Matt Rodda – 2022 Speech on the Online Safety Bill

The speech made by Matt Rodda, the Labour MP for Reading East, in the House of Commons on 5 December 2022.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. I commend the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) on her work in this important area. I would like to focus my remarks on legal but harmful content and its relationship to knife crime, and to mention a very harrowing and difficult constituency case of mine. As we have heard, legal but harmful content can have a truly dreadful effect. I pay tribute to the families of the children who have been lost, who have attended the debate, a number of whom are still in the Public Gallery.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

Just to be clear, the hon. Gentleman’s speech must relate to the amendments before us today.

Matt Rodda

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. A boy called Olly Stephens in my constituency was just 13 years old when he was stabbed and brutally murdered in an attack linked to online bullying. He died, sadly, very near his home. His parents had little idea of the social media activity in his life. It is impossible to imagine what they have been through. Our hearts go out to them.

Harmful but legal content had a terrible effect on the attack on Olly. The two boys who attacked and stabbed him had been sharing enormous numbers of pictures and videos of knives, repeatedly, over a long period of time. There were often videos of teenagers playing with knives, waving them or holding them. They circulated them on 11 different social media platforms over a long period of time. None of those platforms took any action to take the content down. We all need to learn more about such cases to fully understand the impact of legal but harmful content. Even at this late stage, I hope that the Government will think again about the changes they have made to the Bill and include this area again in the Bill.

There is a second aspect of this very difficult case that I want to mention: the fact that Olly’s murder was discussed on social media and was planned to some extent beforehand. The wider issues here underline the need for far greater regulation and moderation of social media, in particular teenagers’ use of these powerful sites. I am finding it difficult to talk about some of these matters, but I hope that the Government will take my points on board and address the issue of legal but harmful content, and that the Minister will think again about these important matters. Perhaps we will have an opportunity to discuss it in the Bill’s later stages.