Grieving dad’s heartbreaking plea to Keir Starmer performed dwell on BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg

The dad of a 14-year-old who took her own life after seeing harmful content online has warned the UK is “going backwards” on internet safety.

Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly died in 2017, warned that Ofcom’s implementation of online safety laws is a “disaster”. He has appealed directly to the Prime Minister as a father to stop children from facing the “dangers” they’re currently experiencing online.

In a clip played on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Russell said: “I’m sure Keir, as a father, protects his children from online dangers as much as any individual can, but as a Prime Minister, he needs to really back online safety and move forward so that the UK is the safest place in the world to be online, and children, when they’re there in the future, don’t face the dangers they’re facing today.”

In a letter to Mr Starmer, he warned that without better protections “streams of life-sucking content” will soon become “torrents” and that a “digital disaster” at the hands of the tech firms is on the horizon. “This preventable harm would be happening on your watch,” he added. The dad said there is “widespread dismay” among bereaved families who have fought for tougher protections warning that more young people have lost their lives because of “dither and delay”.

Mr Russell also criticised Meta’s decision last week to scrap its fact-checking programme. He said it “leads me to believe that Meta is turning its platforms back towards the platforms that Molly saw in the last months of her life”.

In the letter, Mr Russell warned that Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are part of a “wholesale recalibration” of the online world, moving away from safety towards a “laissez-faire, anything-goes model”. “In this bonfire of digital ethics and online safety features, all of us will lose, but our children lose the most,” he said.

Tech Secretary Peter Kyle, who watched the clip of Mr Russell live on the BBC show, admitted MPs need to get into a better cycle of “updating” current laws due to the extremely fast pace technology develops. He said very strict enforcement rules will be coming in by March to ensure tech giants remove illegal content from their platforms.

Pressed on Mr Russell’s calls for the rules to be strengthened, Mr Kyle said: “I’m constantly reviewing them. I have to allow the new measures, because I came into office at a point where the legislation had passed but hasn’t been implemented, I want to focus on getting all of the powers I can have implemented, and that will happen in the course of this year.

“I’m very open minded, and I’ve said publicly that we will have to legislate into the future again….I’ll be honest about this. We can’t just wait every decade or so and do a big bang of online harm legislation and also other bits of technological legislation. We need to get Parliament more into the cycle of updating the law… because things like deep fakes, for example, come down the line and in three months, they are developed, designed, deployed, and they’re impacting society.”

An Ofcom spokesman told the BBC: “We recognise the profound pain caused by harmful content online, and our deepest sympathies remain with Ian Russell and all those who have suffered unimaginable loss.”

They said the voices of victims “will continue to be at the heart of our work”, adding: “In the coming months, as our enforcement powers commence, platforms will face further obligations to protect children from harmful content, even where it is not illegal.”