Mishcon de Reya LLP and the Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre (QMLAC) have submitted joint submissions to the Public Bill Committee on the Online Safety Bill.
These submissions are made on behalf of victims of image-based sexual abuse (or "revenge porn"), and form part of a project that we have been working on with QMLAC to consider how the Online Safety Bill can be drafted so as to best protect such victims.
Earlier this year, we published a review of the draft Bill from the perspective of victims of image-based sexual abuse, and followed that up with a further review of the Bill when it was published in final form.
While we are pleased to see that many of our previous recommendations have been adopted in the final draft of the Bill we remain of the view that the Bill could be amended to better protect victims of image-based sexual abuse.
The purpose of our submissions is twofold: (1) to strongly recommend that those protections already included in the Bill are not watered down; and (2) to propose some modest amendments, which we believe should be uncontroversial and which would make a material difference to SPITE victims.
To read more about the SPITE project or seek support if you have been the victim of image-based sexual abuse, visit the Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre.