Online Safety: Senior managers to face imprisonment for non-compliance

The Online Safety Bill is to be amended to include an offence for officers or senior managers of key tech companies who fail to comply with duties to protect children online.

As currently drafted, the offence will apply to senior managers and officers (or those purporting to fulfil such functions) of "user-to-user services" (better known as social media sites, but they could include many online businesses, including forums, online gaming sites and cloud storage providers). Officers could face up to two years' imprisonment if the failure to comply is committed "with the consent or connivance" or is "attributable to any neglect" of the officer. There is also, therefore, an effort in the current drafting to ensure culpability for negligence, and not just wilful non-compliance.

The current draft offence is set out in an amendment to the proposed Online Safety Bill which is reported to have been agreed in principle by the Government. Ministers are, however, reported to be working with the MPs proposing the amendment to re-draft it, so the final wording is not yet agreed.

The Online Safety Bill is set to introduce a raft of significant regulation for many online businesses, and the knock-on effects will likely extend to those which work with online businesses. The new law will introduce wide-ranging duties of care (including safety duties to protect children, to which the above offence relates) and will give wide-ranging enforcement powers to Ofcom. Offences previously related to failure comply with Ofcom's information requests, for example, but now will have far more serious consequences for individuals behind non-compliant businesses.

For full details of the changes envisaged by the Online Safety Bill and the key implications for business and practitioners, please see Matthew MacLachlan's recent article for the Privacy & Data Protection Journal here.