I congratulate the ministerial team and the army of fantastic officials who have brought this enormous and groundbreaking Bill to its current stage. It is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we will be dealing with. No country has attempted to regulate the internet so comprehensively as we have, and I welcome all the improvements that have been made to bring the Bill to this point. Those people have been extremely brave, and they have listened. There are widely competing interests at stake here, and the navigation of the Bill to a position where it has already achieved a degree of consensus is quite remarkable.
The pressure is on now, not least because we have all got into the habit of describing the Bill as the cavalry coming over the hill to solve all the ills of the online
world. It is worth acknowledging from the outset that it will not be the silver bullet or the panacea for all the challenges that we face online. The point is, however, that it needs to be the best possible starting point, the groundworks to face down both the current threats and, more important, the likely challenges of the future. We all have a huge responsibility to work collaboratively, and not to let this process be derailed by side issues or clouded by party politics. Never has the phrase “not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good” been more appropriate. So much will be at risk if we do not seize the opportunity to make progress.
As the Secretary of State pointed out, the irony is that this vast and complex legislation is completely unnecessary. Search engines and social media platforms already have the ability to reduce the risks of the online world if they want to, and we have seen examples of that. However, while the bottom line remains their priority—while these precious algorithms remain so protected—the harms that are caused will never be tackled. With that in mind, I am more convinced than ever of the need for platforms to be held to account and for Ofcom to be given the powers to ensure that they are.
Inevitably, we will need to spend the next few weeks and months debating the various facets of this issue, but today I want to underline the bigger picture. It has always been an overarching theme that protecting children must be a top priority. One of the toughest meetings that I had as Digital Minister was with Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter Molly took her own life after reading material promoting suicide and self-harm on Instagram. That is a conversation that brings a chill to the heart of any parent. Children are so often the victims of online harms. During lockdown, 47% of children said they had seen content that they wished they had not seen. Over a month-long period, the Internet Watch Foundation blocked at least 8.8 million attempts by UK internet users to access videos and images of children suffering sexual abuse.
There is so much at stake here, and we need to work together to ensure that the Bill is the very best that it can possibly be.
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