Contribution
In the five minutes you have allotted me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will try to speak to my clauses 41 to 47 in my name, new clauses 82 and 83, which are now in my name—I put them in my name on behalf of the Education Secretary—and amendment 4, which I put in my name on behalf of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Jo White).
I thank the previous Ministers, my hon. Friends the Members for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) and for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), for their constant engagement with me on this matter over the past year and a bit, and I also thank the Minister with responsibility for online safety. I welcome the new Minister to her place—she is a fantastic appointment. I thank the Electoral Commission, Philip Rycroft, members of the Online Safety Network in particular, Demos, Adobe, British broadcasters and colleagues from across this House for working with me to table these crucial amendments.
Our democracy is under attack by foreign actors who want to destabilise our country, and individuals in our country who want to create chaos and division. They use the online space to create and spread disinformation, create deepfakes, and use algorithms to amplify bots pretending to be British citizens. These distort the debate, negate the facts, and take away our right to free choice in a free election.
AI-generated material can be fun—for example, images of cats riding on dolphins—but it can also be destructive. A network of 73 TikTok accounts that pretend to be authentic news organisations suddenly sprang up in March 2025; they have nearly one million followers and have published thousands of deepfakes of Government Ministers supposedly announcing controversial policies. They use real BBC footage. In the first week of December 2025 alone, they had nearly one million viewers. That translates to the doorstep. I spoke to a voter in December 2025 who was convinced that the then Prime Minister was imposing a Christmas tax because she saw a video of him announcing it. Those accounts have made us less sure of who and what we can trust. When that happens, people still vote and make a choice, but the ground beneath their judgment shifts.
New clause 47 would ensure that all material that is AI-generated is clearly labelled. It does not stop any party or candidate from creating crowds at their speeches or wearing a superhero outfit to leap over the Elizabeth Tower, but it would bring transparency to the public.
As has often been said, democracy does not require us to agree, but it does require us to live in the same reality, so new clause 82 would create a liability for false statements, and new clause 41 would ensure that the law offline is applied online—mainly sections 106 and 114A from the Representation of the People Act 1983. These need to be made priority offences under the Online Safety Act 2023. I thank the Minister for online safety for his engagement; it allows us to work together to ensure that this happens and that Ofcom understands the importance of protecting democracy.
The algorithms are powerful because they do not look dramatic. They look ordinary; it is just content in our feed. No single message changes our mind; scale, volume, emotion and the cumulative effect do. Online social media bosses can use their control of algorithms to promote their political views without reporting to the public. That is why I tabled new clause 42.
I will skip new clause 44, on the Electoral Commission. I want to raise new clause 43, which would require a repository for political advertising, so that any voter can see what a party is advertising in different parts of the country and on different platforms. It would also ensure that all political advertising and the money spent on it can be audited and properly declared.
Everyone in this House knows that this harmful activity is not limited to election periods, but is happening all the time, spreading disinformation or nudifying and humiliating female candidates and politicians. New clauses 46 and 83, which look to introduce the broadcast code to online platforms, would deal with this matter.
Finally, we need an emergency election protocol that is appropriate, transparent and holds public confidence. That is what new clause 45 is about.
None of my amendments has been selected for decision, so they will be relaid in the Lords. I thank the Minister for Online Safety, No. 10 and the Secretary of State for their engagement. Working together, I am sure that we can find a way to protect our democracy.