Jeremy Wright MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Apr 2025 · Royal British Legion · Hansard source

  More

  Order. We have three speakers left. I ask you to limit yourselves to three minutes each, and then, with the forbearance of the Front Bench speakers, we will get everybody in.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  The Secretary of State will recognise that it is very difficult for private landowners and local authorities along the line of High Speed 2 to plan future development when they do not know what will happen to land that is necessary for construction but is not needed for the long-term operation of the line. A land disposal strategy for HS2 is overdue. Can she produce one urgently? When she does so, will she seek opportunities to benefit communities like those I represent, which are suffering the disruption of the line but will not benefit from its operation?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Disruption at Heathrow · Hansard source

  More

  The Secretary of State has, perfectly fairly, said that some of the specific learning about the incident will have to wait until we know more, but she also said that she has been told that, as a matter of design, the back-up power arrangements for Heathrow were not intended to cover all airport operations until, as we know, a significant reconfiguration took place over a matter of hours. Will she assure that she can and will begin the work of considering whether that is the right position, not just for Heathrow but for other airports? I make no predetermination on her behalf on whether it is or is not, but she can surely do that now without waiting for the specifics of this incident all to be clear.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Sentencing Council Guidelines · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister is right to stress the independence of the Sentencing Council, but would he accept that he cannot criticise the shadow Secretary of State for having a view on these draft guidelines when the Secretary of State herself did exactly that? I also ask him to consider in this debate the real purpose of a pre-sentence report. It is there to give more information about an offender, but it also enables a judge to impose a non-custodial sentence if they believe that is the appropriate course. It is hard for a sentencer to do that, unless someone has been assessed as suitable for a community penalty. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this debate, is it not important that the Sentencing Council makes clear that what is important in deciding whether to ask for a pre-sentence report is whether that extra information is needed and not anything else, including protected characteristics?

• 17 Mar 2025 · Supporting Disabled People into Work · Hansard source

  More

  As the Secretary of State looks at reform, is she considering the PIP reassessment process? For people whose conditions will not get any better, would it not be sensible to relieve them of the burden of that reassessment process unless they wish to be reassessed? That would be less distressing for them, it would save money in the system, and it would allow people who do need reassessment to be reassessed faster.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Community Theatre · Hansard source

  More

  I will call Lisa Smart to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Community Theatre · Hansard source

  More

  That brings the curtain down on this debate. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have participated, both in leading roles and walk-on parts. Question put and agreed to .

• 12 Mar 2025 · Use of Stop and Search · Hansard source

  More

  With a little more than the usual two minutes, I call Saqib Bhatti to wind up the debate.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Criminal Justice System Efficiency: Technology · Hansard source

  More

  The Lord Chancellor will accept that the effective use of electronic tags will not only make the criminal justice system more efficient, but mitigate the need for expensive prison places. Does she agree that two things are necessary for that effective use? First, the tags must be technically reliable; secondly, officials in her Department must have the commercial capacity to manage the contracts efficiently. If she agrees, what can be done to improve both those things?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Market Towns: Cultural Heritage · Hansard source

  More

  I thank all colleagues for their brevity. We now move to the Front Benchers.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Market Towns: Cultural Heritage · Hansard source

  More

  In the spirit of working together, I will call the Front Benchers at 10.28 am. There are still eight people who want to speak, so I am afraid speeches will have to be less than two minutes or someone will be disappointed.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Market Towns: Cultural Heritage · Hansard source

  More

  If she can limit herself to one minute, I call Catherine Fookes.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Market Towns: Cultural Heritage · Hansard source

  More

  Order. I thank the hon. Member for introducing the debate. I remind all Back-Bench Members that if they want to contribute, they should keep bobbing so I know. I am afraid insights will have to be limited to about two and a half minutes if we are to get everyone in.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Market Towns: Cultural Heritage · Hansard source

  More

  I am grateful for the exemplary time discipline so far.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Community Sport Facilities · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister, who has worked a double shift this morning. Question put and agreed to.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Community Sport Facilities · Hansard source

  More

  I will call Andy MacNae to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for a 30-minute debate.

• 27 Feb 2025 · Strategy and Policy Statement · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is right that more can always be done to ensure that all those eligible for the franchise, which now includes a substantial number of overseas voters, understand what they are entitled to, and that we offer them all the assistance we can to participate in the process.

• 27 Feb 2025 · Strategy and Policy Statement · Hansard source

  More

  The first and current strategy and policy statement for the Electoral Commission was published by the previous Government in February last year. The commission passed its report to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission this week, setting out how it has had regard to the statement as required by law. The commission will publish that report in due course.

• 27 Feb 2025 · Strategy and Policy Statement · Hansard source

  More

  I can tell the hon. Gentleman that that is the commission’s view. He will know that the commission remains opposed to the principle of a strategy and policy statement, and views such a mechanism as inconsistent with its independent role.

• 26 Feb 2025 · British Indian Ocean Territory · Hansard source

  More

  The right hon. Lady is absolutely entitled to explain the Government’s position, but if her argument is that there is legal uncertainty, she had better get used to it, because there is legal uncertainty about a lot of things. If her argument is that lots of people disagree with the UK’s position, she had also better get used to that. As I have understood the Government’s position, it has thus far been that the advisory opinion we have received may one day become a binding judgment against the UK, obliging the UK Government to act as they now seek to do. I want to know from where that binding judgment may come, and I have not yet heard an answer.

• 26 Feb 2025 · British Indian Ocean Territory · Hansard source

  More

  Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who are led by lawyers—there is nothing wrong with that—should at least get the law right? If there is legal jeopardy here, does she agree that we should understand what that jeopardy is? She knows that the International Court of Justice cannot make a binding ruling against the UK on this matter because Mauritius is a member of the Commonwealth and we have not accepted its jurisdiction in those circumstances. If there is legal jeopardy that makes a deal necessary, does she agree that this is a good moment for the Minister to explain to us precisely what that legal jeopardy is?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That this House has considered the implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and I am grateful for the opportunity to open the debate. Let me start with some positives. The Online Safety Act 2023 is certainly not the last word on the subject, but it is, in my view, a big step forward in online safety, providing a variety of tools that allow the regulator to make the online world safer, particularly for children. I remain of the view that Ofcom is the right regulator for the task, not least because it can start its work sooner as an existing regulator and given the overlap with its existing work—for example, on video-sharing platforms. I also have great regard for the diligence and expertise of many at Ofcom who are now charged with these new responsibilities. However, I am concerned that Ofcom appears unwilling to use all the tools that the Act gives it to make the online world a safer place, and I am concerned that the Government appear unwilling to press Ofcom to be more ambitious. I want to explain why I am concerned, why I think it matters and what can be done about it. Let me start with what I am worried about. There was a great deal of consensus about the passing of the Online Safety Act, and all of us involved in its development recognised both the urgent need to act on online harms and the enormity of the task. That means that the eventual version of the Act does not cover everything that is bad online and, of necessity, sets up a framework within which the regulator is required to fill in the gaps and has considerable latitude in doing so. The architecture of that framework is important. Because we recognised that emerging harms would be more clearly and quickly seen by online services themselves than by legislators or regulators, in broad terms the Act requires online services to properly assess the risk of harms arising on their service and then to mitigate those risks. My concern is that Ofcom has taken an unnecessarily restrictive view of the harms it is asking services to assess and act on and, indeed, a view that is inconsistent with the terms of the Act. Specifically, my conversations with Ofcom suggest to me that it believes the Act only gives it power to act on harms that arise from the viewing of individual pieces of bad content. I do not agree, and let me explain why. With limited exceptions, if an online service has not identified a risk in its risk assessment, it does not have to take action to reduce or eliminate that risk, so which risks are identified in the risk assessment really matters. That is why the Act sets out how a service should go about its risk assessment and what it should look out for. For services that may be accessed by children, the relevant risk assessment duties are set out in section 11 of the Act. Section 11(6) lists the matters that should be taken into account in a children’s risk assessment. Some of those undoubtedly refer to content, but some do not. Section 11(6)(e), for example, refers to “the extent to which the design of the service, in particular its functionalities” affects the risk of adults searching for and contacting children online. That is not a risk related to individual bits of content. It is worth looking at section 11(6)(f), which, if colleagues will indulge me, I want to quote in full. It says that a risk assessment should include “the different ways in which the service is used, including functionalities or other features of the service that affect how much children use the service (for example a feature that enables content to play automatically), and the impact of such use on the level of risk of harm that might be suffered by children”. I think that that paragraph is talking about harms well beyond individual pieces of bad content. It is talking about damaging behaviours deliberately instigated by the design and operation of the online service, and the way its algorithms are designed to make us interact with it. That is a problem not just with excessive screen time, on which Ofcom has been conspicuously reluctant to engage, but with the issue of children being led from innocent material to darker and darker corners of the internet. We know that that is what happened to several of the young people whose suicides have been connected to their online activity. Algorithms designed to keep the user on the service for longer make that risk greater, and Ofcom seems reluctant to act on them despite the Act giving it powers to do so. We can see that from the draft code of practice on harm to children, which Ofcom published at the end of last year. This debate is timely because the final version of the code of practice is due in the next couple of months. If Ofcom is to change course and broaden its characterisation of the risks that online services must act on—as I believe it should—now is the time. Many of the children’s welfare organisations that we all worked with so closely to deliver the Act in the first place are saying the same. If Ofcom’s view of the harms to children on which services should act falls short of what the Act covers, why does it matter? Again, the answer lies in the architecture of the Act. The codes of practice that Ofcom drafts set out actions that services could take to meet their online safety duties. If they do the things that they set out, they are taken to have met the relevant safety duty and are safe from regulatory penalty. If in the code of practice Ofcom asks services to act only on content harms, it is highly likely that that is all services will do because it is compliance with the code that provides regulatory immunity. If it is not in the code, services probably will not do it. Codes that ignore some of the Act’s provisions to improve children’s safety means the online services that children use will ignore those provisions, too. We should all be worried about that. That brings me to the second area where I believe that Ofcom has misinterpreted the Act. Throughout the passage of the Act, Parliament accepted that the demands that we make of online services to improve the safety of their users would have to be reasonable, not least to balance the risks of online activity with its benefits. In later iterations of the legislation, that balance is represented by the concept of proportionality in the measures that the regulator could require services to take. Again, Ofcom has been given much latitude to interpret proportionality. I am afraid that I do not believe it has done so consistently with Parliament’s intention. Ofcom’s view appears to be that for a measure to be proportionate there must be a substantial amount of evidence to demonstrate its effectiveness. That is not my reading of it. Section 12 of the Act sets out the obligation on services to take proportionate measures to mitigate and manage risks to children. Section 13(1) offers more on what proportionate means in that context. It states: “In determining what is proportionate for the purposes of section 12, the following factors, in particular, are relevant— (a) all the findings of the most recent children’s risk assessment (including as to levels of risk and as to nature, and severity, of potential harm to children), and (b) the size and capacity of the provider of a service.” In other words, a measure that would be ruinously expensive or disruptive, especially for a smaller service, and which would deliver only a marginal safety benefit, should not be mandated, but a measure that brings a considerable safety improvement in responding to an identified risk, even if expensive, might well be justified. Similarly, when it comes to measures recommended in a code of practice, schedule 4(2)(b) states those measures must be “sufficiently clear, and at a sufficiently detailed level, that providers understand what those measures entail in practice”, and schedule 4(2)(c) states that recommended measures must be “proportionate and technically feasible”, based on the size and capacity of the service. We should not ask anything of services they cannot do, and it should be clear what they have to do to comply. That is what the Act says proportionality means. I cannot find in the Act support for the idea that we have to know something will work before we try it in order for that action to be proportionate and therefore recommended in a code of practice. Why does that disagreement on interpretation matter? Because we should want online platforms and services to be innovative in how they fulfil their safety objectives, especially in the fast-moving landscape of online harms. I fear that Ofcom’s interpretation of proportionality, as requiring evidence of effectiveness, will achieve the opposite. There will only be an evidence base on effectiveness for a measure that is already being taken somewhere, and that has been taken for long enough to generate that evidence of effectiveness. If we limit recommended actions to those that have evidence of success, we effectively set the bar for safety measures at current best practice. Given the safe harbour offered by measures recommended in codes of practice, that could mean services being deterred from innovating, because they get the protection only by doing things that are already being done.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

  More

  I am grateful to everyone who has spoken in the debate. We have talked about the consensus there was in the passage of the Online Safety Bill. I think it is fair to say that that consensus is broadly still present, based on what Members have said this morning, and I am grateful for it. There is a need to get this Act implemented. I accept what the Minister says about that, and others have made the same point: we do not want to make the best the enemy of the good, and there is always a trade-off between, on the one hand, getting the particular mechanisms that we know will protect people online in place as swiftly as possible, and on the other hand, making them as extensive and effective as possible. However, given how long it takes for Parliament to make change—I make no apologies for repeating this point—we need to make the best use of the legislation that we have. I have not made a case this morning for extending the parameters of the legislation; I have made a case for using the parameters we already have, which Parliament has already legislated into being and which we have passed over to the regulator for it to use. I accept that regulation and legislation is not passed for effect; we do it so that it can work. We do it not to make ourselves feel better, but to make the lives of our constituents better, so the Minister is right to say that the usability of all this should be at the heart of what we are interested in. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) that Ofcom should not be predominantly focused on insulating itself from judicial review. As a former Law Officer, I think that is an impossible task anyway. This legislation and the regulation that follows it will be challenged—the online platforms have every incentive to challenge it. We cannot be so terrified of that prospect that we are unwilling to extend the parameters of the regulation as far as we believe they should go. That is why I think everybody needs to be a tad braver in all this. Finally, I simply want to repeat the point that many of us have made, which is that we need as Parliament to have a way of keeping our eye on what is happening in this space. These debates are great, but shouting at Ofcom through the loudhailer of Westminster Hall is not as effective as a Committee set up to do this in a more structured and, frankly, a more productive and consensual way. That is the gap that exists in the landscape of parliamentary oversight, and as we develop more and more digital regulation, as we have to, and as AI advances, we will have to fill that gap. I simply say to the Government that filling it sooner rather than later would be wise. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. We have to balance two things, though. We want consistency, as he suggests, but we also want platforms to respond to the circumstances of their own service, and to push the boundaries of what they can achieve by way of safety measures. As I said, they are in a better position to do so than legislators or regulators are to instruct them. The Act was always intended to put the onus on the platforms to take responsibility for their own safety measures. Given the variety of actors and different services in this space, we are probably not going to get a uniform approach, nor should we want one. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the regulator needs to ensure that its expectations of everyone are high. There is a further risk not that we might just fix the bar at status quo but that, because of the opportunity that platforms have to innovate, some might go backwards on new safety measures that they are already implementing because they are not recommended or encouraged by Ofcom’s code of practice. That cannot be what we want to happen. Those are two areas where I believe Ofcom’s interpretation of the Act is wrong and retreats in significant ways from Parliament’s intention to give the regulator power to act to enhance children’s online safety. I also believe it matters that it is wrong. The next question is what should be done about it. I accept that sometimes, as legislators, we have no choice but to pass framework legislation, with much of the detail on implementation to come later. That may be because the subject is incredibly complex, or because the subject is fast-moving. In the case of online safety, it is both. Framework legislation raises serious questions about how Parliament ensures its intentions are followed through in all the subsequent work on implementation. What do we do if we have empowered regulators to act but their actions do not fulfil the expectations that we set out in legislation?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister might be about to come to the point I want to raise with her, which is about proportionality. Will she say something about that? I am keen to understand whether the Government accept Ofcom’s understanding of the term—that proportional measures are those measures that can be evidenced as effective. I gave reasons why I am concerned about that. I want to understand whether the Government believe that that is the correct interpretation of proportionality.