UK Parliament / Open data

Online Safety Bill

Proceeding contribution from Baroness Kidron (Crossbench) in the House of Lords on Monday, 10 July 2023. It occurred during Debate on bills on Online Safety Bill.

My Lords, I thank everybody who has spoken for these amendments. I also thank the Minister for our many discussions and apologise to the House for the amount of texts that I sent while we were trying to get stand-alone harms into the Bill—unfortunately, we could not; we were told that it was a red line.

It is with some regret that I ask the House to walk through the Lobbies. Before I do so, I acknowledge that the Government have met me on very many issues, for which I am deeply grateful. There are no concessions on this Bill, only making it better. From my perspective, there is no desire to push anybody anywhere, only to protect children and give citizens the correct relationship with the digital world.

I ask those who were not here when I said this before: please think about your children and grandchildren and other people’s children and grandchildren before you vote against these amendments. They are not only heartfelt, as the Minister said, but have been drafted with reference to many experts and people in the business, who, in their best practice, meet some of these things already. We do not want the Bill, by concentrating on content, to be a drag on what we are pushing forward. We want it to be aspirational and to push the industry into another culture and another place. At a personal level, I am very sorry to the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect, but I would like to test the opinion of the House.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
831 c1560 
Session
2022-23
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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