Jeremy Wright MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  The hon. Gentleman identifies a real risk in this space: we are always playing catch-up, and so are the regulators. That is why we have tried—perhaps not entirely successfully—to design legislation that gives the regulators the capacity to move faster, but we have to ask them to do so and they have to take responsibility for that. I am raising these points because I am concerned that this particular regulator in this particular set of circumstances is not being as fleet of foot as it could be, but the hon. Gentleman is right that this is a concern across the regulatory piece. I would also say that regulators are not the only actor. We might expect the Government to pick up this issue and ensure that regulators do what Parliament expects, but in this area the signs are not encouraging. As some Members in Westminster Hall this morning know because they were present during the debates on it, elsewhere in the Online Safety Act there is provision to bring forward secondary legislation to determine how online services are categorised, with category 1 services being subject to additional duties and expectations. That process was discussed extensively during the passage of the Act, and an amendment was made to it in the other place to ensure that smaller platforms with high incidences of harmful content could be included in category 1, along with larger platforms. That is an important change, because some of the harm that we are most concerned about may appear on smaller specialist platforms, or may go there to hide from the regulation of larger platforms. The previous Government accepted that amendment in this House, and the current Government actively supported it in opposition. I am afraid, however, that Ofcom has now advised the Government to disregard that change, and the Government accepted that advice and brought a statutory instrument to Committee on 4 February that blatantly contravenes the will of Parliament and the content of primary legislation. It was a clear test case of the Government’s willingness to defend the ambition of the Online Safety Act, and I am afraid they showed no willingness to do so. If we cannot rely on the Government to protect the extent of the Act—perhaps we should not, because regulatory independence from the Executive is important—who should do it? I am sure the Minister will say in due course that it falls within the remit of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. I mean no disrespect to that Committee, but it has a lot on its plate already and supervision of the fast-moving world of online safety regulation is a big job in itself. It is not, by the way, the only such job that needs doing. We have passed, or are in the process of passing, several other pieces of similar framework legislation in this area, including the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the Data (Use and Access) Bill and the Media Act 2024, all of which focus on regulators’ power to act and on the Secretary of State’s power to direct them. Parliament should have the means to oversee how that legislation is being implemented too. Many of these areas overlap, of course, as regulators have recognised. They established the Digital Regulation Co-operation Forum to deal with the existing need to collaborate, which of course is only likely to grow with the pervasive development of artificial intelligence. Surely we should think about parliamentary oversight along the same lines. That is why I am not the first, nor the only, parliamentarian to be in favour of a new parliamentary Committee—preferably a Joint Committee, so that the expertise of many in the other place can be utilised—to scrutinise digital legislation. The Government have set their face against that idea so far, but I hope they will reconsider. My final point is that there is urgency. The children’s safety codes will be finalised within weeks, and will set the tone for how ambitious and innovative—or otherwise—online services will be in keeping our children safe online. We should want the highest possible ambition, not a reinforcement of the status quo. Ofcom will say, and has said, that it can always do more in future iterations of the codes, but realistically the first version will stand for years before it is revised, and there will be many missed opportunities to make a child’s online world safer in that time. It is even less likely that new primary legislation will come along to plug any gaps anytime soon. As the responsible Secretary of State, I signed off the online harms White Paper in 2019. Here we are in 2025, and the Online Safety Act is still not yet fully in force. We must do the most we can with the legislation we have, and I fear that we are not. Given the efforts that were made all across the House and well beyond it to deliver the best possible set of legislative powers in this vital area, timidity and lack of ambition on the part of Ministers or regulators—leading to a pulling back from the borders of this Act—is not just a challenge to parliamentary sovereignty but, much more importantly, a dereliction of duty to the vulnerable members of our society, whose online safety is our collective responsibility. There is still time to be braver and ensure that the Online Safety Act fulfils its potential. That is what Ofcom and the Government need to do.

• 12 Feb 2025 · AI Growth Zones · Hansard source

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  The Minister will be well aware that the growth of AI across the country depends on a ready supply of data and other content on which models can be trained. She will recognise that much of that content comes from our creative industries, and she will know that they are profoundly troubled that they are not being properly treated by the companies currently scraping their data without their permission or without proper compensation. I know that the Government will want to resolve that, and she will know that the Data Bill saw amendments made in the other place to address that. Do the Government intend to resolve this issue by means of the Data Bill or by other means? If by other means, what other means and when?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State is very generous in giving way. Before he finishes, may I ask him about the situation we are creating with this Bill and the Online Safety Act 2023 of setting a framework within which regulators need to operate and cover a good deal of ground? Does he think the advent of these pieces of legislation makes a stronger case for a new Committee of this House, and perhaps a Joint Committee, to maintain scrutiny of ongoing digital regulation? If so, will he be prepared to advance that case?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  There is a great deal in this Bill that we can all support, but some difficult concepts lurk within it, as I know the Secretary of State will recognise. He is talking about data transparency. One of the issues of concern is about precisely what we mean by the “scientific research” on which data may be employed, and precisely what we mean by “the public interest” that must be served by that scientific research. We will not examine this issue on Second Reading, but may I ask him to commit to a proper examination of those concepts as the Bill moves forward, so that we can all understand what we mean and the public can get the reassurance that he describes?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Chagos Islands · Hansard source

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  I have asked the Minister this question before, but if he will forgive me for saying so, his answer could have benefited from additional clarity, so, with your permission, Mr Speaker, I am going to ask it again. The Minister has made it very clear, as have his fellow Ministers, that the urgency and necessity of action in this instance is based on the imminence of an adverse court judgment against the UK. He knows that the International Court of Justice is not the court that we must be thinking of here, because the United Kingdom is not subject to the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ when it concerns disputes involving members or former members of the Commonwealth, so it cannot be an ICJ judgment that the Minister is worried about, can it? If it is not that, what is it?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It would not be right for either of us to ask the Minister to disclose legal advice—that clearly would not be appropriate—but I am grateful for the Minister’s offer to share a slightly more expansive description of why the Government have come to the conclusion that they have. On the hon. Lady’s point about what the Act actually says, we have both quoted paragraph 1(5) of schedule 11, which deals with whether the language that has found its way into the ministerial statement is the be-all and end-all of the Minister’s conclusions. We both think it is not. If it is the case, as I think the Minister is arguing, that the ability to disseminate “easily, quickly and widely” is essentially a synonym for the scale of the service and the number of its users, what does the hon. Lady think of the amendment that Baroness Morgan made in the other place to paragraph 1(4), which says that when the regulations we are considering specify “the way or ways in which the relevant conditions are met”, for category 1 threshold conditions “at least one specified condition about number of users or functionality must be met”? The crucial word that was added is “or”. If the number of users were required to establish what the hon. Lady has described, the word “or” would be inappropriate.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I have sympathy with her position, especially in relation to legal advice, having both received it and given it. I suggest that the Minister is talking about two different things, and they need to be separated. The first is the question of whether legal but harmful content was removed from the Bill, which it undoubtedly was. Measures in relation to content that is neither unlawful nor harmful to children were largely removed from the Bill—the Minister is right to say that. What we are discussing, however, are the tools available to Ofcom to deal with those platforms that it is still concerned about in relation to the remaining content within the ambit of the Bill. The worry of those of us who have spoken in the debate is that the Government are about to remove one of the tools that Ofcom would have had to deal with smaller, high-harm platforms when the harm in question remains in ambit of the Bill—not that which was taken out during its passage. Would the Minister accept that?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a great and unexpected pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I want to take this opportunity to say something about why I think these regulations are a mistake. I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) has just said—I will seek not to repeat it—but it is probably worth noting at the outset that, as the Minister has rightly explained, these regulations are not the only means by which we will hold online services to account under this legislation. A category 1 designation allows Ofcom—the regulator —to impose additional constraints on a platform. I think that is an entirely fair point to make, but as the hon. Lady observed, something like 100,000 online services are likely to be in scope of this Act overall. It is worth noting that, in Ofcom’s assessment, something like 12 to 16 services only would qualify for category 1 status if, as is currently the case, size was the only criterion and we set the limit—as these regulations seek to do—at 7 million monthly users. As the hon. Lady explained, over a considerable period of time, with a considerable amount of energy expended, Parliament decided that it was appropriate to include in the category 1 designation not just the largest services, but those services where a great deal of harm may be concentrated but the services are, in themselves, much smaller. Those services being smaller might happen organically, or it might, of course, happen because that harmful content seeks refuge from the regulation applied to the larger services by migrating to smaller ones. There is good reason, therefore, to think that having smaller services potentially included in category 1 designation is a tool that Ofcom, and indeed the Government, will want to have available. Those platforms, such as ones that specialise in suicide or self-harm, might well be the kind of platforms that we find ourselves increasingly concerned about and that the Government will increasingly be asked to do something about. I have to say to the Minister that it is not sensible to remove from the regulator’s hand the tools that it might want to use to do what the Government will undoubtedly ask it to do—the Government themselves will come under pressure to do something about that. Again, as has been explained, what or who we include in that category 1 designation really matters, because of the additional powers and constraints that Ofcom will have available to it in relation to category 1 services. Those powers include the only powers available under this Act to protect adults from anything that is not illegal content—including vulnerable adults, by the way. There will come a time when the Government, I suspect, will wish they had more to deal with problems of that nature. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North explained, the Act gives those powers, so it is bizarre in the extreme that the Government should choose voluntarily not to use them. It is bizarre, also, because the Labour party in opposition was clear in its support for the change. The hon. Member for Newton Abbot quoted one example of something that the shadow spokesman at the time, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who now has Government responsibilities elsewhere, said during the passage of the Bill. I will quote another example to the Committee. She said: “Categorisation of services based on size rather than risk of harm will mean that the Bill will fail to address some of the most extreme harms on the internet.” –– [ Official Report, Online Safety Public Bill Committee, 12 July 2022; c. 168.] I think she was absolutely right then, and still is now. The draft regulations, I am afraid, do exactly what she said the Act should not do: they limit the criterion for the designation of category 1, and these additional powers, to size only. We should think about the Government’s rationale for what they are doing. In December, the Secretary of State made a written statement to set out the reasoning for the measures that the Government have put before the Committee: “In making these Regulations, I have considered factors as required by the Act. Amendments made during the passage of the Act, changed the consideration for Category 1 from the ‘level of risk of harm to adults from priority content that is harmful to adults disseminated by means of the service’ to ‘how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service.’ This was a significant change”. —[ Official Report , 16 December 2024; Vol. 759, c. 12WS.] In other words, I think the Secretary of State was arguing that he has no option but to limit to a scale criterion-only designation for category 1, because that is how the Act has changed. That is fundamentally mistaken, if I may say so to the Minister. I do not expect her to have all this before her—I know her officials will take careful note—but the Act states at paragraph 1(5) of schedule 11: “In making regulations under sub-paragraph (1)”— the draft regulations we are discussing— “the Secretary of State must take into account the likely impact of the number of users of the user-to-user part of the service, and its functionalities, on”— and this is the part the Secretary of State drew out in his statement— “how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service.” Without doubt, therefore, the Secretary of State has to take the number of users into account, but it is not the only criterion. There is a fundamental misunderstanding —at least, I hope that is what it is—in the ministerial statement, which suggests that that is the only criterion to be considered. It is not, and I think it is a mistake to ignore the others, which, again, have already been drawn out in the debate. To be clear, these draft regulations mean that no smaller platform—under the level of 7 million monthly users—can ever be considered as a category 1 platform, unless or until the Government and Ofcom change their approach to the categorisation process. I repeat the point, and I make no apologies for doing so, that that is specifically contrary to what Parliament had intended in the passage of the Act. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North and I are not the only ones making this observation. There are multiple organisations with whom we and then the Labour party worked closely to get this Act passed for the protection of those about whom the Labour party is charged with worrying. Those include organisations such as the Samaritans, Mind, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, the Antisemitism Policy Trust and the Molly Rose Foundation, all of which care deeply about the effectiveness of this legislation, as I am sure we all do. It is true, and the Minister may make this point, that Ofcom’s advice suggested the course of action the Government are now taking. However, “advice” is the key word. The Government were not obliged to take it, and in this instance I think they would have been wiser to resist it. Ofcom will not have all the tools it could have to deal with smaller services where greater harm may be concentrated, despite what the Act allows. I have to say that tying one hand behind Ofcom’s back is not sensible, even when Ofcom is itself asking us to do so. That is especially true when the Government place such heavy reliance on the Online Safety Act—as they are entitled to—to deal with the multiple online harms that arise. I have lost count, as I suspect others in this Committee have, of the number of times that Ministers have referred to the Online Safety Act when challenged about harmful materials or behaviours online and said, “This is the answer. This Act gives us powers to act against services that do not do what they should.” They are right that it is not a perfect piece of legislation, and none of us involved in its generation would claim that it was, but it does give Government and regulators the powers to act. However, that does us no good at all if, in subsequent pieces of statutory legislation, the Government choose not to use those tools or put them beyond Ofcom’s reach. That is what the regulations do. I have to say to the Minister that government is hard enough. She should not throw away the tools she needs to do the job that she has promised everyone that she will do. This is a mistake, and I hope that even at this late stage the Minister will find a way to avoid making it.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Youth Mobility Scheme: EU · Hansard source

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  I am grateful, too, to the Minister and to everyone who has contributed to the debate. Question put and agreed to.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Youth Mobility Scheme: EU · Hansard source

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  I ask all Members not staying for this debate to leave as quietly as they can. This is a 30-minute debate, so there will be no opportunity for the Member leading it to wind up at the end.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Youth Mobility Scheme: EU · Hansard source

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  Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but “you” is me; she means “he”, in other words the Minister.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Outsourcing: Government Departments · Hansard source

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  I will now call the Minister to respond. If there is any time left before 11 o’clock, I will invite Andy McDonald to wind up, if he wishes to.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Outsourcing: Government Departments · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her debut performance in Westminster Hall. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered outsourcing by Government departments.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Outsourcing: Government Departments · Hansard source

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  Order. I gently remind all Members that we must get to four minutes each voluntarily or I will have to impose something less voluntary. I call Jon Trickett.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Outsourcing: Government Departments · Hansard source

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  Within your four minutes—thank you very much.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Outsourcing: Government Departments · Hansard source

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  I thank all hon. Members who have spoken for their restraint. It has allowed me to get one more hon. Member in, but I ask her to please bring her remarks to a close at 10.30 am.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Outsourcing: Government Departments · Hansard source

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  Order. We have 10 minutes left, and I hope to bring three more people in, so I ask colleagues to restrict themselves accordingly.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Outsourcing: Government Departments · Hansard source

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  Order. It will be obvious to everyone that there is considerable interest in this debate. May I ask all Members to bob if you wish to speak, and to continue to do that so that we can see you still wish to speak? I hope that if everyone can restrict themselves to about four minutes, we will get everybody in. I want to start calling the Front Benchers at 10.30 am.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  The Prime Minister may know that, this time last week, representatives of those who have been injured seriously by covid vaccines were giving evidence to the covid inquiry, including my constituent, Kate Scott. I hope he also knows that the compensation available to those people is not adequate and is not adequately accessible. I am grateful to the Health and Social Care Secretary for the thought that I know he is giving to how that position may be remedied, but may I ask the Prime Minister to give his personal support to that objective, not just because it is the right thing to do for the people affected, but because it will support the objective that we should all share, which is to maintain public confidence in vaccination?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Foreign Donations to UK Political Parties · Hansard source

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  As I mentioned, there is a consensus in this House that foreign donations should not play a part in British politics, but there are gaps in the law. As I mentioned, the Electoral Commission believes that those gaps can be properly closed through further legislation. It is speaking to the Government about that, and I know that it would be happy discuss the matter further with the right hon. Gentleman, if he so wishes.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Foreign Donations to UK Political Parties · Hansard source

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  As the hon. Member will understand, proposals to change the law must come from the Government—with whom, I gently suggest, he has more influence that I do—but he is right that transparency is crucial. It is important that we understand the source of the donations, so that the political parties that accept them can be properly held to account.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Foreign Donations to UK Political Parties · Hansard source

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  When establishing the political finance regime, Parliament’s explicit intention was to ban foreign donations. However, limitations of the current law mean that it is possible for money from foreign sources to enter the UK electoral system through donations from UK companies. For that reason, the Electoral Commission has called for the laws around company donations to be strengthened, to ensure that parties cannot accept money from companies that have not made enough in the UK to fund their donation or loan, to impose a duty to carry out enhanced “know your donor” checks, and to improve transparency over donations made through unincorporated associations.

• 9 Jan 2025 · Impact of Conflict on Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I remind all Members that if they want to contribute to the debate, they should bob or stand briefly, even if they have already notified the Chair that they want to speak.

• 18 Dec 2024 · British Indian Ocean Territory: Sovereignty · Hansard source

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  I know the Minister will want to give the House the greatest possible clarity on what has brought us to this point. The Foreign Secretary has been clear that one of the central considerations for the Government was the likelihood, if not the inevitability, of a binding legal judgment against the UK in this matter. The Minister will know that the judgments of the International Court of Justice are not binding on the United Kingdom when disputes are between the UK and another state which is or was a member of the Commonwealth. That would include Mauritius. I do not expect the Minister to disclose the legal advice that the Government have received, but will he please give the House some more clarity about the nature of the legal jeopardy that the Government perceive here?

• 11 Dec 2024 · Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament · Hansard source

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  Will my right hon. Friend give way before he finishes?