Priti Patel calls for stronger Online Safety Bill with power to jail tech bosses
Former home secretary backs amendment to law saying public expect senior managers at social media firms ‘to be held fully to account’
Priti Patel is among up to 30 Tory MPs who are urging the Government to introduce powers to jail social media bosses who fail to protect children from online harms.
The former home secretary is backing an amendment to the Online Safety Bill that would see named directors at tech firms jailed for up to two years if they fail to comply with legal duties to protect children from harms such as child abuse, suicide and self harm.
Some 14 Tory MPs initially signed up for the amendment, which is also backed by Labour, but it is thought the number could double as the Bill progresses through Parliament.
Ms Patel said: “The public expect senior managers at tech firms to be held fully to account for content published on their platforms and to be proactive in preventing harms and child sexual abuse taking place.
“We must ensure that these new laws in the Online Safety Bill are effective at protecting children and vulnerable people from online harms and this proposed amendment is widely supported.”
'We have seen repeated failures of big tech'
Ministers have previously rejected such demands and the Bill currently only holds social media bosses criminally liable if they fail to cooperate with the official watchdog Ofcom by refusing to provide information for its investigations, for example.
But Tory MP Miriam Cates, who tabled the amendment, said: “We have seen repeated failures of big tech to protect children from the horrors of sexual exploitation, pornography and content that draws them into self-harm and suicide, and sadly the Online Safety Bill as it stands will not stop this.
“The only way to secure the change we desperately need is to make senior directors personally responsible for failures to protect children and that’s why I urge all MPs to support this amendment to include senior manager liability in the Online Safety Bill.”
The change is backed by former cabinet ministers David Jones and Andrea Leadsom and former ministers Tim Loughton, Mark Francois and Sir Edward Leigh.
'Consequences of non-compliance are life changing'
It comes as a poll by YouGov of 2,031 adults showed four in five (81 per cent) wanted tech managers held legally responsible for stopping children being harmed by social media.
The survey for the children’s charity NSPCC revealed two thirds (66 per cent) said senior managers should be prosecuted for failures that resulted in serious harm to children.
Ruth Moss, whose daughter Sophie took her life after viewing harmful content on social media, said: “Where companies wilfully break the law and put the lives of children like my daughter at risk, of course senior managers should be criminally accountable.
“The consequences of non-compliance are life changing for children like Sophie. Criminal liability drives the right behaviours in those with the most responsibility. It works in other industries and there is no reason in my mind as to why big tech executives should be treated any differently.”
Lucy Powell MP, the Shadow Culture Secretary said: “Labour has long called for the Online Safety Bill to be strengthened especially when it comes to the liability - including criminal liability - of social media bosses. Without these sanctions there’s a real risk that a UK regulator will be toothless.
“Yet instead of strengthening the laws, the Government has recently gutted and watered down the Bill, letting social media companies off the hook and allowing harms, abuse and hate to continue.”