My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 1, to which I was happy to add my name alongside that of the Minister. I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for tabling the original amendment, and my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger for providing his very helpful opinion on the matter.
I am especially pleased to see that ensuring that services are safe by design and offer a higher standard of protection for children is foundational to the Bill. I want to say a little word about the specificity, as I support the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, in trying to get to the core issue here. Those of your Lordships who travel to Westminster by Tube may have seen TikTok posters saying that
“we’re committed to the safety of teens on TikTok. That’s why we provide an age appropriate experience for teens under 16. Accounts are set to private by default, and their videos don’t appear in public feeds or search results. Direct messaging is also disabled”.
It might appear to the casual reader that TikTok has suddenly decided unilaterally to be more responsible, but each of those things is a direct response to the age-appropriate design code passed in this House in 2018. So regulation does work and, on this first day on Report, I want to say that I am very grateful to the Government for the amendments that they have tabled, and “Please do continue to listen to these very detailed matters”.
With that, I welcome the amendment. Can the Minister confirm that having safety by design in this clause means that all subsequent provisions must be interpreted through that lens and will inform all the decisions of Report and those of Ofcom, and the Secretary of State’s approach to setting and enforcing standards?