Online Safety
Online harms and platform regulation
Based on 2 parliamentary votes
Related Digital and Technology Issues
How Parties Voted on Online Safety
Government alignment shows how often each party voted with the government's stated position. Issue-aligned direction shows agreement with the AI-identified supportive stance.
Recent Votes
| Vote | Result | Date |
|---|---|---|
The opposition brought forward a motion calling for stronger protections for children from online harms. As an Opposition Day motion, it was debated on time allocated to the opposition and the Labour government voted against it. Yes = Support the opposition's call for stronger or more urgent action to protect children from online harms, beyond what the government is currently doing · No = Reject the opposition's motion, defending the government's existing approach to child online safety — likely arguing current legislation (such as the Online Safety Act) is sufficient or that the motion is politically motivated Govt: No | 70-282 | 24 Feb 2026 |
Vote on regulations that set the size and risk thresholds determining which online platforms (such as large social media sites and search engines) fall under the strictest duties of the Online Safety Act 2023. The thresholds determine which services must comply with the most demanding child protection and safety obligations. Yes = Support bringing these threshold regulations into force, implementing the Online Safety Act's categorisation system for platforms and extending child safety protections online · No = Oppose these specific threshold regulations, arguing they fail to follow the Act's intention by not using risk-based criteria for smaller but high-harm sites, leaving dangerous platforms outside the strictest obligations Govt: Aye | 320-178 | 12 Feb 2025 |
How is this calculated?
Government alignment (primary bar) shows how often a party's MPs voted with the government's stated position on this issue. This is the most comparable metric across parties, as it measures the same reference point for everyone.
Issue-aligned direction (secondary bar) shows how often MPs voted in the direction tagged as supportive of this issue by AI analysis. For example, if a vote is tagged “pro-environment”, a Yes vote counts as aligned. This can be misleading when the tagged direction happens to align with opposition amendments rather than government bills.
Why these metrics may differ: Opposition parties often vote against government bills for strategic or procedural reasons, even when they broadly support the policy area. The government alignment metric makes this clearer by showing the actual voting pattern against a consistent reference.
Source: Commons division data from the UK Parliament Votes API. Alignment direction determined by AI analysis of vote stance tags. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.