29 July 2021

Collins To Chair Online Safety Bill Joint Committee

Damian Collins MP is to chair a joint Parliamentary Committee tasked with scrutinising the Online Safety Bill which is designed to crack down on online harms propagated by the tech giants.

The Committee, which is made up of six members from the House of Commons and six from the Lords including chairman of the News Media Association’s legal, policy and regulatory affairs committee Lord Black of Brentwood, has kicked off its work by launching a consultation inviting comment on the Bill.

The NMA has broadly welcomed the legislation, which includes an exemption for journalism, but believes adjustments are needed to ensure that journalism remains out of scope regardless of the platform on which it appears.

Committee chair Damian Collins said: “The Online Safety Bill is about finally putting a legal framework around hate speech and harmful content, and ultimately holding the tech giants to account for the role their technology plays in promoting it.

“The next step in this process is the detailed scrutiny of the draft Bill. This is a once in a generation piece of legislation that will update our laws for the digital age.

“We now have a super committee of MPs and peers, highly experienced in this area who will work together to go through this Bill line by line to make sure it’s fit for purpose. Freedom of speech is at the heart of our democracy, but so is fighting against movements that seeks to harm and dehumanise people. In the social media age we have not yet got that balance right, and now is the time to fix it.”

From the House of Commons, the members of the Committee are:

  • Damian Collins MP (Chair) (Con) former Chair of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, and current Chair of the APPGs for Media Freedom and Media Literacy;
  • Debbie Abrahams MP (Lab) current member House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee;
  • Darren Jones MP (Lab) current Chair of the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee, Co-chair, APPG Parliamentary Information, Communications and Technology Forum, Chair of the APPG on Technology and National Security and Chair of the APPG on Data Poverty;
  • John Nicolson MP (SNP) Shadow SNP Spokesperson for DCMS, current member House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee;
  • Dean Russell MP (Con) current member Joint Committee on Human Rights and House of Commons Select Committee on Health and Social Care, Chair of the APPG on Digital Health and the APPG on Digital IDs;
  • Suzanne Webb MP (Con) current member House of Commons Procedure Committee, PPS for Department for International Trade and Women and Equalities.

From the House of Lords:

  • Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) current member House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee;
  • Lord Black of Brentwood (Con) current member House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee;
  • Lord Clement-Jones (Lib Dem) Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson for Digital;
  • Baroness Kidron (Cross bench) current member of the House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee;
  • Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab) current member House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee;
  • Lord Gilbert of Panteg (Con) Chair of the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee.

The Committee will report its findings to the Government before 10 December this year.