Thursday, April 17, 2025
Will Trump's free speech demands endanger British children?
The paper says that these concerns have been raised after allies of vice-president JD Vance told the paper that he wants the UK to repeal hate speech laws and ditch plans for a new online safety law in exchange for a trade deal that could see the UK avoid tariffs.
They add that Vance has previously claimed that free speech is being undermined by laws banning hateful comments, including abuse targeting LGBT+ groups or other minorities, and sees UK legislation aimed at improving online safety as an attack on US tech giants:
Both the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the think tank The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) have highlighted concerns over any retreat by Labour on either area.
Matthew Sowemimo, associate head of policy for child safety online at the NSPCC, said: “The Online Safety Act offers a foundation that we believe will vastly improve children’s experiences online.
“For too long, too many children and young people have been exposed to harmful content, groomed, harassed, and bullied online.
“To ensure this vital legislation reaches its potential, we need the UK government to ensure the Online Safety Act is strongly implemented and bolstered where needed. They must be holding Ofcom and tech companies to account, and ensuring the act has enough weight behind it to change the tide for children’s safety online.”
Sophia Worringer, deputy policy director at the CSJ, said: “We have a deeply unhappy generation, amplified by the cancer of social media, whose childhood spent online is threatening their adulthood. Added to this is the ballooning welfare bill with more young people than ever going straight from education into long-term sickness benefit.
“Unless we act now to increase the age of digital consent to 16 and ban algorithms for users under 16, our forecasts show that one quarter of all UK children will suffer from a mental disorder by 2030. This is a national emergency, and we need to act now.”
The paper adds that Vance is “obsessed with the collapse of western civilisation” and believes that there is an erosion of free speech in the UK and Europe, he has also raised concerns about legal cases against Christians for praying silently outside abortion clinics.
This is an alien agenda to the UK and should be resisted. If anywhere is facing an erosion of free speech it is the USA, where the Trump administration is deporting innocent civilians in defiance of the courts, using its financial power to shut down campus protests and threatening states with sanctions if they don't adopt the Federal government's agenda.
