YouTube U-turns over David Davis vaccination passports clip after protest

MP David Davis was filmed addressing a meeting at the Conservative Party conference

YouTube has reversed its decision to remove a video of David Davis arguing against Covid passports, following criticism from the ex-minister.

According to Big Brother Watch, the platform said Mr Davis's speech at the Conservative Party conference violated its policy on "medical information".

Mr Davis said his remarks were "wholly accurate" and YouTube's actions were "an outrageous attack on free speech".

YouTube said the video was "immediately reinstated following a review".

A spokeswoman for the company said: "We quickly remove flagged content that violates our community guidelines, including Covid-19 content that explicitly contradicts expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization.

"With millions of hours of videos uploaded on our site each day, sometimes we make the wrong call."

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In his speech last week, at a conference fringe meeting in Manchester, Mr Davis said he was "a strong believer in vaccination" and that he himself had received both doses.

However, the veteran civil liberties campaigner strongly attacked proposals to introduce vaccine certificates arguing that it "smacked of illiberal government".

'Worrying trend'

He also argued that vaccine passports gave people a "false sense of security" pointing out that vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant could still spread the virus to others.

Campaign group Big Brother Watch uploaded the clip of Mr Davis talking but later received a notification email from YouTube explaining that the video had been removed from the side.

In an email to the organisation, YouTube said it "doesn't allow claims about Covid-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO)".

Mr Davis said: "Throughout the pandemic, we have seen blatant attempts by Big Tech to silence opposition voices challenging the conventional wisdom.

"This episode serves as a further example of the worrying trend of strangling free speech.

"If YouTube is happy to attempt to silence elected members of Parliament, then they are also happy to censor anyone uploading content to their services."

He urged the government to stop "the erosion of free speech" by reviewing proposals in its Online Safety Bill.

Mark Johnson, legal and policy officer at Big Brother Watch said that while YouTube had now reinstated the video, "it is clear that free speech online is in peril."