9th June 2026
Again, politicians think that “banning” something is an end to a problem.
This is a topic this blog has addressed before, but the issue never goes away and so the same old points bear repeating.
Law is not magic.
Prohibitions are not spells.
When you make a law against a thing, that thing may not instantly vanish.
It is not as if one points a wand and says something in cod-Latin, and the unwanted thing is thereby extinguished.
The unwanted thing may instead continue, it is just that further instances of that unwanted thing may be attended with different legal and practical consequences.
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Of course, there should be certain prohibitions.
But it is naïve – indeed magical – thinking to believe that just because, say, murder is prohibited there will be no more murders.
What the prohibition means is that any further murder can be followed by onerous consequences that would not be present if there was not a prohibition.
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Sometimes perhaps the prohibition may deter people doing the unwanted thing.
At other times, people will still do the unwanted thing, but in a way which means they will not be detected.
Or people will still do the unwanted thing if people believe the prohibition will not be seriously enforced – or if they believe the prohibition cannot be enforced.
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A prohibition in and by itself is not a policy. It may be part of a (wider) policy, alongside the allocation of resources, administrative priority, guidance and “soft” law, publicity, and political leadership.
But to make a law against something is often just as effective as casting a spell against something.
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The prompt for this post is the government of the United Kingdom threatening to do something-or-other if the internet companies do not do something-or-other.
Apparently, according to politicians, it is possible to ban social media use for under sixteen year olds.
The politicians will enact a prohibition [and cod-Latin and a merry wave of the legislative wand], the unwanted behaviour will disappear.
But it would seem things are a little more complicated than that.
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One curse of the modern age (and no doubt of earlier ages, but in a different way) is the belief that there are (instant) solutions to social and political problems.
And because of notions of parliamentary sovereignty, politicians in the United Kingdom believe that just because it is relatively easy for legislation to be passed, then more legislation is the solution to any social or political problem.
Members of Parliament cannot do much, but they can pass laws, and so they come to believe that passing laws is the only thing to do.
But public policy is hard.
Public policy is about effecting wanted outcomes which would not occur, but for the public policy. If things would happen anyway, then there is not much of a policy.
Laws are an important, if not crucial part, of much of public policy. Not just prohibitions, but the creation of discretions and obligations, and of rights. Laws can create legal personality or deem certain states of affairs.
But rarely, if at all, is any law the entirety of a public policy.
And so if politicians genuinely want to get rid – or reduce – an unwanted to thing, they have to do more than impose a prohibition.
Magical thinking is the negation of effective public policy.
For law is not magic, and prohibitions are not spells.
Magical thinking is the negation of effective public policy.
For law is not magic, and prohibitions are not spells.
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This is all very fair, BUT … Prohibiting something has another effect that I believe is under-recognised. It sends a message that You Are Now Doing Something You Are Not Supposed To. There is a difference in our individual social-contract understanding between the things we are allowed or supposed to do, and the things we are not allowed or supposed to do. A prohibition may not stop a certain behaviour – but it does move it from the space of ‘permitted’ to the space of ‘not-permitted’. And this is not insignificant.
If you want to send messages, use a carrier pigeon?
If no carrier pigeons are available I’ve heard many high streets in the UK have branches of Card Factory.
“A prohibition may not stop a certain behaviour – but it does move it from the space of ‘permitted’ to the space of ‘not-permitted’.”
Prohibiting alcohol purchase by teens under eighteen simply had the effect of making them work out illegal ways to obtain alcohol, the prohibition itself created an allure for myself and many of my peers back when I was a teen. In the case of net access I suspect the proportion of teens finding ways to access ‘forbidden content’ will be far higher than that of those of us who managed to obtain alcohol, because the down sides of that access are balanced by significant benefits.
I’d argue governments need to be pretty sure they have wide cross-community support for prohibiting anything before they proscribe / legislate…
When governments and the governed think differently, the public’s usual reaction is to ignore the legal prohibition. They can often safely do that because most prohibitions (eg against drink driving) are rarely enforced, they depend for their effect on most people wanting to be thought well of by their peers.
And when governments try to enforce prohibitions the public feel are deeply unjust, the anger and resistance are such that the prohibition and its proposers get dumped… eventually!
What always surprises me when discussing new proposed legislation is the absolute certainty some people possess that the law will be applied in exactly the way they expect and never, never, never against themselves.
I think politicians are particularly susceptible to believing that technology is a magic wand. We see this over and over, in how “Digital ID” will solve immigration cards, or special “benefits cards” will ensure the unworthy can’t spend their cash on things that have earned a badge of disapproval.
And it all seems so easy, until you think about deeply about it, and the practicalities.
If new devices are to have filters built in, for example, what of the secondary market? Will this mean people simply stick on an older phone, eschewing software updates, so that they aren’t filtered?
If incoming messages are to be scanned, how will this affect people outside the UK sending messages to UK users? WIll they need to verify their age too?
Will everything be scanned, or just images? What happens if someone develops a new image format? Or people start using steganography?
Wholly agree. Political ‘Discomfort Expelliarmus!’ handwaving is pathetic.
Isn’t this another example of dragging ourselves out of the medieval mindset which lingers in this country though and we should take a confident step forward in amending how we govern ourselves?
As a species, let alone a nation, it may have qualified as advancement to remember the rules we devise to codify the lessons experience has taught about how to improve our societies. Songs, poems and staged productions are a step ahead of just not bothering to remember important things. In addition it was advanced to write them down, sometimes in copious detail, to make clearer what we should try and try not to encourage in behavioural terms for citizens.
However time and our societies have moved on since writing was invented.
Most people agree that enforcement of laws is at least as important as writing them down in the first place so why don’t we demand of our politicians and civil servants (in the way that, for example, risk assessments or environmental impact assessments or even segmented economic impact guides are required for certain plans now) that our legislation only be enacted when sufficient enforcement plans and allocations of resources have been made.
That ‘policy’ is in fact a required part of the process of law-making? Too soon? Then when will it be time to take modern governance seriously again rather than cod theatrics?
If the Tech companies with the support of the US government won’t take effective action to protect children, what is the alternative to a law?
That is the weakest argument for anything, and many daft polices and laws have been justified by “what is the alternative?”
The alternative is not to have a policy or law that will not work.
Obviously rather light on the practicalities. But ‘something must be done’ and something was ‘laws were passed’.
Why? Because the DM/DT/Sun etc etc will scream blue murder. Think of the cheeldren’. So the pollys will mouth useless nothings on the telly and web. Online sin and unpleasantness has been made to look someone else’s problem – but ‘someone else’ does not care and cannot be made to care.
Out of curiosity I looked at Ofcom’s Children’s access requirements web pages. An awful lot of process and data collection but so far as I could see not much of any preventative value. Lots of ‘highly effective age assurance’ and ‘keeping a record of age assurance’. Words – parsnips.
Perhaps more effective is to tell the truth ‘you can visit nasty places, if you get hurt or your mind gets bent we will do nothing to help you’. As recent events have shown we chucked away societal safety nets a long time ago.
One would think that the appointment as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology would be someone with some sort of scientific background. Unfortunately, Liz Kendall’s degree is in History. Just saying that “technology is available now” does not make it so.
My degree is in history.
This might have something more to do with Starmer wanting to back a popular policy. It remains to be seen whether it stays popular now he has backed it. Note he’s given the tech companies three months to react. That’s about when he might be challenged for the leadership.
In contrast, the White House says UK should give parents “robust tools” to manage their children’s privacy settings and account controls. The UK can’t do that unless the social media platforms provide such controls. Anyone who has tried to manage what they see on social media feeds knows such control options don’t exist.
Prohibition is popular with politicians as it places the prohibited thing in a Somebody Else’s Problem Field.
Being a directly targeted Somebody, such actions would naturally upset a lawyer.
Possibly interesting to watch how the Ofcom online safety plan works out.
So far internet providers are supposed to tell Ofcom what measures they have in place and how effective they are – how many naughty children they catch trying to set up an account. Now this looks a longish game, the statistics will take a while to accumulate, young people will use parent’s or elder sibling’s ID or buy or be offered accounts from outside actors – for money or services. The VPN route may get squeezed, we shall see. Not all service providers will be fulsomely cooperative in providing statistics. Privacy campaigners may kick up a fuss. Plenty of fun to come.
Then at some stage there will be a push for a prosecution. Possibly Ofcom will be forced into action by some combination of pressure groups and newspapers. Plenty of opportunity for high-level political arm twisting and long and expensive litigation. So jolly good for lawyers.
The punishment regime looks modelled on EU competition law which has had a few high profile cases. But we don’t hear so much nowadays – perhaps no-one is trying to play unfair competition games any more and human nature has changed.
One of my favorite jokes, explaining the very low street crime rate in Japan: “They must have a law against crime!”
However, prohibitory rules can work well if used with some intelligence and subtlety. No jurisdiction, to my knowledge, has banned tobacco. But a combination of sin taxes and time-place-and-manner prohibitions probably deserve some credit in reduced tobacco consumption.