“A wide range of policy analysts, civil rights groups, academics,
lawyers, free speech campaigners and industry representatives have
[suggested] ways of mitigating some of the grave threats to free speech
in this Bill … I have, at times, felt that those concerns were batted
away with a certain indifference,” Baroness Claire Fox told the House of Lords on Monday.
“I
hope the Government will listen and consider how to avoid the UK ending
up having the most restrictive internet speech laws of any Western
democracy,” she said.
This week alone, Baroness Fox has raised
her concerns twice in the House of Lords about the proposed UK Online
Safety Bill. As she noted on Monday, there has been little attention
paid to it by the Lords. “I assumed that there would be packed Benches –
as there are on the Illegal Migration Bill – and that everybody,
including all these Law Lords, would be in quoting the European Court of
Human Rights … I assumed there would be complaints about Executive
power grabs and so on. But it has been a bit sparse,” she said.
She
noted that the UK has a long history of boasting that it is the home of
liberty and adopts the liberal approach that being free is the default
position. “That free speech and the plurality and diversity of views it
engenders are the cornerstone of democracy in a free society.”
A
comprehensive piece of law, such as the Online Safety Bill, that
challenges many of those norms, deserves thorough scrutiny through the
prism of free speech, she said....<<<Read More>>>...