Online Safety Act: are Labour or the Tories worse on free speech?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is the Online Safety Act protecting children – or threatening free speech? Michael Simmons hosts John Power, who writes the Spectator's cover piece this week on how the Act has inadvertently created online censorship. Implemented and defended by the current Labour government, it is actually the result of legislation passed by the Conservatives in 2023 – which Labour did not support at the time, arguing it didn’t go far enough.
Michael and John joined by former Conservative MP Miriam Cates who defends the core aims and principles at the heart of the Act. They debate the principles of Big Tech, the risks of government overreach and whether freedom of expression is under threat.
Produced by Megan McElroy and Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One of the many perks of being a spectator subscriber is that you can now register to listen to our podcasts without adverts. |
| 0:05.8 | We know that it all sounds incredibly complicated, so we've made it easy as possible. |
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| 0:18.3 | Hello, and welcome to a special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots. |
| 0:22.6 | Today we're going to be discussing the cover story of this week's magazine, which is about the online safety act that's just been rolled out. |
| 0:31.6 | To discuss that, I'm joined by John Power, who's written this as his first cover for The Spectator, and Miriam |
| 0:40.3 | Kate, who is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Social Justice and a presenter on G.B. News. |
| 0:46.3 | Now, John, you've written this cover story about the act that's just been rolled out in the last few weeks. |
| 0:53.3 | You're fairly critical of a piece of legislation |
| 0:56.7 | that at its heart is meant to be about protecting children, about stopping them accessing porn or |
| 1:02.3 | other harmful material. Isn't this a good thing? Well, as I outline the piece, I'm not sure the |
| 1:08.8 | real reason for the legislation is that people are trying to protect children. I think the piece, I'm not sure the real reason for the legislation is that people |
| 1:11.6 | are trying to protect children. |
| 1:12.6 | I think the purpose behind it is slightly more sinister than that. |
| 1:17.6 | The real appetite for reducing online harms begins in the late 2010s. |
| 1:22.6 | It begins after Brexit and begins with Donald Trump. |
| 1:25.6 | That is when the, what you might call the establishment |
| 1:27.6 | or the elite in Western society really sours on the internet. They were very optimistic about |
| 1:32.4 | the internet in the 2000s and early 2010s. They thought Facebook would be the social revolutionary |
| 1:37.5 | platform. But when it became clear that the social media could actually be an engine for |
| 1:43.9 | social change or political change, |
| 1:46.1 | it became very unpopular. |
... |
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