The Speaker's Conference: the Government's disappointing response
The Government’s long overdue response to the second report of the Speaker’s Conference on the security of MPs, candidates and elections has been published. The second report focused on social media and, in particular, the impact of online abuse on candidates and the role and responsibilities of platforms in reducing it. It painted a particularly bleak picture.
The Speaker's Conference put forward a number of recommendations for the Government to address this, including many which have relevance to the Online Safety Act. While the Government response does - in general - acknowledge the severity of the issues and point to work that's already underway, or that may flow through in future OSA enforcement, it has not committed to take forward any of the new proposals.
We are particularly disappointed that the Government did not accept the recommendation from the Conference that it “should consider the merits of mandating Ofcom to produce an elections code of practice for social media platforms, and the feasibility of introducing this requirement as part of the Bill it has said it will bring forward during this Parliament on electoral reform”.
That Bill - the Representation of the People Bill - has since been published and will shortly be entering Committee stage in the Commons. There are no measures in it to introduce a code of practice - or indeed any measures to address online abuse, harassment and intimidation for those involved in the electoral process.
The Government in its response to the Speaker's Conference says it “recognises the serious impact of online abuse and intimidation targeted at MPs and candidates during elections and agrees that platforms must step up and take robust action to protect them” and notes that the Online Safety Act’s protections must “keep pace with evolving threats, including to UK democracy.” There is a commitment to continuing to “actively review the framework”, including “meeting with and hearing from stakeholders including MPs and candidates to understand where the Act can be strengthened through evidence-based measures.”
While there is a welcome acknowledgement of the need to do more, the suggestion that the Government needs more time to talk to MPs and candidates to understand what to do, when the Speakers Conference took a year doing just that, smacks of kicking the can down the road. This is simply unacceptable in the face of rising deepfake abuse of candidates that we witnessed at the start of the year. Moreover, if they are looking for evidenced-based measures, then we - along with a group of expert organisations including Demos, The Jo Cox Foundation, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Elect Her, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, Fawcett Society, Full Fact and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) - have already developed a code of practice to provide the template for such an intervention.
We know that there is cross-party support for action on this and an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill to bring in an OSA code of practice is being tabled by Emily Darlington MP. Along with our partners, we stand ready to work with MPs of all parties to ensure that the Government wastes no more time procrastinating: the strength of our democracy depends on having good people from all backgrounds and walks of life who are prepared to participate in it. The Government must now stand up and protect them.
