Online Harms Consultation

Darren Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Yes, I am happy to give my hon. Friend exactly that assurance. Companies must tackle illegal content on their platforms and protect children from harmful content and activity online. They really do need to build the right systems. As I said in answer to a previous question, I have seen the technology; there is no excuse anymore not to use it.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I want to ask the Secretary of State two questions on the issue of how we understand what is harmful but perhaps legal. First, will Ofcom be given the powers that it already has for other regulated sectors to demand access to information about how a service is being used and what content is on it? Secondly, why has the Secretary of State abandoned age verification?

[Oliver Dowden]

On age verification, we are moving it from what we previously had, which was not dealing with user-generated content. Most pornography that children access is on sites that have user-generated content. Usually, that is the way that children stumble across it by mistake. It is really important that we broaden the scope of what we are doing, and that is precisely what we are addressing through this legislation.