UK Parliament / Open data

Online Safety Bill

Proceeding contribution from Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 19 July 2023. It occurred during Debate on bills on Online Safety Bill.

My Lords, the hour is late and I will not detain the House for long. However, I hope that the fact that we are all still sitting here at the end of a long Report stage, because we care very much about the Bill and what we are trying to achieve, will be noted by my noble friend the Minister, his officials and others who are watching. I thank my noble friend Lady Harding for so ably introducing the amendments, which I absolutely support. I was, perhaps for the first time, going to agree with something the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said a day or so ago: that one thing we and Ofcom need to do much better is to understand the transparency of the algorithms. It is not just algorithms—this is where my knowledge ends—but other design features that make these sites addictive and harmful, and which are outside content. The Bill

will not be capable of addressing even the next five years, let alone beyond that, if we do not reflect the fact that, as my noble friend Lady Harding said, it has already been amended so that one way its objectives are to be achieved is by services being required to focus on safety by design.

I hope very much that my noble friend will take up the invitation, because everybody is tired and has been looking at this Bill for so many hours and months that we are probably all word-blind. We could all do with standing back and thinking, “With the amendments made, how does it all hang together so that ultimately, we keep those we want to keep safe as safe as we possibly can?” On that basis, I support these amendments and look forward to hearing further from the Government about how they hope to keep safe those we all wish to keep safe.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
831 cc2414-6 
Session
2022-23
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Back to top