London British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has avoided a last-minute vote defeat in the House of Commons on a new Internet Safety Bill. After an uprising by around 50 conservative parliamentarians from their own parliamentary group, the government agreed that top managers of the major tech platforms could be prosecuted if they did not adequately protect children from attacks on the Internet.
Those responsible face up to two years in prison. The new bill was discussed in parliament on Tuesday and will then go to the upper house.
For Sunak, it is the third retreat on a politically contentious issue. Previously, the prime minister had to bow to the will of Tory rebels in the dispute over binding targets for house and apartment building and give up his opposition to new onshore wind turbines.
The Conservative government has a majority of 67 votes in parliament, but is at risk if a significant number of MPs deviate from the party line and want to vote with the opposition.
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The bill, which has been in the works for almost six years and aims to put the UK at the forefront of internet regulation, seeks to curb damage to any website or app where users interact with each other, from social media to search engines. A government impact assessment had revealed that the law could apply to more than 25,000 internet applications.
Schoolgirl’s death sparked off
The UK’s efforts to provide comprehensive protection for Internet users are also being closely monitored by the EU. Ireland introduced a similarly strict online safety law in December 2022.
Calls for more safety on online social media platforms have grown louder in the UK after 14-year-old schoolgirl Molly Russel committed suicide in 2017. A coroner later determined that harmful online content, including on Pinterest and Instagram, had contributed to Molly’s death.
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Jail terms are the only way tech execs are “putting security at the top of their agenda,” her father, Ian Russel, said. It is important to “change the corporate culture on these platforms,” he told the BBC.
The previously introduced Online Safety Bill required operators of websites with user-generated content, including social media, to take “reasonable steps” to prevent children from viewing harmful material. This includes, for example, pornographic content.
Age verification, better parental controls and deleting harmful content are mentioned as possible safeguards. Companies that fail to meet their legal obligations, including protecting children, can be fined up to 10 percent of global sales.
The British prime minister withdrew under pressure from his own faction.
(Photo: dpa)
However, that did not go far enough for many Conservative MPs. They called for a tougher approach to top managers, up to and including prison sentences. The new security law for online platforms should now give the state regulator Ofcom the right to personally prosecute responsible managers of technology companies should they fail to fulfill their duty of care towards minors.
That was “a big step forward,” said Conservative MP Bill Cash. The tech executives would “not want to take the risk of going to jail.” The rebels also include former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel. Shadow Minister of Education Lucy Powell from the opposition Labor Party, however, does not go far enough to tighten the law. She calls for more protection online not only for children but also for adults. Ofcom supervisors need “enough teeth to make Silicon Valley bosses sit up and take notice”.
Sunak fears for the tech location Great Britain
So far, Sunak has opposed tightening the law, arguing that it will make Britain less attractive to the tech industry. Criminal penalties for executives, he said, should only be imposed if managers refused to cooperate with media regulator Ofcom’s requests for information or investigations.
Last year, a survey by the Chartered Institute for IT found that only about 19 percent of tech professionals believe the new law will make the internet more secure. Representatives of start-ups also warn that small tech companies in particular could be overwhelmed by the costs of the new regulation. Large tech companies, on the other hand, have warned above all about restrictions on freedom of expression.
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