UK criminal sanctions for tech bosses ?could be copied by non-democracies?

Introducing criminal sanctions for tech executives in the online safety bill could be copied by non-democratic regimes, the industry has claimed before an influential report this week.

A joint committee of MPs and peers scrutinising the bill will publish its findings on Tuesday after the culture secretary promised to accelerate provisions for criminal liability for senior managers.

Nadine Dorries said it was "nonsense" that tech firms would be given a two-year grace period before criminal accountability is introduced. Instead, liability would be brought in within three to six months of the bill becoming law, she said.

In an example of the industry counter-offensive, the British trade body techUK said criminal sanctions could provide a "pretext" for non-democratic regimes to introduce punitive measures based on the legislation.

Antony Walker, the deputy chief executive of techUK, said: "There are examples around the world in non-democratic regimes where threats to senior executives have been used as a way to force companies in a way that suits a particular government. The UK has an opportunity to set an example whereby we don't provide those pretexts for other regimes to simply say: ‘Well if the UK does it, that's the gold standard. We're going to do it too but then apply a somewhat different standard.'"

Twitter has issued a similar warning. Speaking to the joint committee in October, the social media company's director of public policy strategy, Nick Pickles, said "hostage laws" - so called because they could be used to get at companies by pressuring staff members - could be adopted by illiberal regimes.

In its submission to the committee, Google said the criminal sanctions threat would encourage directors to remove content "at scale" rather than risk falling foul of the act.