Member

The online safety landscape is evolving rapidly, and our regulatory mechanisms must evolve with it. Just as we stressed the need for robust mechanisms for civil society input during the then Bill’s passage, we now need robust mechanisms for reviewing and refining how these operate in practice. So I ask the Government for a number of specific commitments: first, that they will monitor closely the practical operation of these eligibility criteria to ensure that they are not inadvertently excluding legitimate and important voices from the super-complaints process, in particular smaller, newer or less well-resourced organisations; secondly, that they will keep under continuous review Ofcom’s capacity to handle super-complaints effectively, ensuring both that resource constraints do not undermine the system’s objectives and that sufficient funding and staff with appropriate expertise are always in place; and, thirdly, that they will commit to a comprehensive review of these regulations within two years of their coming into force, paying particular attention to their accessibility for smaller organisations and their effectiveness in identifying and addressing systemic online safety features.