Social media bosses face duty of care prosecution

Directors to be held personally liable for breaches of new internet safety law

SOCIAL media bosses will be held personally liable for online harms and face prosecution if they breach their duty of care, the Government is to announce.

Baroness Morgan, the Culture Secretary, will appoint Ofcom as the regulator to enforce a statutory duty of care requiring tech giants such as Facebook and Google to protect children from abuse and self-harm online.

A parliamentary Bill enacting the duty of care, for which The Daily Telegraph has campaigned since 2018, is expected by the summer and laws could be in place within 18 months.

The plans are to go to Cabinet today and are due to be launched to coincide with Safer Internet Day on Tuesday when Lady Morgan will also publish the results of a consultation on last year’s White Paper on online harms.

In the Tory manifesto and Queen’s Speech, Boris Johnson vowed to “make the UK the safest place in the world to be online”.

Lady Morgan wants the legislation to mirror regulation in the financial sector. Known as “senior management liability”, firms must appoint a director to take personal responsibility for ensuring legal duties are met. Breaches could mean fines and criminal prosecution. “If you go down to individual responsibility, that concentrates the minds of executives in a way corporate responsibility might not,” said a source. Andy Burrows, of the NSPCC, said: “Any regulator will only succeed if it has the power to impose hefty fines that hit rogue companies hard in the pocket and hold named directors and tech firms criminally accountable.”

Ofcom will advise on potential sanctions against directors, from enforcement notices and disqualification to fines and prosecution. It will also be able to draw up legally enforceable codes of practice setting out what is expected of social media firms.

Codes for blocking and removing terrorist content and online child abuse are expected to be published before the summer by the Home Office. Other harms that may be covered include disinformation that causes public alarm, such as anti-vaccine propaganda, selfharm, harassment, cyberbullying, violence and pornography, where there will be tougher age verification rules.

Ofcom may also be able to impose fines for breaches of the codes worth up to four per cent of the firms’ global turnover – which could cost Facebook £2billion and Google £5billion.

Ministers may also give Ofcom powers to block access to the UK for persistent serious duty of care breaches.

Today Priti Patel, the Home Secre- tary, backs an appeal to Facebook from child safety groups worldwide not to extend end-to-end encryption for messaging, which could make it easier for paedophiles to contact children.

Facebook said protection of young people was “critically important” and it was “committed to building strong safety measures” into its plans.