Facebook and Instagram have sought government protection from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s fire with up to 4,000 EU laws on the statute books after Brexit.
In a letter to a parliamentary committee to be published on Friday, the parent group, Meta, wants the laws underpinning social media firms to be “expressly reserved elsewhere” or “removed from the scope” of reserved EU law ( repeal and reform) bill.
If they weren’t, groups like Facebook would be “less likely to operate in the UK,” writes Richard Earley, UK public policy manager at Meta.
Labor MP Stella Creasy said the bill could cause social media companies to leave the UK by accident.
“Many of us want social media companies to be responsible for how their platforms are used. Shutting them down by default is not the way to do it, but Metta themselves say it’s possible because of the government’s REUL bill,” she tweeted.
Representatives of private and public interest groups were invited to contribute to a consultation on the bill earlier in November, with criticism pouring in from organizations ranging from the Institute of Directors, trade unions including Unison, the TUC and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI), an organization , dedicated to protecting the health and safety of consumers.
In a letter also published on Friday, CTSI called on the government to shelve the bill, warning there were 250 items of “vital legislation” covering food and product safety, animal health and welfare, fair trade, fraudulent and predatory trade and legal metrology – the system of enforcing weights and measures so that consumers get what they pay for.
CTSI says a survey conducted shows that the public is most concerned that food standards will be affected by the bill.
It also found that tackling EU legislation was last on the list of priorities for voters who were more concerned about the cost of living and the NHS. The controversial bill is the brainchild of former business secretary Rees-Mogg.
The bill is at the committee stage in the House of Commons. It proposes to scrap up to 4,000 laws, covering everything from animal testing of cosmetics to holiday pay and passenger compensation rights, unless they are actively preserved by a minister. It has been widely criticized as “reckless” and “anti-democratic” by legal experts because of the unprecedented powers it gives to ministers.
The speed with which the government wants to push through the bill, introduced by Rees-Mogg in September when he was business minister, has also been criticised.
Under the so-called sunset clause, any EU laws that are not amended or updated by 31 December 2023 will automatically be excluded.
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The bill was this week described as “not fit for purpose” by the government’s independent evaluator.
Early wrote to the commission to draw its attention to a set of laws stemming from the Electronic Commerce Regulations (EC Directive) 2002 which are at risk of being changed or deleted.
The laws contain provisions known as “intermediary liability” that protect social media companies from liability for user behavior and content.
Including the e-commerce directive in the scope of the bill “would raise serious concerns,” Earley wrote.
If protections for social media operations are not maintained, the “end effect”, he said, is that platforms and websites will be “less likely to want to operate in the UK and may opt out of making the UK a center for innovative new products and services in the manner envisaged by the government”.
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