Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle AI-driven (a) abuse and (b) discrimination.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Online Safety Act 2023 places robust duties on user-to-user and search services to tackle abuse and discrimination where it is illegal or harmful to children. These duties apply regardless of whether content is created by AI or not. Services must implement effective systems to prevent, identify, and swiftly remove illegal material. Additionally, in-scope service providers have a responsibility to protect children from ‘priority’ content that is harmful to children, which includes violent content or content that is hateful or abusive based on certain characteristics. Services must also put in place adequate mechanisms for users to report bullying and online harassment.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to ban nudification apps from online app stores.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The government is concerned about the proliferation of AI-enabled products and services that facilitate the creation of deepfake non-consensual intimate images.
Government legislated to ban the non-consensual creation of sexually explicit deepfake images in the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, ensuring that offenders face the appropriate punishments for this atrocious harm. The government is aware of the concerns over the tools themselves and is looking into this closely.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to make harmful pornographic content illegal on online platforms.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Online Safety Act protects users from harmful and illegal pornographic content. Extreme pornography is a priority offence, meaning that services must proactively mitigate and remove such content.
In addition, the Secretary of State and Victims Minister are introducing a new offence via the Crime and Policing Bill that will crack down on violent pornography, criminalising the possession and publication of images depicting strangulation and suffocation. This will also be designated as a priority offence under the Online Safety Act, meaning platforms will be required to take proactive steps to prevent users from seeing illegal strangulation and suffocation content.
Since 25 July 2025, services that host, publish or allow the sharing of pornography must also implement highly-effective age assurance to prevent children encountering pornographic content.
These measures are part of the government's Plan for Change to halve violence against women and girls, sending a strong message that dangerous and sexist behaviour will not be tolerated.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, how many Sikhs are employed in his Department; and whether they are recorded as (a) an ethnic or (b) a religious group.
Answered by Feryal Clark
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology records Sikh or Sikhism, as a religion or belief and not as an ethnicity.
Please refer to Table A3 of the Civil Service Statistics 2024 where statistics on religion or belief by department as at 31 March 2024 are published: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-service-statistics-2024. This includes statistics on those recorded as ‘Sikh’.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to help reduce misogynistic content online.
Answered by Feryal Clark
The Online Safety Act requires in-scope services to proactively tackle the most harmful illegal content, including illegal misogyny.
Where this type of abuse is not illegal, services likely to be accessed by children must provide safety measures to protect them from harmful and age-inappropriate content and activity, including content which is hateful and abusive. Category 1 services will also need to remove legal misogynistic content, where it is prohibited in their terms of service.
The Act requires Ofcom, the regulator, to publish guidance about protecting women and girls online, which it published in draft for consultation on 25 February.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to help protect children from (a) deception, (b) bullying, (c) abuse and (d) harmful content online.
Answered by Feryal Clark
Our priority is the implementation of the Online Safety Act so children benefit from its protections.
The Act requires services to protect users from illegal content. Companies will also need to assess whether their service is likely to be accessed by children and provide safety measures to protect them from harmful and age-inappropriate content and activity, such as abuse, bullying, and content that promotes eating disorders or self-harm. Measures include using age assurance and changing their algorithms to filter out harmful content.
The illegal content duties are now in effect and the child safety duties will be enforceable by this summer.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department taking to make government digital services as accessible as possible, including for those without strong digital skills.
Answered by Feryal Clark
The Government wants to put digital inclusion at the heart of how we deliver better designed, time-saving public services, to ensure as many people as possible can access public services digitally. Our ambition is for everyone in the UK to have the access, skills, support and confidence to participate in our modern digital society, whatever their circumstances.
On accessibility, there is a globally recognised standard for accessibility for Web Content, and though digital accessibility is an important part of designing an inclusive service, meeting the standards does not guarantee an inclusive service. We will be exploring how to extend the scope of the standards beyond central government into the wider public sector and looking at revising them to include inclusive service design.
Promoting digital inclusion is a priority for this Government, and we will be working closely with key partners in charities, businesses and local authorities to make sure that no one is left without the tools to engage fully in society. We hope to announce more on this soon.