Draft Online Harm Reduction Bill

This draft Bill, with explanatory notes, implements the proposal for a statutory duty of care enforced by a regulator approach to online harm reduction as set out by Professor Lorna Woods, William Perrin and Maeve Walsh in Carnegie UK’s publication of April 2019. It creates a high-level framework to regulate systems operating online that may give rise to harms. The framework empowers an independent regulator, OFCOM, to act at arms’ length from the executive and Parliament.