Online Safety Bill

Liz Twist Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill, which is necessary and overdue, but I would like to raise two issues: how the Bill can tackle suicide and self-harm prevention, and mental health around body image for young people.

First, all suicide and self-harm content should be addressed across all platforms, regardless of size: it is not just the larger platforms that should be considered. The requirement imposed on category 1 platforms relating to legal but harmful suicide and self-harm content should be extended to all platforms, as many colleagues have said. There is a real concern that users will turn from the larger to the smaller platforms, so the issue needs to be addressed. Will the Minister confirm that even smaller platforms will be asked at the start to do an assessment of the risk they pose?

Secondly, the Secretary of State referred to secondary legislation, which will be necessary to identify legal but harmful suicide and self-harm content as a real priority for action. It would be really helpful if we could see that before the legislation is finally passed: it is a key issue and must be an urgent area of work.

Thirdly, I wonder whether the Government will look again at the Law Commission’s proposal that a new offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm be created, and that the Bill should make assisting self-harm a priority issue with respect to illegal content. Will the Minister look again at that proposal as the Bill progresses?

I also want to speak about damage to body image, particularly in relation to young people. All of us want to look our best on social media. Young people in particular face a real barrage of digitally enhanced and in many cases unrealistic images that can have a negative effect on body image. Research by the Mental Health Foundation shows that harmful material that damages body image can have a real negative effect on young people’s mental health. As other hon. Members have said, and as most of us know from our own experience, many of the images that we see on social media are driven by algorithms that can amplify the harm to young people. That is particularly concerning as an issue associated with the possible development of eating disorders and mental health conditions.

The Bill does include some provision on algorithms, but more needs to be done to protect our young people from that damage. I encourage the Government to consider amendments that would give more control over new algorithmic content and ensure that the safest settings are the default settings. Users should be given more control over the kind of advertising that they see and receive, to avoid excessive advertising showing perfect bodies. The Government should commit themselves to recognising material that damages body image as a serious form of harm.

There are many more detailed issues that I would have liked to raise tonight, but let me end by saying that we need to give serious consideration to ways of reducing the incidence of suicides and self-harm.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Online Safety Bill

Liz Twist Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

Addressing that is absolutely essential. That goes for any of the deepfake examples we have heard about, including from my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), because if we know that something has been changed—and the whole point about deepfake is that it is hard to tell—we can tell easily and say, “I know that is not right, I know that is not true, I know that is false, and I can aim away from it and treat it accordingly”.

Just to make sure that everybody understands, this is not some piece of new tech magic; it is already established. Adobe, as I have said, is doing it with the Content Authenticity Initiative, which is widely backed by other very serious tech firms. Others in the journalism world are doing the same thing, with the Journalism Trust Initiative. There is NewsGuard, which produces trust ratings; the Trust Project, which produces trust indicators; and we of course have our own press regulators in this country, the Independent Press Standards Organisation and IMPRESS.

I urge the Government and all here present not to be satisfied with where this Bill stands now. We have all heard how it can be improved. We have all heard that this is a new, groundbreaking and difficult area in which many other countries have not even got as far as we have, but we should not be in any way satisfied with where we are now. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) said earlier that we need to approach this Bill in a spirit of being humble, and this is an area in which humility is absolutely essential. I hope all of us realise how much further we have to go, and I hope the Minister will say how he proposes to address these important and so far uncovered issues in due course.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I wish to address new clauses 16 and 28 to 30, and perhaps make a few passing comments on some others along the way. Many others who, like me, were in the Chamber for the start of the debate will I suspect feel like a broken record, because we keep revisiting the same issues and raising the same points again and again, and I am going to do exactly that.

First, I will speak about new clause 16, which would create a new offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm. I am going to do so because I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on suicide and self-harm prevention, and we have done a good deal of work on looking at the issue of self-harm and young people in the last two years. We know that suicide is the leading cause of death in men aged under 50 years and females aged under 35 years, with the latest available figures confirming that 5,583 people in England and Wales tragically took their own lives in 2021. We know that self-harm is a strong risk factor for future suicidal ideation, so it is really important that we tackle this issue.

The internet can be an invaluable and very supportive place for some people who are given the opportunity to access support, but for other people it is difficult. The information they see may provide access to content that acts to encourage, maintain or exacerbate self-harm and suicidal behaviours. Detailed information about methods can also increase the likelihood of imitative and copycat suicide, with risks such as contagion effects also present in the online environment.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work she has done. She will be aware of the case of my constituent Joe Nihill, who at the age of 23 took his own life after accessing suicide-related material on the internet. Of course, we fully support new clause 16 and amendment 159. A lot of content about suicide is harmful, but not illegal, so does my hon. Friend agree that what we really need is assurances from the Minister that, when this Bill comes back, it will include protections to ensure that adults such as Joe, who was aged 23, and adults accessing these materials through smaller platforms are fully protected and get the protection they really need?

[Liz Twist]

I thank my hon. Friend for those comments, and I most definitely agree with him. One of the points we should not lose sight of is that his constituent was 23 years of age—not a child, but still liable to be influenced by the material on the internet. That is one of the points we need to take forward.

It is really important that we look at the new self-harm offence to make sure that this issue is addressed. That is something that the Samaritans, which I work with, has been campaigning for. The Government have said they will create a new offence, which we will discuss at a future date, but there is real concern that we need to address this issue as soon as possible through new clause 16. I ask the Minister to comment on that so that we can deal with the issue of self-harm straightaway.

I now want to talk about internet and media literacy in relation to new clauses 29 and 30. YoungMinds, which works with young people, is supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Psychological Society and the Mental Health Foundation in its proposals to promote the public’s media literacy for both regulated user-to-user services and search services, and to create a strategy to do this. Young people, when asked by YoungMinds what they thought, said they wanted the Online Safety Bill to include a requirement for such initiatives. YoungMinds also found that young people were frustrated by very broad, generalised and outdated messages, and that they want much more nuanced information—not generalised fearmongering, but practical ways in which they can address the issue. I do hope that the Government will take that on board, because if people are to be protected, it is important that we have a more sophisticated media literacy than is reflected in the broad messages we sometimes get at present.

On new clause 28, I do believe there is a need for advocacy services to be supported by the Government to assist and support young people—not to take responsibilities away from them, but to assist and protect them. I want to make two other points. I see that the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) has left the Chamber again, but he raised an interesting and important point about the size of platforms covered by the Bill. I believe the Bill needs to cover those smaller or specialised platforms that people might have been pushed on to by changes to the larger platforms. I hope the Government will address that important issue in future, together with the issue of age, so that protection does not stop just with children, and we ensure that others who may have vulnerabilities are also protected.

I will not talk about “legal but harmful” because that is not for today, but there is a lot of concern about those provisions, which we thought were sorted out and agreed on, suddenly being changed. There is a lot of trepidation about what might come in future, and the Minister must understand that we will be looking closely at any proposed changes.

We have been talking about this issue for many years—indeed, since I first came to the House—and during the debate I saw several former Ministers and Secretaries of State with whom I have raised these issues. It is about time that we passed the Bill. People out there, including young people, are concerned and affected by these issues. The internet and social media are not going to stop because we want to make the Bill perfect. We must ensure that we have something in place. The legislation might be capable of revision in future, but we need it now for the sake of our young people and other vulnerable people who are accessing online information.

[Suzanne Webb]

This is the first time I have been able to speak in the Chamber for some time, due to a certain role I had that prevented me from speaking in here. It is an absolute honour and privilege, on my first outing in some time, to have the opportunity to speak specifically to new clause 53, which is Zach’s law. I am delighted and thrilled that the Government are supporting Zach’s law. I have supported it for more than two years, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell). We heard during the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill how those who suffer from epilepsy were sent flashing images on social media by vile trolls. Zach Eagling, whom the law is named after, also has cerebral palsy, and he was one of those people. He was sent flashing images after he took part in a charity walk around his garden. He was only nine years of age.

Zach is inspirational. He is selflessly making a massive difference, and the new clause is world-leading. It is down to Zach, his mum, the UK Epilepsy Society, and of course the Government, that I am able to stand here to talk about new clause 53. I believe that the UK Epilepsy Society is the only charity in the world to change the law on any policy area, and that is new clause 53, which is pretty ground-breaking. I say thank you to Zach and the Epilepsy Society, who ensured that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Watford stepped up and played our part in that.

Being on the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill was an absolute privilege, with the excellent chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins). People have been talking about the Bill’s accompanying Committee, which is an incredibly good thing. In the Joint Committee we talked about this: we should follow the Bill through all its stages, and also once it is on the statute books, to ensure that it keeps up with those tech companies. The Joint Committee was brought together by being focused on a skill set, and on bringing together the right skills. I am a technological luddite, but I brought my skills and understanding of audit and governance. My hon. Friend the Member for Watford brought technology and all his experience from his previous day job. As a result we had a better Bill by having a mix of experience and sharing our expertise.

This Bill is truly world leading. New clause 53 is one small part of that, but it will make a huge difference to thousands of lives including, I believe, 600,000 who suffer from epilepsy. The simple reality is that the big tech companies can do better and need to step up. I have always said that we do not actually need the Bill or these amendments; we need the tech companies to do what they are supposed to do, and go out and regulate their consumer product. I have always strongly believed that.

During my time on the Committee I learned that we must follow the money—that is what it is all about for the tech companies. We have been listening to horrific stories from grieving parents, some of whom I met briefly, and from those who suffered at the hands of racism, abuse, threats—the list is endless. The tech companies could stop that now. They do not need the Bill to do it and they should do the right thing. We should not have to get the Bill on to the statute books to enforce what those companies should be doing in the first place. We keep saying that this issue has been going on for five years. The tech companies know that this has been talked about for five years, so why are they not doing something? For me the Bill is for all those grieving families who have lost their beautiful children, those who have been at the mercy of keyboard warriors, and those who have received harm or lost their lives because the tech companies have not, but could have, done better. This is about accountability. Where are the tech companies?

I wish to touch briefly on bereaved parents whose children have been at the mercy of technology and content. Many families have spent years and years still unable to understand their child’s death. We must consider imposing transparency on the tech companies. Those families cannot get their children back, but they are working hard to ensure that others do not lose theirs. Data should be given to coroners in the event of the death of a child to understand the circumstances. This is important to ensure there is a swift and humane process for the coroner to access information where there is reason to suspect that it has impacted on a child’s death.

In conclusion, a huge hurrah that we have new clause 53, and I thank the Government for this ground-breaking Bill. An even bigger hurrah to Zach, Zach’s mum, and the brilliant Epilepsy Society, and, of course, to Zach’s law, which is new clause 53.