Technology secretary Peter Kyle says Reform UK leader’s latest comments demonstrate he is ‘not on the side of children’
Good morning. Yesterday Reform UK said that it would repeal the Online Safety Act, key parts of which have only just come into force. The party described it as “the greatest assault on freedom of speech in our lifetimes” and claimed that it won’t protect children because some people are using VPN services to bypass age cerification requirements. It was quite a bold policy announcement, because polls suggest voters strongly back measures to limit the spread of harmful content online, but it has gone down well with hardcore libertarians.
Peter Kyle, the science secretary, has been giving interviews this morning, and he has not held back. In an interview with Sky News, he claimed this meant that Nigel Farage was now in effect siding with pornographers and paedophiles like Jimmy Savile. He explained:
When it comes to online activity, we have seen unfettered access of adults to children via social media. When we put in the age verification, it stops strange adults getting in touch with children …
Nigel Farage is on the side of turning the clock back to the time when strange adults, strangers, can get in touch via messenging apps with children. We have now asked [social media companies] to age verify the age at which people can have access to online content so we can protect children from unwanted, dangerous content, and also those messaging services.