Britain’s new laws to boost safety and tackle hate speech online are “not up for negotiation”, a senior government minister has warned, after Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg vowed to join Donald Trump to pressure countries they regard as “censoring” content.
In an interview with the Observer, Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, said that the recent laws designed to make online platforms safer for children and vulnerable people would never be diluted to help the government woo big tech companies to the UK in its defining pursuit for economic growth.
His comments come as Keir Starmer prepares a major big tech charm offensive this week in which he will pitch the UK as the “sweet spot” for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
However, the prime minister will do so with his government facing constant and wild attacks from Elon Musk, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures and a leading Trump supporter.
Zuckerberg also used a wide-ranging statement last week to reveal he was ditching “politically biased” factcheckers and reducing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender on Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
He added that he would “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.
While he did not single out the UK, which passed the Online Safety Act last year, Zuckerberg said Europe had “an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship”.
Kyle, who is preparing to unveil the government’s AI strategy alongside Starmer this week, said Zuckerberg was struggling with the same issues of free speech that he had to consider as a legislator.
However, Kyle said he would not countenance rolling back Britain’s new online safety laws.
“The threshold for these laws allows responsible free speech to a very, very high degree,” he said. “But I just make this basic point: access to British society and our economy is a privilege – it’s not a right. And none of our basic protections for children and vulnerable people are up for negotiation.
“I was in California speaking to these companies in December. I was there in November. None of this has been challenged. There is a great deal of interest in our direction of travel. I think there is a great deal of suspicion about some countries around the world and the way that they are acting.
“But I think we have not only led the world in online safety, I think we’ve done it in a way which is sensitive and on the side of innovation.”
Under the Online Safety Act, large social media platforms will eventually have to make sure illegal content – including hate speech – is removed, enforce their own content rules and give users the means of screening out certain types of harmful content if they choose to do so.
The news comes as the father of Molly Russell, the teenager who took her own life in 2017 after seeing harmful content online, warned this weekend that the rules were not tight enough.
After last summer’s riots, which were fuelled by online misinformation, Kyle asked Ofcom to examine how illegal content, particularly disinformation, spread during the disorder and whether further measures would be needed. He said that his judgments on the issue would not be swayed by the demands of big tech.
“The safety of people across Britain is not up for negotiation,” he said. “But also, investing in a country where its citizens are safe and feel safe is a better bet than one where they don’t. People do vote with their feet on these issues and platforms upon which people don’t feel safe are ones that tend not to do as well as others.”
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This week’s launch of the government’s AI action plan will seek to encourage tech investment in the UK by pitching the country as less regulated than the EU and well placed to host development. Kyle is also toning down the previous government’s “overbearing” focus on AI safety concerns.
The action plan’s launch coincides with big tech leaders moving closer to Trump as his inauguration approaches. Meta is replacing its factchecking with a “community notes” style system, similar to that used by the Musk-owned X.
Musk has become an outspoken critic of the Labour government, amplifying far-right criticism of Starmer. The tech boss’s attacks began in earnest last year over the government’s response to the summer riots, when he accused Britain of “turning into a police state”.
There is increasing anger within the Labour party over comments made by Musk, whose most recent forays into British politics have seen him make wild claims about the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips. She has said the comments had made her more worried about her safety.
Musk has also raged at the government for rejecting his calls for another national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Starmer has said his government is open-minded about holding one in future, but argued that it should first prioritise enacting recommendations from a 2022 independent report into child sexual abuse.
However, in a sign Labour is trying to avoid fanning the tensions with Musk, Kyle said he would be happy to talk with the billionaire, but only as part of his determination to deliver the benefits of new technology to Britain.
“I am so focused on getting our country to the point where we are fully exploiting all of the technology that is out there, so that we then move to a position where we’re creating more of it and innovating for more of it,” he said. “Nothing will distract me from that mission.
“I’m available to talk to any innovator, any potential investor, but it is on those terms. The rest of it, I’m just not interested in – with the exception of when it tips over into the kind of content which started to emerge around Jess, where it does need challenging.
“But I have a very high threshold for this. My priority is to be 100% focused on what will put food on the plates of Britons today and into the future.”
