Democracy and the draft Online Safety Bill: the report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee

Posted on March 4, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

The publication of a draft Online Safety Bill has enabled two parliamentary committees to engage in detailed pre-legislative scrutiny. The conclusions of a special joint committee were discussed in earlier posts by its Chair, Damian Collins and Alex Walker. Here, Alex analyses the findings of the second report on the draft bill, authored by the DCMS Committee, and analyses the points of contention between the two reports.

Parliament has been giving close attention to the landmark Online Safety Bill since it was published in draft in May 2021. In December, the joint committee set up to consider the draft bill published its report. I considered its recommendations in the first part of this two-part series on the scrutiny of the draft bill. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee has since published its take on the draft legislation. As the DCMS committee commented, it is welcome that the bill was published in draft, and is receiving such comprehensive pre-legislative scrutiny. Whilst the government is of course not required to accept the recommendations of the committees, failing to address gaps they have both identified would not be a constructive response to the pre-legislative process.

One such gap (highlighted previously on this blog) is that of online harms to democracy. Whilst they diverge on a number of points, the DCMS committee and the joint committee share the analysis that this is a serious issue which the bill should address. In this piece, I consider the DCMS committee’s proposals to address online threats to democracy and look at how they differ from those of the joint committee. Both approaches to improving this aspect of the bill are worthy of careful consideration and the government should not use the points of difference as a way to avoid taking action.

Content that undermines democracy should be in scope

Constitution Unit Deputy Director Alan Renwick and I argued in written evidence to the DCMS committee that online harms to democracy should be addressed in the legislation. The committee agreed. The government’s own 2019 Online Harms white paper detailed the dangers that online activity such as the viral spread of disinformation could pose to democracy. But the measures the white paper set out to address this issue were later abandoned, leaving the draft bill with a considerable blind spot. Both the DCMS committee and the joint committee concluded that leaving this gap unfilled would be a mistake. However, the two committees recommended different changes to the legislation.

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The Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill: steps in the right direction for democracy

Posted on January 27, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

The government’s draft Online Safety Bill does little to protect democracy from damage caused by online actors, despite a previous commitment to take action. Alex Walker argues that this was an error. Here, he analyses the December report of the parliamentary joint committee tasked with examining the bill. A post in early February will critique the conclusions and recommendations of the DCMS select committee, which published its report earlier this week.

In December, the joint committee tasked with scrutinising the government’s draft Online Safety Bill published its report, the conclusions of which were outlined by its Chair, Damian Collins, on this blog. The committee recommended significant overarching changes to the draft bill, which represents the first major attempt in the UK at online regulation.

Since its publication in May 2021, the draft bill has been subject to extensive criticism, including on this blog. In previous posts, I’ve highlighted that it fails to address online threats to democracy. The government’s 2019 Online Harms white paper acknowledged the seriousness of this issue and set out measures to tackle it. These proposals were then later abandoned.

Positively, the committee noted the government’s change of direction and concluded to the contrary that online harms to democracy should be tackled by legislation. Whilst the committee’s recommendations have their own limitations, if adopted they would better protect democratic processes from online harm than at present.

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Constitutional reformers need to tackle six key questions about the regulation of digital campaigning

Posted on June 18, 2021 by The Constitution Unit

Today marks the second day of the Unit’s conference on the Johnson government’s constitutional reform agenda, for which free tickets remain available. One of today’s speakers, Kate Dommett, argues that the government’s proposals to tackle the challenges posed by digital campaigning are far from comprehensive, leaving many unanswered questions for future governments to address.

Five years on from the Brexit referendum and the Cambridge Analytica scandal that emerged in its wake, the government is poised to publish its Electoral Integrity Bill. Proposing ‘significant changes to the electoral and democratic system’, it could be presumed that Boris Johnson’s government is about to enact an ambitious programme of constitutional change that will update electoral systems to the digital age. Yet, from the details available so far – including a new announcement this week – it seems Johnson’s government is failing to address six critical questions about digital campaigning, leaving considerable room for further reform.

The rise of digital technology in campaigning

The rise of digital campaigning has been a slow and steady phenomenon in UK elections, but in recent years there has been significant attention paid to the need for electoral reform. The current regulation governing electoral campaigning can be found in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act (PPERA) that was passed in 2000. Since then the adoption of websites, social media profiles and, more recently, online advertising by electoral campaigners has raised questions about the suitability of existing legislation. Indeed, a range of parliamentary committees, civil society bodies, academics and even digital companies such as Facebook, have asserted a need for urgent digital campaigning regulation.

Publishing a report devoted to digital campaigning in 2018, the Electoral Commission has been at the forefront of these debates. Its analysis revealed the rapid rise of digital tools in elections, showing increasing amounts are being spent on digital advertising. Updating its statistics to include the last election, Figure 1 (below) shows that spending on digital advertising has increased to around £7.5 million, and now represents a significant proportion of election campaign spend.