My Lords, I will address my remarks to government Amendment 268AZA and its consequential amendments. I rather hope that we will get some reassurance from the Minister on these amendments, about which I wrote to him just before the debate. I hope that that was helpful; it was meant to be constructive. I also had a helpful discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Allan.
As has already been said, the real question relates to the threshold and the point at which this measure will clock in. I am glad that the Government have recognised the importance of the dangers of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm. I am also grateful for the way in which they have defined it in the amendment, relating to it grievous bodily harm and severe injury. The amendment says that this also
“includes successive acts of self-harm which cumulatively reach that threshold”.
That is important; it means, rather than just one act, a series of them.
However, I have a question about subsection (10), which states that:
“A provider of an internet service by means of which a communication is sent, transmitted or published is not to be regarded as a person who sends, transmits or publishes it”.
We know from bereaved parents that algorithms have been set up which relay this ghastly, horrible and inciteful material that encourages and instructs. That is completely different from those organisations that are trying to provide support.
I am grateful to Samaritans for all its help with my Private Member’s Bill, and for the briefing that it provided in relation to this amendment. As it points
out, over 5,500 people in England and Wales took their own lives in 2021 and self-harm is
“a strong risk factor for future suicide”.
Interestingly, two-thirds of those taking part in a Samaritans research project said that
“online forums and advice were helpful to them”.
It is important that there is clarity around providing support and not encouraging and goading people into activity which makes their self-harming worse and drags them down to eventually ending their own lives. Three-quarters of people who took part in that Samaritans research said that they had
“harmed themselves more severely after viewing self-harm content online”.
It is difficult to know exactly where this offence sits and whether it is sufficiently narrowly drawn.
I am grateful to the Minister for arranging for me to meet the Bill team to discuss this amendment. When I asked how it was going to work, I was somewhat concerned because, as far as I understand it, the mechanism is based on the Suicide Act, as amended, which talks about the offence of encouraging or assisting suicide. The problem as I see it is that, as far as I am aware, there has not been a string of prosecutions following the suicide of many young people. We have met their families and they have been absolutely clear about how their dead child or sibling—whether a child or a young adult—was goaded, pushed and prompted. I recently had experience outside of a similar situation, which fortunately did not result in a death.
The noble Lord, Lord Allan, has already addressed some of the issues around this, and I would not want the amendment not to be there because we must address this problem. However, if we are to have an offence here, with a threshold that the Government have tried to define, we must understand why, if assisting and encouraging suicide on the internet is already a criminal offence, nothing has happened and there have been no prosecutions.
Why is subsection (10) in there? It seems to negate the whole problem of forwarding on through dangerous algorithms content which is harmful. We know that a lot of the people who are mounting this are not in the UK, and therefore will be difficult to catch. It is the onward forwarding through algorithms that increases the volume of messaging to the vulnerable person and drives them further into the downward spiral that they find themselves in—which is perhaps why they originally went to the internet.
I look forward to hearing the Government’s response, and to hearing how this will work.