My Lords, as often, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Harding and Lady Kidron, and to support this group of amendments, especially those to which I put my name. I thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for the many amendments they are introducing, including in the last group, on which I was not able to speak for similar reasons to other noble Lords. I especially note Amendment 1, which makes safety by design the object of the Bill and makes implicit the amendments that we are speaking to this afternoon, each of which is consistent with that object of safety by design running through the Bill.
As others have said, this is an immensely complex Bill, and anything which introduces clarity for the technology companies and the users is to be welcomed. I particularly welcome the list in Amendment 281F, which the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has already
read aloud and which spells out very clearly the harm which results from functionality as well as content. It is imperative to have that in the Bill.
In Committee, I referred to the inequality of harms between the user of a service and the forces arrayed against them. You may like to imagine a child of eight, 12 or 15 using one of the many apps we are discussing this afternoon. Now imagine the five As as forces arrayed against them; they are all about functionality, not content. We must consider: the genius of the advertising industry, which is designed on a commercial basis for sales and profit; the fact that processes, applications and smartphones mean that there is 24/7 access to those who use these services and that there is no escape from them; the creation of addictions by various means of rewarding particular features, which have little to do with content and everything to do with design and function; the creative use of algorithms, which will often be invisible and undetectable to adult users and certainly invisible to children; and the creation of the generation of more harms through artificial intelligence, deep fakes and all the harms resulting from functionality. Advertising, access, addiction, algorithms and artificial intelligence are multiplying harms in a range of ways, which we have heard discussed so movingly today.
The quantity of harm means the socialisation, normalisation and creation of environments which are themselves toxic online and which would be completely unacceptable offline. I very much hope, alongside others, that the Government will give way on these amendments and build the naming of functionality and harm into the Bill.