Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will take steps to ensure that small and medium media platforms restrict content that promote suicide and self-harm.

All companies in scope of the Online Safety Bill will have duties to proactively prevent the spread of content encouraging or assisting suicide. They will also have to protect children from harmful suicide and self-harm content, even if it is not illegal. While duties are proportionate to the risk of harm and a service’s capacity, these duties apply regardless of the size of the service.

The largest and highest risk services will also need to set out in terms and conditions their policies for addressing harmful content to adults. This will likely include types of legal content promoting self-harm.

This approach reflects the fact that this type of content is likely to cause the most harm on services with the largest audiences and a range of high-risk features, where it can spread quickly and reach large numbers of people.