The online safety bill is finally being released – but will it do the job?

Ukraine has reported that Russian forces bombed a theatre where civilians were sheltering in Mariupol in the south of the country. Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told BBC News there were between 1,000 and 1,200 people in the building. The total number of casualties remains unknown. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted about the incident: “Russians could not have not known this was a civilian shelter. Save Mariupol! Stop Russian war criminals!” On Sky News this morning, Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell described the attack as “absolutely barbaric” and said Labour would be asking whether the UK could go “further and faster” on additional sanctions and whether the government was providing as much military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as possible.

At home, the government’s long-awaited online safety bill will be published later today. The bill is intended to tackle harmful content online, including child sexual abuse, terrorism, fraud and the promotion of suicide and self-harm. Tech companies will be forced to proactively prevent people from being exposed to illegal content, where previously they were only required to act when content had been reported to them by users. Labour has rejected claims by ministers that the bill is “world-leading” and highlighted the damage caused by the delay to its publication, including the rapid spread of Russian disinformation within the UK. While supportive of the legislation in principle, the opposition party does believe the government has approached it in the wrong way, focusing on regulating content rather than trying to make the wider system work by introducing an overarching duty of care.

The second reading of the bill is not expected for at least a couple of weeks. LabourList understands that Labour will particularly scrutinise the sections of the bill relating to child protection, asking whether they do enough to keep children safe online. The party is also interested in how the bill will seek to tackle disinformation and misinformation online and address the ‘David vs Goliath’ issue of the lack of recourse for individuals against big tech companies. In a piece for ConservativeHome yesterday, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries responded to critics concerned the bill will give people like Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg “unlimited power” to decide what is acceptable to say online: “I’ve got news for them: we’re already there.”

Labour supports most of the recommendations made by the joint committee on the draft legislation, which published its report at the end of last year. The government adopted 66 of the committee’s proposals, and chair of the committee and Tory MP Damian Collins argued in an article for the Daily Telegraph that the bill has been “greatly strengthened”. On the broadcast round this morning, Labour’s Lucy Powell said her party “support the principle” of the bill, but again stressed the harm caused by the delay in its publication.

Also on LabourList, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori have been released by Iran following years of imprisonment. The pair landed back in the UK at approximately 1am this morning to an emotional reunion with their families. We have published new exclusive polling that finds most Brits do not know Labour’s position on nuclear energy. Do read my write-up of yesterday’s PMQs, too, in which deputy leader Angela Rayner faced Dominic Raab in an acrimonious session. Sign up to LabourList’s morning email for everything Labour, every weekday morning.