The Online Safety Bill is still a censor’s charter

One of Rishi Sunak’s pledges was to remove the ‘legal, but harmful’ censorship clause that Boris Johnson was poised to bring in via the Online Safety Bill. A few weeks ago it was said that he had done so and I wrote a piece congratulating him. I may have spoken too soon. The Bill as published would actually introduce (rather than abolish) censorship of the written word – ending a centuries-old British tradition of liberty. The censorship mechanism is intended for under-18s – an improvement on the original, draconian plan. But it still raises problems that I doubt have been properly discussed in Whitehall given the bias amongst officials desperate to get this Bill through.

Films and magazines have long been subject to age censorship. The intentions of this Bill are fine: to protect children from indefensible content. But the greatest mistake in politics is to judge a scheme by its intentions, rather than its effects.