Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answers by Lord Agnew of Oulton on 7 November and Lord Ashton of Hyde on 6 November (HL Deb, col 1594), what assessment they have made of a study published in the British Medical Journal in April 2008 which found that websites providing information about suicide were more likely to be encouraging the act of suicide than offering support to potential victims.

We have made no formal assessment of the 2008 British Medical Journal study.

We are aware of the positive and negative impacts that the internet can have on mental wellbeing and the potential harmful effect of websites with content that promotes suicide. We provided £1.5 million of funding through the Cross-Government Suicide Prevention Strategy for further research on suicide prevention. This included research undertaken by Lucy Biddle for Bristol University, who was involved in the study referenced in 2008. This further research was published last year and showed that people with experience of suicide have used the internet to find information and support online as well as searching suicidal content and that we should seek to harness the positive effects of the internet and support vulnerable people online. A summary of this research, Priorities for suicide prevention: balancing the risks and opportunities of internet use, is attached. We also support organisations such as the Samaritans, which works with online providers to improve the way that online users can report harmful content and encourages providers to take action.

The Government is committed to making the United Kingdom the safest place online and until 7 December is consulting on the National Internet Safety Strategy, which seeks to improve safety online for everyone.