Vicky Ford – 2022 Speech on the Online Safety Bill

The speech made by Vicky Ford, the Conservative MP for Chelmsford, in the House of Commons on 5 December 2022.

It is great that the Bill is back in this Chamber. I have worked on it for many years, as have many others, during my time on the Science and Technology Committee and the Women and Equalities Committee, and as Children’s Minister. I just want to make three points.

First, I want to put on the record my support for the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller). She is a true, right and honourable friend of women and girls all across the country. It is vital that women and girls are protected from intimate image abuse, from perverse and extreme pornography, and from controlling and coercive behaviour, as well as that we make a new offence to criminalise cyber-flashing.

Secondly, I want to talk about new clause 16 and self-harm, especially in relation to eating disorders. As I said in this place on Thursday, it is terrifying how many young people are suffering from anorexia today. The charity Beat estimates that 1.25 million people are suffering from eating disorders. A quarter of them are men; most are women. It also reminds us that anorexia is the biggest killer of all mental illnesses.

It is very hard to talk about one’s own experiences of mental illness. It brings back all the horrors. It makes people judge you differently. And you fear that people will become prejudiced against you. I buried my own experiences for nearly 40 years, but when I did speak out, I was contacted by so many sufferers and families, thanking me for having done so and saying it had brought them hope.

There may be many reasons why we have an increase in eating disorders, and I am sure that lockdown and the fears of the pandemic are a part of it, but I do remember from my own experience of anorexia 40 years ago how I had got it into my head that only by being ultra-thin could I be beautiful or valued. That is why images that glamorise self-harm, images that glamorise eating disorders, are so damaging. So it is really concerning to hear in recent surveys that more than one in four children have seen content about anorexia online. It is great that Ministers have promised that all children will be protected from self-harm, including eating disorders. When it comes to adults, however, I understand that Ministers may be considering an amendment similar to new clause 16 that would make it illegal to encourage self-harm online, but that it might not cover eating disorders, because they are just considering giving adults the right to opt out of seeing such content.

I was lucky that by the time I turned 18 years old I was over the worst of my anorexia, but when I look back at my teenage self, had I been 18 at the peak of my illness and had access to social media, I do not think I would have opted out of that content; I think I might have sought it out. It is incredibly important that the definition of self-harm absolutely recognises that eating disorders are a form of self-harm and are a killer.

My third point is that I welcome the measures to protect children from sexual abuse online and join my voice with all those who have thanked the Internet Watch Foundation. I have been honoured to be a champion of the foundation for over a decade. The work it does is so important and so brave. The Everyone’s Invited movement exposed the epidemic of sexual violence being suffered by young women and girls in our schools. As Children’s Minister at the time, I listened to their campaigners and learned from them how online pornography normalises sexual violence. There must be measures to prevent children from accessing all online porn. I was worried that Barnardo’s contacted me recently saying that more needs to be done to address the content that sexualises children in pornography. I hope the Minister will work closely with all children’s charities, including the wonderful Children’s Commissioner, as the Bill goes through the rest of its stages.