12 2GM Wednesday February 16 2022 | the times
News
Tech giants may soon have to proact-
ively remove “legal but harmful” con-
tent from their platforms for UK users
under radical proposals being consid-
ered by the government.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, is
reportedly considering changes to the
forthcoming Online Safety Bill that
would require tech companies to moni-
tor and remove content that is consid-
ered harmful but not illegal.
The bill aims to make the UK the
“safest place in the world to be online”
and could be presented to parliament as
to minimise access to content that is
“legal but harmful”, such as some types
of online abuse, or content that may
glorify self-harm or eating disorders.
However, it was not stated that the
companies would be legally required to
proactively remove such content,
rather than relying on users to report it.
Now, Patel is looking to make tech
companies and their UK-based direct-
ors liable for such content. The move
was first reported by the Financial
Times, which said that she had written
to cabinet colleagues including the
chancellor laying out her proposals, as
she says new measures are needed to
better protect children online.
“There is lots of content on socialTom Knowles
Technology Correspondent
Matt Dathan
Channel migrants should be deported
to an overseas British territory within
48 hours of arriving in the UK, a report
by a right-wing think tank has said.
Policy Exchange recommends set-
ting up asylum processing centres in
Britain’s Sovereign Base Areas in
Cyprus; Alderney in the Channel
Islands; or Ascension Island, 4,
miles away in the Atlantic.
The think tank, which has close links
to the government, urges ministers to
adopt a “new Plan B” if France contin-
ues to refuse “Plan A” of British vessels
intercepting boats in French waters and
escorting migrants back to France.
Policy Exchange has recommended
a three-stage process for handling
those picked up in the Channel, under
which every migrant would be detained
and deported within 48 hours to a third
country. Policy Exchange believes its
hardline proposals would act as a deter-
rent. Last year the number of migrants
crossing the Channel reached 28,381.
The Policy Exchange proposals go
further than Priti Patel, the home sec-
retary, has published as part of her New
Plan for Immigration and Nationality
and Borders Bill.
The exchange’s preference out of the
three overseas locations is Ascension
because of its climate and its lack of an
indigenous or permanent population.
The report said the island’s runway
could handle “large planes” and cited
its “stable and favourable” climate, with
an average temperature of 22.7C.
Ascension Island has been compared
A total of 28,381 migrants crossed
the Channel to Britain last year
Send Channel
migrants to
Ascension,
ministers told
Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor to Australia’s use of Nauru island to pro-
cess asylum seekers. But the exchange
report said that accommodation in As-
cension would be “much less austere”
than in Nauru, Cyprus and the Channel
Islands because of the warm weather.
A drawback to using Ascension
Island might be the cost of flying the
migrants 4,000 miles. The report said
more work was needed to calculate the
“practical aspects”.
The option of placing migrants on
sovereign bases in Cyprus, in Akrotiri
and Dhekelia, would be allowed as their
use by the UK is “not required to be
confined to military purposes”.
The report said Alderney was the
most favourable option because its
local government would make it easier
to process asylum seekers. It said that
placing migrants on the island would
help deter Channel crossings because
of the “futility of departing for the UK
from France, only to find oneself closer
to France, physically, than the UK”.
Its proposals are based on a premise
that every migrant who crosses the
Channel — even genuine refugees —
would never be granted a right to settle
in the UK.
Richard Ekins, an Oxford professor
and one of the report’s authors, said the
Channel migrant crisis needed a
“game-changing” solution. “The crisis
may well worsen as events in Ukraine
unfold,” he said. If Plan A cannot be
agreed with France, the Plan B outlined
in this report is the way forward.”
A government source said that
sending people to overseas British terri-
tories would not solve the problem of
removing illegal migrants from enter-
ing the UK’s asylum system.
Tech firms face crackdown on ‘legal but harmful’ content
soon as next month. The legislation re-
quires social media giants — and most
other companies that allow users to up-
load their own content — to show a
“duty of care” to users by proactively re-
moving illegal content and activity,
such as child sex abuse material or
terrorist content. They must also
ensure that children are not exposed to
inappropriate material. Companies
that fail to do so could be fined £18 mil-
lion or 10 per cent of their global annual
turnover, and UK-based directors
could be held criminally liable.
In the draft released in May, the gov-
ernment stated that a certain subset of
companies, predominantly social me-
dia giants, would also need to take stepsmedia that is illegal and harmful to
children. We want to give Ofcom powers
to require companies to mitigate harm
on their platforms,” a Whitehall official
said. “There are technologies that can
do this and we want to make sure that
tech companies are doing all they can.”
Tech executives have reported con-
cern about the proposals. One industry
figure told the FT: “This seems to go sig-
nificantly beyond what is done in dem-
ocratic countries. It feels a bit closer to
what they are doing in China.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “We
expect companies to remove and limit
the spread of illegal content on their
platforms. Where they don’t, it is right
they are held to account.”MI5 rejected
intelligence
on bomber
Duncan Gardham, Fiona HamiltonIntelligence passed to MI5 in the
months before the Manchester Arena
bomb was dismissed despite being a
“pressing national security concern”,
an intelligence officer admitted in a
secret hearing.
The Security Service was said to have
been overstretched due to the rise of
Islamic State when it failed to appreci-
ate the significance of two leads passed
on about Salman Abedi, who killed 22
people in a suicide attack in May 2017.
Another MI5 witness told the public
inquiry into the bombing that there was
a big increase in workload in the two
years before the attack and he had
warned his superiors “something
potentially could get through”. Families
of victims said they were “shocked and
appalled” at the revelation.
Four MI5 witnesses and ten officers
from counterterrorism police gave evi-
dence in secret after Sir John Saunders,
the inquiry chairman, ruled that a pub-
lic airing would risk national security.
Yesterday, on the final day of evi-
dence after 17 months of hearings, a
“gist”, or summary, was read out.
Paul Greaney QC, for the inquiry,
explained that the MI5 officer who first
evaluated one piece of intelligence
“accepted during questioning that it
could be understood, at the time, to
indicate activity of pressing national
security concern”.Red head A model on the LaQuan Smith runway on Valentine’s Day was well
prepared to stave off the infamous winter weather at New York Fashion WeekFERNANDA CALFAT/GETTY IMAGESThe parents
living in fear
of children
Charlie MoloneyAdult children attacking their parents
make up a tenth of domestic abuse
cases, a study funded by the Home
Office has found.
More young adults are living at home
because of housing shortages and the
higher cost of property, and investiga-
tors said this had led to tensions within
homes. In cases involving a parent, the
abusers were, on average, aged 27 and
male while the victims were aged 54.
Dr Nathan Birdsall, co-investigator
on the project, said that the 10 per cent
figure could be an underestimate.
Instances of abuse were unreported
because parents did not want to crimi-
nalise their children, the study said.
“They may also feel it makes them
look like a bad parent,” Birdsall told The
Daily Telegraph. “They feel embar-
rassed or guilty about reporting or they
may rely on their child to provide and
care for them.”
Nicola Graham-Kevan, a professor
of criminology from the University of
Central Lancashire who led the
research, said that the abuse often
resulted from the pressures of caring
for elderly or ill mothers and fathers.
“As medicine gets better at keeping
people alive, it also means chronic ill-
nesses are going to be more prevalent,
increasing the chances of carer burn-
out,” she said.
There were 66,973 domestic abuse
offences or incidents investigated by
Lancashire police, which formed part
of the study, of which 7,171 involved a
child aged over 16 abusing a parent or
parental figure. The number of people
aged 24 to 34 who are living with their
parents has risen by a third since 1996.6 The government is struggling to
move 12,000 Afghan refugees out of
hotels partly because some families do
not want to be moved to remote areas of
the country. Yesterday marked six
months since the evacuation mission
from Afghanistan, which airlifted
17,000 people to Britain. Officials have
privately admitted there will still be
families living in hotels a year on from
Operation Pitting last August and that
they are struggling to persuade coun-
cils to offer enough permanent homes.