UK Parliament / Open data

Digital Economy Bill

My Lords, I supports the amendment proposed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Janke, but also the remarks of my noble friend Lady Howe. I want to ask the Minister, when he comes to reply, about an issue that I raised in your Lordships’ House previously, and that is the issue of suicide sites on the internet. It concerns me that young people can be encouraged to visit those sites and take their own lives. Only a year ago I attended a school prize giving in a north-west school, and the headmaster told me when I arrived how a child in that school had taken their own life only the day before. As noble Lords can imagine, that was a terrible tragedy not only for the family but for the whole school, and it rather changed the atmosphere on that occasion. That child had been visiting one of the suicide sites on the internet, and the headmaster discovered that several other children had been doing the same.

It can be revenge porn or the kind of trolling to which the noble Baroness referred, the harassment of young women in particular, or the whipping up of xenophobia, racism or anti-Semitism, but it is right that there should be a code of practice, and we should get on with it. I hope that the Minister will tell us more

about the Green Paper, what the framework will be for it and when we are going to start to look at these issues seriously.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
782 cc75-6 
Session
2016-17
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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