Speeches by Darlington.

“Can I stand up for the south-east? We are not all London. We don’t all have access to finance in the same way as London does. The triangle is not a triangle; it is three spots.”

“Does the shadow Home Secretary recognise that the number of reported crimes involving sexual violence went up by 300% under his Government? When he talks about police numbers, would he also like to mention how many police officers left because of conditions in their police force and because of mental health and physica…”

“I pay tribute to all the amazing speeches we have heard from Labour Members. It can be seen from how many of us are still here, hours into the debate—in contrast to the Opposition—how seriously the Government and the Labour party take law and order. I absolutely agree with all those speeches, but because of time I will…”

“I know my hon. Friend’s absolute passion and the experience in this area, particularly on international development, that he gained under the last Labour Government. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on aid match, can I ask whether he sees a role for the generosity of the UK public in ensuring that they can…”

“rose—”

“Yes, or FCDO. It could be either, but it is my understanding that it is the overseas development assistance money through the Department of Health and Social Care that has the most interaction. But the Department may decide to handle it differently.”

“Thank you to the Committee for asking me to come and present. Those of you that are aware of the UK’s long history in both developing and leading the very innovative Gavi Vaccine Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will know that we are now at the point in the cycle where we talk about …”

“Let’s see if you have an opinion on any of these. Apologies for some of the language coming out here: “This cunt is openly screwing everyone, and he doesn’t care why. We rise up and openly shoot Keir Starmer as he needs to step down, or the people of the UK will force him to. If not, I will”, swear emoji, swear emoji, …”

“Do you also give that access to your advertising space and processes?”

“Within the Data (Use and Access) Bill that is going through the House, section 123 is about ensuring that researchers, non-profit companies and others can hold companies like yours to account. It is about ensuring that they can access the information necessary for academics and researchers to evaluate and hold you to a…”

“I have a final question. One of the things you keep saying is, “Hold us to account.” You are, essentially, the monopoly in this area. You are—let us call it as it is. You are market dominant.”

“Yes, the post mortem.”

“Can you share that with the Committee?”

“What concerns me is the statement that you made earlier: that you had very little to do with the Southport misinformation. Yet you have been presented with evidence here that you helped to monetise the creation of a key piece of misinformation that was used to incentivise the riots. Have you done any reflection post th…”

“To come back to the Chair’s point, how fast is fast? Only 22% of that material was removed within two weeks of being reported. Of that material, 74% had not been removed after two weeks. Is that the kind of time period we should expect? When you say “swiftly,” do you mean a month, a day or an hour?”

“Right. How much money has Google made off these ads promoted by eating disorder content? One in four items of material suggested by YouTube breaches your own policies, in terms of harmful eating content, and these adverts are from quite high-profile, big brand names. How much money do you reckon you have made from that…”

“I would appreciate that follow-up, because I fail to see the action you are talking about. Google controls between 40% and 80% of the market share of the buy side. That is putting together Google ads and YouTube ads, which are similar. You own YouTube, and they work together. Are you aware of the recent report from the…”

“Could you give an example of where you have taken action against something we would know about, in the UK, to de-monetise a site?”

“It is quite interesting that you are saying there is a difference between the illegal content that my colleague Paul raised and misinformation sites. This is an interesting use of language, but it clearly comes down to the quality of the systems within Google. When it comes to misinformation that leads to violence, whi…”

“I get what you are saying. I get that you are trying to make that distinction between a search company and social media, but the reality is that your AI scraping to create your AI Overview is scraping social media. You cannot really disaggregate that world any more; you do not live in two different spaces.”