Online Safety Bill

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I welcome the Bill and the opportunity it presents, if it is strengthened, to address the many online harms which have been so eloquently outlined by colleagues around the Chamber. My starting point is ensuring that we do all we can to minimise the harms to those at risk of, or with, eating disorders. I declare an interest as the mother of a young adult daughter with anorexia, which is, as many noble Lords will know, the deadliest of any of the mental health diseases.

The evidence is clear of the harm that online content can do to people at risk of, or with, eating disorders and to exacerbate their conditions. Beat, the leading eating disorder charity, undertook research last year of 255 people with lived experience of eating disorders and their carers, which found that 91% of people with lived experience of eating disorders have encountered content which was harmful to their eating disorder condition. This includes sites that are innocuously called “pro-ana” and “pro-mia”, which encourage extreme starvation and extreme bulimic behaviours by people, and content for which there is no warning if you see an image or a video of body checking or of people being fed by naso-gastric tubes, as though that were something to be applauded.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, said, there are images which have been digitally enhanced to present pictures of people’s bodies that are completely unrealistic but are not labelled as digitally retouched—unlike in France, where the law states that those commercial images do have to be if digitally retouched. It was good that the celebrity influencer Kylie Jenner, who may not be known to all noble Lords in this place, was called out last week in the media for digitally editing pictures of her body on social media. That is the right thing to do and this Government should be doing more on that, including in the Bill.

It is not just that those images are out there. Other noble Lords have made the point that there are algorithms which constantly pump them at people. People with eating disorders feel bombarded by a constant stream of triggering images, content and advertising which feeds eating disorder behaviours and conditions. Obviously, you can recover from eating disorders; that is good news for those of us who know sufferers. But having talked to my daughter Rose about it, I know that what happens on TikTok is that your feed page—I think it is called a “for you” page—obviously is based on the content you have been looking at over the last period. It will suck you back down into an eating disorder, just when those people with mental disorders are trying to get out. For the reasons given so well by other noble Members, algorithms need to be touched on.

I fully support what the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, said about the insufficiency of the protections for adults. I cannot get my daughter to put food in her mouth to nourish her; how on earth am I going to get her or other vulnerable people to opt out in a different way from the social media content which is harming them?

It was excellent that Vicky Ford promoted this issue in the other place, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, mentioned. She had some suggestions about ensuring that eating disorders were treated on a par and that the obligations on social media companies applied regarding those disorders. I support that entirely and hope that I can work with other Members from around the House to ensure that we can shut that loophole down, so that people with eating disorders, and their carers, are given another tool in the fight against these vicious and deadly diseases.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Lords Chamber

I fear that unless we are very careful this section will do the same.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I am afraid that on this issue, as I am sure she would expect, we profoundly disagree. I am delighted to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and those from my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, which do the same sort of thing and address the critical issue of what is a proportionate response, respecting the fact that the position for adults is different from that for children. What is a proportionate response, recognising that there is a large cadre of vulnerable people who need help to manage the beneficial but also worrying tool which is social media?

I shall cover only the issues on which I have any degree of competence in this complex field, which is to speak about the importance of this amendment because of the particular nature of eating disorders. I declare an interest as the mother of a young adult who has eating disorders and had them when she was a child. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, talked about the need to allow adults to use their reason. Let me tell the Committee about people with eating disorders: I would love it if I could get my daughter to be as reasonable as she is when I talk to her about the benefits of proportional representation, where she can beat me hands down, when I try but fail to get her to put food in her mouth.

Eating disorders have two issues of relevance to this debate, and they are why I support the case for the strongest protection for them, the default being that people should have to opt in to have access to harmful content. First, eating disorders are intensely controlling. They suck people in, and they are not just about not eating; they control how they exercise; they control who they see; they are a control mechanism over a person’s whole life. I reject the idea that you can get someone who is controlled, day and night, by an eating disorder to make the decision to opt out of accessing social media content, when we know that people with eating disorders gravitate towards it because it provides them with content that sustains their illness. It provides them with communities of other users— the pro-mia and pro-ana sites, which sound incredibly comforting but are actually communities of people that encourage people, sometimes literally, to starve themselves to death. That controlling nature means that, for me, people having to opt in is the best way forward: it is a controlling illness.

Secondly, eating disorders are a very competitive illness. If you have anorexia, you want to be the thinnest. In the old days, that meant that you would cook food that you would not eat, but you would get your sister to eat it and you would feel good because you were thinner. Of course, with social media, you can now access all these websites where you can see people with nasogastric tubes and see people who are doing much “better”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, in that dreadful phrase, they provide “thinspiration”: people look for thinness and compare themselves to other people. It is an insatiable desire, so the idea that they will voluntarily opt out of that is just away with the fairies.

As I say, we need a proportionate response. I appreciate that people with eating disorders may well choose to opt in, but I think that the state in the first place should require that people have to opt into that choice. We have heard about the various mental health organisations that have made that case, but in thinking about this and talking to Rose about it, I think there is another fundamental reason why it is right that the state should take this approach. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, eating disorders can start at a young age, but they can also start after the age of 18. If someone in their mid-20s—or mid-30s or mid-40s—is starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about their body image and starting to get some rather odd views about food but does not yet have an eating disorder, that is the time when, if they get support and do not get encouragement, we might be able to stop them getting sucked into these appalling vortexes of eating disorders. If we have this provision that people have to opt in, they might not see that content which, as has been mentioned, is being pushed at them—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford gave examples the other week of how these sites feed you stuff immediately as soon as you start going down this route. If people have to opt in, we might just have that chance of stopping them getting an eating disorder.

Yes, people have to be given access to some of this material in a free society, but it is the role of the state to protect the vulnerable, and the particular nature of eating disorders means that, for me, this amendment is vital.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, in her very moving and personal speech. I am sorry that I was unable to speak to the previous group of amendments, some of which were in my name, because, due to unavoidable business in my diocese, I was not able to be present when that debate began late last Tuesday. However, it is very good to be able to support this group of amendments, and I hope tangentially to say something also in favour of risk assessment, although I am conscious that other noble Lords have ably made many of the points that I was going to make.

My right reverend friend the Bishop of Gloucester has added her name in support of amendments in this group, and I also associate myself with them—she is not able to be here today. As has been said, we are all aware that reaching the threshold of 18 does not somehow award you with exponentially different discernment capabilities, nor wrap those more vulnerable teenagers in some impermeable cotton wool to protect them from harm.

We are united, I think, in wanting to do all we can to make the online space feel safe and be safe for all. However, there is increasing evidence that people do not believe that it is. The DCMS’s own Public Attitudes to Digital Regulation survey is concerning. The most recent data shows that the number of UK adults who do not feel safe and secure online increased from 38% in November/December 2021 to 45% in June/July 2022. If that trend increases, the number will soon pass half, with more than half of UK adults not feeling safe and secure online.

It is vital that we protect society’s most vulnerable. When people are vulnerable through mental illness or other challenges, they are surely not able to protect themselves from being exposed to damaging online content by making safe choices, as we have just heard. In making this an opt-in system, we would save lives when people are at a point of crisis.