I am particularly grateful to the noble Lords who co-signed Amendments 96, 240 and 296 in this group. Amendment 225 is also important and warrants careful consideration, as it explicitly includes eating disorders. These amendments have strong support from Samaritans, which has helped me in drafting them, and from the Mental Health Foundation and the BMA. I declare that I am an elected member of the BMA ethics committee.
We have heard much in Committee about the need to protect children online more effectively even than in the Bill. On Tuesday the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, made a powerful speech acknowledging that vulnerability does not stop at the age of 18 and that the Bill currently creates a cliff edge whereby there is protection from harmful content for those under 18 but not for those over 18. The empowerment tools will be futile for those seriously contemplating suicide and self-harm. No one should underestimate the power of
suicide contagion and the addictive nature of the content that is currently pushed out to people, goading them into such actions and drawing them into repeated viewings.
Amendment 96 seeks to redress that. It incorporates a stand-alone provision, creating a duty for providers of user-to-user services to manage harmful content about suicide or self-harm. This provision would operate as a specific category, relevant to all regulated services and applicable to both children and adults. Amendment 296 defines harmful suicide or self-harm content. It is important that we define that to avoid organisations such as Samaritans, which provide suicide prevention support, being inadvertently caught up in clumsy, simplistic search engine categorisation.
Suicide and self-harm content affects people of all ages. Adults in distress search the internet, and children easily bypass age-verification measures and parental controls even when the have been switched on. The Samaritans Lived Experience Panel reported that 82% of people who died by suicide, having visited websites that encouraged suicide and/or methods of self-harm, were over the age of 25.
Samaritans considers that the types of suicide and self-harm content that are legal but unequivocally harmful include, but are not limited to, information, depictions, instructions and advice on methods of self-harm and suicide; content that portrays self-harm and suicide as positive or desirable; and graphic descriptions or depictions of self-harm and suicide. As the Bill stands, platforms will not even need to consider the risk that such content could pose to adults. This will leave all that dangerous online content widely available and undermines the Bill’s intention from the outset.
Last month, other parliamentarians and I met Melanie, whose relative Jo died by suicide in 2020. He was just 23. He had accessed suicide-promoting content online, and his family are speaking out to ensure that the Bill works to avoid future tragedies. A University of Bristol study reported that those with severe suicidal thoughts actively use the internet to research effective methods and often find clear suggestions. Swansea University reported that three quarters of its research participants had harmed themselves more severely after viewing self-harm content online.
Amendment 240 complements the other amendments in this group, although it would not rely on them to be effective. It would establish a specific unit in Ofcom to monitor the prevalence of suicide, self-harm and harmful content online. I should declare that this is in line with the Private Member’s Bill I have introduced. In practice, that means that Ofcom would need to assess the efficacy of the legislation in practice. It would require Ofcom to investigate the content and the algorithms that push such content out to individuals at an alarming rate.
Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate set up new accounts in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia at the minimum age TikTok allows, which is 13. These accounts paused briefly on videos about body image and mental health, and “liked” them. Within 2.6 minutes, TikTok recommended suicide content, and it sent content on eating disorders within eight minutes.
Ofcom’s responsibility for ongoing review and data collection, reported to Parliament, would take a future-facing approach covering new technologies. New communications and internet technologies are being developed at pace in ways we cannot imagine. The term
“in a way equivalent … to”
in Amendment 240 is specifically designed to include the metaverse, where interactions are instantaneous, virtual and able to incite, encourage or provoke serious harm to others.
We increasingly live our lives online. Social media is expanding, while user-to-user sites are now shopping platforms for over 70% of UK consumers. However, online is also being used to sell suicide kits or lethal substances, as recently covered in the press. It is important that someone holds the responsibility for reporting on dangers in the online world. Harmful suicide content methods and encouragement were found through a systematic review to be massed on sites with low levels of moderation and easy search functions for images. Some 78% of people with lived experience of suicidality and self-harm surveyed by Samaritans agree that new laws are needed to make online spaces safer.
I urge noble Lords to support my amendments, which aim to ensure that self-harm, suicide and seriously harmful content is addressed across all platforms in all categories as well as search engines, regardless of their functionality or reach, and for all persons, regardless of age. Polling by Samaritans has shown high support for this: four out of five agree that harmful suicide and self-harm content can damage adults as well as children, while three-quarters agree that tech companies should by law prevent such content being shown to users of all ages.
If the Government are not minded to adopt these amendments, can the Minister tell us specifically how the Bill will take a comprehensive approach to placing duties on all platforms to reduce dangerous content promoting suicide and self-harm? Can the Government confirm that smaller sites, such as forums that encourage suicide, will need to remove priority illegal content, whatever the level of detail in their risk assessment? Lastly—I will give the Minister a moment to note my questions—do the Government recognise that we need an amendment on Report to create a new offence of assisting or encouraging suicide and serious self-harm? I beg to move.