Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 13
Thirteenth Report - Preparedness for online safety regulation
Published 21 Feb 2024
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Preparedness for online safety regulation All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
As the regulator for online safety, Ofcom will need to monitor the compliance of over 100,000 service providers, who target the UK market or have a significant number of UK users, and that fall within the scope of the regulation. The majority of regulated service providers will be based overseas and will not have been regulated by Ofcom before. The largest and riskiest service providers will be subject to detailed, one-to-one supervision.22 Ofcom expects around 40 companies will be supervised in this way and it has established a supervision team for this purpose.23 It also said that it had information-gathering powers and would issue requests for information to service providers, co-ordinating these requests carefully to prioritise the information required and take account of the burden on providers.24
From: Public Accounts Committee, Thirteenth Report - Preparedness for online safety regulation (HC 73), 21 February 2024
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 3 May 2024 (deadline 21 April 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with the Committee's recommendations on codes of practice deadlines, compliance monitoring, the fee regime and evaluation, and disagrees with those on complaint feedback and skills audits.
- On codes of practice, the government agrees and states that Ofcom "is on track" to submit its illegal harms and protection of children Codes to the Secretary of State by 26 April 2025.
- On feedback to complainants, the government disagrees, stating that the Act "does not empower Ofcom to adjudicate on individual complaints"; these should go to the provider.
- On the fee regime, the government agrees. Ofcom will consult publicly in Summer 2024, with the aim of implementing the fees regime in the 2026-27 financial year.
- On skills audits, the government disagrees, stating that both organisations "already have effective workforce planning processes", which fulfil the intent of the recommendation.