Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge

The Online Safety Act gives online user-to-user services new duties to implement systems and processes to reduce the risks of their services being used to facilitate certain ‘priority’ kinds of offending. It also requires providers to take down illegal content when it does appear. These duties extend to intimate image abuse (IIA) content. This is a priority kind of offending under the Act. Ofcom will have strong enforcement powers where platforms fail to comply with their duties for IIA content. It can impose significant fines and, where appropriate, business disruption measures on non-compliant platforms. It can fine companies up to £18 million or 10% of their qualifying global annual revenue.

The department continues to support the take up of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects by girls and women in higher education (HE).

Skills, including STEM skills, are crucial for the delivery of the government’s missions. This is why the department is building a coherent, flexible, high quality skills system to break down barriers to opportunity and drive economic growth, underpinned by a new Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy.

To boost quality, encourage more students into STEM across schools and further education, and therefore ensure a strong pipeline of qualified students into HE and careers in STEM areas, the department has committed substantial spending on mathematics, digital and technical education. For instance, the government funds the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme, which provides professional development to teachers in state-funded schools and colleges in England, including strategies to raise girls’ participation in mathematics post-16. Support is focused in areas of low social mobility so that, whatever their location, background or gender, students can choose their best post-16 mathematics pathway and access high quality teaching.

Funding is also provided to the National Centre for Computing Education to support the teaching of computing and increase participation in computer science qualifications. This support includes programmes designed to encourage greater participation by girls and industry-led events that raise pupils’ awareness of careers in computing and digital.

The department is also supporting schools to deliver STEM-related careers education through programmes such as STEM ambassadors. Such initiatives raise young people’s awareness of the high quality options available for technical and academic routes into STEM and the careers STEM pathways offer.

The government will continue to support learners who wish to have a career in STEM through its technical education offer, with a range of high quality qualifications and apprenticeship opportunities at all levels. Examples of this include 12 T Levels in STEM subjects, including engineering, science, digital and media. T Levels are promoted to young people via the Skills for Life national communications campaign.

The government has also created over 370 employer-designed apprenticeship standards in STEM, including level 3 Cyber Security Technician, level 4 Software Developer and level 6 Civil Engineer (degree). Apprenticeships are a great way for anyone, regardless of their background or gender, to receive high quality training and skills to begin, or progress in, a successful career in STEM. The department is promoting STEM apprenticeships to girls in schools through our Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge Programme. In 2023/24, 17.7% (17,220) of STEM apprenticeship starts were by women, compared to 15.8% (15,170) in 2022/23.

On 13 January, my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, agreed to take forward all 50 recommendations set out by Matt Clifford in his Artificial Intelligence (AI) Opportunities Action Plan. This included recommendations on AI Skills and Talent.

In addition to the AI Opportunities Action Plan, the new Industrial Strategy will channel support to eight growth-driving sectors in which the UK excels today and will propel it forward tomorrow. Digital and Technologies has been identified as one of the eight growth-driving sectors and the department is currently consulting on the barriers to growth, including skills, in this sector.

This government is committed to ensuring both learners and employers have access to crucial digital and AI skills that have the potential to increase productivity and create new high value jobs in the UK economy. To achieve this, the department will build a responsive skills system, coordinated through Skills England, to deliver on the national, regional and local skills needs of the next decade.

​​The digital skills pipeline starts with the school system. The department funds the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) to improve the teaching of computing and increase participation in computer science at GCSE and A level across England. To support the teaching of AI, the NCCE delivers a range of courses on machine learning, ethics and teaching about AI in primary and secondary computing and also facilitates industry-led events for pupils to raise awareness of opportunities and careers in sectors such as AI.

The department already provides a range of post-16 academic and technical qualifications relevant to AI skills. Developed in partnership with employers, there are currently 34 apprenticeship standards in digital occupations, including at degree level and in areas like AI.

Learners can study three Digital T Levels which include AI content and there are 77 digital Higher Technical Qualifications approved and quality marked as providing the skills demanded in the workplace by employers, including AI skills. Skills Bootcamps are available in digital, including AI and machine learning, with the latest published data showing that the majority of Skills Bootcamps were in the digital sector, with 61% of starts in digital for the 2022/23 financial year.

The higher education (HE) system continues to be a route for those seeking the skills required for a career in AI. There are a range of high quality AI courses available and, in 2022, 46,000 students graduated from an AI-relevant HE programme in the UK.

The department is not able to identify the percentage of school leavers who have gone on to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects in higher education (HE) at a reasonable cost or within the required timeframes.

The department has access to Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data. HESA is responsible for collecting and publishing data on the UK HE sector. These data are shared with the department and include a wide range of information on students from the UK studying in UK higher education providers (HEPs), including their sex and subject of study. These data are only collected in relation to their HE attendance and do not cover any school data.

The department is able to supply the number of UK-domiciled students studying STEM subjects at UK HEPs broken down by sex, based on HESA data. Due to the change in subject classification from 2019/20 to 2020/21, the department is only able to provide a comparable time series from 2020/21 onwards.

These data are provided in the attached spreadsheet. There is no single official definition of which subjects make up STEM. The HESA science grouping includes subjects like medicine, nursing and agriculture that may not be included in other definitions of STEM.

As part of the statutory relationships and health education in primary schools and relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in secondary schools, pupils are taught about online safety and harms.

The statutory guidance for relationships education for primary school can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-education-primary.

The statutory guidance for RSHE for secondary school can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-and-sex-education-rse-secondary.

This guidance includes being taught about what positive, healthy and respectful online relationships look like, the effects of pupils’ online actions on others, how to recognise and display respectful behaviour online, and where to get help and support for issues that occur online.

Teaching about online safety also complements the computing curriculum, which covers the principles of online safety at all key stages, with progression in the content to reflect the different and escalating risks that pupils face. The statutory guidance for the computing curriculum can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study.

The guidance ‘Teaching online safety in schools’ sets out how to teach about all aspects of internet safety in a coordinated and coherent way across the curriculum, and can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-online-safety-in-schools.

The department is currently reviewing the RSHE statutory guidance. My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has been clear that children’s wellbeing must be at the heart of this guidance for schools and as such the government will look carefully at the consultation responses, discuss with stakeholders and consider the relevant evidence before setting out next steps. As part of the review, the department will consider whether additional or revised content should be included in the guidance, including content regarding online safety and harm.

The Curriculum and Assessment Review is also looking at the curriculum as a whole and how to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life. The government‘s ambition is for a broad, rich and cutting-edge curriculum that equips children and young people with the essential knowledge and skills required to thrive as citizens, in work and throughout life.

In addition, the statutory ‘Keeping children safe in education’ guidance which all schools and colleges must have regard to when drawing up and implementing their own safeguarding policies has been strengthened with regards to online safety in recent years. Governing bodies and proprietors should ensure online safety is a running and interrelated theme whilst devising and implementing their whole school or college approach to safeguarding and related policies and procedures, including doing all that they reasonably can to limit children’s exposure to harmful online content on the school’s or college’s IT system.

Whilst the National Health Service does not offer bespoke mental health services to survivors of image-based abuse, anyone experiencing mental health problems as a result of such abuse is advised to seek help from their local general practitioner, NHS Talking Therapies services or through NHS 111.

Further advice for survivors is available from the Revenge Porn Helpline and other sources of emotional support for all types of abuse can be obtained through the Hub of Hope website, both in an online-only format.

The Home Office is providing £150,000 to the Revenge Porn Helpline in 2024/5. They provide high-quality support and advice to victims of non-consensual intimate image sharing and raise awareness of intimate image abuse nationally and internationally. Since its establishment in 2015, the Helpline has demonstrated an ability to successfully remove from circulation 90% of the images reported to the Helpline by victims.

Intimate image-based abuse can have a devastating impact on the lives of its victims and this Government will treat violence against women and girls (VAWG), online and offline, as a national emergency.

The College of Policing set the curriculum for policing which includes educational outcomes on image-based abuse. At present, individual forces choose how to deliver this training, often by commissioning local experts and support services.

The Government is determined that every force must have the right specialist capability to investigate these crimes properly. We will therefore work closely with the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs' Council to strengthen the training for officers on VAWG.

Under the Online Safety Act 2023, it is an offence to send, share or threaten to share “deepfake” pornography. This is part of a new “base offence” that criminalises someone for sharing an intimate image without consent. This Government has committed to banning the creation of sexually explicit “deepfake” images.

The new Government inherited a justice system in crisis and took decisive action to stop our prisons from collapsing. When we replaced the previous Government’s early release scheme with SDS40, we specifically excluded sexual offences, including sharing intimate images without consent.

Data on SDS40 releases forms a subset of data intended for future publication.

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on offenders sentenced to immediate custody for offences relating to sharing intimate images, at criminal courts in England and Wales, in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, which can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly: June 2024.

This can be accessed by navigating to the ‘2. Sentence Outcomes’ tab and using the following HO offence codes;

• 08815 - Sharing or threatening to share intimate photograph or film

• 17508 - Share photograph or film of person in intimate state without consent

Offences relating to sharing intimate images came into force in January 2024 and up to end of June 2024, 3 offenders were sentenced to immediate custody.