A group of senior Conservatives, including Lord Frost, have written to Nadine Dorries warning her that the Online Harms Bill, which is still very much alive despite Boris’s resignation, poses a grave threat to free speech. The Telegraph has more.
The Online Harms Bill could allow a future Labour government to clamp down on free speech, says Lord Frost and senior Tories.
The former Brexit minister is among nine senior Tories who are demanding Nadine Dorries ditch plans to regulate legal but harmful content online because of fears a future Labour government could use it to censor free speech.
The group which also includes former ministers David Davis and Steve Baker and Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, have written to the Culture Secretary warning that the plans give the Government unprecedented powers to designate “harmful” content.
They said this could lead to “political censorship” online as social media companies would respond by suppressing such content as well as allowing a future secretary of state to use the power to lean on the tech giants to remove speech they subjectively dislike.
“This will apply to your successors in post, who will include your political opponents,” they said in their letter seen by the Telegraph.
“The ratcheting effect on our civil liberties is already happening in real time. The Labour Party has expressed its intention to expand the regulatory framework to include ‘health-related misinformation and disinformation’.
“This could lead to the state designating social media companies as the arbiter of truth online and presents serious problems for freedom of speech.”
The MPs and peers urge the Government to ditch clause 13 of the online safety Bill which enacts the plans to regulate legal but harmful content.
“We are concerned about both the legal precedent set by the state targeting so-called ‘legal but harmful’ speech and the censorious impact this measure would have,” they said.
“We cannot support a two-tier system where the public may be prohibited from saying things online that are lawful to say offline.
“The censorious concept of putting restrictions on ‘legal but harmful’ speech undermines our long tradition of promoting freedom of expression, and it is as unConservative as it is unBritish.
“Clause 13 of the Bill, which focuses on online speech deemed ‘harmful’ to adults, will cause social media companies to censor more legitimate expression under a new system regulated by Ofcom.
“Online speech which could be ‘harmful’ to adults is not defined in the Bill. Rather, it grants the Secretary of State overwhelming executive power to designate what these categories could be, without adequate safeguards.”
Worth reading in full.
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While this is good to see, it is a bit of a contortion to say that they are concerned that Labour might misuse the act when the Government under the current Conservative administration have been running roughshod over all our civil liberties, including free speech, for the last two years.
‘Legal but harmful’ is the same kind of stupidity, unnecessary, heavy handed government interference, as ‘tax avoidance is as bad as tax evasion’.
Put Kemi Badenoch in charge. She has an inbuilt bulldust detector.
And she recognises that too much government is at the root of most of this country’s problems.
See also ‘non-crime hate incidents’ or whatever gibberish they’re called.
Wonder why he doesn’t want to run for PM to actually do something about this plus Brexit, plus net zero. A Lord did become PM years ago.
I don’t think it’s all that well understood that the PM does not have to be an MP in the HoC. In the past, loads of them were Lords: https://history.blog.gov.uk/2013/04/24/prime-ministers-in-the-house-of-lords/ The author of this uses the term “centre of gravity of British political life”, and speculates that it’s unlikely to have another one, but who knows?
None of this group of senior conservatives want to put their money where their mouth is
While it doesn’t have to be that way, it’s just a fact that in 2022 the PM not being in the commons would be a really strange look.
I would go as far as to suggest that the resulting commentary and reaction would be such a huge distraction that it would make it hard for the man to do the job.
A timely intervention.
To see what is hurtling down the tracks if the Conservatives do not detoxify themselves toute suite, simply glance at the Guardian website where a man in a smock (Harris) has written an opinion piece:
Proportional representation
New relationship with the EU
‘Two jags’ regional devolution
Ian Botham’s peerage taken away by the light touch expedient of abolishing the entire upper house
Banning private education
Government determined entry into Oxford and Cambridge
Massive council house building
Universal basic income
Yet more employment legislation
Uncle Tom Cobley including the end of so many traditional country pursuits
Bunter has done so much damage that a platform as above might very well creep across the line to a coalition of the left if put to the electorate right now.
It is at times like this that the Nation must look to Corporal Jones…….
Or, far better, Kemi Badenoch.
They aren’t trying to regulate “harmful speech.” Who decides if something said is harmful and on what grounds? Because it goes against the official, politically-correct, opinion?
This is a proposal for Establishment Censorship …. plain and simple. No Conservative should support this Bill.
In this case, I think they really do mean harmful.
What they don’t specify is to whom.
The answer of course is to establishment interests and power.
The Chinese Communist Party use exactly the same principle to give themselves unlimited and absolute power within a pseudo legal framework. They have given themselves the legal power to act against anything that is a threat to Chinese society. They of course decide whether something is a threat or not. Any convoluted rationale will do.
For example, years ago when there was a terrible tainted milk scandal, they clamped down on protests on the grounds that it could lead to social instability. That is in fact the rationale they now use for shutting anyone up: it causes social instability. Works every time.
It turns my stomach to think that people are so incredibly stupid that they don’t realise the terrible danger of allowing the state to go down that route or worse still don’t care or worse still think it’s a good thing.
Who decides if something said is harmful and on what grounds?
Some anonymous employee of a social media company who happens to be pissed off by it for whatever reasons. There is – using the same example as the article – no need for a future Labour government here. All it takes is Labour supporters working for the companies in question. These can de facto suppress whatever they want, be it because of semi-private grievances or under direct party orders.
Labour, Conservative, who cares anymore. They’re obviously all the SAME.
I couldn’t agree more. It really doesn’t matter about ‘party’, it’s the ‘agenda’ that matters. That cartoon of Bob Moran’s showing a headless Boris Johnson puppet being manipulated by Schwab (Get me anuzzer vun) was spot on. People still talk about elections being important but for me the bigger game is afoot, as shown by all the things happening, and it’s only going to get more intense.
As another example of real-world content moderation: I’m – obviously – again blocked by Facebook. This time, because I wrote that – as additional measure against Putin’s war on Ukraine – one could perhaps load Ricarda Lang into a bomber and drop her on Moscow as this would certainly have a devasting impact. The lady is the political leader of the German Greens – the German war-mongering pary – and routinely the butt end of jokes of this kind because she’s enormously fat. This is obviously political satire.
But not to Facebook moderators. These claim that it’s a call for real violence which would seriously endanger public safety. That’s a ludicrous proposition and the real reason is obviously party-politically motivated censorship of expressions people who are afiliated with the particular party in question don’t exactly like.
Both Facebook and Twitter (presumably, I’m not on Twitter and don’t plan to change this) are already not so covertly controlled by unaccountable, anonymous left-wing mobs censoring whatever they want, no matter how thin the pretext happens to be this time. Instead of encouraging these people to abuse the powers granted to them yet more aggressively, something Dorrie’s bill is wont to accomplish, politicians should look into reining them in.
This strikes very much as a false flag.
“Online Harms Law Could Allow Labour to Censor Free Speech, Lord Frost Warns.”
Instead of ensuring that this Bill is dropped forthwith senior Tories are stating that if this is made law it could be misused by a future Labour administration. Not the current Tory administration, heaven forbid, but a nasty mob led by either Kneel or Ranting.
Perish the thought.
This is virtue signalling.
The fuss and the focus required from senior Tories is ensuring this Bill is never enacted.
Welcome to communist Britain. Buckle up, it is going to be one helluva ride.