This is the latest rebellion faced by UK PM Rishi Sunak in recent weeks over housing targets for councils and restrictions on onshore wind farms.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gestures during his first major domestic speech of 2023 at Plexal, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London (Photo: AP/File)
By India Today Web Desk: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing a major rebellion over the government’s plans to prevent harmful material on the internet. The members of his Conservative Party want to toughen legislation so websites are forced to introduce more robust age checks to stop children accessing pornography, Bloomberg reported.
The Online Safety Bill has been designed to protect children when they use the internet. It is set to begin its passage through the upper, revising chamber, the House of Lords, on Monday.
The government has argued that the legislation needs to remain general to allow it to keep up with changing technology. On the other hand, Conservative party leader James Bethell has stressed that porn is so harmful to children it needs immediate legislation.
This is the latest rebellion faced by Sunak in recent weeks over housing targets for councils and restrictions on onshore wind farms. On both of those issues, the prime minister backed down and offered concessions to avoid defeat in the House of Commons.
The Online Safety Bill was introduced in March under Boris Johnson and has been repeatedly altered during its passage through Parliament. Now, a series of amendments drafted for the long-debated bill will propose that all porn websites must implement age verification systems within six months of it becoming law, the report said.
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In an amendment to the bill which is also supported by Labour, communications watchdog Ofcom would be given the power to prosecute individual executives at social media companies that are found to have breached the law, Forbes reported.
The executives could face up to two years in prison if found to have failed to protect children from harm on their platforms, the report said. The amendments to the bill have the support of heavyweights including former home secretary Priti Patel and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.
WHAT ARE THE NEW AMENDMENTS?
The reports suggest that the new amendments that are likely to be debated will demand adults prove they are over 18 by using stringent forms of age verification already used for online gambling. For example, they will have to upload an ID card or credit card details. This can be done via a third-party tool to ensure that a person’s identity is not directly linked to the porn site, which is a more privacy-preserving approach.
Other measures for age verification include using software that predicts someone’s age by analysing their face via a webcam or phone camera, where it is not required to identify documents.
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“What we need is an emphatic timetable and clear cut commitment to hard-gated mandatory age verification,” James Bethell, a Conservative peer who is overseeing the amendments said in an interview on Tuesday.
“The current provisions are a kumbaya aspiration that leaves open too many loopholes, no enforcement and no timetable.”
This is not the first time policymakers have tried to introduce age checks for adult-only sites. The Digital Economy Act of 2017 had age verification provisions, but they were dropped by the government before being implemented.
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