Lewis Atkinson MP: speeches

Speeches

• 29 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q Mr Amin, given your expertise in representing these cases in the court, can I ask you for your view around the Mental Capacity Act issue regarding eating disorders and other disorders? Obviously, we have heard one version of that. Given your experience of working with UK law to the highest level, what is your assessment of this? Yogi Amin: I have worked in a range of medical treatment cases over many years, covering different illnesses and conditions, and clause 2 reads fine to me. It works. It is clear. I do not consider that it needs any additional words. I can understand, when we go to court, that cases will come through and they will fall within those definitions, and it will be clear. I do not consider anorexia to come under a terminal illness unless it is right at the end of life, and that does not really fit within the parameters of the Bill, because we are not talking about right at the end of life. We have section 63 of the Mental Health Act, which deals with anorexia, and there is force-feeding that clinicians consider. That is my view on the anorexia side of things. Doctors will provide the evidence on terminal illness. You heard from the chief medical officer yesterday, and they will provide guidance around all of that. Subsequent to the Bill, there will be secondary legislation and then the guidance. They will provide clear guidance that will then feed into this and the evidence that will be before a judge that says, “Yes, it is a terminal illness, and this is the prognosis” and so on. It is nothing different from what we produce in medical treatment cases before the court at the moment, where the doctors produce expert reports and give evidence. They explain the condition, the prognosis and their decision on capacity, and they explain what is in the best interests of an individual if they lack capacity. As I understand it, the Bill is crafted to produce the evidence as you go along the path here, and then eventually to the judge. Chelsea Roff: May I add one sentence, because it is related to eating disorders? I would refer to a 2012 Court of Protection case, where a 29-year-old with anorexia was described as being in the terminal stage of her illness and multiple physicians described her death as inevitable. I would also refer to a 2023 case seen at the Court of Protection, which said, “I recognise with deep regret that it will probably mean that she will die.” She was also described as being at the “pre-death stage”. Again, that young woman is still alive and still fighting for services. Although I respect what Mr Amin is saying, and I agree with his interpretation, we have case law in the UK where people with anorexia are being found to be terminal. We have to take that reality into account. Yogi Amin: I do not think they were found to be terminal. They were described by a doctor in a case as being terminal, and that doctor may not have described it properly. Chelsea Roff: Indeed, but a judge will be relying on doctors.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q Can I be explicit on the palliative care point? We have heard concerns from some in palliative care provision that there is anxiety that if we introduce this in the UK, there is a risk of deterioration in or failure to improve palliative care. Can you address that directly in the light of your experience? Dr Mewett: I will say one thing briefly. Palliative Care Australia, which is our peak body, commissioned a report a few years back that studied the introduction of voluntary assisted dying legislation throughout the jurisdictions of the world. It concluded—this is a body that was not pro-VAD—that there was no adverse impact on palliative care services; indeed, it was often the contrary. Palliative care services were actually strengthened and enhanced because of the emphasis now being placed on more choices at the end of life. So I think that is an absolute furphy, as we say in Australia—you might say a red herring. Palliative care services are not in any detriment. In fact, I would go on to say that this idea that palliative care doctors will leave in their droves if such legislation is introduced is just false. We respect conscientious objection in this space, and we have learned to live with each other and respect that people are entitled to set their own ethical limits.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q Sir Chris, you mentioned having time to ensure that people are appropriately trained, and the Bill includes provisions for the Secretary of State to make orders around required training. Could you say a little bit more about that? If Parliament decide to pass an Act of this nature, what training would be helpful and required—in particular around skills, and the assessment of capacity and coercion? Professor Whitty: I will give my view, and it might be useful to get Duncan’s view on the nursing side, because nurses will often be heavily involved in these discussions. I would divide the kind of training that is needed into two broad groups: training that is essentially normal medical practice but may need some variation, and things that are clearly specific to this Bill. Issues, for example, around mental capacity—as determined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005—are dealt with every day, in every hospital up and down the country; every doctor and nurse above a certain level of seniority should be able to do that normally. It may require some slight adjustment. There is an absolute expectation within the Act, for example, that the more serious the decision, the greater the level of capacity that someone needs to have. That is already built into the principles of the Act and the way that things are done. I would extend that to the management of end of life, which should be a normal part of medical and nursing practice—we will all die eventually, and that has always been part of medicine, and always should be. That training should be generic, but may need some adaption. There will then be some specific things that will be necessary for people to understand the legislation, including, in some cases—if this Bill is passed—if they are to take part in the final part of prescribing drugs to patients. It is much more likely that a very large number of doctors and nurses may get involved in the very earliest stages, because someone may raise an issue with their GP, nurse or consultant, who will need to have the basic understanding for that. In my view, the more detailed later stages will require some specific training. I think there will be a gradation of doctors: those who are happy to have the general, initial conversation; those who are happy to have the structured conversation that follows; and a minority who will be happy to go on to take part in the final stages. It is very important that the wishes of the patient are respected. That is the central point of this. We must start with what is good for someone in their last six months of life, and for their immediate family, but we must also make sure that the wishes of healthcare professionals around this area are absolutely protected, when it comes to conscience and to choice. Duncan Burton: I am mindful that there are two groups of staff who would potentially be working in this service, if the Bill is passed, but also of the wider workforce. At 2 o’clock in the morning, when a patient wants to have a conversation with somebody about end of life, it is going to be a nurse with them, or a nurse in a care home, or a specialist nurse providing cancer care, so we have to think about the training and support that is required for them, be that around signposting or explaining where they can go to access more information. There is an important part about the entire wider workforce that we need to think about. Clearly, for those people who are working in such a service, we need to think about the safeguarding elements, and how we make sure there is support through safeguarding training and confidentiality—particularly mindful that some patients may choose not to tell their families about this. We need to think about how we enable and support staff in managing those kinds of circumstances and navigating the legal requirements through the Bill. We need to think ahead about what we need to do in undergraduate training for doctors and nurses, and in the curriculum.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  indicated assent. Dr Green: With regard to the specific questions, no, I do not believe that a doctor has to be a specialist in the individual disease at stake to advise a patient about prognosis. I can only refer you back to what Dr Whitty said: that in the majority of cases, it is fairly clear—this applies to capacity, too—but in some cases, it is not so clear. What is important is that the doctor has the ability to seek further advice if they need it; it is not always required.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Sorry—I meant the provision of information for someone. Dr Green: The provision of information would be very useful, because in a situation where a doctor was unwilling to have an initial discussion with the patient, it would provide a way for the patient to get that information that was in no way obstructive.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q I want to cover two areas. I will start with the current law. I am interested in the position that doctors are currently in, both regulatorily and around the current law. The Suicide Act 1961 and so on clearly prohibit this. A number of us have heard from families who have gone to Switzerland, and so on, and who have returned and had a conversation with their family doctor around the death of a loved one. There have been incidents in which people have attempted to take their own lives, given that there is no current assisted dying provision. Could you say a little about the dilemmas facing doctors on the current law as it stands? Mark Swindells : We do get inquiries from doctors who are concerned that they are doing the right thing when it might become apparent to them that a patient wants to travel overseas to access assisted dying. We have taken legal advice, and on that basis, we guide doctors that it is permissible for them to provide the existing medical records to that patient, as you might under a subject access request, but to be really cautious about going any further in terms of recommending that or assisting the process more than that. That is based on our understanding of the existing law in the Suicide Act. Dr Green: Of course, that leads to a further issue. As we heard from Dr Whitty today, this measure may progress at a different speed in Scotland and England and Wales. We also have the Crown dependencies, which are some way further ahead than the mainland Governments on it. That raises an issue for doctors who work in England and Wales but treat patients in the Crown dependencies. We would want clarity about the legal situation regarding a doctor in Liverpool who is treating a patient in the Isle of Man, should the law allow assisted dying in the Isle of Man.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q Moving on to the next issue, you have both spoken fairly clearly about—or advocated against—having an absolute ban on doctors discussing or raising the issue. I want to tease out whether there is a difference between raising it and recommending it. Dr Green, you suggested that it might be appropriate for a doctor to recommend that someone seeks further information from an independent source, for example. If Parliament so wished, would it be appropriate for Parliament to be clear that no doctor should recommend assisted dying as a course of action? Dr Green: I do not think I ever suggested that doctors should recommend assisted dying. If I did, I apologise—

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q So you would be happy if there was an explicit prohibition on recommendation. Dr Green: I am reluctant to make a statement on that in this forum. We will go away and discuss it, and come back to you.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q I am going to try again. Some people advocate for a ban on this issue being discussed at all, which we have heard your answers on. A different version of that is a ban on any sense that doctors would recommend it as a course of action, in the way that an oncologist, say, might recommend a course of chemotherapy. Could you comment on that as a potential approach to assuage some questions or concerns among the public, and how that would sit in terms of regulation? Dr Green: We have not taken an official view on doctors recommending it, but I do not think it was ever in any of our minds that doctors would be recommending it as a course of action to patients.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q I have one follow-up on that. At the moment, we are aware that there are instances across the NHS every day where people make decisions around refusing the treatment that would be required to prolong their life. Doctors, nurses and the healthcare team would be involved in assessing capacity and coercion around those cases. Can you tell me a bit about any learnings from that, about the levels of skill required in the current practice around refusing lifesaving treatment, and about how that might be taken into account in the Bill? Professor Whitty: You are absolutely right: it is a completely normal part of medical and wider nursing, and other practice, but particularly medical practice, to consider issues of consent and capacity. It can be that someone says they do not want treatment that is clearly going to be lifesaving. A very well-known example is that of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who choose not to have blood products. If they are bleeding heavily, that is an issue that could lead to the end of their life. Provided they understand that and they have capacity, that has to be respected. The alternative way—the other thing that doctors have to do—is to give people advice before they have major operations, chemotherapy or other drugs that may in themselves lead to the end of their life, but which also may lead to a benefit. Explaining to people the risks and benefits, including the fact that they may lose their life as a result of the next stage—if someone is at high anaesthetic risk, that is not a trivial risk sometimes with operations—is a very standard part of medical practice that you do from the point that you qualify. Obviously, as people get more senior, they tend to be more experienced in it—and, as with most things, if you get more experience, you generally get better at it.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley. Having agreed to extend the time on Thursday to hear devolution issues and from the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, by adding two further witnesses, the amendment to the amendment would reduce the time available on those options. In an ideal world we would like to hear from all sorts of people. The option of written evidence is available. We have got other evidence, and I want to ensure that Thursday’s session is focused on the proposals that my hon. Friend has made.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q I think around 650 people with a terminal illness currently take their own lives a year. If we see a success with the Bill, I wonder whether there would be a reduction of that number going forward. Do you think that could be incorporated in monitoring going forward? Do you think there are opportunities to avoid that suffering? People are clearly experiencing traumatic deaths at the moment. Dr Cox: It is really difficult to know how many people who die by suicide because of their terminal illness would instead access assisted dying, and it is really difficult to understand the impact of assisted dying legislation on that. If we look at the evidence of suicide, we know that it is increased in people with serious illnesses, but it is actually increased in the first six months after diagnosis, not in the last six months of their lives, so it is about the trauma of the diagnosis. What we need for that is better mental health services, better support around diagnosis and earlier palliative care. The other piece of evidence that I would offer to you is that the global picture of what happens to suicide rates after assisted dying legislation is introduced is confusing and mixed. But there are jurisdictions, for instance Germany, where after the introduction of assisted dying legislation the incidence of suicide has gone up year on year. I do not think we can say that introducing assisted dying legislation will stop those suicides.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q We have heard from two witnesses—you, Sir Nicholas, and Dr Ahmedzai from the earlier panel—on the question of judicial oversight. While we have you here, Sir Max and Mr Ruck Keene, what are your observations on the proposals from those two witnesses that an alternative to a High Court judge overseeing the process would be some form of panel or tribunal, potentially multidisciplinary? What is your view on that and the legal implications for that? Sir Max Hill: I would say two things. First, it bears weight that, looking at all the provisions in the Bill, the additional level of scrutiny currently being called judicial scrutiny or approval is absent in all the comparative examples around the world. That already makes this a tighter pre-legislative model than we see in other countries that have gone down this route. That is worth remembering. Secondly, while I am not a family lawyer—I was, but a very long time ago—I think that the family division of the High Court would be very well-placed to perform the sort of exercise enshrined in current drafting, which is not a rubber-stamping exercise, but a substantive consideration of heavily objective medical opinion arrived at by not one, but two doctors, one of whom is not the treating doctor. I listen to and accept the question of pressure on the justice system generally. That is something the Committee will be concerned about because, if the Bill passes, we want something workable. I heed what Sir James Munby said. The sitting judiciary, for good constitutional reasons, is highly unlikely to say anything. But there is therefore merit in looking at clause 12, under the heading, “Court approval”, and performing quite a simple exercise, which for me would be going through subsections (1) to (6) inclusive and, where it says “High Court”, replace that with something else. Personally, I have an aversion to the word “tribunal”, which indicates a right and wrong or some kind of fault-based system—that is not what we are talking about here. But a panel, as Nick said, is the way to go— Sir Nicholas Mostyn : A panel appointed by the Official Solicitor. Sir Max Hill: Whether appointed by the Official Solicitor or not. Dare I say it—because I am sitting next to a very distinguished one—I do wonder about the recently retired members of the judiciary and the role that they could play under a replacement panel system. Sir Nicholas Mostyn: That is what I had in mind—the Official Solicitor looking at the retired judges. Sir Max Hill: Yes, so there is legal professional capacity among the retired judges—not that they would sit alone on a panel. It would bring with it the extra benefit of having suitably qualified medical professionals, like the Spanish model. So yes, I think that could be done. That is not the same thing as saying that the High Court approval model is fatally flawed and could not be introduced, but I do think there is a viable alternative, which is worth looking at. Alex Ruck Keene: I have only one observation, and I said this in my written evidence but I also want to say it out loud. You have to think very carefully about what purpose any form of this oversight is actually serving societally, if the oversight panel, whether that be a judge or a panel, cannot decline to approve an application if it considers that the reason the individual is seeking assistance in dying is because of service provision failures by the statutory bodies responsible for meeting their health and social care needs. That is a question of principle, and I want to make sure that that is squarely before you.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q Clause 35 introduces a duty on the Secretary of State to report on a periodic basis to Parliament on the accessibility and quality of palliative care. As I understand it, that would be a new duty that we are pioneering. What is your reaction to that? Will it be helpful in continuing the momentum to make improvements to palliative care? Are there any further reporting requirements as part of that assessment—for example, around equity of access, which some have mentioned—that we could think about when considering amendments? James Sanderson: I welcome the provision in the report. What is necessary is a benchmarking of the current position. Rather than waiting a significant period of time to do a review, we need to benchmark the current state of palliative care and then base subsequent reviews on any changes. As I mentioned before, we also need to look at the wider context. If we look narrowly at the provision of palliative care, we will not properly see what goes on across the whole environment of the health service and social care. We have mentioned the fact that district nurses and general practitioners are providing a huge amount of palliative end-of-life care, so it may not just be what goes on inside hospices and in palliative care teams in hospitals. I agree that that needs to look at the demographic information so that we are collecting details on who is accessing palliative care and where, and the certain types. All that is necessary as part of the review. Dr Cox: I agree completely that we need to be doing reviews now and in the future regularly on palliative care aspects. I also think there is an opportunity to write into the Bill other monitoring that would be really helpful in ensuring safety on an ongoing basis. That includes monitoring in terms of decision making—how often assessing doctors refer to others, how often they disagree and what happens after the declaration. In the Bill there is, as far as I could see, no limit to the delay between the declaration and the request for the substance. That would be an interesting thing to look at in the future, because somebody could delay for six or eight months. Do we do another capacity assessment then? That is a tricky question. What about the taking of a substance? We have not talked about that. There are a lot of things we could look at in future that would be really helpful to monitor.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money) · Hansard source

  More

  On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 22 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money) · Hansard source

  More

  Will my hon. Friend give way?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I, like you, Sir Roger, hope that we can spend the next five or six weeks in the spirit of collaboration and that we do not get bogged down in procedural wrangling. We need to work across the Committee to get the best procedure we can. The hon. Member for East Wiltshire made several points, including the precedent for private Members’ Bills. The relevant point here is that this private Member’s Bill is unique already by the fact that the lead Member, my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley, has agreed to take evidence—unlike in any other private Member’s Bill. Therefore, in some cases there may be a need to discuss the sensitivity of individual witnesses’ availability and personal circumstances. We cannot agree as a Committee just by calling witnesses in the abstract. We have to agree—as is outlined by my hon. Friend’s motion and indeed by the alternative motion in the name of the hon. Member for East Wiltshire—for them to attend at a specific time and at a specific place. I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that the Committee would do well to have a conversation in private about the individual availability and suitability of some witnesses. The motion set out on the amendment paper to sit in private is to consider “matters related to the sittings motion”, not the sittings motion itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley has clearly indicated that we will return to sit in public for the formal proceedings, which I support. That means that the hon. Member for East Wiltshire and any others who wish to place on record their observations can do so then. In the same way that the hon. Gentleman acknowledges happens in Select Committees and other forums where there is discussion about witnesses, how to call them and so on, I suggest that we spend a little bit of time in private to do so too, before agreeing—I hope with a level of consensus across this Committee—to return in public and to operate in public scrutiny as the hon. Gentleman suggests is appropriate. I support the motion to sit in private for the consideration of these specific matters in initial discussion and then I support returning to public, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley has indicated, so that we can be subject to the right public scrutiny for the decisions that we make today.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough. The hon. Member for East Wiltshire said at the start that the purpose of this Committee was not to relitigate the principle of the vote that we had on Second Reading. Yet in his comment just now, he talked about weighing up the numbers in favour or against, which entirely suggests that the issue of witness evidence selection exists in his head and that he is relitigating matters. I come to the issues around the Australian amendment—amendment (f). Of course the expertise will come from people who are participating in the system. By definition, they are not ethically opposed to it, because if they were opposed to it on the basis of conscience, they would not be participating in the system in Australia. As the Bill makes amply clear, no medical professional or health professional here will be under any obligation to participate in the system here. Therefore, in order for this Committee to do the serious work of making sure that the Bill is as robust and workable as possible, we need to hear overwhelmingly from people involved in this practice in other jurisdictions, to benefit from their expertise. We do not need to hear from people from other jurisdictions who are, in principle, opposed to this practice. Why would it be appropriate to remove the evidence of a palliative care physician involved in this practice in favour of a head of infectious diseases, whose relevance I do not see because they are not engaged in this practice? That just highlights my point. I commend my hon. Friend, Kim Leadbeater, for the flexibility she has already shown today in adding names, and for the spirit that she has shown so far. The fact is that all these individuals may give written evidence that we will all consider. I am in favour of us moving on, getting our evidence sessions done and making progress, and dealing with the detail of the Bill, rather than using the selection of witnesses to try to relitigate the Second Reading debate.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Children’s Social Media Accounts · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That this House has considered e-petition 661407 relating to children’s social media accounts. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to open this important debate as a member of the Petitions Committee. I start by paying tribute to the petitioners and in particular the petition creator, Ellen Roome, who I had the honour of meeting as part of my preparations for this debate and who is in the Gallery today. Ellen’s son, Jools, died in April 2022. Since then, she has been a determined campaigner not just to get access herself to Jools’ social media data to help understand the circumstances of his death, but also to secure a future in which other bereaved parents do not face the situation that she has. I welcome that Ellen’s MP, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), is here, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy), who has been working with Ellen on this issue. I look forward in particular to their contributions, which I know will provide further insight and will rightly ensure that Ellen’s own words are on the parliamentary record. Since Jools’ death in 2022, the law and practice related to social media data has changed in several ways, most notably through the Online Safety Act 2023. The changes were secured in large part thanks to the efforts of the Bereaved Families for Online Safety group, other members of which are also here today; I pay tribute to their work. What I hope will become clear in this debate is that recent changes to the law, the implementation of those changes and the response of social media companies are not yet sufficient, and further change is needed to help bereaved parents such as Ellen. The petition attracted 126,000 signatures. That is a testament to Ellen’s campaigning efforts and the public’s concern about these issues. Online services such as social media, streaming and messaging are now features of everyday life, including children’s lives. There are undoubtedly positive aspects of age-appropriate online services—giving children opportunities to explore the world, connecting with others who share interests and extending peer support options—but as the level of public concern recognises, it is beyond doubt that there has been significant exposure of many children to online harms, and that the action in response to that has not yet been sufficient or fast enough to meet the challenges.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Children’s Social Media Accounts · Hansard source

  More

  I agree that social media companies rightly face regulation; I will talk a little more about that later. There is, rightly, debate and campaigning in the media and elsewhere—we saw some of that over the weekend—about the level of regulation of online content that children may access online, whether that is illegal content or legal but harmful content. Although the regulation of content itself is not the focus of today’s debate, as a concerned parent myself, I am impatient for online services to take proper responsibility for what our children see. Social media companies must not shy away from their responsibilities to protect children, either because of misguided free speech concerns or out of concern about their levels of profit. It is important to note, as context for today’s debate, that the law does not allow online services to collect or store the personal information of children under the age of 13. As a result, most popular services require users to be at least 13 years of age, but enforcement of that requirement has historically been lax. The age-assurance requirements in the Online Safety Act must be implemented without delay. I know that hon. Members will want to touch on various elements of the approaches to social media regulation, but in parallel to the wider debate about content regulation, the petitioners are clear that there are specific issues about parental access that warrant a response in their own right, from both social media companies and the Government, so I want to focus my remarks, and I hope this debate, on those specific questions. First, the petitioners call for parental access to social media when children are alive. I understand the instinct behind this call—the instinct to directly monitor what a child is doing online in order to protect them from the harms to which I have referred. However, in the course of preparing for the debate, I heard clearly from multiple perspectives, including children’s charities such as the NSPCC, that broad, overarching parental rights to children’s social media would not be appropriate. Of course, given that the minimum age of use should be 13, we are talking about teenagers. Children—teenagers—do have long-established rights to privacy, as set out by the UN convention on the rights of the child, and established UK law and practice in a range of areas reflects and recognises that. Such rights are important not just as abstract concepts but because, as I have heard, older children sometimes need private online spaces to help them to explore the world—for example, a teenager understanding their own sexuality before they wish to share it with their parents. We also know that, sadly, in some horrible cases, parents are themselves perpetrators of abuse against their children. Establishing a blanket right to access children’s online activity would remove an important safe route for children to seek support and alert others in such cases. The petitioners themselves have reflected on such matters, and although they remain determined to support parents to keep their kids safe online, there is a recognition that establishing an overarching parental right to access the data of living teenagers is unlikely to be the appropriate way forward. Instead, it appears to me that parental oversight of a child’s social media use should rather be achieved through strengthening and significantly increasing the uptake of parental controls and other specifically designed arrangements that children and their parents agree to together, as part of the sign-up processes for online services. It is clearly the responsibility of online services to implement and expand such measures, and I hope for rapid progress in that area as a key part of online services’ work to improve children’s safety online in partnership with parents. I now turn to the issue of bereaved parents’ access to social media data, which is the specific issue for which Ellen has been campaigning, because she is still not able to access data about Jools’ use of online services before his death. I cannot begin to imagine the anguish of losing a child and, even more so, not being given information that might help a parent to understand the circumstances of their child’s death. We rightly talk about laws, protections and rights, but we do not talk enough as a society about the right—indeed, the need—to grieve a loss, especially one as painful as the loss of child. In preparing for this debate, I spoke with SLOW, or Surviving the Loss of Your World—a charity that offers bereavement support for parents following the loss of a child. The charity emphasised to me the absolute necessity, as part of the grieving process, of establishing an understanding of what led to death. By being denied data about Jools’ online activity before his death, Ellen has been denied the ability to grieve as she wishes. The petition recognises that it cannot be right that a grieving mother is forced to go through years of campaigning and investigation to try to get answers about her son’s death. I urge everyone—especially those working in social media companies—to reflect on the evident injustice of the situation, and to commit to finding a way to do the right thing: to give Ellen the information and answers she needs. The Online Safety Act 2023 made important provisions for Ofcom and coroners to access social media in relevant cases following a child’s death, in turn helping bereaved families. It is welcome that the current Government’s Data (Use and Access) Bill, which is making its way through Parliament, strengthens those powers and the requirements for data retention so that the risks of data loss in such cases are reduced. However, the provisions do not have retrospective mechanisms, and are therefore not sufficient for historical cases, such as Jools’, where the coronial process has already concluded. As a result, Ellen is in the situation where she has to try and crowdfund a significant sum of money for legal action to get Jools’ inquest re-run, so that the coroner can use the powers now available in law to access Jools’ social media data. It cannot be right that this is necessary. Some online services say that without a change in the law, they cannot legally release data to bereaved parents like Ellen, but what has struck me in preparation for the debate is that there is not a consensus on the current legal situation. The online safety and data protection expert, John Carr, told me that he did not believe that the general data protection regulations necessarily limited the release of children’s usage data to bereaved parents. Snap, the provider of Snapchat, told me that it already, on a case-by-case basis, discloses usage data to a parent who is the successor to a deceased child. Other online services—including some of the most prominent social media services used by young people, such as TikTok—seem to take a different interpretation of the law. They state that data protection legislation prohibits them from releasing any data they hold that would give parents like Ellen the answers they deserve. I find this inconsistency of interpretation from online services at best troubling and at worst suspicious, given the historical behaviours of some social media companies that were involved in minimising—and indeed covering up—evidence of the impact of online harm. I believe it is incumbent on all online services to use their considerable resources to push the existing law as far as they can, and to find a way to release data to bereaved families.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Children’s Social Media Accounts · Hansard source

  More

  I agree that legislative action has been necessary, as the Online Safety Act shows, and indeed, there are provisions on this in the current data Bill. The issue is that there is a lack of clarity; under the existing law, some social media companies seem to be finding a way of doing the right thing while others are not. I will come to the hon. Member’s point when I ask a couple of questions of the Government. I can assure the social media companies—in the event that they carefully do the right thing, on a case-by-case basis, and then face data protection questions from regulators in response—that they will find allies across Parliament in defending their actions. I ask the Minister and the Government: what scope is there for stating clearly in law that, so long as due care is taken on a case-by-case basis, the release of data to bereaved parents is permitted? Could the data Bill be amended to include a clarification to remove, once and for all, the claim of some companies that they are prohibited from giving parents like Ellen the data and answers they deserve? Are there any other steps the Minister believes could be taken to right this injustice? I look forward to hearing the perspectives of colleagues and the Government’s response to this important debate.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Children’s Social Media Accounts · Hansard source

  More

  I thank Members from across the House for their contributions to this well attended and powerful debate. We have demonstrated significant consensus across the House about the need to continue to strengthen and evolve online regulation, which, as the petition shows, is a matter of significant public concern. I think it is fair to say that the public expect Parliament to work on a cross-party basis on these issues, and I hope that in future months we can continue the debate in the spirit in which it has been conducted today. I thank the Minister for her response. I particularly welcome her indication that the Government will give consideration to any potential changes to the forthcoming data Bill to put it beyond doubt that, in historic cases such as Jools’, parents have rights to access data following bereavement and that the powers that have been set out to coroners can be applied without undue financial penalty or campaigning by parents like Ellen. Of course, the people that we have not heard from today are the social media companies, although I am sure they are listening to us all. I invite them to demonstrate that they genuinely want to do the right thing—to get in touch and do the right thing for bereaved parents like Ellen; not to hide behind data protection regulations; and to actively engage with policymakers and families to get this right, to allow children to be protected and, in tragic cases when a child has died, to give parents the opportunity to grieve properly. I thank the Petitions Committee staff for their assistance in organising and preparing the debate, which it has been an honour to lead. It is right that I use the final words of the debate to pay tribute to the 126,000 petitioners, and in particular to Ellen Roome: may Jools’ memory always be a blessing, and I sincerely hope that today’s debate helps you and other bereaved families get the data and the answers that you need. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered e-petition 661407 relating to children’s social media accounts.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Access to Public Services: Technology · Hansard source

  More

  7. What steps his Department is taking to utilise technology to improve access to public services.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Access to Public Services: Technology · Hansard source

  More

  Sunderland was recently named the UK’s smartest city by The Times . It was a pleasure to welcome the Secretary of State when he visited recently. More than 5,000 homes in our city now have assistive technology installed, supporting the independence of older and disabled people and improving their access to care. How do the Government plan to build on the example of Sunderland to improve access to public services across the UK?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Housing: Military Personnel and Families · Hansard source

  More

  21. What steps he is taking to improve housing for military personnel and their families.