Grieving mum gains support for new data sharing law

A bereaved mother has welcomed support from the House of Lords to change the law to secure children's social media data automatically upon their death.

Ellen Roome MBE from Cheltenham has campaigned for parents to be able to access their deceased children's accounts after her son Jools' death in April 2022.

Roome believes Jools, 14, died after an online challenge went wrong. A coroner returned a narrative verdict at his inquest and ruled out suicide.

Peers broadly supported an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill at a debate on Tuesday that would introduce automatic preservation of a deceased child's social media data.

Roome said her next mission was to address concerns voiced by Justice Minister Baroness Alison Levitt KC.

Levitt told the debate: "We are not saying no. What I am saying is that I understand the concern that the existing statutory provision for the preservation of a deceased child's social media data should operate as effectively as possible and we will consider carefully what further steps could be taken."

Roome, who was recently appointed an MBE for her work in children's online safety, is working with a group of other bereaved parents calling for an update to statutory guidance governing police investigations into the death of a child, making potential online harm a primary line of inquiry.

They want officers to take swift action to seize digital devices and capture data from accounts.

Investigators would also be required to report any evidence that online safety legislation may have been breached to the regulator Ofcom.

Speaking in support of the campaign, shadow education minister Baroness Barran said: "Given how much of a child's life is now lived online, it's vital that it's investigated properly and at the earliest opportunity."

Roome said she was confident the group would be able to overcome Levitt's concerns.

"Their only argument yesterday was 'What about the children that die in a road traffic accident, from an illness, or the under five-year-olds?'," she said.

"There's an argument that there would be an administration problem for dealing with those children as opposed to looking at the ones who die from social media because they're sort of saying the numbers aren't the same.

"Let's just get the data - it can't be that much of an effort for Ofcom to write and preserve the data... it's not really that much of an administration issue just to make sure that parents are not left in my situation," she added.

Roome said she hopes to be back in the House of Lords chamber in April.

The amendment will then be debated in the House of the Commons at a later date before a decision is made.

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