Appearing on a call on LBC, father George told the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage measures in the Online Safety Act were a matter of ‘life and death for families like mine’
Nigel Farage has been confronted over his plans to axe the Online Safety Act by a parent who lost his 15-year-old child.
During a call on LBC, father George told the Reform UK leader his son died after an “attack propagated through social media three years ago”. The parent said had the Online Safety Act been in place at the time it would have forced platforms to introduce age verification and restrict harmful content.
Earier this week at a press conference the leader of the right-wing party said he would scrap the “dystopian” legislation – prompting an angry response. It comes after Mr Farage unveiled an ex-Tory who made racist remark on WhatsApp as its newest defector.
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Dad George asked: “Do you acknowledge this law is not theoretical and a matter of a life and death for families like mine?”
Mr Farage replied: “George, awful. If age verification of itself was able to prevent incidents and tragedies like this I would George, 100%, support it.
“But the problem is it doesn’t because of the VPN [Virtual Private Network] route… that is the problem. There has to be a tech answer around this, I don’t know what it is, certainly the government doesn’t know what it is.”
The Reform UK chief added: “George, my objection is what you’re describing here is exactly what the legislation the Conservatives put in place, but then they expanded it to a whole lot of other places. George, we do need to find a solution but I’m sorry to say this is not it.”
The exchange came amid a row between senior Cabinet ministers and Mr Farage over the Online Safety Act, which came into force last week.
Under the legislation tech companies have been ordered to bring in age verification tools, tame toxic algorithms and remove harmful content. The Tech Secretary Peter Kyle said repealing the laws would put Mr Farage on the side of “people out there who are extreme pornographers peddling hate, peddling violence”.
In comments branded “disgusting” by Mr Farage, the Cabinet minister went on: “Make no mistake about it, if people like Jimmy Savile were alive today, he’d be perpetrating his crimes online. And Nigel Farage is saying that he’s on their side.”
In a post on X, Mr Farage responded: “Peter Kyle’s comments on Sky News are disgusting. He should do the right thing and apologise.”
Keir Starmer also defended the legislation from its critics when he met Donald Trump on Monday, telling reporters: “We’re not censoring anyone. We’ve got some measures which are there to protect children, in particular, from sites like suicide sites.”
The PM added: “I personally feel very strongly that we should protect our young teenagers, and that’s what it usually is, from things like suicide sites. I don’t see that as a free speech issue, I see that as child protection.”
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