Online Safety Act is 'not finished', Molly Russell's father warns next government

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Treating the Online Safety Act as "job done" would be a "disaster", a bereaved father has said as he called on the next government to commit to implementing update legislation to tackle harm affecting children.

Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter Molly took her own life, said bold steps are needed to reassure parents a “real change” in terms of Internet safety and their children’s safety.

In 2022, Molly, a schoolgirl from Harrow, north-west London, was judged by a coroner to have died as a result of "an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content” in November 2017.< /p>

The Online Safety Act was passed in October and regulator Ofcom is working on codes of practice to help it enforce the rules, although they will not begin to come into force until next year.

The legislation requires social media companies to curb the spread of illegal content on their platforms and protect children from viewing potentially harmful content, with hefty fines among the potential penalties for those who break the new rules.

But Mr Russell said that while the law had laid "really important" groundwork, a new government will have to figure out how to 'stay on top' of developments in the fast-paced world of technology.

The Molly Rose Foundation – the suicide prevention charity set up in memory of her daughter – released a five-point plan that it said would build on regulation and accelerate “much-needed” changes.

< p>It would simply be a disaster if the next government started treating the Online Safety Act as a job done. It's not over, they need to finish the job and figure out how to stay current.

Ian Russell, Molly Rose Foundation

Mr. Russell told the PA news agency this would be the case. It would be “wrong to forget the Online Safety Act, or to consider it as a piece of legislation that only came into force towards the end of 2023 and is therefore a done deal”.

< p>He added: “It’s a mistake. it's not done because it's so new, it's not done because it will need to be revised, it's not done because technology is evolving at such a pace that even if we were to catch up our delay in terms of legislation and regulation, the technology would have evolved and we will have to adapt it to catch up with the technological gap again.

“So it is a constantly evolving thing and that would be all simply a disaster if the next government starts treating the Online Safety Act as a job done. It’s not over, they need to finish the job and figure out how to stay current. »

He said it must be...