Online Safety: Children and Young People

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Lola McEvoy]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that great threat. My area of expertise on the issue is children’s and service users’ voices. There is definitely space for Ofcom and the Government to try to regulate the illegal manufacturing of images through AI. When I asked children in my constituency whether they had ever seen something that they knew was made by AI, they said yes—they had seen images of people that they knew were not real—but the notifications and warnings to tell them that it was AI were not as explicit as they could be. In other words, they could tell for themselves, but the notifications were not comprehensive enough for other children, who may not have noticed. This is a real danger.

There will always be content created online that we cannot police. We have to accept—as we do with any other piece of legislation—that there will be criminal actors, but I have called this debate because there are ways to protect children from harmful content, including by using the right age verification model. I am keen to focus my contribution on trying to protect children from content, in the round, that is harmful to them.

As I said before, the mechanism for change is in front of us, but my concern is that the children’s codes are not strong enough. The children in my town have told me—and I am sure everybody here knows it—that the current age verification requirements are easily passed through, and that content on some sites is deeply disturbing and sent to them without them asking for it. That means that the sites are hosting content that is deeply disturbing for children, and that the age verification is not fit for purpose. We need to talk either about stopping those sites from hosting that content, which is very difficult, or about changing the age verification process.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

I want to talk about the scale of the problem that the hon. Lady touches on. The Children’s Commissioner for England reveals that 79% of children under 18 have encountered violent pornography before the age of 18, with the average age of first exposure being 13. Everything the hon. Lady is saying is very important, but this is not a niche problem; it is something that parents in Winchester have spoken to me about repeatedly in the four months since I was elected.