UK prime minister Rishi Sunak. AFP File
New Delhi: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing another rebellion from his Conservative Party members who are seeking strict laws so that websites are compelled to implement thorough age checks to prevent youngsters from viewing pornography.
“What we need is an emphatic timetable and clear-cut commitment to hard-gated mandatory age verification,” a Bloomberg report quoted James Bethell, a Conservative peer who is overseeing the amendments, as saying.
“The current provisions are a kumbaya aspiration that leaves open too many loopholes, no enforcement and no timetable,” he added.
According to a series of modifications being prepared for the long-debated legislation, all porn websites will be required to put in place age verification systems within six months of the Online Safety Bill’s passing.
Earlier this month, rebellion from Tory lawmakers had prompted Sunak to cave in to demands for Big Tech directors to face jail if they fail to remove harmful content.
The Online Safety Bill, designed to protect children when they use the internet, is set to begin its passage through the upper, revising chamber, the House of Lords on Monday.
Earlier, the Bill required tech companies to remove illegal material from their platforms, with a particular emphasis on protecting children from seeing harmful content. It would also impose heavy fines for sites that break the rules.
However, dozens of MPs with the ruling Conservatives put their name to an amendment demanding tougher action.
The rebels MPs said that the owners of social media platforms should face jail time if they fail to protect children from seeing damaging content.
Following this, the government bowed to pressure from some its own backbenches — as well as calls from online child safety campaigners — to include expanded criminal liability provisions by making senior management at in-scope platforms criminally liable for repeat breaches of child safety duties.
This means that regulator Ofcom will get additional powers that could — at least on paper — result in jail time for social media bosses who deliberately flout child safety rules.
The new amendments, likely to be debated in late February, will demand that adults prove they’re over 18 by using stringent forms of age verification already used for online gambling, for example uploading an ID card or credit card details, according to the report.
Other approaches to age verification, including using software that estimates someone’s age by analysing their face via a webcam or phone camera, do not require any identity documents.
With inputs from agencies
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