Is Russell Brand really so dangerous?

Once the dust has settled over the government’s mini-Budget, another big political battle looms: the Online Safety Bill. This is the legislation that will make Ofcom responsible for regulating the internet so Britain becomes ‘the safest place in the world to go online’ – at least, that’s how the last government tried to sell it. It was due to go the House of Lords for a second reading in July, but was put on hold because of the Tory leadership contest and I was hoping it would never be resuscitated. Liz Truss and her lieutenants are currently going through the last administration’s legislative programme, seeing what they can ditch to free up some parliamentary time for new bills. But the Culture Secretary has said that, like some zombie, this bill will soon be back from the dead.

The problem its opponents face is that those in favour of it are more powerful and better at lobbying than us. For instance, five ex-culture secretaries recently wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph headlined: ‘Watering down Online Safety Bill “will put children at risk”.’ This is a reference to the fact that the bill will empower Ofcom to impose large fines on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube if they fail to remove content that’s harmful to children. A case in point is Molly Russell, the 14-year-old who took her own life in 2017. Last week, a coroner concluded that the material Molly had seen on social media that appeared to encourage suicide had ‘contributed to her death in a more than minimal way’.

This verdict was met with a chorus of voices clamouring for the bill to be passed as quickly as possible, including that of Prince William, who said that protecting young people from harm should be ‘a prerequisite, not an afterthought’ for social media companies.