Online safety laws ‘too blunt and imprecise’ says NPCC chair

Chief Constable Gavin Stephens told police leaders that many existing laws are “too blunt, imprecise, or even clumsy in responding to online safety”.

He also renewed his call for the ambitious reform of policing to empower neighbourhood officers, streamline decision making and create a stronger national centre for the service.

Mr Stephens delivered the comments in the keynote address on Monday (September 15) at the Police Superintendents’ Association conference.

He compared the challenge of tackling offending online in the modern world to the challenge of tackling deaths and serious injuries on the roads following a major expansion of the road network in the 1970s and 80s.

“Society learned quickly that if we wanted the new world that opened up through affordable motoring and fast roads to be safe, then broad ranging measures were needed to change human behaviour,” he said.

“Engineering, education, enforcement all played a part. Seatbelts, attitudes to drink-driving, more rigorous testing, licence penalty points all came together. As did the engineering, the regulation and sharing of responsibility for the problem.

“The online safety foundations are much, much weaker, but there are lessons to be learned here. If we want to change human behaviour to make the online world safer, enforcement alone is not going to cut it, especially through a range of outdated laws.

“But I could see that the application of sub criminal penalties, automated at scale as safety partnerships do now for the roads, with subsequent restrictions on freedoms of use and implications for wider public life, coupled with education and engineering, may help us to achieve a safer online world for our children and grandchildren.”

In his address, Mr Stephens said there had been the case for fundamental structural reform of policing for more than a decade, with a financial and operational imperative for policing to act now.

He renewed the argument for a deliberately designed system of policing, with a police reform White Paper due to be published in the coming months.

“Talking to colleagues in other nations I’ve seen that changes on the scale we are advocating are possible and we have put them off for too long now,” Mr Stephens said.

“Of course, what those international colleagues tell us is that it won’t sweep aside the rapidly changing criminal threats, nor the community tensions, but it will provide us with a more consistent approach, with less wasted effort and duplication, and more agility to be able to respond to societal change and community needs.

“Most importantly, it will serve our communities better and it will be an important step in supporting colleagues to achieve, and enjoy work, in this wonderful vocation of ours for many years to come.”