Ministers will be able to decide arbitrarily what Britons can say online under far-reaching internet safety laws, according to MPs who are demanding tougher safeguards for free speech.
The 225-page online safety bill was finally published yesterday after extensive rewriting designed to balance better protection for children and the vulnerable with the right to freedom of expression.
Ministers now say they will draw up a list of “priority” legal but harmful content that social media companies will be required to risk assess and enforce terms and conditions upon, and parliament will have to approve anything added to the list in future. However, this will only be done through statutory instruments, (SI), which are passed without full parliamentary scrutiny, although the Department for Culture, Media and Sport insisted they would still be voted on by both houses of parliament.
The Tory MP David Davis, a former Brexit secretary, warned that the process gave ministers too much power to decide what people could and could not say online. He said: “How they are going to do it is through an SI committee, most of which appointed by whips who are going to decide what we can or can’t say online. If you’re going to restrain free speech you put it in primary legislation, you don’t hide it away by putting it in a committee upstairs.”
Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, insisted that the bill would ensure that “companies will not be able to remove controversial viewpoints arbitrarily”.