Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to stop websites promoting suicide.

Under section 2(1) of the Suicide Act 1961 it is an offence in England and Wales to carry out an act capable of encouraging or assisting the suicide or attempted suicide of another person with the intention to so encourage or assist. The law applies to online actions in exactly the same way as it does offline.

We published the third progress report of the Cross-Government Suicide Prevention Strategy for England in January which set out the Government’s intention to explore ways of working with suicide prevention stakeholders and the online sector to address potentially harmful suicidal content online.

The Government continues to work closely with the UK Council for Child Internet Safety which engages social media companies to make sure they are committed to protecting children who use their platforms. This includes issues around suicidal content.

The Government also expects social media companies, and others, to have robust processes in place and to act promptly, including removing content which does not comply with the acceptable use policies or terms and conditions they have in place and, where appropriate, suspending or terminating the accounts of those breaching the rules in place.