Tory MPs are planning an amendment to the Online Safety Bill that would make tech executives criminally liable for children’s duty of care failures.
Conservative MP Miriam Cates and other MPs including Sir William Cash, Andrea Leadsom, Julian Lewis, Lia Nici, Tim Loughton, Lee Anderson, and former Home Secretary Priti Patel are backing an amendment (pdf) to new laws regulating online spaces that would introduce powers to jail tech bosses.
In an editorial for The Telegraph on Monday, Cates said she believes that “future generations will look back on children’s online harms the same way we look back on children who were forced to work down mines.”
Cates pointed to TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, and an investigation by the Centre for Countering Hate in December (pdf) that found that TikTok was pushing suicide, self harm, and eating disorder content via its “For You” feed.
Cates also mentioned the case of Molly Russell, a 14-year-old girl from Harrow, northwest London, whose father said showed no obvious signs of mental illness, but who took her own life on Nov. 21, 2017. She had viewed online content related to depression and self-harm for months.
“Without urgent action, we risk passing a Bill that lacks the teeth it so desperately needs to force global tech firms to tackle the systemic issues that harm children online,” Cates wrote.
“That is why Sir Bill Cash and I will this week table an amendment to the Online Safety Bill with the intention of introducing a criminal offence for directors and senior managers, punishable by a maximum of two years in prison, when it can be proved that a breach of the child safety duties has been committed with the consent, connivance or neglect of a senior manager or director,” said Cates.
Access to Online Pornography
Cates, who is part of the Education Select Committee, has also warned of children having access to online pornography.
In an interview with GB News in November, she said: “This is an absolute epidemic and about half of 11 year olds, we think, have seen porn. And so you know, once you get older than that, of course, it’s most children.
“And I think the other thing to say is, as well as it being prolific, the kinds of pornography that that children are seeing is not what we might have seen when we were growing up in a dodgy magazine or something like this.
“This is hardcore, abusive, violent, really horrendous, disgusting stuff that most adults would be absolutely outraged that children have free and easy access to. And it is free and easy,” she added.
The measure will force Google, Twitter, Meta, and others to abide by a code of conduct overseen by online regulator Ofcom, which will also have the power to fine companies failing to comply up to 10 percent of their annual global turnover.
Under the current state of the bill, the biggest social media platforms must carry out risk assessments on the types of harms that could appear on their services and how they plan to address them, setting out how they will do this in their terms of service.
A person using a computer in an undated file photo. Dominic Lipinski/PA Media
There has been fierce debate around bill since it was introduced to Parliament on March 17, 2022 with the aim to “protect children from harmful content such as pornography and limit people’s exposure to illegal content, while protecting freedom of speech.”
Later in the year, Toby Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, an organisation dedicated to upholding free speech in Britain, told The Epoch Times by email that he hoped that if and when bill comes back it will be a “Children’s Online Safety Bill, with all references to protecting adults from ‘legal but harmful’ content removed.”
Last year, writing for the freedom of expression campaign group Index on Censorship, Gavin Millar, QC, warned that everyone who uses the internet will be affected by the Online Safety Bill, which will significantly curtail freedom of expression in a way that has profound consequences.
The bill is due to return to the Commons for its report stage on Jan. 16.
A Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spokesman told The Epoch Times by email: “Protecting children from online harm is a top priority and we share the public’s desire for increased accountability.
“The government will carefully consider all proposed amendments to the world-leading Online Safety Bill and set out its position when Report Stage continues in January.”
The Epoch Times has contacted TikTok for comment.
PA Media and Alexander Zhang contributed to this report.
Owen Evans
Author
Owen Evans is a UK-based journalist covering a wide range of national stories, with a particular interest in civil liberties and free speech.
