My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for introducing the amendments in the way she did. I think that what she has done, and what this whole debate has done, is to ask the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, posed: we do not know yet quite where the gaps are until we see what the Government have in mind in terms of the promised new offence. But it seems pretty clear that something along the lines of what has been proposed in this debate needs to be set out as well.
One of the most moving aspects of being part of the original Joint Committee on the draft Bill was the experience of listening to Ian Russell and the understanding, which I had not come across previously, of the sheer scale of the kind of material that has been the subject of this debate on suicide and self-harm encouragement. We need to find an effective way of dealing with it and I entirely take my noble friend’s point that this needs a combination of protectiveness and support. I think the combination of these amendments is designed to do precisely that and to learn from experience through having the advisory committee as well.
It is clear that, by itself, user empowerment is just not going to be enough in all of this. I think that is the bottom line for all of us. We need to go much further, and we owe a debt to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for raising these issues and to the Samaritans for campaigning on this subject. I am just sorry that my noble friend Lady Tyler cannot be here because she is a signatory to a number of the amendments and feels very strongly about these issues as well.
I do not think I need to unpack a great deal of the points that have been made. We know that suicide is a leading cause of death in males under 50 and females under 35 in the UK. We know that so many of the deaths are internet-related and we need to find effective methods of dealing with this. These are meant to be practical steps.
I take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, not only that it is a social problem of some magnitude but that the question of definitions is important.
I thought she strayed well beyond where I thought the definition of “self-harm” actually came. But one could discuss that. I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, saying that we want good law, not relying on good people, was about definitions. We cannot just leave it to the discretion of an individual, however good they may be, moderating on a social media platform.
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Along with the Samaritans, I very much regret that we no longer have the legal but harmful category, which would help guide us in this area. I share its view that we need to protect people of all ages from all extremely dangerous suicide and self-harm content on large and small platforms. I think this is a way of doing it. The type of content can be perhaps more tightly defined in terms of the kinds of information, depictions, instructions and the kinds of content, the portrayal and the graphic descriptions that occur. One perhaps might be able to do more in that direction. I very much hope that we can move further today with some assurance from the Minister in this area.
The establishment of a specific unit within Ofcom, which was the subject of the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, is potentially a very useful addition to the Bill. I very much hope that the Minister takes that on board as well.