Will Sunak continue with the censor’s charter?

Had it not been for the Tory leadership contest over the summer, a new censorship law would have been passed in Britain by now. The Online Safety Bill included a clause banning content regarded as ‘legal but harmful’ – a dangerously vague phrase that could mean anything that ministers wanted. It would, in effect, have been the end of free speech in the UK. Rishi Sunak said that, if elected, he’d amend the legislation. But this may be only a partial reprieve.

The new text of the Bill has yet to be published. But one mooted compromise is that ‘legal but harmful’ would be removed for adults but still apply to under 18s. The trouble is that this would be almost impossible to implement. In bookshops, newspapers, magazines and more, the British principle has always been one of universal access. So censorship intended at children is likely to affect adults too. The threat would remain.

The MPs who were set to vote for the Online Safety Bill never understood the danger of the ‘legal but harmful’ clause. At present, speech is either legal or it is not. It is illegal, for example, to promote suicide or terrorism and to advertise drugs or weapons. Whether this is attempted on a street corner or on YouTube, it’s against the law. But the difficulty with free speech always comes in the marginal areas, the collateral damage. Hence the danger of entrusting politicians with powers they can’t understand.

The sponsor of the Online Safety Bill, Nadine Dorries, was a perfect example of how it could be abused. As culture secretary she insisted that she was defending free speech, but she made no end of suggestions of what she would like to censor. At one stage, she offered up the jokes of comedian Jimmy Carr as an example of what she considered beyond the pale.

Her predecessor, Oliver Dowden, had enough time to grapple with this Bill to realise its danger.