Nigel Farage demands apology from minister who said he’s on the side of ‘Jimmy Savile’

Science and technology secretary Peter Kyle has accused Nigel Farage, who has vowed to repeal the new Online Safety Act, of being on the side of “Jimmy Savile”.

Kyle said Reform UK’s recent pledge to scrap the legislation, which took effect last week, would allow “extreme pornographers” to continue perpetrating crimes online.

Passed in 2023, the Online Safety Act requires service providers hosting user-generated content to implement age checks to ensure children are protected from adult or otherwise inappropriate content. Those who fail to do so could face hefty fines.

The likes of Discord, Bluesky, Reddit, Grindr, Feeld and X/Twitter implemented the checks before the deadline, while others, including forum 4Chan, have terminated operations in the UK.

Former Reform chairman Zia Yusuf, now the head of the party’s so-called department of government efficiency, told the press that if they won the next general election, the legislation would be reversed immediately, and they would seek other ways to replicate its efforts to protect children from harmful content – prompting Kyle to claim they were on the side of child sex offenders, such as disgraced TV presenter and DJ Savile, The Guardian reported.

“I see that Nigel Farage is already saying that he’s going to overturn these laws,” Kyle said. “So you know, we have people out there who are extreme pornographers, peddling hate, peddling violence. Nigel Farage is on their side.

“Make no mistake about it, if people like Jimmy Savile were alive today, he’d be perpetrating his crimes online. And Nigel Farage is saying that he’s on their side.”

Asked to clarify his comments, Kyle said: “Nigel Farage is on the side of turning the clock back to the time when strange adults, strangers, can get in touch via messaging apps with children.”

After Savile died in 2011, hundreds of people came forward to claim he had sexually assaulted when they were children.

Farage, who has labelled the law “dystopian”, responding on X/Twitter, saying Kyle’s comments were “disgusting” and called on him to “do the right thing and apologise”.

Instead, Kyle said: “If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act, you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that.”

Members of the public have argued that that the new law amounts to censorship. A petition urging the government to repeal it has already attracted some 400,000 signatures. Following the legislation taking effect on Friday (25 July), Virtual Private Network (VPN) usage in the UK soared, with Mashable reporting that searches had increased by more than 1,400 per cent.

VPNs allow users to bypass region-based restrictions by hiding a device’s internet provider address.

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