gives the regulators the capacity to move faster, but we have to ask them to do so and they have to take responsibility for that. I am raising these points because I am concerned that this particular regulator in this particular set of circumstances is not being as fleet of foot as it could be, but the hon. Gentleman is right that this is a concern across the regulatory piece. I would also say that regulators are not the only actor. We might expect the Government to pick up this issue and ensure that regulators do what Parliament expects, but in this area the signs are not encouraging.”
“The Minister might be about to come to the point I want to raise with her, which is about proportionality. Will she say something about that? I am keen to understand whether the Government accept Ofcom’s understanding of the term—that proportional measures are those measures that can be evidenced as effective. I gave reasons why I am concerned about that. I want to understand whether the Government believe that that is the correct interpretation of proportionality.”
“These debates are great, but shouting at Ofcom through the loudhailer of Westminster Hall is not as effective as a Committee set up to do this in a more structured and, frankly, a more productive and consensual way. That is the gap that exists in the landscape of parliamentary oversight, and as we develop more and more digital regulation, as we have to, and as AI advances, we will have to fill that gap. I simply say to the Government that filling it sooner rather than later would be wise. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023.”