Online Harms Consultation

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

The right hon. Lady raises important points. On private channels, companies will be expected to use emergent technology to check for this sort of thing happening. The point about proportionality is that clearly we cannot expect them to individually, through human activity, spot this kind of thing; they will have to rely on artificial intelligence and so on. So as the regulator becomes confident that those technologies work, it will expect the firms in question to use it. There is a slightly separate issue about end-to-end encryption, and she will be familiar with the sort of conversations the Home Secretary and I are having with Facebook, for example, on that. Encryption cannot be used as an excuse to get out of being subject to this legislation, and we would expect firms that use end-to-end encryption still to take measures to protect against child abuse and exploitation, for precisely the reasons the right hon. Lady sets out.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

In 2007, the Council of Europe produced a convention, which I understand we have signed, that deals with the online abuse of children. Will my right hon. Friend work with me and other members of the Council of Europe to strengthen that convention, in order to make sure that the regulators are genuinely robust and can deal with this problem?

[Oliver Dowden]

Yes, of course I would be delighted to do so. As Members will know, child abuse, sadly, knows no boundaries—the child abuse viewed by people in this country is often generated around the world—so it is important that we have a co-ordinated approach.