Constituents have contacted me regarding the Online Safety Bill and the spread of misinformation.

I welcome the Government's plans to make the UK the safest place to go online. The Online Safety Bill will give adults control over what they see and engage with online. It will also ensure that children are protected, by allowing parents to see and act on the dangers sites pose to young people.

While the Government has changed some measures in the Bill, I am reassured that the new offences of false and threatening communications will remain in the Bill. The false communications offence will protect individuals from any communications where the sender intended to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience, sent without reasonable excuse. Moreover, the threatening communications offence will include messages which conveyed a threat amounting to the definition of serious harm. In conveying the threat, the defendant intended the object of the threat to fear the threat would be carried out, or the defendant was reckless as to whether the object of the threat would fear that the threat would be carried out.

As the internet becomes an increasingly integral part of our daily lives, I believe it is imperative that action is undertaken to ensure users are protected online and I therefore welcome these new measures.