---

Internet and Video Games

Although I am not a member of the Committee and I played no part in its compilation of the report, I am grateful for the opportunity to raise some of the issues that have been directly affecting my constituents and that, perhaps, reflect some of its recommendations. I first became aware of many of the issues when the deaths were taking place in Bridgend and media coverage suggested that an internet-based death cult was operating and influencing some of the young people in my constituency. I examined that claim and found no basis in fact for an internet death cult in operation, but that took me along a line of exploration that has had myriad repercussions for me. It took me to the so-called suicide recipe sites, which do more than give people advice on how to take their life. Some of those sites are so truly pernicious and evil that they actively seek to persuade those who enter them to take their own life. I have been working with the Ministry of Justice on how we can use the review of the Suicide Act 1961 to look at drawing the activities such sites into the classification of assisting a suicide. I have also been seeking meetings with the internet service providers to persuade them to actively bury such sites, so that they are made more difficult to access, and that, as an alternative, where people are looking for information in relation to suicide, the ISPs promote information, advice and guidance to help people who are potentially suicidal to access supportive information and supportive sites. I commend those ISPs that are taking those steps, although not all are. The internet can be used successfully. An Australian website called Reachout.com.au, which is now looking to expand into Ireland and the United States—I hope that it would be looked at positively here in the United Kingdom—cut the number of young people’s deaths, because young people had a website they could go to for confidential information, where they could test whether they needed help and support in respect of their feelings and confusion—relating to self-harm, for example—and which could help them find out where to go for such support. Positive information can be accessed on websites and it is imperative that we direct vulnerable people to them. I have found the Samaritans and YoungMinds sites to be particularly helpful. That led me to look at social networking sites. Many of the youngsters in Bridgend who died had been using such sites. I have been impressed at how often the front pages of such sites immediately provide hyperlinks to supportive information, and we must work with those sites to promote that more proactively. Areas that we have not looked at but need to look at include advice to young people on the risks of providing not just information that may allow them to be targeted by people who may want to gained access to them and to hurt them, but photographs and comments that may be utilised elsewhere. I hope to reveal some details later. A great deal of distress was caused to many of the families in my constituency by the print media and their websites, which took some of the comments and photographs from social networking sites and used them in multiple press reports. In fairness to our print media and thanks to the work of the Press Complaints Commission and its willingness to collaborate and to work with me and families, it was possible to issue desist notices, and such photographs are no longer constantly used whenever there is a story. However, it is not possible to issue similar desist notices for online use of such photographs. That led me to issue two internet safety leaflets: one for parents and one for youngsters. I had a lot of help from Dr. Tanya Byron when putting them together. She agreed to look at them and to check the content to ensure that they complied with her recommendations. They are on my website if hon. Members want to use them in their constituencies. I took them into all my primary schools.