UK Online Safety Bill Temporarily Defeated, Put On Hold Until Fall

The news was so good I didn’t believe it at first, like being told you’ve just won the lottery. A tweet appeared last night at about 7:15 pm claiming the Online Safety Bill had been put on hold by the Government.

Hearing that the Online Safety Bill has been dropped from government business next week with a view for it to "come back in the autumn" (aka when there's a new PM

Read: it's being dropped

Pretty key piece of govt legislation gone

— Eleanor Langford (@eleanormia) July 13, 2022

But it was true! The same journalist later wrote a longer piece for PoliticsHome explaining that the Bill had been held over until the autumn, explaining why.

PoliticsHome understands that the Bill was removed from the Government’s agenda to make space for a motion of no confidence in the Government due to be put to the House on Monday.

And this wasn’t idle speculation, but a genuine scoop. Later, the BBC followed up, confirming the story.

Plans for new internet safety laws have been put on hold until a new Prime Minister is in place in the autumn.

The Online Safety Bill aims to lay down rules in law about how platforms should deal with harmful content.

It had been in its final stages and was to be discussed in Parliament next week, but will now be paused until MPs return from their summer break.

A Government source confirmed to the BBC that timetable pressures meant the bill is being rescheduled.

Shadow culture minister Alex Davies-Jones said the delay was “an absolutely devastating blow and another example of the Tories prioritising their own ideals over people’s safety online”.

Campaigners seeking changes to the existing regulations expressed concern at the delay.

No doubt some people are ‘concerned’, but my phone began to light up with WhatsApp messages saying “Boom!”, accompanied by wine glass emojis. I’ve been campaigning against this legislation since it was first mooted in April 2019. I wrote a cover story for the June edition of the Critic describing the Bill as a “censors’ charter” and, more recently, replied to a piece by Chris Philp, then the junior minister piloting the Bill through the Commons, in ConservativeHome. I debated the Bill with one of its supporters in front of a group of Conservative MPs in Committee Room 10 last month and last week I spoke about the Bill to the Association of Conservative Peers in the House of Lords. Only this week, the Free Speech Union created a template email for people to send to their MPs, pointing out the major shortcomings of the Bill and asking, at the very least, for it to be held over until a new Prime Minister is in place. On Monday I was urging Conservative MPs I know who oppose the Bill to ask for a delay for precisely the reason it has been delayed, but the message they were getting back from the whips is that the Government was determined to press ahead. Then, suddenly, the house of cards collapsed.

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Source: The Daily Skeptic via Truth Unmuted

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