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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“Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) that Ofcom should not be predominantly focused on insulating itself from judicial review. As a former Law Officer, I think that is an impossible task anyway. This legislation and the regulation that follows it will be challenged—the online platforms have every incentive to challenge it. We cannot be so terrified of that prospect that we are unwilling to extend the parameters of the regulation as far as we believe they should go. That is why I think everybody needs to be a tad braver in all this. Finally, I simply want to repeat the point that many of us have made, which is that we need as Parliament to have a way of keeping our eye on what is happening in this space.”
“However, given how long it takes for Parliament to make change—I make no apologies for repeating this point—we need to make the best use of the legislation that we have. I have not made a case this morning for extending the parameters of the legislation; I have made a case for using the parameters we already have, which Parliament has already legislated into being and which we have passed over to the regulator for it to use. I accept that regulation and legislation is not passed for effect; we do it so that it can work. We do it not to make ourselves feel better, but to make the lives of our constituents better, so the Minister is right to say that the usability of all this should be at the heart of what we are interested in. I accept the point made by the hon.”
“I am grateful to everyone who has spoken in the debate. We have talked about the consensus there was in the passage of the Online Safety Bill. I think it is fair to say that that consensus is broadly still present, based on what Members have said this morning, and I am grateful for it. There is a need to get this Act implemented. I accept what the Minister says about that, and others have made the same point: we do not want to make the best the enemy of the good, and there is always a trade-off between, on the one hand, getting the particular mechanisms that we know will protect people online in place as swiftly as possible, and on the other hand, making them as extensive and effective as possible.”
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who are led by lawyers—there is nothing wrong with that—should at least get the law right? If there is legal jeopardy here, does she agree that we should understand what that jeopardy is? She knows that the International Court of Justice cannot make a binding ruling against the UK on this matter because Mauritius is a member of the Commonwealth and we have not accepted its jurisdiction in those circumstances. If there is legal jeopardy that makes a deal necessary, does she agree that this is a good moment for the Minister to explain to us precisely what that legal jeopardy is?”
“The right hon. Lady is absolutely entitled to explain the Government’s position, but if her argument is that there is legal uncertainty, she had better get used to it, because there is legal uncertainty about a lot of things. If her argument is that lots of people disagree with the UK’s position, she had also better get used to that. As I have understood the Government’s position, it has thus far been that the advisory opinion we have received may one day become a binding judgment against the UK, obliging the UK Government to act as they now seek to do. I want to know from where that binding judgment may come, and I have not yet heard an answer.”
“The Minister will be well aware that the growth of AI across the country depends on a ready supply of data and other content on which models can be trained. She will recognise that much of that content comes from our creative industries, and she will know that they are profoundly troubled that they are not being properly treated by the companies currently scraping their data without their permission or without proper compensation. I know that the Government will want to resolve that, and she will know that the Data Bill saw amendments made in the other place to address that. Do the Government intend to resolve this issue by means of the Data Bill or by other means? If by other means, what other means and when?”
“There is a great deal in this Bill that we can all support, but some difficult concepts lurk within it, as I know the Secretary of State will recognise. He is talking about data transparency. One of the issues of concern is about precisely what we mean by the “scientific research” on which data may be employed, and precisely what we mean by “the public interest” that must be served by that scientific research. We will not examine this issue on Second Reading, but may I ask him to commit to a proper examination of those concepts as the Bill moves forward, so that we can all understand what we mean and the public can get the reassurance that he describes?”
“The Secretary of State is very generous in giving way. Before he finishes, may I ask him about the situation we are creating with this Bill and the Online Safety Act 2023 of setting a framework within which regulators need to operate and cover a good deal of ground? Does he think the advent of these pieces of legislation makes a stronger case for a new Committee of this House, and perhaps a Joint Committee, to maintain scrutiny of ongoing digital regulation? If so, will he be prepared to advance that case?”
“I have asked the Minister this question before, but if he will forgive me for saying so, his answer could have benefited from additional clarity, so, with your permission, Mr Speaker, I am going to ask it again. The Minister has made it very clear, as have his fellow Ministers, that the urgency and necessity of action in this instance is based on the imminence of an adverse court judgment against the UK. He knows that the International Court of Justice is not the court that we must be thinking of here, because the United Kingdom is not subject to the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ when it concerns disputes involving members or former members of the Commonwealth, so it cannot be an ICJ judgment that the Minister is worried about, can it? If it is not that, what is it?”
“This Act gives us powers to act against services that do not do what they should.” They are right that it is not a perfect piece of legislation, and none of us involved in its generation would claim that it was, but it does give Government and regulators the powers to act. However, that does us no good at all if, in subsequent pieces of statutory legislation, the Government choose not to use those tools or put them beyond Ofcom’s reach. That is what the regulations do. I have to say to the Minister that government is hard enough. She should not throw away the tools she needs to do the job that she has promised everyone that she will do. This is a mistake, and I hope that even at this late stage the Minister will find a way to avoid making it.”
“Ofcom will not have all the tools it could have to deal with smaller services where greater harm may be concentrated, despite what the Act allows. I have to say that tying one hand behind Ofcom’s back is not sensible, even when Ofcom is itself asking us to do so. That is especially true when the Government place such heavy reliance on the Online Safety Act—as they are entitled to—to deal with the multiple online harms that arise. I have lost count, as I suspect others in this Committee have, of the number of times that Ministers have referred to the Online Safety Act when challenged about harmful materials or behaviours online and said, “This is the answer.”
“There are multiple organisations with whom we and then the Labour party worked closely to get this Act passed for the protection of those about whom the Labour party is charged with worrying. Those include organisations such as the Samaritans, Mind, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, the Antisemitism Policy Trust and the Molly Rose Foundation, all of which care deeply about the effectiveness of this legislation, as I am sure we all do. It is true, and the Minister may make this point, that Ofcom’s advice suggested the course of action the Government are now taking. However, “advice” is the key word. The Government were not obliged to take it, and in this instance I think they would have been wiser to resist it.”
“There is a fundamental misunderstanding —at least, I hope that is what it is—in the ministerial statement, which suggests that that is the only criterion to be considered. It is not, and I think it is a mistake to ignore the others, which, again, have already been drawn out in the debate. To be clear, these draft regulations mean that no smaller platform—under the level of 7 million monthly users—can ever be considered as a category 1 platform, unless or until the Government and Ofcom change their approach to the categorisation process. I repeat the point, and I make no apologies for doing so, that that is specifically contrary to what Parliament had intended in the passage of the Act. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North and I are not the only ones making this observation.”
“I do not expect her to have all this before her—I know her officials will take careful note—but the Act states at paragraph 1(5) of schedule 11: “In making regulations under sub-paragraph (1)”— the draft regulations we are discussing— “the Secretary of State must take into account the likely impact of the number of users of the user-to-user part of the service, and its functionalities, on”— and this is the part the Secretary of State drew out in his statement— “how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service.” Without doubt, therefore, the Secretary of State has to take the number of users into account, but it is not the only criterion.”
“12WS.] In other words, I think the Secretary of State was arguing that he has no option but to limit to a scale criterion-only designation for category 1, because that is how the Act has changed. That is fundamentally mistaken, if I may say so to the Minister.”
“We should think about the Government’s rationale for what they are doing. In December, the Secretary of State made a written statement to set out the reasoning for the measures that the Government have put before the Committee: “In making these Regulations, I have considered factors as required by the Act. Amendments made during the passage of the Act, changed the consideration for Category 1 from the ‘level of risk of harm to adults from priority content that is harmful to adults disseminated by means of the service’ to ‘how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service.’ This was a significant change”. —[ Official Report , 16 December 2024; Vol. 759, c.”
“Member for Newton Abbot quoted one example of something that the shadow spokesman at the time, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who now has Government responsibilities elsewhere, said during the passage of the Bill. I will quote another example to the Committee. She said: “Categorisation of services based on size rather than risk of harm will mean that the Bill will fail to address some of the most extreme harms on the internet.” –– [ Official Report, Online Safety Public Bill Committee, 12 July 2022; c. 168.] I think she was absolutely right then, and still is now. The draft regulations, I am afraid, do exactly what she said the Act should not do: they limit the criterion for the designation of category 1, and these additional powers, to size only.”
“Again, as has been explained, what or who we include in that category 1 designation really matters, because of the additional powers and constraints that Ofcom will have available to it in relation to category 1 services. Those powers include the only powers available under this Act to protect adults from anything that is not illegal content—including vulnerable adults, by the way. There will come a time when the Government, I suspect, will wish they had more to deal with problems of that nature. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North explained, the Act gives those powers, so it is bizarre in the extreme that the Government should choose voluntarily not to use them. It is bizarre, also, because the Labour party in opposition was clear in its support for the change. The hon.”
“There is good reason, therefore, to think that having smaller services potentially included in category 1 designation is a tool that Ofcom, and indeed the Government, will want to have available. Those platforms, such as ones that specialise in suicide or self-harm, might well be the kind of platforms that we find ourselves increasingly concerned about and that the Government will increasingly be asked to do something about. I have to say to the Minister that it is not sensible to remove from the regulator’s hand the tools that it might want to use to do what the Government will undoubtedly ask it to do—the Government themselves will come under pressure to do something about that.”
“It is worth noting that, in Ofcom’s assessment, something like 12 to 16 services only would qualify for category 1 status if, as is currently the case, size was the only criterion and we set the limit—as these regulations seek to do—at 7 million monthly users. As the hon. Lady explained, over a considerable period of time, with a considerable amount of energy expended, Parliament decided that it was appropriate to include in the category 1 designation not just the largest services, but those services where a great deal of harm may be concentrated but the services are, in themselves, much smaller. Those services being smaller might happen organically, or it might, of course, happen because that harmful content seeks refuge from the regulation applied to the larger services by migrating to smaller ones.”
“It is a great and unexpected pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I want to take this opportunity to say something about why I think these regulations are a mistake. I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) has just said—I will seek not to repeat it—but it is probably worth noting at the outset that, as the Minister has rightly explained, these regulations are not the only means by which we will hold online services to account under this legislation. A category 1 designation allows Ofcom—the regulator —to impose additional constraints on a platform. I think that is an entirely fair point to make, but as the hon. Lady observed, something like 100,000 online services are likely to be in scope of this Act overall.”
“The worry of those of us who have spoken in the debate is that the Government are about to remove one of the tools that Ofcom would have had to deal with smaller, high-harm platforms when the harm in question remains in ambit of the Bill—not that which was taken out during its passage. Would the Minister accept that?”
“I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I have sympathy with her position, especially in relation to legal advice, having both received it and given it. I suggest that the Minister is talking about two different things, and they need to be separated. The first is the question of whether legal but harmful content was removed from the Bill, which it undoubtedly was. Measures in relation to content that is neither unlawful nor harmful to children were largely removed from the Bill—the Minister is right to say that. What we are discussing, however, are the tools available to Ofcom to deal with those platforms that it is still concerned about in relation to the remaining content within the ambit of the Bill.”
“Lady think of the amendment that Baroness Morgan made in the other place to paragraph 1(4), which says that when the regulations we are considering specify “the way or ways in which the relevant conditions are met”, for category 1 threshold conditions “at least one specified condition about number of users or functionality must be met”? The crucial word that was added is “or”. If the number of users were required to establish what the hon. Lady has described, the word “or” would be inappropriate.”
“It would not be right for either of us to ask the Minister to disclose legal advice—that clearly would not be appropriate—but I am grateful for the Minister’s offer to share a slightly more expansive description of why the Government have come to the conclusion that they have. On the hon. Lady’s point about what the Act actually says, we have both quoted paragraph 1(5) of schedule 11, which deals with whether the language that has found its way into the ministerial statement is the be-all and end-all of the Minister’s conclusions. We both think it is not. If it is the case, as I think the Minister is arguing, that the ability to disseminate “easily, quickly and widely” is essentially a synonym for the scale of the service and the number of its users, what does the hon.”
“Order. It will be obvious to everyone that there is considerable interest in this debate. May I ask all Members to bob if you wish to speak, and to continue to do that so that we can see you still wish to speak? I hope that if everyone can restrict themselves to about four minutes, we will get everybody in. I want to start calling the Front Benchers at 10.30 am.”
“Order. I gently remind all Members that we must get to four minutes each voluntarily or I will have to impose something less voluntary. I call Jon Trickett.”
“I thank all hon. Members who have spoken for their restraint. It has allowed me to get one more hon. Member in, but I ask her to please bring her remarks to a close at 10.30 am.”
“I will now call the Minister to respond. If there is any time left before 11 o’clock, I will invite Andy McDonald to wind up, if he wishes to.”
“I thank the Minister for her debut performance in Westminster Hall. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered outsourcing by Government departments.”
“I ask all Members not staying for this debate to leave as quietly as they can. This is a 30-minute debate, so there will be no opportunity for the Member leading it to wind up at the end.”
“The Prime Minister may know that, this time last week, representatives of those who have been injured seriously by covid vaccines were giving evidence to the covid inquiry, including my constituent, Kate Scott. I hope he also knows that the compensation available to those people is not adequate and is not adequately accessible. I am grateful to the Health and Social Care Secretary for the thought that I know he is giving to how that position may be remedied, but may I ask the Prime Minister to give his personal support to that objective, not just because it is the right thing to do for the people affected, but because it will support the objective that we should all share, which is to maintain public confidence in vaccination?”
“When establishing the political finance regime, Parliament’s explicit intention was to ban foreign donations. However, limitations of the current law mean that it is possible for money from foreign sources to enter the UK electoral system through donations from UK companies. For that reason, the Electoral Commission has called for the laws around company donations to be strengthened, to ensure that parties cannot accept money from companies that have not made enough in the UK to fund their donation or loan, to impose a duty to carry out enhanced “know your donor” checks, and to improve transparency over donations made through unincorporated associations.”
“As the hon. Member will understand, proposals to change the law must come from the Government—with whom, I gently suggest, he has more influence that I do—but he is right that transparency is crucial. It is important that we understand the source of the donations, so that the political parties that accept them can be properly held to account.”
“As I mentioned, there is a consensus in this House that foreign donations should not play a part in British politics, but there are gaps in the law. As I mentioned, the Electoral Commission believes that those gaps can be properly closed through further legislation. It is speaking to the Government about that, and I know that it would be happy discuss the matter further with the right hon. Gentleman, if he so wishes.”
“I remind all Members that if they want to contribute to the debate, they should bob or stand briefly, even if they have already notified the Chair that they want to speak.”
“I know the Minister will want to give the House the greatest possible clarity on what has brought us to this point. The Foreign Secretary has been clear that one of the central considerations for the Government was the likelihood, if not the inevitability, of a binding legal judgment against the UK in this matter. The Minister will know that the judgments of the International Court of Justice are not binding on the United Kingdom when disputes are between the UK and another state which is or was a member of the Commonwealth. That would include Mauritius. I do not expect the Minister to disclose the legal advice that the Government have received, but will he please give the House some more clarity about the nature of the legal jeopardy that the Government perceive here?”
“I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. On behalf of those who have served on the Committee and, in my case, who hope to carry on serving subject to the will of the House, I just say that this moment should not pass without our simply saying thank you to my right hon. Friend for his service. This is an important Committee, as he knows better than anyone. It does a considerable service to the House, and he has done a considerable service to the House himself in serving on it or chairing it with the skill with which he has over nearly a decade.”
“We need to act urgently to ensure that the codes of practice say what we want them to say. At the moment my concern is that Ofcom may simply talk about current good practice and not urge advancements in good practice to be maintained by the platforms. Those are the two areas that I hope the Minister will think about in relation to the draft codes and the need for an ongoing relationship between us in Parliament and Government and Ofcom to ensure that the Act continues to deliver as we want it to.”
“As I read the Act, section 11 says that, yes, we must risk-assess for individual harmful pieces of content, but under section 11(6)(f) we also must risk-assess for the different ways that the service is used, including functionalities or other features of the service that affect how much children use the service—which goes back to a point made earlier. Those are the sorts of things it is important to underline that we expect Ofcom to attend to. I am grateful for the Government’s statement of strategic priorities, but the point made about this being a fast-moving landscape is fundamental. Again in the Act, the codes of practice are vital, because they set out the things that platforms ought to do to keep children safe. If the platforms do the things set out in the codes, they are broadly invulnerable from further regulatory intervention.”
“I do not think it is. We have heard this afternoon that many aspects of risk and harm to children online have nothing to do with the specific nature of an individual piece of content. The Act is important, and I believe it does support Ofcom’s ability to act in relation to harms beyond specific matters of content. For the Minister’s benefit, I have in mind section 11 of the Act on risk assessment—as she will know, because she knows it off by heart. For everybody else here, section 11 deals with risk assessment, and on that a great deal hangs. If we do a risk assessment, the obligation is to do something about risks, and that hangs on what risks are identified in the assessment. So the risk assessment matters.”
“I think, frankly, it is harder to find Conservative Ministers who did not have responsibility for it at some point or another, but what we all tried to do was make sure that the structure of the Act would support the objectives that, again, we all share. I will mention two specific things, which I should be grateful if the Minister would consider. I do not expect her to respond to them this afternoon, but if she would consider them and write to me, I should be very grateful. It seems to me that we need to make sure that as responsibility for implementing the Act moves from us as legislators to Ofcom as the regulator, Government and Parliament and the regulator are on the same page. There are two areas where I am concerned that that might not be the case. The first is the question whether harm to children is all about content.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) not just on securing this debate but on the way in which she made her case. I want to focus on a couple of the more technical aspects of the Online Safety Act, which are important in fulfilling the objectives that we all share this afternoon, which, as she rightly said, are to make sure that the vehicle that we now have in the OSA delivers the right outcomes for the safety of children online. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage); she is right that I had ministerial responsibility for the Act.”
“The Government have justified their inheritance tax changes for farmers on the basis that they are concerned about people gaining short-term tax advantage by buying agricultural land. May I therefore ask whether, instead of the sweeping changes that they made, the Government considered an approach that would limit the IHT exemption to those who could demonstrate that the family farm had been in family ownership for a certain number of years? If that approach was explored, why was it not pursued? If it was not explored, why not?”
“I warmly welcome my hon. Friend the shadow Solicitor General to her post—it is good to see her back—and I thank the Solicitor General for her kind words. I equally warmly welcome the advent of a “failure to prevent” offence in relation to certain kinds of economic crime. The Solicitor General will agree that the purpose of that exercise is not to engender further prosecutions but to change behaviour. Will she therefore reassure the House that she will work with colleagues across Government to ensure that businesses receive all the advice they need about how to put in place the reasonable anti-fraud measures that will give them a defence under that new offence?”
“Member for Swindon South (Heidi Alexander), is sitting beside her—monitoring sentencing more proactively, in particular for newly created offences, so that we can all have confidence that, particularly in relation to those offences, sentences are being passed within anticipated ranges?”
“I do not know for how long the Solicitor General and I will have these exchanges over the Dispatch Boxes, but I am glad to be able to start on a note of consensus. I agree with her that it would not be appropriate to extend the unduly lenient sentence scheme to cover unduly severe sentences, for which, as she says, appeal is already available, but she will agree that the scheme is always capable of improvement. It is currently wholly reactive, responding to requests from others for sentences to be reviewed. May I ask the Solicitor General to consider the merits of her Department, and indeed the Ministry of Justice—I see that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the hon.”
“May I first warmly welcome the Solicitor General to her place, and the Attorney General to his place in the other place, in what the Solicitor General will already know is one of the most interesting and challenging parts of government? While I am at it, I should of course also welcome the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) as the new Chair of the Justice Committee. May I also take the opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), the shadow Solicitor General, on the responsibilities he will shortly take up on behalf of the whole House, which he will do brilliantly after an all-too-short career on the Opposition Front Bench?”
“Like others, I welcome what the Government have already done to extend the permitted development rights for rooftop solar and car park canopies, but may I encourage my hon. Friend to tell others in Government who have responsibility for planning that there are considerable benefits to car park canopies, particularly in hotter summers?”
“I welcome what my right hon. Friend has set out, particularly the efforts that he and his predecessors have made to remove friction from the process of getting the victims of this unforgivable episode the compensation they clearly deserve. But he will recognise that as the system beds down and begins to operate, there is always the risk of that friction creeping back in. Can he make sure that he and his ministerial colleagues keep their eyes on the process and work with Sir Robert Francis to make sure it continues to be without friction, so that people continue to be able to easily access the compensation they need?”