Mr. Liam Herrick:

It might seem superficially that one might propose a safe area such as the EU where problems like that do not arise but that is not the case either. There are plenty of member states where activists, trade unionists and journalists are targeted and, indeed, have even been assassinated. There is a superficial appeal to this idea of verification but it is deeply problematic in practice. The Deputy compared expression online to driving a car on a road. His analogy is problematic because one can also use the analogy of online expression in terms of expression more generally. We do not require licences for people to be politically active, express themselves, protest or write letters to newspapers and so on. This goes to the heart of the question about harmful content and, again, the analogy that was helpfully introduced by the Deputy, about expression that might cause distress to a politician. We have a carefully crafted balance of freedom of expression within the Council of Europe area under the European Convention on Human Rights and, indeed, under the Constitution. Once one starts getting into the concept of what might cause distress to others, in terms of being harmful, that is not amenable to a proportionate legal definition. That is the problem we are likely to encounter if we go down this road. It is not at all to understate the challenge of finding the right ways to deal with things that undoubtedly cause injury to people. Of course, that is the challenge the committee has taken on but we need to be careful not to introduce vague concepts that will compound the problem.