Culture secretary rejects claims changes to online safety bill have made it weaker – UK politics live | Politics

On Thursday last week Mark Harper, the transport secretary, held what both sides described as a positive meeting with Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary. They were talking about the rail strikes and afterwards Lynch told journalists that it was not clear to his union who had the authority to negotiate a pay settlement. The individual rail companies, and the Rail Delivery Group (which represents them), were both saying they could not engage in collective bargaining, he said.

Lynch said Harper had offered to send him a letter clarifying who exactly did have the authority to negotiate a settlement.

Harper has now released the text of his letter to Lynch. It is short and it does not really address Lynch’s questions at all, but Harper is promising a further meeting, as well as “better information sharing”. He says:

My role is to facilitate and support – not negotiate. Negotiations will continue between trade unions and employers, but I can see scope for agreement.

Let me set out how I think we can help support that. Better information sharing between the rail minister, trade unions and those leading the negotiations on behalf of the employers can speed up this process. We will soon convene a further meeting to help advance, with the good faith of all parties, settlement discussions and progress in this dispute.

Good morning. The Rishi Sunak cabinet may be stuffed with faces from the David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss administrations, but it is not all continuity and in some ways Sunak is revising policies pursued by his predecessors. We’ve got an example today, with changes to the online safety bill.

The bill, which has been years in the planning and which was published by Nadine Dorries when she was culture secretary, would extend significant new controls over social media companies. It goes further than what has been tried in most other western democracies. The bill completed almost all its Commons stages in the spring, but it was shelved as Johnson had to resign, amid concerns that it restricted freedom of speech too much and in the knowledge that a new PM might prefer a different approach.

He does, and this morning Michelle Donelan, the culture secretary, has announced significant changes. Here is the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s summary. And here is my colleague Dan Milmo’s overnight story.

The original bill focused heavily on a category of content deemed “legal but harmful” (posts about suicide, for example). The bill did not ban this content, but it imposed strict restrictions on how social media companies would have to handle it (the full details are in a briefing here), and that led to claims that this would amount to a de facto ban, because the social media companies would choose not to take any risks and remove the content anyway.

The “legal but harmful” provisions have now been removed, and replaced with plans that are intended to achieve a similar effect while looking less like censorship. Ian Russell, who has been a campaigner for stricter controls since his daughter Molly killed herself after viewing large amounts of content related to suicide and depression on social media, said he was glad the government was finally bringing the bill back to parliament.

But he said the removal of the “legal but harmful” clauses meant the bill was being watered down. He told the Today programme:

There are two emotions this morning and one is some relief, not just on my part but on the part of many parents who sadly find themselves in similar circumstances, that at last this is moving forward.

There’s been a growing sense of frustration amongst that community of bereaved parents and families that not enough is being done, so that’s the good news.

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But, as ever with these things, the devil will be in the detail and so it’s very hard to understand that something that was important as recently as July, when the bill would have had a third reading in the Commons – and was included in the bill, this legal but harmful content – it’s very hard to understand why that suddenly can’t be there …

I don’t see how you can see the removal of a whole clause as anything other than a watering down.

But Donelan claims the bill has been made “stronger”. And, interviews this morning, she said the protections for children in the bill were not being watered down. She told the Today programme:

Let’s be absolutely clear. So you mentioned young people and children – nothing is getting watered down or taken out when it comes to children. We’re adding extra in, so there is no change to children.

And she has posted this on Twitter.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10am: Martin Lewis, the consumer champion and founder of the MoneySavingExpert website, gives evidence to the Commons culture committee at 10am on misinformation.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

3pm: Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Lords economic affairs committee.

Afternoon: Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, gives a speech to MPs and peers in parliament.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions and, if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

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