OFCOM (Duty regarding Prevention of Serious Self-harm and Suicide) Bill [HL]

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene to give my strong support to this Bill, which is a good step forward. I hope, in view of the debate we had the other night about the Online Safety Bill, that we will be able to meld these difficulties together into one Bill, but if we cannot, this is a good step forward.

I have come into this area only tangentially in that, when I was a member of the Council of Europe, I was involved in an assessment of AI and the uses to which it could be put. This ties in very much with the latter part of the noble Baroness’s speech, because what comes out of the box has to be put into the box. We were studying sentencing and whether you could use AI to sentence prisoners. Believe it or not, that has been tried in the State of Florida. Analysis afterwards showed quite clearly that the people who were inputting the information had a bias which they were not necessarily aware of but which was making the sentencing unbalanced. In fact, it was making it more likely that black people in Florida would be sentenced to longer prison terms, and more likely that they would be found guilty and sentenced than white people. However, when the researchers we employed went back to dig out the data, they did not find any bias in the people who were inputting it. In other words, there was no deliberate attempt to bias the data; it had all come about because of the unconscious bias which we probably all have buried within us. Therefore, we need to be very careful in this area.

It is a good step forward for Ofcom to set up a group to look at suicide and what it can do to address it—I am pleased to see that. However, I disagree marginally with the noble Baroness. It is not just about profit. One of the problems with the internet is the mental health issues of the people posting the information. We saw this the other day when I referred to the showing of the images given to the unfortunate little girl who took her own life. No one was actually making any money out of it, but they were undoubtedly getting psychological thrills from causing deep pain and harm. This is one of the things we have to address: it is not just about money, and in many cases, this is what happens on the web.

I am no expert on the web—in fact, at home I am a bit of a joke because of my lack of knowledge of how to navigate it—but what I have seen shows me that serious steps need to be taken. As I said in my speech the other night, we have to tackle vigorously the concept of anonymity on the web. There should be a way of tracing what is being posted and who is posting it, so that regulators and, if necessary, the police, can quickly get to the source. I made the point the other night—I will make it again—that the more anonymous a posting can be, the more unacceptable the sentiments in it often are. We are going to have to tackle this question of anonymity.

In my lifetime, I have known three people who ended their lives by committing suicide. None of them were children. For two of the three, it was completely un-expected. The only thing that could be said afterwards —of course, all the inquiry and debate comes afterwards— is that they had felt very isolated in facing up to the problems of their lives. It brought to mind the case, for those noble Lords who remember, of Dr David Kelly, who killed himself. His case was undoubtedly affected by his familial relations and the fact that he did not feel he had the level of support he needed.

The third person I knew who committed suicide suffered from deep mental depression. She was an Oxford graduate so she was not someone at the margin of life. She had a good degree and held a good job but she went into a spiral of depression to a point where, as one of my friends said, “She just won’t be helped, will she?” It was very sad but no one knew what to do. Other than locking her up in a secure room and keeping a watch on her, we probably could not have prevented her suicide. It was something that, I am afraid, a number of us expected to happen but were helpless in trying to prevent—although a number of us did try to prevent it by getting social services and mental health services involved. One of the lessons we must learn is that, for some people, the mental state into which they get is very difficult to help with. It is no good blaming the National Health Service for it. The health service is terribly overstretched and there is a limit to what it can do.

That has been a bit of a diversion on this excellent Bill. My final point concerns the words

“sent or posted with malicious intent”.

It is going to be very difficult to prove that. The definition needs to be tightened up and turned into something more like “sent or posted with apparent malicious intent” because other people have to judge it. It is no good some bright little person sitting there and saying, “Oh, I didn’t realise that anyone would kill themselves because of this. I was just playing around.” This offence probably needs to be tightened a little bit; we are going to have to rely on a certain amount of judge-made law to interpret how “malicious intent” is to be registered and understood.

Having said all that, I welcome the Bill. It is an excellent step forward from a most hard-working Member of this House, with whom I have had a lot to do over the years. We are very lucky that she is here. I wish her Bill well and I am sure that the Minister will do his best to help.