Speeches by Narayan.

“I am very happy to come back and write, and certainly on a regular occasion brief the Committee on the activities of the team, to the extent we can without compromising on the objectives.”

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

“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.”

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

“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…”

“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—”

“The fundamental thing that we are looking at, as I mentioned in the consultation, is personality rights born out of this feeling over the manipulation of individuals’ rights to their own personality online. It applies more acutely to public figures and politicians but it applies broadly too. It is a definite problem an…”

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

“Sorry, that is an independent thing.”

“That is right.”

“Prosecuted? Talitha, I am going to have to rely on you to decide.”

“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…”

“On the responsibility question, as Ofcom has itself told you, it is responsible for the implementation of the Online Safety Act. I am the junior Minister responsible for it; the Secretary of State is the senior Minister responsible for it. On the question of the legal threshold, which was the second separate question r…”

“Platforms have a responsibility to comply with the Act. I suspect there are many cases where they have done so. We do not ask platforms to report every single instance where they have taken action.”

“I am very happy to write to the platforms and ask them for data.”

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

“I am afraid I am going to have to frustrate your question on this because for reasons of not wanting to give answers on capacity and resourcing of the team—not least to avoid letting malicious actors have a sense of how we are acting on this question—we have tended to ensure that we are clarifying to Parliament and eng…”

“I have answered a very large number of oral questions and written questions on this particular theme and they relate very much to ensuring the scope of the team’s operational activity is appropriate. But as you will appreciate, in this context—as in other contexts of looking at operational national security responses—w…”

“First, on the very tight scope of that operational activity, which is threats to public safety and national security, the team has been engaging with platforms and has generally found a satisfactory level of engagement. But I have to stress that this is a very tight scope, and so it does not speak to the broader contex…”

“The only thing I would add is that in the Defending Democracy Taskforce, we have been talking about election preparedness for the elections ahead, well before the short campaign start as well.”