My Lords, as well as moving Amendment 70, I shall also speak to Amendments 71AA and 71AB, all of which would add a new clause to the end of Part 3 of the Bill. The amendments are all, in different ways, trying to move forward on the increasing social evil of online abuse and trolling.
Amendment 70 would require the Secretary of State to carry out a review of online abuse, consult widely and report back to Parliament within six months of the passing of the Act. Amendment 71AA would require commercial internet sites that host personal accounts to take responsibility for the material posted on the sites, issuing a safety impact assessment, informing the police of violent threats and removing posts that incite violence. Amendment 71AB would require the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice with which social media platform providers must comply and which would include how they should respond to online abuse and how they should protect children. We believe that our amendments all provide the Government with a road map for action on an issue of huge social concern. They are in themselves probing amendments, but provide practical solutions that we hope the Government will take seriously.
The deluge of online abuse has massive child welfare implications. We know that social media sites are increasingly being used to bully, bribe and intimidate young people. The charity Childnet has identified that one in four teenagers suffered hate incidents online last year, and the incidents are increasing. Teenagers with disabilities and from minority ethnic groups are disproportionately targeted. Schools are reporting that malicious posts, personal abuse and fabricated stories are undermining young people’s self-esteem, distorting their self-image and encouraging risky behaviour. All these trends are having a knock-on effect on child mental health, with demand for support increasing and services unable to cope. For example, a record 235,000 young people accessed mental health services last year, but many others were denied the help they need.
I have focused on young people, but we know that this is also a problem in the adult world. The recent survey of MPs highlighted the threats of violence, appalling levels of anti-Semitism and sexist abuse. The MP Luciana Berger has spoken openly about the torrent of anti-Semitic abuse she has received, including threats of violence. The latest reports show a 36% increase in anti-Semitic incidents last year. Luciana reported that Twitter was slow to act, even when cases were drawn to its attention, and that the police and social media did not co-operate effectively to intervene when allegations were made. Even when prosecutions took place, some of the abuse sites could still be accessed on Twitter. Other women MPs have been subjected to graphic messages threatening rape and murder, and we know that those are not always idle threats, as the tragic death of Jo Cox all too starkly reminded us.
Of course, the abuse directed at MPs is a tiny example of what is happening day in, day out, both to those in public office and to private individuals. Some of these incidents are investigated and some are not.
For example, we know that 155 people were jailed for sending grossly offensive, indecent or obscene material. Equally, we know that that is the extreme end of trolling, and that many other people have reported that their complaints were not taken seriously. It feels as though we are no longer in an agreed area for behaviour. There are no longer clear rules about what is acceptable and there are no longer clear penalties for those that transgress them.
We do not pretend that the measures we are proposing will be a panacea that will resolve these huge social challenges, but we hope that they might be a first step to capturing the scale of the problem and giving people more reassurance about the direction of legislation in the future.
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When a similar amendment calling for a review was considered in the Commons, the Minister, Matt Hancock, passed the problem back to the industry. He said that,
“we expect social media and interactive services to have in place robust processes that can quickly address inappropriate content and abusive behaviour on their sites”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/11/16; col. 1276.]
He went on to say that fast-changing technology made legislating difficult and that the existing action being taken by social media companies was the best approach. This is not an adequate response. The social media sites have been extremely slow to face up to their responsibilities, and they have proved to be very reluctant to intervene and take down abusive content. There is also a huge grey area as to where the police will intervene and what protection the public can expect them to provide.
We believe that initiatives of the kind that we are proposing here are timely and necessary. They would allow a proper debate about the rules of online interaction in the future and would help to clarify the responsibility for who should uphold those rules. This problem will not go away; it will get worse. Our amendments would provide the first step to getting our public norms and standards back in balance, and I hope that noble Lords will support this initiative. I beg to move.