Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
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.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
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.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether she is taking steps to ensure that the Online Safety Bill includes a new offence of encouraging serious self-harm with malicious intent.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
Under the Online Safety Bill, all in-scope services will need to remove and limit the spread of illegal content and activity online. Companies that are likely to be accessed by children will also need to protect them from harmful content, such as self-harm content. The largest sites will also be required to set out in terms of service their approach to addressing harmful content to adults and enforce these consistently.
The Government asked the Law Commission to review the criminal law for harmful communications. Following the Law Commission’s final report, the government accepted the recommended communications offences and the cyberflashing offence, which are being brought into law through the Online Safety Bill. The Government is considering the remaining recommendations, including a new offence to address the encouragement and assistance of self-harm. We will issue a full response to the Law Commission in due course.
The Government introduced the Online Safety Bill to Parliament on 17 March 2022.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to promote and strengthen creative industries in the north of England.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
We strongly believe that our booming creative industries can drive growth in towns and cities across our country, including in the north of England.
We have a number of initiatives underway to strengthen those industries, including £17.5m to expand the Creative Scale Up programme, supporting access to finance for high growth creative firms outside London. This builds on the successful pilot that has supported over 200 businesses in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and West of England. I was in Manchester this month to meet some of the alumni from that.
Seven places in the North have received funding from the Cultural Development Fund to support creative initiatives, including Wakefield, Grimsby, Barnsley, Berwick-on-Tweed, Middlesbrough, Rochdale and Stockport.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
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 the steps to restrict online content that promotes suicide and self-harm to (a) children under 18, and (b) people of all ages, through the provisions of the Online Safety Bill.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Online Safety Bill will offer strong protections for users of all ages from content promoting suicide and self-harm. Encouraging or assisting the suicide of another person is named as a priority offence in the Bill. All services in scope of the bill will need to take proportionate steps to prevent users from being exposed to this content.
The strongest protections in the Bill are for children, and providers of services which are likely to be accessed by children will need to protect them from harmful suicide and self-harm content, even if it is not illegal. Category 1 services (high risk, high reach services) will also need to set out in terms and conditions their policies for addressing harmful content to adults.
Search services play a key role in enabling users to encounter harmful content, such as content promoting self-harm and suicide. These services also have duties under the Bill to minimise all users’ exposure to illegal content, and minimise children’s exposure to harmful content in search results.
Asked by: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the impact of the reduction in youth service funding in Kirklees on youth crime and anti-social behaviour in that area.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Local Authorities have a statutory duty to allocate funding to youth services in line with local need. This is funded from the Local Government settlement, which was over £12 billion this year. Police recorded incidents show a fall in Antisocial Behaviour since 2013/2014 from around 2.1 million to 1.7 million incidents in September 2021.
The Government recognises the vital role that accessible youth services and activities play in improving the life chances and wellbeing of young people. The Government is investing £560 million over the next 3 years in a new National Youth Guarantee, so that by 2025 every young person will have access to regular clubs and activities, adventures away from home and opportunities to volunteer.