Chris Philp
MP for Croydon South · Conservative · United Kingdom
“The Minister mentioned return numbers, but what she did not mention is that the return of 6,000 small-boat migrants in the past two and a bit years amounts to only 8% of illegal immigrants crossing the channel. That is to say, 92% of illegal immigrants crossing get to stay. There is no deterrent whatsoever in that.”
“I cannot give all the many examples, in the interests of time, but they cited one example in which apparently hundreds of Pakistani men claimed to be gay, based on a letter from an individual claiming to be the sexual partner of all of them. That is quite clearly fabricated with the assistance of immigration lawyers.”
“I was on the beaches of northern France just a few weeks ago, waist deep in water as one such dinghy embarked with about 100 illegal immigrants on it, while 10 members of the French gendarmerie nationale, who we pay for—who the Home Secretary pays for—with £660 million of our money, almost all of it unconditional, stood by and did nothing…”
“Numerous rapes have been committed by small-boat illegal immigrants, including the rape of a girl in Nuneaton aged just 12. The Government are using sleight of hand. They are moving illegal immigrants from hotels into apartments, then granting them asylum on an industrial scale.”
“I thank my constituency neighbour, the Minister for Policing and Crime, for advance sight of her statement. I am sure that we all agree that the right to protest is a fundamental part of our democracy, but the right to protest should never be violently exercised or cause serious disruption to other people.”
“Since the general election, over 80,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the channel, all illegally and all unnecessarily, because France is a safe country—nobody is fleeing persecution in France. Almost 20,000 have crossed this year alone, and 625 crossed yesterday, with more coming in the early hours.”
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“Those things are already priority offences in schedule 7 to the Bill. The Bill went into Committee on Tuesday and I look forward to discussing with the shadow Minister and other Committee members ideas to improve the Bill as it goes through Parliament.”
“Yes, I can categorically give that assurance. There has been some misinformation around this issue. First, there is nothing at all in the Bill that requires social media firms to censor or prohibit speech that is legal and that is harmless to children. Reports to the contrary are quite simply untrue. In fact, there is express provision in the Bill: clause 19(2) expressly provides for a new duty on social media firms to have regard to free speech. Such a provision does not currently exist.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and his long-standing interest in this area. Clause 50 of the Online Safety Bill already exempts recognised news publishers from the provisions of the Bill, and in clause 16 there are particular protections for content of journalistic importance. As we committed on Second Reading, I think in response to one of his interventions, we will be looking to go further to provide a right of appeal in relation to journalistic content. Work is going on to deliver that commitment right now, and we will bring forward further news as soon as possible. I will make sure that my right hon. Friend is the first to hear about it.”
“Ultimately, it is for the courts to decide whether that offence would pick up these kinds of issues that we are talking about around flashing imagery.”
“Q Just to continue the point made by my colleague, you are right to say that Ministry of Justice colleagues are considering the flashing image offence as a separate matter. But would you agree that clause 150, on harmful communications, does criminalise and therefore place into the scope of the Bill communications intended to cause harm to a “likely audience” where such harm is “psychological harm amounting to serious distress”? Therefore, sending somebody a flashing image with the intention of inducing an epileptic fit would be likely caught under this new harmful communications offence in clause 150, even before a separate future offence that may be introduced. Richard Wronka: I think we can certainly understand the argument. I think it is important that the Bill is as clear as possible.”
“The second thing I would say is that there was absolute recognition of how advanced we are in terms of the recruitment of teams, which I touched on before, because we have had the funding available to do it. There are many countries around Europe that have recruited between zero and 10 and are imminently going to take on some of these responsibilities under the Digital Services Act, so I think they are quite jealous. The last thing is that we see continued collaboration with other regulators around the world as a really important strand, and we welcome the information-sharing powers that are in the Bill. There are some parallels, and we want to take similar approaches on areas such as transparency, where we can collaborate and work together. I think it is important—”
“Q I would suggest that the definition in clause 150 would cover epilepsy trolling. You mentioned that you met recently with European regulators. Briefly, because we are short of time, were there any particular messages, lessons or insights you picked up in those meetings that might be of interest to the Committee? Kevin Bakhurst: Yes, there were a number, and liaising with European regulators and other global regulators in this space is a really important strand of our work. It often said that this regime is a first globally. I think that is true. This is the most comprehensive regime, and it is therefore potentially quite challenging for the regulator. That is widely recognised.”
“It is not a silver bullet, but for too long children have been using entirely inappropriate services. The No. 1 recommendation from the 16 to 21-year-olds, when asked what they wish their parents had known and what we should do, was age assurance, if you are trying to protect a younger sibling or are looking at children, so I was pleased to see that. Companies cannot hope to protect children if they do not know who the children are on their platforms, so I was extremely pleased to see that.”
“Q Can I start by thanking the NSPCC and you, Dame Rachel, and your office for the huge contribution that you have made to the Bill as it has developed? A number of changes have been made as a result of your interventions, so I would just like to start by putting on the record my thanks to both of you and both your organisations for the work that you have done so far. Could you outline for the Committee the areas where you think the Bill, as currently drafted, contains the most important provisions to protect children? Dame Rachel de Souza : I was really glad to see, in the rewrite of the Online Safety Bill, a specific reference to the role of age assurance to prevent children from accessing harmful content. That has come across strongly from children and young people, so I was very pleased to see that.”
“Our engagement is very much about saying, “How can we make sure this Bill is the best it can possibly be?” But that is on the bedrock of that systemic approach, which is fundamental if we are to see a culture shift in these companies and an emphasis on safety by design—designing out problems that do not have to happen. I have engaged with companies where child safety considerations are just not there. One company told me that grooming data is a bad headline today and tomorrow’s chip shop wrapper. A systemic approach is the key to ensuring that we start to address that balance.”
“We should not lose sight of the fact that, although this Bill is doing many things, first and foremost it will become a crucial part of the child protection system for decades to come, so it is a hugely important and welcome intervention in that respect. What is so important about this Bill is that it adopts a systemic approach. It places clear duties on platforms to go through the process of identifying the reasonably foreseeable harms and requiring that reasonable steps be taken to mitigate them. That is hugely important from the point of view of ensuring that this legislation is future-proofed. I know that many companies have argued for a prescriptive checklist, and then it is job done—a simple compliance job—but a systemic approach is hugely important because it is the basis upon which companies have very clear obligations.”
“This Bill is a really good step in that direction; it will hold them to account and ensure they get children offline. That was a critically important one for me. I was also pleased to see the holding to account of companies, which is very important. On full coverage of pornography, I was pleased to see the offence of cyber-flashing in the Bill. Again, it is particularly about age assurance. What I would say is that nudge is not working, is it? We need this in the Bill now, and we need to get it there. In my bit of work with those 2,000 young people, we asked what they had seen in the last month, and 40% of them have not had bad images taken down. Those aspects of the Bill are key. Andy Burrows: This is a landmark Bill, so we thank you and the Government for introducing it.”
“Q Sorry to interject, Dame Rachel, but do you agree that it is not just about stopping under-18s viewing pornography; it also includes stopping children under 13 accessing social media entirely, as per those companies’ purported terms and conditions, which are frequently flouted? Dame Rachel de Souza: Absolutely. I have called together the tech companies. I have met the porn companies, and they reassured me that as long as they were all brought into the scope of this Bill, they would be quite happy as this is obviously a good thing. I brought the tech companies together to challenge them on their use of age assurance. With their artificial intelligence and technology, they know the age of children online, so they need to get those children offline.”
“Andy Burrows: The super-complaint mechanism is part of the well-established arrangements that we see in other sectors, so we are very pleased to see that that is included in the Bill. I think there is scope to go further and look at how the Bill could mirror the arrangements that we see in other sectors—I mentioned the energy, postal and water sectors earlier as examples—so that the statutory user advocacy arrangements for inherently vulnerable children, including children at risk of sexual abuse, mirror the arrangements that we see in those other sectors. That is hugely important as a point of principle, but it is really helpful and appropriate for ensuring that the legislation can unlock the positive regulatory outcomes that we all want to see, so I think it contributes towards really effective regulatory design.”
“Subsection (4) makes it clear that the entities nominated to be an authorised super-complainant would include “a body representing the interests of users of regulated services”, which would obviously include children. If an organisation such as the Office of the Children’s Commissioner or the NSPCC—I am obviously not prejudicing the future process—were designated as a super-complainant that was able to bring super-complaints to Ofcom, would that address your point about the need for proper advocacy for children? Dame Rachel de Souza: Absolutely. I stumbled over that a bit when Maria asked me the question, but we absolutely need people who work with children, who know children and are trusted by children, and who can do that nationally in order to be the super-complainants. That is exactly how I would envisage it working.”
“Q Thank you. I obviously strongly agree with those comments. I would like to turn to a one or two points that came up in questioning, and then I would like to probe a couple of points that did not. Dame Rachel mentioned advocacy and ensuring that the voice of particular groups—in this context, particularly that of children—is heard. In that context, I would like to have a look at clause 140, which relates to super-complaints. Subsection (4) says that the Secretary of State can, by regulations, nominate which organisations are able to bring super-complaints. These are complaints whereby you go to Ofcom and say that there is a particular company that is failing in its systemic duties.”
“Dame Rachel de Souza: Yes, and I was so pleased to see that. The regulator needs to have teeth for it to have any effect—I think that is what we are saying. I want named senior managers to be held accountable for breaches of their safety duties to children, and I think that senior leaders should be liable to criminal sanctions when they do not uphold their duty of care to children.”
“Q Thank you, Andy. I am conscious of the time, so I will be brief with my final three questions. You made a valid point about large social media platforms receiving complaints generally, but in this case from children, about inappropriate content, such as photographs of them on a social media platform that do not get taken down—the complaint gets ignored, or it takes a very long time. In clause 18, we have duties on the complaints procedures that the big social media firms will now have to follow. I presume that you would join me in urging Ofcom to ensure that how it enforces the duties in clause 18 includes ensuring that big social media firms are responsive and quick in how they deal with complaints. Children are specifically referred to in the clause—for example, in subsection (3) and elsewhere.”
“We really welcome the simplified child sexual exploitation warning notices in the Bill that will give Ofcom the power to intervene when companies have not demonstrated that they have been able to introduce end-to-end encryption in a safe and effective way. One area in which we would like to see the Bill—”
“Dame Rachel de Souza: I am going to say yes and yes. Andy Burrows: I will say yes and yes as well. The point about end-to-end encryption is hugely important. Let us be clear: we are not against end-to-end encryption. Where we have concerns is about the risk profile that end-to-end encryption introduces, and that risk profile, when we are talking about it being introduced into social networking services and bundled with other sector functionality, is very high and needs to be mitigated. About 70% of child abuse reports that could be lost with Meta going ahead. That is 28 million reports in the past six months, so it is very important that the Bill can require companies to demonstrate that if they are running services, they can acquit themselves in terms of the risk assessment processes.”
“Q Good—thank you. I want to say something about gaming, because Kirsty Blackman asked about it. If messages are being sent back and forth in a gaming environment, which is probably the concern, those are in scope of the Bill, because they are user-to-user services. I will put my last two questions together. Are you concerned about the possibility that encryption in messaging services might impede the automatic scanning for child exploitation and abuse images that takes place, and would you agree that we cannot see encryption happen at the expense of child safety? Secondly, in the context of the Molly Russell reference earlier, are you concerned about the way that algorithms can promote and essentially force-feed children very harmful content? Those are two enormous questions, and you have only two minutes to answer them, so I apologise.”
“Q Thank you for coming to give evidence to the Committee. On the question about user choice around identity verification, is this not conceptually quite similar to the existing blue tick regime that Twitter operates successfully? Katy Minshall: As I say, we share your policy objective of giving users more choice. For example, at present we are testing a tool where Twitter automatically blocks abusive accounts on your behalf. We make the distinction based on an account’s behaviour and not on whether it has verified itself in some way.”
“A public figure might think, “Actually, I really appreciate that I get retweets, likes and people replying to my tweets,” but if only a small number of users have taken the opportunity to verify themselves, that is potentially a disincentive even to use this system in the first place—and all the while we were creating a system, we could have been investing in or trying to develop new solutions, such as safety mode, which I described and which tries to prevent abusive users from interacting with you.”
“I totally accept that point, but it would mean that some people would be able to reply to Boris Johnson and others would not. I know we are short on time, but it is worth pointing out that in a YouGov poll in April, nearly 80% of people said that they would not choose to provide ID documents to access certain websites. The requirements that you describe are based on the assumption that lots of people will choose to do it, when in reality that might not be the case.”
“Q Well, I’d be grateful if you applied that to my account as quickly as possible! I do not think that the concept would necessarily operate as you suggested at the beginning. You suggested that people might end up not seeing content posted by the Prime Minister or another public figure. The concept is that, assuming a public figure would choose to verify themselves, content that they posted would be visible to everybody because they had self-verified. The content in the other direction may or may not be, depending on whether the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition chose to see all content or just verified content, but their content—if they verified themselves—would be universally visible, regardless of whatever choice anyone else exercised. Katy Minshall: Yes, sorry if I was unclear.”
“As I said, we publish every quarter how many suspected under-13s get removed.”
“Q I want to move on to the next question because we only have two minutes left. Ben, you talked about the age verification measures that TikTok currently takes. For people who do not come via an age-protected app store, it is basically self-declared. All somebody has to do is type in a date of birth. My nine-year-old children could just type in a date of birth that was four years earlier than their real date of birth, and off they would go on TikTok. Do you accept that that is wholly inadequate as a mechanism for policing the age limit of 13? Ben Bradley: That is not the end of our age assurance system; it is just the very start. Those are the first two things that we have to prevent sign-up, but we are also proactive in surfacing and removing under-age accounts.”
“Q If I understood your answer correctly, that is only if a particular piece of content comes to the attention of your moderators. I imagine that only 0.01% or some tiny fraction of content on TikTok comes to the attention of your moderators. Ben Bradley: It is based on a range of signals that they have available to them. As I said, we publish a number every quarter. In the last quarter, we removed 14 million users across the globe who were suspected to be under the age of 13. That is evidence of how seriously we take the issue. We publish that information because we think it is important to be transparent about our efforts in this space, so that we can be judged accordingly.”
“Public interest should always be considered when developing policies. From the perspective of the Bill, I would focus on freedom of expression for everyone, and not limit it to content that could be related to political discussions or journalistic content. As Ben said, there are already wider freedom of expression duties in the Bill.”
“Q Thank you. Forgive me for moving on in the interests of time. Earlier, we debated content of democratic importance and the protections that that and free speech have in the Bill. Do you agree that a requirement to have some level of consistency in the way that that is treated is important, particularly given that there are some glaring inconsistencies in the way in which social media firms treat content at the moment? For example, Donald Trump has been banned, while flagrant disinformation by the Russian regime, lying about what they are doing in Ukraine, is allowed to propagate—including the tweets that I drew to your attention a few weeks ago, Katy. Katy Minshall: I agree that freedom of expression should be top of mind as companies develop safety and policy solutions.”
“Q To be clear, those freedom of expression duties in clause 19(2) do apply to everyone. Katy Minshall: Sorry, but I do not know the Bill in those terms, so you would have to tell me the definition.”
“Q Welcome to the Committee’s proceedings and thank you for joining us this afternoon. I would like to start on the question of the algorithmic promotion of content. Last week, I met with the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, who spoke in detail about she had found when working for Facebook, so I will start with you, Richard. On the question of transparency, which other Members of the Committee have touched on, would you have any objection to sharing all the information you hold internally with trusted researchers? Richard Earley: What information are you referring to?”
“I have worked at Facebook—now Meta—for almost five years, and nobody at Facebook has any obligation, any moral incentive, to do anything other than provide people with the best, most positive experience on our platform, because we know that if we do not give people a positive experience, through algorithms or anything else, they will leave our platform and will not use it. They tell us that and they do it, and the advertisers who pay for our services do not want to see that harmful content on our platforms either. All of our incentives are aligned with yours, which are to ensure that our users have a safe and positive experience on our platforms.”
“Data, in particular on the operation of algorithmic promotion of particular kinds of content. Richard Earley: We already do things like that through the direct opportunity that anyone has to see why a single post has been chosen for them in their feed. You can click on the three dots next to any post and see that. For researcher access and support, as I mentioned, we have contributed to the publishing of more than 400 reports over the last year, and we want to do more of that. In fact, the Bill requires Ofcom to conduct a report on how to unlock those sorts of barriers, which we think should be done as soon as possible. Yes, in general we support that sort of research. I would like say one thing, though.”
“In fact, when we made that switch in 2018, we saw a decrease in more than 50 million hours of Facebook use every day as a result of that change. That is not the action of a company that is just focused on maximising engagement; it is a company that is focused on giving our users a positive experience on our platform.”
“Many of them, in fact, do the opposite of what you have just described: they identify posts that might be violent, misleading or harmful and reduce the prevalence of them within our feed products, our recommendation services and other parts of the service. We optimise the algorithm that shows people things for something called meaningful social interaction. That is not just pure engagement; in fact, its focus—we made a large change to our algorithms in 2018 to focus on this—is on the kinds of activities online that research shows are correlated with positive wellbeing outcomes. Joining a group in your local area or deciding to go to an event that was started by one of your friends—that is what our algorithms are designed to promote.”
“Q Yet the algorithms that select particular content for promotion are optimised for user engagement —views, likes and shares—because that increases user stickiness and keeps them on the site for longer. The evidence seems to suggest that, despite what people say in response to the surveys you have just referenced, what they actually interact with the most—or what a particular proportion of the population chooses to interact with the most—is content that would be considered in some way extreme, divisive, or so on, and that the algorithms, which are optimised for user engagement, notice that and therefore uprank that content. Do you accept that your algorithms are optimised for user engagement? Richard Earley: I am afraid to say that that is not correct. We have multiple algorithms on our services.”
“Q You have alluded to some elements of the algorithmic landscape, but do you accept that the dominant feature of the algorithm that determines which content is most promoted is based on user engagement, and that the things you have described are essentially second-order modifications to that? Richard Earley: No, because as I just said, when we sent the algorithm this instruction to focus on social interaction it actually decreased the amount of time people spent on our platform.”
“Q It might have decreased it, but the meaningful social interaction score is, not exclusively, as you said, but principally based on user engagement, isn’t it? Richard Earley: As I said, it is about ensuring that people who spend time on our platform come away feeling that they have had a positive experience.”
“Q That does not quite answer the question. Richard Earley: I think that a really valuable part of the Bill that we are here to discuss is the fact that Ofcom will be required, and we in our risk assessments will be required, to consider the impact on the experience of our users of multiple different algorithms, of which we have hundreds. We build those algorithms to ensure that we reduce the prevalence of harmful content and give people the power to connect with those around them and build community. That is what we look forward to demonstrating to Ofcom when this legislation is in place.”
“Q Yes, but in her testimony to, I think, the Joint Committee and the US Senate, in a document that she released to The Wall Street Journ a l , and in our conversation last week, Frances Haugen suggested that the culture inside Facebook, now Meta, is that measures that tend to reduce user engagement do not get a very sympathetic hearing internally. However, I think we are about to run out of time. I have one other question, which I will direct, again, to Richard. Forgive me, Katie and Becky, but it is probably most relevant for Meta.”
“While the Bill is proportionate in its measures, it is not designed to impose undue burdens on companies that are not high risk. I have one more question for Richard. I think Katie was saying that she wanted to make a statement?”
“What will they have to do to change it? In principle, that terminology is possibly sufficient, but it kind of depends in practice what it actually means in terms of those codes of practice. We do not yet know what it means, because all we have in the Bill is about age assurance or age verification.”
“Professor McGlynn, do you think that standard set out there— “the result that children are not normally able to access the service or that part of it” —is sufficiently high to address the concerns we have been discussing in the last few minutes? Professor Clare McGlynn: At the moment, the wording with regard to age assurance in part 5—the pornography providers—is slightly different, compared with the other safety duties. That is one technicality that could be amended. As for whether the provision you just talked about is sufficient, in truth I think it comes down, in the end, to exactly what is required, and of course we do not yet know what the nature of the age verification or age assurance requirements will actually be and what that will actually mean. I do not know what that will actually mean for something like Twitter.”
“Q Thank you, Sir Roger, and thank you to the witnesses for coming in and giving very clear, helpful and powerful evidence to the Committee this afternoon. On the question of age verification or age assurance that we have just spoken about, clause 11(14) of the Bill sets a standard in the legislation that will be translated into the codes of practice by Ofcom. It says that, for the purposes of the subsection before on whether or not children can access a particular set of content, a platform is “only entitled to conclude that it is not possible for children to access a service…if there are systems or processes in place…that achieve the result that children are not normally able to access the service”. Ofcom will then interpret in codes of practice what that means practically.”
“Q Yes, you are quite right that the Ofcom codes of practice will be important. As far as I can see, the difference between clauses 68 and 11(14) is that one uses the word “access” and the other uses the word “encounter”. Is that your analysis of the difference as well? Professor Clare McGlynn: My understanding as well is that those terms are, at the moment, being interpreted slightly differently in terms of the requirements that people will be under. I am just making a point about it probably being easier to harmonise those terms.”
“Professor Clare McGlynn: I read your piece in The Times this morning, which was a robust defence of the legislation, in that it said that it is no threat to freedom of speech, but I hope you read my quote tweet, in which I emphasised that there is a strong case to be made for regulation to free the speech of many others, including women and girls and other marginalised people. For example, the current lack of regulation means that women’s freedom of speech is restricted because we fear going online because of the abuse we might encounter. Regulation frees speech, while your Bill does not unduly limit freedom of speech.”
“Q Thank you very much. I wanted to ask you a different question—one that has not come up so far in this session but has been raised quite frequently in the media. It concerns freedom of speech. This is probably for Professor McGlynn again. I am asking you this in your capacity as a professor of law. Some commentators have suggested that the Bill will have an adverse impact on freedom of speech. I do not agree with that. I have written an article in The Times today making that case, but what is your expert legal analysis of that question?”
“Free speech is always regulated, and it is about how we choose to regulate it. I would keep making the point that the speech of women and girls and other marginalised people is minimised at the moment, so we need regulation to free it. The House of Lords and various other reports about free speech and regulation, for example, around extreme pornography, talk about regulation as being human-rights-enhancing. That is the approach we need to take.”
“Q Okay, I take your second point, but did you agree with the point that the Bill as crafted does not restrict what you would ordinarily consider to be free speech? Professor Clare McGlynn: There are many ways in which speech is regulated. The social media companies already make choices about what speech is online and offline. There are strengths in the Bill, such as the ability to challenge when material is taken offline, because that can impact on women and girls as well. They might want to put forward a story about their experiences of abuse, for example. If that gets taken down, they will want to raise a complaint and have it swiftly dealt with, not just left in an inbox. There are lots of ways in which speech is regulated, and the idea of having a binary choice between free speech and no free speech is inappropriate.”