Prime Minister Truss commits to "tweaking" the Online Safety Bill - but will it be sufficient to protect free speech?

During the Tory leadership election, an FSU-led campaign helped thousands of our members to contact the candidates, urging them to look again at the “censors’ charter” that is the?Online Safety Bill. Thanks to the success of that campaign both candidates committed to doing something about clause 13 of the Bill, which aims to regulate so-called ‘legal but harmful’ online content. So it’s good to see that during her first PMQs as leader, Liz Truss went out of her way to confirm that the Bill would indeed now be tweaked to “allow free speech” (Financial Times).

“Would she accept that no responsible Government can avoid the need for excellent, balanced, sensible regulation in the online space?” asked Jeremy Wright MP, and “will she therefore assure me that the Bill will come back to this House swiftly for us to consider further and amend if necessary?”

“I can assure my Right Hon. and learned friend that we will be proceeding with the Online Safety Bill,” Truss replied, before adding that “there are some issues that we need to deal with. What I want to make sure is that we protect the under-18s from harm and that we also make sure free speech is allowed, so there may be some tweaks required, but certainly he is right that we need to protect people’s safety online.” (The exchange is available to view on our Twitter page?here.)

It’s in part thanks to the actions of our members that the new Prime Minister is talking about “tweaking” the Bill, rather than simply waving it through as is.

But will a “tweak” be sufficient? There are other aspects of the Bill besides clause 13 that pose a threat to free speech. At present, for instance, it requires providers like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to remove in?every part of the United Kingdom?content that’s illegal in?any part of the United Kingdom. So if something is illegal to say in Scotland, but not in the rest of the UK, the big social media companies would have to remove it in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Do we really want to empower Nicola Sturgeon to dictate what the entire British population is allowed to see and say online? That seems insane, particularly as Scotland has just passed the Hate Crime and Public Order Act – a piece of legislation that will make it illegal to say a large number of things that are currently lawful to say in the rest of the UK. (FSU Scottish Advisory Council member Jamie Gillies describes the Act as an “authoritarian mess”.)

Over the coming months it’s going to be more important than ever to keep up the pressure on legislators. Now that the leadership contest is over, one very effective way for members to do so will be to use our website’s template email generator to write to their MP and ask that he or she look again at the Bill (the campaigning tool is?here). We’ve updated the email to take account of Liz Truss’s recent remarks, welcoming her willingness to amend the Bill and pointing out all the aspects of it that will need to be “tweaked” if its threat to free speech is to be neutralised.

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