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Labour's online safety laws are 'quashing our democratic right to free speech', Sarah Pochin tells GB News
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Jul 29, 2025
Labour's latest online safety laws have sparked a fiery free speech row on GB News, as Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin branded the rules "censorship through the back door".Debating the newly introduced legislations, which aims to "protect children online", Human Rights Campaigner Peter Tatchell defended the Government and claimed the Act "doesn't impact free speech".FULL STORY HERE.
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This act, Patrick, is nothing more than censorship and surveillance through the back door
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It's called an online safety act. And most people would think, well, what's wrong with that
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That sounds good and sensible. But the fact is what's hidden in the small print is nothing short of quashing our democratic right to free speech
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So there's two particular areas of the act which should be looked at. The first is Section 44
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that gives one person, the Secretary of State, the right to direct Ofcom to what it wants
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to what the Secretary of State wants to be censored. The second thing that we need to look out for is Section 179
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which means that social media companies, if they're not policing this act
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and looking for anything that may cause some kind of mental psychological harm undefined
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so that definition is subjective, then they will potentially find 10% of their global turnover
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So there are two very, very important parts of this Act that people won't know about
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And you know what? I agree with everything that you heard there from Zia Youssef This does nothing to protect children OK Well Peter I do positive to you that this is slightly Orwellian It was brought in under the guise of we must protect the kids
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and we must protect them from things like going on suicide websites and all of that, which I think basically everyone agrees with, right
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You should protect kids and you should not allow them to access suicide websites
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But the reality is it goes much further than that, doesn't it? And it's already stifling certain discussions about immigration
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and about the Pakistani rape gangs. Well, I can assure you that the Online Safety Act does not in any way inhibit free speech
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It is designed to protect online users, particularly children, against harmful and illegal content like pornography
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like content that may encourage young people to consider suicide or to engage in eating disorders
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bullying, harassment, criminal activity like drug use and trafficking. These are the protections it seeks to provide
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But it does not inhibit your right to criticise the government or to say what you want within the law
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That's completely exaggerated. And when Nigel Farage was asked well what is your alternative He didn have any answers You know people said you know you want to protect children Well if you don agree with this law what are you going to do instead And he said he didn have any answers
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That's an admission of failure in my view. All right, well, let's just pick up on something there
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So there's a tweet that we can bring up, or an ex-post, whatever you're supposed to call it these days. So this is Katie Lam. Now, she happens to be a Conservative MP
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She's been very outspoken on the Pakistani rape gang scandal. And she tweeted something here, you know
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In the absence of an inquiry about it, you know, there's horrific details that can only come to lie through the amazing work of so-and-so
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So these are court transcripts, which presumably contain some really quite devastating and no doubt, well, what would you say
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I suppose disgusting detail about the reality of the problem. And it's got there, due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age
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Well, Sarah, there's detail there, presumably about the Pakistani rape gangs, that certain people wouldn't like you to know about
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And it's being censored, isn't it? It is being censored. And let's just take a couple of points that Peter made there
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The first thing to say is children, or adults under 18, whatever you want to call them
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we're now finding that under this Labour government that they have the right to vote from 16
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and yet they are having this sort of content government content The government is choosing to restrict content First of all how can that be how can that make sense
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You can't on the one hand call someone an adult and on the other hand restrict their content
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But what I would say is that we know how capable, how savvy, how IT technical these kids are these days
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We've heard already today about how VPNs are being bought up, but the app for VPNs has gone mad today
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The kids know how to get round it, and all this act will do is direct our children onto the dark web
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where they will see and read far more damaging content. This has not been well thought through
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Do not be in any denial about what this act is about
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this government has introduced an elite police task force. It can't find police when it comes to arresting shoplifters
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or knife crime on the streets or stealing our mobile phones, but suddenly it can find an elite task force
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And do you know what the point of that task force is? It's to go and search online content to see who might be saying something
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anti-government, anti-immigrant or racist. All right
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