U.K. Parliament Reviews Effectiveness of Age Verification Rules

LONDON — The House of Lords has launched a new inquiry into the enforcement of age-verification requirements under the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (OSA), inviting members of the public and industry stakeholders to weigh in on whether the law is delivering its intended results.

The review comes after multiple data breaches involving companies that provide age- and identity-verification services. One of the incidents involved a vendor responsible for handling age verification for Discord.

Those security breaches, along with ongoing concerns over user privacy, prompted the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee to open the inquiry on Monday. Rather than focusing solely on how quickly Ofcom has enforced the law, lawmakers are examining whether the compliance framework established by the legislation itself is functioning as intended.

Earlier this summer, Ofcom published its first annual report on age-verification implementation. The regulator rolled out its enforcement program last year and has since investigated dozens of adult entertainment platforms over alleged noncompliance while imposing substantial financial penalties on technology companies, including several based in the United States.

Even with those enforcement efforts underway, members of the committee say questions remain. Baroness Barbara Keeley, who chairs the Lords Communications and Digital Committee, said the Online Safety Act was introduced to establish a comprehensive framework for improving online safety across the United Kingdom, but concerns have been raised about whether it is achieving that goal.

Ofcom has also drawn criticism over both the way it has implemented the legislation and the consistency of its enforcement. Keeley said, “It is now clear that the Act is not working as well as it should. We want to understand why.” Her committee has invited evidence from stakeholders in the United Kingdom and abroad, including representatives of the adult entertainment industry.

The committee has outlined a broad scope for the inquiry. According to its call for evidence, “It will consider Ofcom’s interpretation, implementation and enforcement of the OSA’s provisions; whether these have led online services to make meaningful changes to their systems, processes and design; and the impact of the OSA on children’s and adults’ online experiences.

“The committee will also assess whether there are shortcomings in the OSA itself that limit the regime’s effectiveness and identify what further action may be required from the government, Ofcom, providers of regulated services or Parliament to drive improvements,” the announcement reads. “The inquiry will address the effectiveness of the regulatory framework established by the OSA, rather than re-examining the full range of issues considered during the development of the legislation.”

“Our new inquiry will look in detail at how the act has been implemented by Ofcom,” Keeley said.

“Any law is only as good as its enforcement, and we want to know if it is doing enough to hold tech platforms to account,” she added. “We will look at whether there are issues with the legislation itself that need to be addressed, both to improve online safety now and to ensure we are better prepared to tackle new harms that emerge in future.”

Written submissions will be accepted until 5 p.m. BST on Monday, Sept. 7. Among the questions the committee is asking is: “What evidence, if any, is there that U.K. users are less exposed to illegal content and activity since the OSA illegal content duties came into force?” Critics have also argued that the legislation has made it more difficult for online platforms to rely on their own trust and safety programs without government oversight.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has also published an analysis raising concerns about the law’s impact on user privacy.

Paige Collings, the EFF’s senior speech and privacy activist, wrote, “The Online Safety Act is a threat to the privacy of users, restricts free expression by arbitrating speech online, exposes users to algorithmic discrimination through face checks, and leaves millions of people without a personal device or form of identification excluded from accessing the internet.”

Despite those concerns, several organizations and industry representatives have said they plan to participate in the inquiry by submitting written evidence.

Iain Corby, executive director of the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA), said, “We welcome this inquiry and agree with the committee chair’s view that ‘any law is only as good as its enforcement,’ and we have consistently reminded Ofcom that it is imperative that it creates a level playing field by enforcing at scale.”

He added, “And while ‘issues with the legislation itself’ are also in scope, having spent four and half years passing the Online Safety Act, recommendations on how to accelerate the impact of that existing law will have a far more immediate effect.”

The adult industry trade association Free Speech Coalition (FSC), which has been critical of the Online Safety Act, also plans to provide evidence to Parliament.

“In the year since the Online Safety Act went into effect, some adult platforms have experienced overly aggressive enforcement by Ofcom despite making good faith efforts to comply, while some of the worst actors have exposed limitations of one country’s ability to police the entire internet,” said Alison Boden, executive director of the FSC.

“FSC will be submitting evidence to Parliament to help shape future legislation,” Boden added.

Attorney Corey Silverstein, whose practice focuses on the online adult entertainment industry, said he also supports the committee’s decision to review the law and its implementation.

“I strongly welcome the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee’s inquiry into the implementation and impact of the Online Safety Act,” Silverstein said. “Protecting children online is an important objective, but invoking that objective cannot exempt a law from scrutiny of whether it actually works—or of the harms it imposes on millions of law-abiding adults. The inquiry should examine both Ofcom’s implementation of the Act and the legislation’s underlying assumptions.”

He added, “Child safety and adult privacy are not mutually exclusive. Effective policy must protect both. I hope this inquiry produces an evidence-based reassessment of age-verification mandates and ensures that lawmakers do not repeat the same mistakes as other jurisdictions consider similar legislation.”