Yesterday was the last day of the Online Safety Bill’s journey through Parliament, which is a set of new proposed laws to help protect children and adults online.

The amendment to the Bill, which was brought forward by Baroness Beeban Kidron and backed by the Bereaved Families for Online Safety group, will give coroners the ability, through Ofcom, to force co-operation when deaths suspected to be related to online abuse and harm are investigated.

If tech platforms don’t comply, they could then face a fine of 10% of their global revenue.

“Our changes to the Bill will seek to ensure that Ofcom has the powers it needs to support coroners and their equivalents in Scotland, so that they have access to the information they need to conduct investigations into a child’s death where social media may have played a part,” said Lord Parkinson, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Arts and Heritage.

Further, Baroness Healy, who has various policy focus areas including media, as well as community and families, said: “Where a child has died, sadly, and social media is thought to have played a part, families and coroners have faced years of stonewalling, often never managing to access data or information relevant to that death; this adds greatly to their grief and delays the finding of some kind of closure.

“[…] These amendments would mean that tech companies now had to comply with Ofcom’s information notices or face a fine of up to 10% of their global revenue.”

Some platforms have “digital legacy” features in place, which allows the families of deceased users to access their online accounts. However, features like these aren’t appropriate or helpful when children die suddenly.

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The Bereaved Families for Online Safety group, who have backed the amendment, was founded in 2017. It includes the parents of Olly Stephens, who was fatally stabbed in 2021 following a dispute on social media.

Outside parliament yesterday, Olly’s mother, Amanda Stephens, said that the amendment “does feel like progress,” and that Olly’s “legacy for us is that he would always stick up for the underdog and would never accept people being bullied,” according to the BBC.