00:00It's so lovely to meet you. Thank you for talking to Hello.
00:03We've been following the progress of the Online Safety Bill very closely
00:07and how it's affecting children and parents and children's safety.
00:12The internet and social media in particular offers some fantastic opportunities,
00:16especially tackling things like loneliness, but huge risks as well, especially for our young.
00:20And the problem that we've got at the moment is basically the sector is completely unregulated
00:25and they're not accountable for some of the problems that we're seeing.
00:28Where we are now in terms of that legislative journey is really exciting
00:32because we're just about to finish the process so it can become a law
00:37and that will be transformational.
00:40And it will mean that here in the UK it will become the safest place in the world to be
00:45on the internet.
00:46The parents will have the confidence of knowing that when their child is using a social media platform
00:51that they're doing so in a safer way because they're not able to see the illegal content that they are
00:57now
00:57and that they're not able to see some of the content that is really not age appropriate,
01:01just like you would expect with a movie or anything else of that nature.
01:05We do treat children differently and we should be protecting them when they go online.
01:09Right now, I know that children younger than, for example, 13 with some of these apps are going on those
01:16apps.
01:16How is that going to work in practice?
01:19So we're saying that platforms have to, in the future, enforce their age restrictions,
01:24which will be a minimum of 13, some have higher.
01:27If they don't, then they're going to face potentially humongous fines of up to billions of pounds.
01:33So there's a real incentive and deterrent, in fact, to actually adhere to that piece of legislation.
01:38And how that will work in practice will depend on the exact platform and how they operate.
01:44It may be that they will introduce an age verification technique,
01:47but it's more likely that they'll introduce what we call age assurance, age estimation techniques,
01:53utilising lots of different tools to assess the age of their user.
01:59And if they're not confident that they are sure of the age,
02:03they can then go back to that user and say,
02:05we need some further information, at which case it might be at the level of age verification.
02:10It's a massive leap forward.
02:11So when I took over the bill, in fact, we didn't have that.
02:15Many people said to me, you can't make it any stronger for children.
02:17And I felt passionately that this bill, at its heart, does need to be about children.
02:21They need to be protected.
02:23As a parent, how do I know that when my child is going on, or teen is going on one
02:27of these apps,
02:28how are they going to be protected going forward?
02:30Well, once the bill becomes law and it starts to be implemented,
02:35then social media companies will have a duty legally to ensure that your child,
02:40and my child when he's older, doesn't see videos of that content or images or words, etc.
02:47So a social media platform will have to introduce lots of systems and lots of processes,
02:52which means utilising tools to ensure that that kind of content doesn't appear on that platform.
02:58And they will have to be proactive, but also reactive as well,
03:02to make sure that if some did slip through the net, they react very quickly.
03:06We're expecting Royal Assent, which is a process which becomes a law within weeks.
03:10So from day one of implementation, they'll work with the regulator who will be setting out the expectations.
03:16Ofcom, which will be the regulator, will take on board the duty of trying to act as a information gatherer
03:24on behalf of coroners so that they can get some information and data out of social media companies
03:30for inquests when it tragically results in awful consequences.
03:35A parent sitting at home with their child, if they do come across some harmful content,
03:40what should they do? Who should they report it to?
03:43So one of the things that we've introduced within this bill is basically boosting the complaints process
03:48for individuals, but also for groups, so that they can flag that kind of material and concerns directly to the
03:57platforms.
03:57Well, the way the bill works is that they have to adhere to all of the requirements within it.
04:03Is the government doing anything, or can they to support parents when they want support and information?
04:09We do need to enable parents and support parents by changing the law in this really radical way,
04:15but also we need to support parents and children with media literacy.
04:20One of the areas that we've introduced in this bill is making sure that children can't access porn.
04:25I mean, you say it, and I almost feel gobsmacked saying it,
04:30because it's awful, the situation that we've got at the moment.
04:33Studies show that the average age a child sees pornography now is 13 years old, and that's the average.
04:39With apps and messaging and the end-to-end encryption, users are meeting children on apps,
04:45going on to messaging services. How are we going to help those children?
04:51Yeah, I'm glad you asked me about that, because there's been quite a great deal of confusion on this.
04:55So we haven't actually taken that out of the bill. It's still there.
04:58Really?
04:58Yeah, there was just a lot of confusion the other week on this.
05:00The process would be, if a platform was encrypted and there was a concern by the Home Office or the
05:05Police
05:05that there was child abuse and sexual exploitation on that encrypted platform,
05:09they would work with the regulator to put in place loads of mitigations,
05:13try and prevent and move that and eradicate that abuse and predatory action on their platform.
05:22If those mitigations weren't enough, then as a last resort, the regulator could say to that platform,
05:30OK, what we need you to do is research technology that will enable encryption to be protected
05:37whilst allowing access for child abuse and sexual exploitation.
05:41It may be that it's never needed to be used, but I think that it's morally the right thing to
05:46do,
05:47that we've put that safety net in the legislation in case we ever have to deploy it.
05:51Looking forward to seeing the changes over the coming months.
05:54Thank you so much for talking to us.
05:55Thank you, thanks.
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