Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: Final Report

Debate between Miriam Cates and Grant Shapps

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Lady is right, and this plays into the wider issues of gang traffickers as well, because they know that they can be in an exploitative situation and do exploit, in particular, girls but also all children. She refers to the victims Bill, which was published in May in draft format. The whole point of that is for it to have pre-legislative scrutiny. I know that many organisations and many colleagues across the House have been involved in that, which will mean, I think, that we come forward with legislation that is in a better place to tackle many of the issues that she and others in this House have raised.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and the commitments that he has made to looking at the recommendations of the review. The problem is that child sexual exploitation and abuse are getting worse in this country. In 2020, the Internet Watch Foundation found 153,000 images of child sexual abuse online and reported a 77% increase in self-generated images of sexual abuse. I welcome his commitment to the Online Safety Bill, but the truth is that it is the proliferation of online pornography, which is increasingly extreme in nature, that is driving up demand for child sexual exploitation. In fact, the word “teen” is one of the most commonly searched terms on PornHub. When will the Government acknowledge that online pornography is an enormous public health issue, child protection issue and criminal justice issue that is driving much of the child sexual exploitation that we see today?

[Grant Shapps]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. She mentioned some figures. The ones that really stuck out for me were that, in 2021 alone, global technology companies reported more than 29 million suspected instances of child sexual abuse material on their platforms. To be clear, that is just social media platforms; that is not the whole of the internet. There are 85 million files, including images of videos of child sexual abuse. She is absolutely right about the scale of the problem. As she will know, the Online Safety Bill contains clauses to deal with some of this. I think she is referencing two parts of this: the strictly illegal aspects—the Home Office clauses; and the wider issues that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is taking forward in the Bill. That Bill is active and in front of the House, and she is right to highlight the necessity of its completing its passage.