The motion highlighted that the Act must protect children online while respecting social media users’ safety
Lib Dem conference passed an emergency motion this morning calling for an urgent review of the Online Safety Act within six months.
The Online Safety Act was passed under the Conservative government in 2023 but is now being implemented by Labour.
The party says the legislation needs to be urgently reviewed with full parliamentary scrutiny to ensure it protects children online while respecting users’ privacy.
Victoria Collins MP, the Lib Dem spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology, argued that “vulnerable children are not protected efficiently under the Online Safety Act.”
She explained she had helped to put forward the emergency motion with the Young Liberals and Liberal Reform because it “exposes the flaw in how this act has been implemented”.
Collins pointed to Wikipedia being regulated under the same framework as pornographic sites simply because of its popularity.
She added that LGBTQ forums had been restricted and “inappropriately age-gated”, blocking young people struggling with their sexuality from accessing support.
Collins argued that “This is not what the Act ever intended to do.”
The motion also called for the creation of a Digital Bill of Rights, which Collins said would act as “a best practice” for companies and the government “where rights to privacy and digital safety are prioritised”.
Caroline Voaden, MP for South Devon, also spoke for the motion. Voaden said the Online Safety Act was a step in “the right direction” to protect children.
However, she said “in a fast changing world” legislators must become more nimble “to keep up with the tech giants who resist any attempts to curtail their profit-making enterprises”.
Voaden stressed that the Act must be reviewed to ensure it “focuses squarely” on protecting children and other vulnerable users, but does not prevent access to support, political content or educational resources, “for these are the kind of things that make the internet a positive tool for everyone”.
Lib Dem member James Currie accused the Online Safety Act of empowering tech companies. “We tell Meta to ‘sort it out’ as if they can be trusted on children’s safety,” he said.
“The simple fact is we should not be using the power of the state to empower tech companies against their own users,” he said.
Currie highlighted that as “the party of personal liberty”, the Lib Dems should put the power of the individual against the tech company at the heart of its digital policy.
Following the motion on digital rights, conference discussed a motion titled ‘Building a fairer asylum system’.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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