Source · Select Committees · Petitions Committee
Recommendation 7
7
Accepted
Paragraph: 46
We recommend that the Online Safety Bill should include abuse based on the characteristics protected...
Recommendation
We recommend that the Online Safety Bill should include abuse based on the characteristics protected under the Equality Act and hate crime legislation as priority harmful content in the primary legislation. It should also list hate crime and Violence Against Women and Girls offences as specific relevant offences within the scope of the Bill’s illegal content safety duties and specify the particular offences covered under these headings, as the draft Bill already does for terrorism and Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse offences.
Government Response Summary
The government agrees to list hate crime and Violence Against Women and Girls offences as priority illegal content in the Online Safety Bill, detailing specific included offences, and announced this change on February 5th.
Paragraph Reference:
46
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
We thank the Committee for this recommendation. An overarching principle of the Bill is to ensure that what is unacceptable offline is also unacceptable online. This is why all in-scope services will be required to tackle illegal content and ensure any children using their services are protected from harm. Recognising the influence of larger platforms, the Bill also introduces a categorisation approach to ensure the most used services are accountable to their users. Services providing high-risk, high-reach services (known as Category 1 services) will therefore have a legal obligation with regard to content and activity which is legal for adults but may be harmful to them. However, we do not think it is appropriate for the Government to require platforms to remove or interfere with legal content. This is why the duties are focused on increasing transparency about the risks on Category 1 Service, and ensuring companies set and enforce clear terms of service for how they will treat harmful content. This will enable users to make informed decisions about the platforms they use. This approach is also designed to be proportionate and to not place burdens on smaller services that do not have high reach, recognising that adult users may wish to seek out this content. Moreover, harmful material is likely to cause the most harm on Category 1 services with the largest audiences and a range of high-risk features, where it can spread quickly and reach large numbers of people.