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<\/p>\nJade-Ruyu Yan is a UK Reporting Fellow at Tech Policy Press and openDemocracy.<\/p>\n
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The United Kingdom is seeking to grant ministers wide-ranging new powers to rewrite significant portions of the Online Safety Act through amendments tucked into two unrelated bills, a move experts say could bypass normal parliamentary scrutiny.<\/p>\n
The proposed changes would allow ministers to amend the Act by adding as much as a third to the regulatory regime using so-called Henry VIII clauses<\/a>, limiting Parliament to a simple yes-or-no vote on an unforeseeable number of new rules, rather than full debate or amendment.<\/p>\n The change would allow the central government to limit detailed parliamentary scrutiny and amend the Act more quickly. \u201cIt\u2019s basically [introducing] a third of the Online Safety Act,\u201d and gives ministers power to add as many unforeseen new rules as they want, said Essex University law professor Lorna Woods, legal advisor to the Online Safety Act Network.<\/p>\n In March, the government proposed edits to the Crime and Policing Bill as well as the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would enable these changes.<\/p>\n The move comes after admissions by the UK\u2019s communications regulator Ofcom<\/a> that it didn\u2019t have the power to address Elon Musk\u2019s chatbot Grok\u2019s deepfake scandal (when the tool was used to create non-consensual sexualized images primarily of women and children), due to limitations in how the Online Safety Act laws apply to chatbots. The UK government announced it would<\/a> \u201cmove fast to shut a legal loophole and force all AI chatbot providers to abide by illegal content duties in the Online Safety Act.\u201d<\/p>\n The amendments also come ahead of decisive UK local council elections and at a moment when the Labour government is \u201cunder a huge amount of pressure\u201d to deliver, said Owen Bennett, former head of international online safety at Ofcom, the UK\u2019s communications regulator. \u201cIn general, there\u2019s a sense of, \u2018we need to go farther and faster.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The proposed changes have been criticized for their potential consequences, including granting unfettered power to current and future governments to change what was already a highly contested and long-fought-for act.<\/p>\n There are also worries that limiting parliamentary debate will weaken the democratic legitimacy of the regime, potentially making it easier for tech companies to challenge rules or lobby ministers directly rather than engage with Parliament.<\/p>\n This proposed amendment also comes amidst the perception that the UK government is eager to attract Big Tech investment while simultaneously exerting greater executive control over tech regulation.<\/p>\n The UK\u2019s Online Safety Act,<\/a> passed into law in 2023, is the result of years of negotiations and revisions, and has long been criticized as complex and internally inconsistent.<\/p>\n The Act is \u201ca bit like Frankenstein,\u201d said Javier Ruiz Diaz, Technology and Human Rights Lead with Amnesty International UK and former policy director at digital rights nonprofit Open Rights Group. \u201cIt became this really complicated system\u201d that \u201cno one really is happy with,\u201d he said, describing it as \u201ca bit of a mess\u201d with various bills and addendums \u201cbolted on\u201d over time.<\/p>\n Still, experts say that complexity reflects years of negotiation, something they argue is undermined by the new shortcut approach.<\/p>\n \u201cThe concept underpinning the Online Safety Act \u2026 [is that it] gives you the house and then the furniture can be put in later,\u201d said Catherine Allen, founder of immersive technology research and consultancy Limina Immersive. As new technology emerges, these can be addressed through amendments to the Act, she said.<\/p>\n At around 300 pages<\/a>, the Act has been characterized as the most wide-ranging effort by a Western government to regulate online safety, amidst a wide variety of efforts by governments to regulate, according to a survey of online safety regulations globally<\/a> conducted by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.<\/p>\n Changes from a \u2018desperate\u2019 government<\/p>\n Now the government has proposed amendments that could change a significant proportion of the Online Safety Act, in ways that are currently unpredictable, say experts.<\/p>\n The mechanism is indirect: rather than amending the OSA directly, the government has inserted provisions into unrelated legislation.<\/p>\n The change \u2014 the inclusion of Henry VIII clauses in both bills \u2014 would allow ministers to change legislation without allowing Parliament to amend the proposals. In these cases, now, Parliament would only be able to say yes or no to any new rules, without any discussion of the merits or downsides. So while technically some \u201cparliamentary supervision remains, \u2026 it is extremely limited,\u201d said Elena Abrusci, senior lecturer in law at Brunel University, in an email to Tech Policy Press.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be fair\u2026this is not dramatically a new approach,\u201d she said, referring to how the Act already provided for the possibility for ministers and the Secretary of State to expand on the offenses under its scope through secondary legislation. \u201cWhat is new is the specific focus on AI-generated content.\u201d<\/p>\n Our Content delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n Join our newsletter on issues and ideas at the intersection of tech & democracy<\/p>\n Thank you!<\/p>\n You have successfully joined our subscriber list.<\/p>\n \u201cChanging one act with another act is actually kind of normal,\u201d said Woods. The problem is using these wide-ranging powers to do it, she said.<\/p>\n The Crime and Policing Bill, introduced early last year by the Labour government, is a broad bill introduced to enforce the government\u2019s Safer Streets initiative<\/a>, which broadly aims to increase confidence in policing and reduce violent crime. While the bill expands policing powers by covering a wide swathe of topics, from violence against women and children and knife crime (and attracting criticism for its regulations, including banning face coverings<\/a> at protests), it also has implications for the tech sector by dealing with online safety, fraud and data<\/a>, such as removing criminal images online. The amendment to the bill<\/a> would give senior government ministers the \u201cpower to amend [any provision of the Online Safety Act] in relation to illegal AI-generated content.\u201d<\/p>\n The Children\u2019s Wellbeing and School Bill, introduced by the Department of Education in 2024, aims to improve educational standards and online safety for children. The suggested amendment<\/a> would give ministers the ability to change or add to any piece of legislation regarding restricting children\u2019s access to the internet.<\/p>\n Since the UK\u2019s Online Safety Act was launched almost three years ago, there have been 28 investigations into 92 services, according to regulator Ofcom in 2025<\/a>. One measure, which required platforms to implement age verification measures to view pornographic content, was implemented last summer and received widespread backlash<\/a>, including criticism from US politicians such as Vice President JD Vance about how it would restrict US tech companies.<\/p>\n Experts acknowledged the need for speed, with caution. Online threats \u201care emerging at extraordinary speed,\u201d said Elena Martellozzo, lecturer in Criminology at Middlesex University, whose research has focused on online sexual abuse. While \u201cthose powers should never really be handed out lightly \u2026 these amendments aren\u2019t necessarily a blank cheque, they are tied to specific harms,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The risks of speed<\/p>\n While there is support for the policy ideas behind the changes, the notion of giving wide-ranging power to ministers to amend the Act is worrying, say critics.<\/p>\n The proposed changes feel like a \u201cdesperate\u201d response to get ahead, said Ruiz Diaz. \u201cAs much as everyone wants to see children protected,\u201d rushing to make changes is \u201cgenerally not a good idea,\u201d he said. \u201cThe moment you start shortcutting the process, you leave holes for companies to exploit that.\u201d<\/p>\n That concern goes to the heart of criticisms of the change: that trading the democratic process for speed could ultimately weaken the enforceability of the regime.<\/p>\n