My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and his cosignatories for bringing this comprehensive amendment before us this afternoon. As we have heard, this is an issue that was debated at length in the Online Safety Act. It is, in effect, unfinished business. I pay tribute to the noble Lords who shepherded that Bill through the House so effectively. It is important that we tie up the
ends of all the issues. The noble Lord made significant progress, but those issues that remain unresolved come, quite rightly, before us now, and this Bill is an appropriate vehicle for resolving those outstanding issues.
As has been said, the heart of the problem is that tech companies are hugely protective of the data they hold. They are reluctant to share it or to give any insight on how their data is farmed and stored. They get to decide what access is given, even when there are potentially illegal consequences, and they get to judge the risk levels of their actions without any independent oversight.
During the course of the Online Safety Bill, the issue was raised not only by noble Lords but by a range of respected academics and organisations representing civil society. They supported the cross-party initiative from Peers calling for more independent research, democratic oversight and accountability into online safety issues. In particular, as we have heard, colleagues identified a real need for approved researchers to check the risks of non-compliance in the regulated sectors of UK law by large tech companies—particularly those with large numbers of children accessing the services. This arose because of the increasing anecdotal evidence that children’s rights were being ignored or exploited. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, have given an excellent exposition of the potential and real harms that continue to be identified by the lack of regulatory action on these issues.
Like other noble Lords, I welcome this amendment. It is well-crafted, takes a holistic approach to the problem, makes the responsibilities of the large tech companies clear and establishes a systematic research base of vetted researchers to check compliance. It also creates important criteria for the authorisation of those vetted researchers: the research must be in the public interest, must be transparent, must be carried out by respected researchers, and must be free from commercial interests so that companies cannot mark their own homework. As has been said, it mirrors the provisions in the EU Digital Services Act and ensures comparable research opportunities. That is an opportunity for the UK to maintain its status as one of the top places in the world for expertise on the impact of online harms.
Since the Online Safety Act was passed, the Information Commissioner has been carrying out further work on the children’s code of practice. The latest update report says:
“There has been significant progress and many organisations have started to assess and mitigate the potential privacy risks to children on their platforms”.
That is all well and good but the ICO and other regulators are still reliant on the information provided by the tech companies on how their data is used and stored and how they mitigate risk. Their responsibilities would be made much easier if they had access to properly approved and vetted independent research information that could inform their decisions.
I am grateful to noble Lords for tabling this amendment. I hope that the Minister hears its urgency and necessity and that he can assure us that the Government intend to table a similar amendment on Report—as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, no more “wait and see”. The time has come to
stop talking about this issue and take action. Like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I was in awe of the questions that the noble Baroness came up with and do not envy the Minister in trying to answer them all. She asked whether, if necessary, it could be done via a letter but I think that the time has come on this and some other issues to roll up our sleeves, get round the table and thrash it out. We have waited too long for a solution and I am not sure that exchanges of letters will progress this in the way we would hope. I hope that the Minister will agree to convene some meetings of interested parties—maybe then we will make some real progress.