Govt drops ‘legal but harmful’ wording from Online Safety Bill

The Government has dropped the ‘legal but harmful’ provisions from its Online Safety Bill, in a move welcomed by The Christian Institute.

Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan promised in September that free speech concerns in the Bill would be addressed, including controversial wording relating to the restriction of ‘legal but harmful’ content, and now, following a meeting with the Institute and other key stakeholders, the wording has officially been deleted.

The amended Bill will also expand and strengthen some protections for children, and an offence relating to ‘harmful communications’ has also been deleted.

Restricting Christian content

Prior to the changes, the Bill’s approach had led to fears that social media companies – which have a track record of restricting Christian and socially conservative content – would inevitably go far beyond what the law sets out.

The weak free speech protections also meant there was a danger that traditional views on marriage, sexuality and gender would be seen as valid targets for censorship.

The Bill continues to aim to force pornography websites to implement strict age verification systems to stop under-18s from viewing explicit content. It also makes ‘cyberflashing’ a criminal offence, with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison, and measures will be introduced to protect people from being abused online by anonymous trolls.

Freedom of speech

Simon Calvert, Deputy Director at The Christian Institute, welcomed the changes, saying: “The Christian Institute and its supporters have been trying to persuade the Government from the start that it is possible to protect children and adults from real harm without sacrificing everybody’s freedom of speech.

“The announcement that the Bill will no longer oblige tech companies to adjudicate on what kinds of opinions adults are allowed to hear is a good faith attempt to respond to these concerns.

“We are glad that the Government has also heeded our call to drop the so-called ‘harmful communications’ offence that was far too broad and subjective. And we are grateful to the Minister for taking the time last night to meet online with free speech groups to explain the changes she is making.

“We have been advocating giving users better control over their own online experience and the Bill will now do more to ensure that.”

‘Incitement to hatred’

While the Bill has improved, a vaguely worded requirement to help users filter out ‘incitement to hatred’ has sparked fresh concerns.

Mr Calvert outlined the Institute’s worries: “We know that activists have hollowed out the meaning of the word ‘hatred’ by routinely using it to describe opinions they merely disagree with.

“It is not yet clear whether content expressing mainstream Christian views on marriage, sexual ethics and gender, for example, will fall foul of the new filtering provisions.

“Attempts to legislate against ‘hatred’ from 2001 onwards became mired in free speech concerns and led to a series of major defeats for the then Labour Government. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport must be very careful it doesn’t stray into the same territory.”

Restrictions on pornography

He continued: “We reiterate our strong support for protecting children online and the latest announcements seem to make important improvements that will make tech companies do more to stop our youngsters being damaged.

“However, it is worth remembering that back in 2017 Parliament passed a law to force porn sites to age verify their users and those provisions were never implemented. This was a major missed opportunity that could have protected hundreds of thousands of children over the last five years. And we remain frustrated at the Government’s refusal to clarify and strengthen the porn protections in this Bill for children.

“The new bans on suicide and self-harm content, epilepsy trolling and porn deepfakes are welcome. It is hard to believe tech companies need to be forced to protect their users from this kind of content.”