Children: Online Safety

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Cormack]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that minors are not exposed to the dangers of online media.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, the Government take this issue very seriously indeed, and continue to urge all parts of the industry to do more. The four main internet service providers will very soon have implemented family-friendly filters at network level for all new customers, with existing customers to follow. Ministers have also called for all social media companies to attend a meeting very shortly to review what processes are in place to ensure that minors are kept safe.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, while I am grateful for the sympathetic response of my noble friend, I would gently say to him that there is no greater crime than the destruction of childhood innocence. If it is right to take sanctions against those who supply cigarettes or alcohol to those who are underage, is there not an overriding case for not leaving the dissipation of this evil material to self-regulation? We need to take action and we need to do it very quickly.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I can understand my noble friend’s extreme concern about this issue, but it is the case that anything that is illegal offline is also illegal online. On his point about the self-regulatory environment that we have been encouraging—and great progress has been made—with the technological advances in this whole sector, we need to be ahead of the game. That is why we are working to get the internet service providers to be part of the teams, to ensure that the problems to which my noble friend has referred are matters of the past.