Kick It Out CEO says new online safety bill is ‘brilliant’ but only ‘a small piece of the jigsaw’

Kick It Out chief Tony Burnett says the government’s new online safety bill is “brilliant news” but only “a small piece of the jigsaw”.

The new legislation, which could help prevent discrimination and abuse on social media platforms, passed its final parliamentary debate on Friday.

The football authorities played a significant part in the development of the bill, and a joint statement from The FA, Premier League, EFL, PFA and Kick It Out shortly after the announcement described the legislation as “a significant moment for those who participate in the game”.

Only last weekend, Sheffield United goalkeeper Wes Foderingham was subject to online racist abuse after a match against Tottenham Hotspur, which was swiftly condemned by both clubs.

While the new bill provides a vehicle to hold social media platforms to account through regulator Ofcom, Kick It Out chief Tony Burnett warns this should not be seen as the end of the issue.

“It’s brilliant news,” the CEO of the equality and inclusion charity told the Independent.

“We’ve been campaigning for over two years on football governing bodies to try and influence not just the legislation, but also the content of it. So it’s a really positive move.

“This is the first step, and now we’ve got to move really quickly from celebrating what’s been achieved to making sure that the way that Ofcom structures the regulation of social media organisations is fit for purpose and they are effective in holding them to account.

“We’ve all seen lots of examples where regulators are not as effective as they should be.”

Kick It Out recorded a 65.1 per cent rise in reports of discriminatory behaviour in 2022/23, with the 1,007 reports received including a 279 per cent increase in online abuse.

Burnett believes while the numbers represent the fact fans are becoming less tolerant of discriminatory behaviour and more likely to report it, the current climate is still seeing a worsening of the state of affairs.

“Discriminatory behaviour is absolutely rising – we also saw a double-digit increase in hate-related incidents. It’s absolutely on the rise.

“Rather than stoking culture wars, we should be trying to stoke inclusion. But I just don’t think we’ve got the maturity as a society to think that way at the moment.”

“What this legislation doesn’t change unfortunately, is the fact there is a significant increase in people pressing the keys. So we still have a massive job to do as a society and culture to try and work out how we got to a position where people with toxic views now have a voice and feel more comfortable than ever to share this in broader society.”

Although Kick It Out record their own set of statistics, neither the 92 clubs in the Premier League and Football League, nor the governing bodies are obligated to share their own data on how many discriminatory incidents take place every year.

Burnett says this makes it difficult to get a full understanding of the extent of the issue, and take subsequent steps to try and deal with it.

“We still can’t get a picture right across the sport as to how many discrimination cases are raised every year to develop a comprehensive understanding of the state of play across football. That’s just madness.

“We’re not really interested in making people look bad. We’re interested in the facts. We can’t address the challenge until we really understand the facts. If clubs are open and honest with us and say we’ve got a problem, we can help them to solve it.

“The football industry, over the last three years, has done more than ever to try and tackle some of these issues, but our worry is that we’re doing the safe stuff. We’re sending people on training courses, and we’re running campaigns, which have got a place, but we’re not doing the hard stuff.

“The online safety bill is brilliant, because it gives us a start to hold social media organisations to account – but that’s only a small part of the jigsaw.”