My Lords, this has been a very thoughtful and thought-provoking debate. I start very much from the point of view expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and this brings the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, into agreement—it is not about the content; this is about features. The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, made exactly the same point, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Healy—this is not about restriction on freedom of speech but about a design feature in the Bill which is of crucial importance.
When I was putting together the two amendments that I have tabled, I was very much taken by what Parent Zone said in a recent paper. It described user empowerment tools as “a false hope”, and rightly had a number of concerns about undue reliance on tools. It said:
“There is a real danger of users being overwhelmed and bewildered”.
It goes on to say that
“tools cannot do all the work, because so many other factors are in play—parental styles, media literacy and technological confidence, different levels of vulnerability and, crucially, trust”.
The real question—this is why I thought we should look at it from the other side of things in terms of default—is about how we mandate the use of these user empowerment tools in the Bill for both children and adults. In a sense, my concerns are exactly the opposite of those of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—for some strange, unaccountable reason.
The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, the right reverend Prelate and, notably, my noble friend Lady Parminter have made a brilliant case for their amendment, and it is notable that these amendments are supported by a massive range of organisations. They are all in this area of vulnerable adults: the Mental Health Foundation, Mind, the eating disorder charity Beat, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Psychological Society, Rethink Mental Illness, Mental Health UK, and so on. It is not a coincidence that all these organisations are discussing this “feature”. This is a crucial aspect of the Bill.
Again, I was very much taken by some of the descriptions used by noble Lords during the debate. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford said that young people do not suddenly become impervious to content when they reach 18, and he particularly described the pressures as the use of AI only increases. I thought the way the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, described the progression from teenagehood to adulthood was extremely important. There is not some sort of point where somebody suddenly reaches the age of 18 and has full adulthood which enables then to deal with all this content.
Under the Bill as it stands, adult users could still see and be served some of the most dangerous content online. As we have heard, this includes pro-suicide, pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia content. One has only to listen to what my noble friend Lady Parminter had to say to really be affected by the operation, if you like, of social media in those circumstances. This is all about the vulnerable. Of course, we know that anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental health problem; the NHS is struggling to provide specialist treatment to those who need it. Meanwhile, suicide and self-harm-related content remains common and is repeatedly implicated in deaths. All Members here who were members of the Joint Committee remember the evidence of Ian Russell about his daughter Molly. I think that affected us all hugely.
We believe now you can pay your money and take your choice of whichever amendment seems appropriate. Changing the user empowerment provisions to require category 1 providers to have either the safest options as default for users or the terms of my two amendments is surely a straightforward way of protecting the vast majority of internet users who do not want this material served to them.
You could argue that the new offence of encouragement to serious self-harm, which the Government have committed to introducing, might form part of the solution here, but you cannot criminalise all the legal content that treads the line between glorification and outright encouragement. Of course, we know the way the Bill has been changed. No similar power is proposed, for instance, to address eating disorder content.
The noble Baroness, Lady Healy, quoted our own Communications and Digital Committee and its recommendations about a comprehensive toolkit of settings overseen by Ofcom, allowing users to decide what types of content they see and from whom. I am very supportive of Amendment 38A from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, which gives a greater degree of granularity about the kind of user, in a sense, that can communicate to users.
Modesty means that of course I prefer my own amendments and I agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Fraser, Lady Bull and Lady Harding, and I am very grateful for their support. But we are all heading in the same direction. We are all arguing for a broader “by default” approach. The onus should not be on these vulnerable adults in particular to switch them on, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said. It is all about those vulnerable adults and we must, as my noble friend Lady Burt, said, have their best interests at heart, and that is why we have tabled these amendments.
6 pm