Repeal the Online Safety Act
The Parliament petitions site records 550,136 signatures for this petition, which closed on 22 October 2025. The Government responded on 28 July 2025. MPs debated it in Westminster Hall on 15 December 2025.
The petition
The petition's creator is not named in the Petitions site's published record. Quoted in full from the UK Parliament petitions site.
Repeal the Online Safety Act
We want the Government to repeal the Online Safety act.
We believe that the scope of the Online Safety act is far broader and restrictive than is necessary in a free society.
For instance, the definitions in Part 2 covers online hobby forums, which we think do not have the resource to comply with the act and so are shutting down instead.
We think that Parliament should repeal the act and work towards producing proportionate legislation rather than risking clamping down on civil society talking about trains, football, video games or even hamsters because it can't deal with individual bad faith actors.
The Government's response
The Government published its response on 28 July 2025. Its summary:
The Government is working with Ofcom to ensure that online in-scope services are subject to robust but proportionate regulation through the effective implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023.
The opening 396 words of the 792-word response:
I would like to thank all those who signed the petition. It is right that the regulatory regime for in scope online services takes a proportionate approach, balancing the protection of users from online harm with the ability for low-risk services to operate effectively and provide benefits to users.
The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from its protections.
Proportionality is a core principle of the Act and is in-built into its duties. As regulator for the online safety regime, Ofcom must consider the size and risk level of different types and kinds of services when recommending steps providers can take to comply with requirements. Duties in the Communications Act 2003 require Ofcom to act with proportionality and target action only where it is needed.
Some duties apply to all user-to-user and search services in scope of the Act. This includes risk assessments, including determining if children are likely to access the service and, if so, assessing the risks of harm to children. While many services carry low risks of harm, the risk assessment duties are key to ensuring that risky services of all sizes do not slip through the net of regulation. For example, the Government is very concerned about small platforms that host harmful content, such as forums dedicated to encouraging suicide or self-harm. Exempting small services from the Act would mean that services like these forums would not be subject to the Act’s enforcement powers. Even forums that might seem harmless carry potential risks, such as where adults come into contact with child users.
Once providers have carried out their duties to conduct risk assessments, they must protect the users of their service from the identified risks of harm. Ofcom’s illegal content Codes of Practice set out recommended measures to help providers comply with these obligations, measures that are tailored in relation to both size and risk. If a provider’s risk assessment accurately determines that the risks faced by users are low across all harms, Ofcom’s Codes specify that they only need some basic measures, including:
• easy-to-find, understandable terms and conditions;
• a complaints tool that allows users to report illegal material when they see it, backed up by a process to deal with those complaints;
Read the full response on the petitions site.
Where the signatures came from
Signatures came from 650 constituencies. Measured against each constituency's electorate at the 2024 general election, the most came from Cities of London and Westminster, with 29.9 signatures per 1,000 electors (2,194 in all).
543,528 of the signatures were from the UK and 6,608 from elsewhere, by the location signers gave.
| Constituency | Signatures | Electorate, July 2024 | Per 1,000 electors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cities of London and Westminster | 2,194 | 73,369 | 29.9 |
| Dundee Central | 1,495 | 74,221 | 20.1 |
| Cambridge | 1,394 | 70,321 | 19.8 |
| Plymouth Sutton and Devonport | 1,418 | 75,313 | 18.8 |
| Edinburgh North and Leith | 1,455 | 78,411 | 18.6 |
| Brighton Pavilion | 1,336 | 74,786 | 17.9 |
| Manchester Central | 1,521 | 85,204 | 17.9 |
| Norwich South | 1,353 | 76,296 | 17.7 |
| Lincoln | 1,275 | 72,315 | 17.6 |
| Salford | 1,458 | 83,633 | 17.4 |
| Region | Signatures |
|---|---|
| South East | 78,894 |
| North West | 61,903 |
| London | 56,304 |
| East of England | 52,029 |
| South West | 50,258 |
| Scotland | 48,461 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 44,357 |
| West Midlands | 43,608 |
| East Midlands | 39,995 |
| Wales | 26,629 |
| North East | 23,225 |
| Northern Ireland | 11,445 |
Debate in Parliament
MPs debated the petition in Westminster Hall on 15 December 2025. Read the debate in Hansard. House of Commons Library debate pack.
Source and receipt
- https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903.jsonUK Parliament Petitions API · read 2026-10-15 · SHA-256
bf30527a85e7aec9… - The petition on petition.parliament.uk
The petition's words are its creator's and the response is the Government's; this site quotes both and gives no view on either. Signature counts can still change while a petition is open. To report an error, send a correction request.