Microsoft boss says duty of care law is vital to protect children online
‘We need regulation. There’s an absence of trust in tech that people use all the time’
MICROSOFT, the world’s biggest technology company, has backed the Government’s plans for a statutory duty of care as it says regulation is essential to protect children from harm online.
Hugh Milward, the software giant’s head of corporate, external and legal affairs, said “proper regulation” overseen by a new regulator was needed to help repair the public’s “broken” trust in tech firms.
He suggested the planned “duty of care” for which The Telegraph has campaigned could provide a model to be adopted worldwide.
His comments come amid pressure on the Government to push through its plans with detailed legislation in the Queen’s Speech, due on Monday.
Mr Milward told a London conference on online child abuse: “We need regulation. I know that sounds unusual for a tech company to be that clear, but we need regulation that is proportionate and realistic.
“There’s an absence of trust in tech that people use all the time.
“We feel that having a regulator, including proper regulation, is a really powerful step in re-establishing that trust and making some progress.”
Mr Milward said the Government’s duty of care plans were a “super interesting” model for other countries attempting to tackle online harms.
He said one advantage of a duty of care was that it was “less prescriptive” and “less time-limited”, which meant that it could adapt to future developments in technology.
Mr Milward said it provided the UK with the chance to develop a worldleading model, but it needed to be “workable”. “It has to ensure that it doesn’t damage the things that we want to preserve,” he added.
Adam Mosseri, the chief executive of Instagram, became the first tech boss to back the duty of care concept in an interview with The Telegraph earlier this year. In March, Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg said there was a need for governments and regulators to have a “more active role”.
The Government’s White Paper on online harms proposed a new regulator to enforce a duty of care, with tech firms’ executives held legally responsible for breaches. The watchdog would have powers to fine the companies and potentially shut down services.
Mr Milward said it was also important for tech giants to work with other agencies to combat online harms, citing work to develop and use so-called photo DNA technology which enables abuse images to be recognised and blocked on Microsoft servers.
“It’s only through collaboration that we can make that really effective,” he said. “We have to make a difference in grooming. It involves collaboration over the development of new technologies like AI to tackle this.”