BORIS Johnson has been urged to take stronger action against social media directors who allow extremist content on their platforms.
Keir Starmer questioned the Prime Minister over the government’s plans, urging him to ensure the owners of companies could face “criminal sanctions” if they do not tackle radical content online.
MPs gathered in the Commons for the first Prime Minister’s Questions since the death of Sir David Amess on Friday.
The Labour leader said he wanted to conduct the session of PMQs in a “collegiate” manner, and asked the Prime Minister to strengthen the online harms bill, which is working its way through parliament just now.
He said: “It is frankly beyond belief that as the Mirror reported yesterday 40 hours of hateful content from Anjem Choudary could be easily accessed online.
“The Prime Minister and the Government could stop this by making it clear that directors of companies are criminally liable for failing to tackle this type of material on their sites. We don’t need to delay.
“So, in the collaborative spirit we saw in this House on Monday, will the Prime Minister commit to taking this away, looking at it again, and working with all of us to strengthen his proposed legislation?”
Mr Johnson said: “I’ve already said that we are willing to look at anything to strengthen the legislation, I’ve said that we will bring it forward to Second Reading before Christmas.
“And, yes, of course we will have criminal sanctions with tough sentences for those who are responsible for allowing this foul content to permeate the internet.”
Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Westminster leader, questioned Mr Johnson over the decision not to progress a Scottish bid for a carbon capture facility in the North East, as announced yesterday.
He said: "In 11 short days, world leaders will gather in Glasgow for Cop26. This is our best chance and very likely the last chance to confront the climate emergency faced by our planet.
“That is why it was such a devastating blow that on the eve of Cop26, this UK Government rejected the Scottish Clusters bid, to gain track-1 status for carbon capture storage.”
He added: “We know this decision was not made on technical and logical rules. This devastating decision was purely political. Scotland northeast was promised this investment in 2014.
“It is a promise that has been broken, time and time again. So will the Prime Minister finally live up to those promises or are they simply not worth the Tory election leaflets they are written on?”
The Prime Minister replied: “We remain absolutely committed to helping industrial clusters to decarbonise across the whole of the country and, of course, including Scotland, and I know that there was disappointment about the Acorn bid in in Aberdeen, and that’s why it has been selected as a reserve cluster.”
It comes after Kwasi Kwarteng, UK Business secretary, said this morning that he was confident the Scottish facility would be operational at some point in the “next few years”.
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