The Labour Party government in Britain may consider banning VPNs, according to unearthed plans made before the implementation of the controversial Online Safety Act.
After the marquee censorship law passed by the previous ‘Conservative’ government came into full effect on Friday, sales for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have soared in the UK, as netizens seek a workaround to avoid the restrictions imposed by social media firms for fear of facing onerous fines from the British government.
The software allows users to mask their device’s IP address by re-routing traffic through another country, enabling people in authoritarian countries to bypass their government’s internet restrictions. Although widely used, VPNs are in particular demand in countries such as Communist China, Islamist Iran, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
With companies such as Proton VPN and Nord VPN claiming thousands of per cent in growth in their British userbase since Friday, there are suggestions that the left-wing Labour government may turn to already mooted plans to follow China’s lead in banning the software.
In resurfaced comments by the Westminster blog Guido Fawkes, Labour MP Sarah Champion said in 2022: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112. If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.”
At the time, the then-opposition Labour frontbench confirmed to the Independent that it was supportive of Champion’s amendment, potentially indicating that the party would be willing to take measures to ban or limit VPN usage to ensure the effectiveness of the Online Safety Act.
Last week, Labour Technology Secretary Peter Kyle also said that websites that promote VPNs as a means of avoiding age checks would be targeted by the government, telling The Telegraph: “If platforms or sites signpost towards workarounds like VPNs, then that itself is a crime and will be tackled by these codes.”
While the legislation was pitched to the public as a means of preventing children from seeing pornography or other graphic content, the law has already been impacting political speech on social media, with videos of anti-mass migration protests and even a speech from an MP in the House of Commons on Muslim child rape grooming gangs being “restricted” on X for those who verify their age with the Elon Musk-owned platform.
The issue was also raised during the joint press conference held by UK Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer and U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday, with a reporter raising the possibility that the Online Safety Act could be used to punish Trump’s Truth Social platform. The law allows for the British broadcasting regulator Ofcom to impose fines of £18 million or 10 per cent of a platform’s global turnover for falling foul of the speech codes.
“I only say good things about him and his country, so if you censor me, you’re making a mistake,” Trump cautioned Starmer.
Separately on Monday, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party vowed to repeal the law should it come into power at the next election. Party spokesman Zia Yusuf warned that with the law, Britain is “descending rapidly into some kind of dystopia.”
“This Online Safety Act — Orwellianly named — does absolutely nothing to protect children. What it does do is suppress freedom of speech in this country and
really force social media companies to censor anti-government speech,” he said.
