Online Safety Bill moves to the next stage

Thank you for taking the time over the past week to contact a Peer about Baroness Howe’s Online Safety Bill.

In its manifesto for the recent general election, The Conservative Party promised:
 

“We will stop children’s exposure to harmful sexualised content online, by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material”.

The opportunity for the Government to honour its commitment came before the House of Lords on 17th July with the second reading of Baroness Howe’s Online Safety Bill.

Many people used our campaign website Safeonline.org.uk to contact Peers ahead of the debate, urging them to speak in favour of the Bill.

Many Peers did attend the debate which was, by and large, very supportive of her proposals.  The Lords agreed to move the Bill forward to Committee stage, at which point the Bill will be further scrutinised and amendments will be considered.

Sadly the Government did not choose to adopt the provisions of the Bill to accomplish the aims set out in their manifesto.  However the Minister, Baroness Shields, acknowledged the “horrific problem” of the easy availability of online pornography and said that the Government would consider Lady Howe’s approach alongside other options currently under examination.

Lord Framlingham, speaking in support of the Bill, pointed out the lack of speed in action taken on the issues raised in the Bill so it is to be hoped that further time will be found in the parliamentary timetable over the coming months for a Committee Stage debate in order to keep the pressure on the Government to act quickly.

There is strong public support for measures ensure that websites with pornographic content carry out proper age-verification of users in order to protect children.  In a recent poll three-quarters of those asked agreed this should be done.

Although it is disappointing that the Government did not take the opportunity offered in the debate to adopt the Bill, it is encouraging that the debate continues to move in the right direction.  As Lady Howe said: “Each time one puts pressure on the Government, it improves the situation.”  We now look forward to a further opportunities to hold the Government to account to their manifesto promises at Committee Stage.

Have your say on online child protection

Over the past few years we have seen some real progress in our fight to protect children from harmful online material: The Government has worked with Internet Service Providers to come up with a voluntary industry agreement to protect children which being called ‘default-on’.  Broadband users now have to make an unavoidable choice as to whether they want to activate family-friendly filters.  TalkTalk and Sky have gone one step further and their filters are switched on as a default unless users ask for them to be removed. 

However the internet remains a potentially very dangerous place for children.

In its manifesto for the recent general election, The Conservative Party promised:

“We will stop children’s exposure to harmful sexualised content online,

by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material”.

This was encouraging and yet there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech about implementing the commitment and when asked about how it would be taken forward during the Queen’s Speech debate, the Minister ignored the question.

The opportunity for the Government to honour its commitment will come before the House of Lords on 17th July 2015 with the second reading of Baroness Howe’s Online Safety Bill.

This Bill (revised and updated for the 2015/6 Parliament) would, should it become law, require a statutory approach to filtering as well as, robust age verification if a user chooses to remove adult content filters. It would also require web sites showing 18 and R18 material (that’s hardcore pornography) to people in the UK (regardless of whether the sites themselves are based in the UK) must put in place robust age-verification procedures.

If you agree that it’s time we offered children the best possible protection from harmful online content please take action.

With the debate on this bill less than a week away we would really encourage you to contact Members of the House of Lords asking them to support the Bill.   We have updated our campaign website www.safeonline.org.uk  to make this very quick and easy to do.   Just go online and you will be given a Peer to write to, together with model letters you can just copy and paste. 

Emailing will take as little as 5 minutes!

The Government must now deliver on its promise.

Despite all predictions to the contrary, the Conservative Party has won the general election with enough seats to form a majority government.  This means that the Conservatives will have the wherewithal to deliver on their manifesto promises which included:

• “We will stop children's exposure to harmful sexualised content online, by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material and age-rating for all music videos.” 

•  “We will work to ensure that search engines do not link to the worst-offending sites.”  

That these commitments were included in the Conservative Party Manifesto is because you have made it clear, through your actions and your much valued support for Mediawatch-UK, that these are important issues.  Your voice has been heard and it has been heeded.
Moving forward we must now make sure that we hold the new Conservative government to their promises and ensure that these important measures to protect our children are enacted swiftly.