Online Safety Bill: Bereaved parents win fight for information

Molly Russell was 14 when she died in 2017 after viewing harmful online content while suffering depression

The government has agreed to give coroners and bereaved families new powers to access information on their loved ones held by tech companies.

The pledge came during a House of Lords debate on the Online Safety Bill.

Culture minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay said the amendments to the bill would make accessing data "more straightforward and humane".

Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly ended her life after viewing harmful content online, said it was "really important".

The Online Safety Bill was introduced in March under Boris Johnson, and has been repeatedly altered during its passage through Parliament.

As it moved towards being passed, the bill went through a final day of scrutiny by a committee in the House of Lords.

During the committee hearing crossbench peer Baroness Kidron called for legal powers to request information from Facebook and other "service providers", which could be relevant to the death of a child who had used their platform.

'Role of algorithms'

In response, culture minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay announced a "package of amendments" to ensure "coroners have access to the expertise and information that they need in order to conduct their investigations, including information held by technology companies, regardless of size".

Lord Parkinson added: "This includes information about how a child interacted with specific content online as well as the role of wider systems and processes, such as algorithms, in promoting it."

Several parents of children who lost their children as a result of online harms were in the public gallery in the Lords during the debate, including Mr Russell.

Mr Russell said of the announcement: "It's absolutely vital if we're to learn lessons"

Mr Russell, from Harrow in north-west London, described the plans as "the first major concession that the government's really given in this process".

"It's absolutely vital if we're to learn lessons and find out how to make this great and fantastic digital world safer for everyone, and particularly children, to use," he said.

"What we have to do is let digital platforms bring their benefits with them but protect people from the harms that they contain."

Lorin LeFave was one of the parents in the public gallery while the bill was being discussed in the House of Lords

Lorin LeFave, whose son Breck Bednar, 14, was groomed and murdered by someone he met online said the progress had been "very positive".

"The speeches were supportive and the interactions were going in the right direction, so I'm hoping of all hopes that this bill will be all that it can be," she said.

"I don't want to have to live with the online world being the wild west any longer, I want just to be able to tame it and to make sure our children are safer online."

Speaking after the announcement, Baroness Kidron said: "It's not a victorious moment because it's so tragic that we've had to fight this hard, that so many families have hit the wall of 'computer says no' when they're in such grief and extremis.

"The minister said that the government would make a coroner's notice an equivalent of an Ofcom information notice - all of the powers of Ofcom will indeed go to the coroner in effect."

She added this would include powers to fine companies and hold managers responsible.

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