Protecting Children Online

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be able to contribute to today’s debate.

It is clear that neither the Minister nor anyone else can solve this problem on their own, but the Government can take action to help protect children online. My particular concern centres on the unmonitored use of the internet by those whom we already know to have a history of sex offending. The Government’s consultation on parental internet control stated that it was looking into the best way of shielding children from harmful and adult content, including sites that exposed children to online sexual grooming. Most of the debate and consultation in this area have focused on restricting access to adult, pornographic and child abuse material, but in looking at the most serious threat—of grooming and sexual abuse—we need to be serious not just about the online content, but about online users and those with whom children come into contact online.

In my maiden speech, I began with a few words about Ashleigh Hall, a young woman who lived in my constituency. When she was 17, she was murdered by a registered sex offender she met on Facebook. The 33-year-old offender used a fake identity, and for his profile took a picture of a younger man in order to start talking to and grooming Ashleigh. After she agreed to meet him, the offender posed as his internet personality’s father in order to pick her up, after which he abducted, raped and murdered her.

This man had a history of violent sexual offences, including multiple charges of sexual assault, rape and kidnapping. He was known to be dangerous and was a registered sex offender, but although he and his home were registered and expected to be monitored, his internet use was not. He was under no obligation to register his online identities, and I have learned that any refusal to do so would have been met with no action whatever. The authorities had no idea what images he was looking at or who he was communicating with.

We know that one quarter of 12 to 15-year-olds report using social networking sites to communicate with people they do not already know. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre receives more than 600 reports of grooming each month, yet as the situation stands, people we recognise as a serious threat to public safety are monitored in the community but not online, where they have as much access, if not perhaps more, to building relationships with young people and may pretend to be someone they are not.

[Jim Shannon]

One of the Labour party’s proposals refers to making extra resources available to the police to ensure that these things can be monitored. Could that have prevented that case from happening?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman]

It is very difficult to say what might have prevented this tragedy, but the Government need to look with some urgency at the power to monitor the internet use of people whom we know to be a threat to children.

It is not acceptable for a known offender to have unmonitored online access in order to socialise with young people. I have raised this issue in the House before and asked the Government to make progress towards requiring sex offenders to register their online identities. Child protection and online safety will be significantly aided if that is a notification requirement for registered sex offenders as a matter of course, and if failure to do so is regarded with just as much seriousness as an offender failing to register the fact that they were living with young children. In 2011, the Government consulted on the prescribed information that offenders are expected to disclose, including increased notification requirements for foreign travel and living arrangements, and even changes to ensure that an offender could not avoid the register by changing their name, but the issue of online identification was not addressed.

It is often repeated that parents must take the lead in protecting their children in online activity, and so they must. However, parents such as Ashleigh’s mum deserve to know that dangerous people who are already known to the police and authorities are not left with the unchecked freedom to groom further victims. We know who these people are, but false, manipulative online identities mean that young people such as Ashleigh do not know whom they are speaking to. Access to inappropriate material for young children is very concerning, but I expect that controlling it will be a constant battle, with technology inevitably outpacing the law. My suggestion is to make a simple change, which follows the accepted principles of existing requirements on registered offenders, but it could make all the difference to a family’s safety. I am glad that we are debating measures to protect young people online. I would simply ask that, as well as considering the broad safeguards that we seek to introduce, we also focus on the internet use of those whom we already know have a history of sexual offending.