Speeches by Narayan.

“If I recall from memory it has been about four months or so at the very least.”

“Sorry, that is an independent thing.”

“As you will appreciate, foreign interference offences have a series of offline instances. You will be very well aware of widely covered cases, not least those subject to court action at the moment. Of course, the offline cases are not in the ambit of Ofcom, and so they are dealt with by the Home Office. Regarding onlin…”

“When the foreign interference offence as covered by the Online Safety Act applies, Ofcom is the regulator in charge of ensuring that platforms, which have the duty to comply with their requirements under the Act, are taking action. There is a very clear enforcement path there. There is a broader thing, which was just b…”

“I speak to them on a regular basis, and so does the rest of Government.”

“Yes.”

“On the first question of whether it is an offence or not, ostensibly it feels totally wrong to me. Given the threshold set in the law, which is that you just need reasonable grounds to infer foreign interference, not conclusive proof of it, without pre-empting the individual cases, to me it would feel like there is a p…”

“As an offence, it is owned by the Home Office.”

“I try to limit it but of course I do, yes.”

“In its implementation of the online aspects of foreign interference as they relate to the Online Safety Act, Ofcom reports to us in the DSIT context.”

“The main thing I would say is that the online experience at the moment for me, and I expect for all of you, is not satisfactory in a couple of different ways. There might be instances that meet the threshold of illegality, and when those happen, we have a system to take action on those. There is a—”

“There are two separate questions here. One is the question of who is responsible. You have rightly answered that yourself in that context: Ofcom is responsible for the implementation of the law. There is a separate question from responsibility, which is are the thresholds appropriate at the moment? First, as I mentione…”

“You will be more aware than me given all your experience. We will be consulting on a range of ways in which we can best protect individuals’ rights without contravening appropriate free expression values when also tackling digital replicas. We will do that as a precursor to then being able to take action on the appropr…”

“I do not ask for data on their internal compliance with the law. The instances of non-compliance and the overall compliance with the legislation are something that Ofcom is responsible for. Of course in this instance, I know they have been in front of you, and I hope they were asked this. I am happy to ask them again i…”

“I will get in particular trouble with the whips if I commit to a legislative vehicle for a hypothetical regulatory action.”

“No, not at all. In fact, it is the opposite. The elements of foreign interference covered in the Online Safety Act come from the offence but the foreign interference offence covers offline stuff, which is totally separate from the—”

“On prescription, I feel a very strong urge that we need to turn up the volume on this and I will continue to push for that wherever it is feasible and appropriate.”

“Thank you, Chair, and thank you in particular for both the inquiry that you are conducting as a group and for that generous opener. The fundamental thing I would say is that you will know more than any other part of Parliament that we are in a totally new geopolitical paradigm. AI is the central question in terms of ca…”

“With respect, the Online Safety Act has been around for less than a year in its implementation of illegal content duties and child safety duties. To my knowledge, we have not had significant national-level elections in that period. That all said, I am as concerned about this question as you are. I am just keen on groun…”

“It is a really important question you raise. On the question of funding, of course that is separate. There is a live case under the foreign interference offence that you will be aware of in the courts, so I will not comment on that. That is outside the online space. In the online space, as I mentioned, I will absolutel…”