Research and analysis

Online Safety Act 2023: RPC opinion (green-rated)

Regulatory Policy Committee’s opinion on DSIT's Online Safety Act enactment IA

• From: Regulatory Policy Committee
• Published: 8 November 2024

Documents

Online Safety Act 2023: RPC opinion (green-rated)

PDF, 212 KB, 13 pages

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Details

The Act introduces a new regulatory framework establishing a duty of care on companies to improve the safety of their users online, overseen and enforced by Ofcom.

The RPC considers the IA fit for purpose. The IA fully assesses direct impacts on business, in line with RPC guidance on primary legislation IAs. The IA provides a good monitoring and evaluation plan and assessment of wider impacts. The RPC expects further assessments to be submitted at secondary legislation and/or regulator stages, subject to framework requirements.

The RPC last reviewed an IA for this measure at the start of 2022, issuing a ‘fit for purpose’ opinion on 18 February 2022. This was a final stage Bill IA that incorporated a number of amendments resulting from pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill. As with previous Online Safety IAs, the lead department for the measure at the time was DCMS. The present IA takes account of amendments to the Bill during parliamentary passage affecting direct impacts on business and reflected in the Bill at Royal Assent (i.e. making submission of an ‘enactment stage’ IA for RPC scrutiny a requirement).

The Impact Assessment has been published on legislation.gov - an accessible link can be found here

Published 8 November 2024