Responding to the Government’s draft Online Safety Bill, published today, Robert Colvile, Director of the CPS, said:
‘It is clear the Government is making a genuine attempt to improve safety online, while trying to avoid curbing freedom of expression, and we welcome some of the steps taken to restrict the scope of who this legislation will apply to. However, it is disappointing to see that the onus is still on businesses to police so-called ‘legal but harmful’ content.
‘As we said in our report, it is for Parliament to determine what is sufficiently harmful that it should not be allowed, not for Ofcom or individual platforms to guess. If something is legal to say, it should be legal to type. Ofcom’s powers should only allow it to take enforcement action where a particular platform has consistently failed to act on illegal content.’
Date Added: Wednesday 12th May 2021
