Labour MP warns Reform UK’s pledge to repeal the Online Safety Act would remove important safeguards for children
Reform UK‘s pledge to repeal the Online Safety Act could enable “modern-day Jimmy Saviles,” Labour MP Jess Phillips has said.
Writing in The Times, the Home Office minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls appeared to accuse Nigel Farage of being more concerned about “clicks for his monetised social media accounts” than children’s safety online.
Under rules that came into effect on 25 July as part of the act, online platforms such as social media sites and search engines must take steps to prevent children from accessing harmful content such as pornography or material that encourages suicide.
However the Reform UK leader has said the legislation threatens freedom of speech and open debate.
Phillips said she would like to speak to Farage about “one of those modern-day Saviles, Alexander McCartney”.
She wrote: “Unlike Savile, he didn’t have to become a national celebrity to access his victims. He just needed a computer.”
McCartney posed as a teenage girl to befriend young females from across the globe on Snapchat and other platforms before blackmailing them.
Believed to be one of the world’s most prolific online offenders, McCartney abused at least 70 children online and drove one girl to suicide.
Phillips said the Online Safety Act exists to try to provide a “basic minimum of protection, and make it harder for paedophiles to prey on children at will”.
She said police have told her that paedophile networks use “normal websites where their parents assume they’re safe” to coerce and blackmail young people.
“I worry about what it means now and what it will mean when boys reared on a diet of ultraviolent online child abuse are adult men having children of their own. I can’t ignore that, neither can Peter Kyle, and, most importantly, nor can millions of parents across the country.
“I defy Nigel Farage to tell me what any of that has to do with free speech.”
Phillips’ comments come after Technology Secretary Peter Kyle accused Farage’s party of effectively siding with “extreme pornographers” and paedophiles like Jimmy Savile.
He said: “Make no mistake about it, if people like Jimmy Savile were alive today, he’d be perpetrating his crimes online. And Nigel Farage is saying that he’s on their side.”
Farage demanded an apology from the Technology Secretary, who refused to withdraw the remarks.
