Boris Govt Poses as Pro-Free Speech While Moving to Punish Tech Firms for Not Censoring More

Boris Johnson’s government is claiming to “back freedom of speech to the hilt” even as it moves to prosecute tech bosses who fail to censor “foul content”.

Pressed by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on the “inescapable desire” of MPs to clamp down on online abuse and the right to anonymity online in the wake of Sir David Amess’s alleged murder at a constituency surgery, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons that “Of course we will have criminal sanctions with tough sentences for those who are responsible for allowing this foul content to permeate the internet.”

Such sanctions would likely be included in the Online Harms Bill, which had been planned to create multi-billion-pound financial penalties for tech firms which fail to censor to the state’s satisfaction but stopped short of  “senior manager liability” for individual executives, according to The Times.