Suicide: Online Products Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Baroness Berridge
Main Page: Baroness Berridge (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Berridge's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Suicide: Online Products
Baroness Berridge Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend has mentioned various statutory agencies, but is this not a particular category of legal but harmful content? Assisting suicide is a criminal offence, as is potentially conspiring to assist suicide. Will he ensure that all those statutory bodies involved really relate to the boundaries of the criminal law that exists today? These companies should be ensuring that they are not assisting or conspiring to assist suicide.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My noble friend is right: there are existing criminal sanctions here and content which encourages or assists suicide, and therefore breaks the existing law, will be covered as well by the safety duties providing for illegal content under the Online Safety Bill. We want to ensure that the Bill adds to the armoury that we have to prevent as many suicides as we can.