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Key events
Cabinet Office ‘looking into’ how Labour thinktank commissioned investigation into journalists, Kendall says
In her interviews this morning Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, was also asked about the controversy about the Labour Together thinktank that commissioned a report that made “baseless claims” about journalists who were invesigating it.
Kendall told Times Radio that the Cabinet Office was “looking into” this. She said:
The Cabinet Office is looking into the facts of this issue. And I think that’s right because the freedom of the press to ask difficult questions, including of cabinet ministers, is absolutely essential. And the journalists in question, I know, are extremely good. They make our lives difficult, but that is their job.
The report was commissioned by Josh Simons, who was running Labour Together when the party was in opposition. He is now a junior minister, working in the Cabinet Office and in Kendall’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Asked if it was “tenable” for him to carry on as a minister, Kendall told the Today programme: “He has welcomed the investigation, rightly so, by the regulatory body, the body responsible for regulating public affairs.”
Liz Kendall stresses consultation launch does not mean government certain to impose full social media ban for under-16s
Good morning. Parliament is in recess this week, but politics goes on, and the government an announcement about social media. The Online Safety Act, a vast piece of legislation that was first proposed in the last decade and passed in 2023, is only now fully coming into force. But already there are claims that it is out of date and, under pressure from campaigners – and particularly the Conservative party – the government last month announced that it will consult on the case for banning under-16s from social media. Australia has introduced a ban of this kind, and in countries around the world governments are under growing pressure to do the same. The Tories are fully committed to a ban for under-16s, and recently won a vote on this in the Lords.
Today’s government “announcement” on social media is actually three announcements. There are explained in this news release from No 10. They are:
A loophole is being closed to ensure that material produced by AI chatbots is covered by Online Safety Act rules. When the act was being passed, AI chatbots weren’t widely available. Robert Booth has focused on this in is overnight Guardian story.
The government is committing to legislating now so that, when its three-month consultation on a social media ban for under-16s wraps up later, if it decides it wants to change the law, it will be able to do so via secondary legislation (ie quickly), without having to wait for a new bill. (This is broadly what the Labour MP Fred Thomas, who is pushing for a ban on under-16s using social media, was arguing for after the government lost the vote on this in the Lords last month.)
The government is also promising legislation to ensure that, if a child dies and social media is deemed relevant, that content gets preserved, not wiped. Campaigners refer to this as Jool’s law.
Anyone following the way this debate has developed at Westminster over the past year may think that a social media ban for under-16s is inevitable. Within months, the government has gone from saying a ban would be unworkable to sounding on the verge of implementing one.
But, in interviews this morning, Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, stressed that this was not a done deal. She told the Today programme:
We do think it’s right to have a consultation on whether or not to ban social media for the under-16s
Lots of people have made up their minds, Lord Nash (the Tory peer who tabled the amendment that led to the government defeat in January) included.
But let me just say this. There are organisations, including the NSPCC and the Molly Rose Foundation and the Internet Watch Foundation, who are worried that a ban wouldn’t solve the problem because it would just force some of this stuff deeper [into the dark web], that the children would try and get around it, that it would create a cliff edge at 16.
So I think it is the right and responsible thing to do to have a consultation.
I will post more from Kendall’s interviews soon.
Because of recess, there is not much in the diary for today. These are the events we know about.
Morning: Keir Starmer is expected to record a clip for broadcasters.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
4pm: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press event in Romford, ahead of a rally later in the evening. Farage will be with Andrew Rosindell MP and “special guests”.
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