My Lords, I support Amendment 25YR and will speak to Amendment 33A, which is in my name. We certainly need to look much more closely at the duty of online providers and their responsibilities. Amendment 25YR refers to the overarching duty of care that agencies must have to children. Both amendments address the need to oblige these online providers to report incidents on content that are likely to contravene existing regulations and likely to come up to the criminal test as used in prosecutions.
The obligations also include that the content should be removed with immediate effect. As we have already heard, this has proved difficult in many cases and very
many people say that they have tried to have offensive material removed unsuccessfully. Amendment 25YR refers to a code of practice, and mentions that it needs specific terms that prohibit cyberbullying and provide a mechanism for complaints, as well as for the removal of the offending material. The other thing I particularly welcome about this amendment is the obligation to work with educators, technical professionals and parents to ensure that young people have safe use of the internet.
Amendment 33A would extend this principle rather wider. I am sure we all support measures to prevent cyberbullying of children. It is also fair to say that it is not just children who suffer in this way. Many members of minority groups, disabled people and people with learning difficulties—in fact, people who are in some way different—come in for regular forms of abuse. People just like you and me, having disagreed with somebody, come in for torrents of vile, unpleasant and absolutely unacceptable bullying on the internet. I believe that this would not be allowed in newspapers. Somebody would not be allowed to abuse someone else in a pub. The landlord would be responsible and I believe that it is time we took the online providers to task and made them take some responsibility for what appears and what they allow.
The Minister, in replying to my amendment last time mentioned the fact that existing legislation already provides the means to do this. In fact, I think over 30 statutes refer to these measures and have not yet been consolidated—added to which, there are laws coming online that will make it even more difficult to have a consolidated approach, such as the revenge porn legislation and law on streaming of child abuse. It is becoming increasingly complex and we need a much firmer approach.
It was also mentioned that the Home Office had £4.5 million to address this issue; I understand that this was largely for the measures and resources that the police needed to prosecute criminal acts in this way. The last thing the Minister referred to was that the Law Commission was consulting on this issue. My understanding of that consultation is that it is about improving people’s behaviour on the internet. It does not at all address the online providers. This Bill offers an opportunity to address an appalling practice that is becoming even more prevalent, and I hope that the Minister will agree to incorporate these amendments in the Bill.