Protecting Children Online

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

The Ministry of Justice and the Home Office are looking very closely at that issue, which has been debated recently. It is right that my colleagues in the relevant Departments look to see what action it is appropriate to take.

CEOP works with UK police forces, which carry out excellent work in tracking down and arresting the owners of sites within the UK and rescuing and safeguarding the children who are subject to abuse. We will continue to support and promote the work of CEOP. It is important to note that the number of people working there has increased from 85 in 2010 to 130 now. CEOP is now a command within the National Crime Agency, and this will build on its success and allow it to work closely with other commands to ensure that children continue to be safeguarded. CEOP receives important support, in the form of a skills resource, from the business sector, including Microsoft, BAE Systems Detica and Visa, as well as children’s charities such as the NSPCC. At next week’s summit we will discuss what further resources we can bring to bear for CEOP, especially in terms of support from businesses that can bring particular skill sets to help it to carry out its work. As I said, we will also discuss with CEOP its close co-operation and work with the IWF.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to hear the Minister being positive about the proposal by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). I hope that the summit will be a very productive discussion. End Violence Against Women has come up with a specific proposal on how to tackle the production of so-called rape porn, both online and offline. Can the Minister confirm that that will also be on next week’s agenda so that it can be talked through with businesses and then inform the discussions between the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice?

[Mr Vaizey]

We will certainly look at what we need to include on the agenda. The summit has to focus on what internet companies can do to help us to tackle not only child abuse images but the exposure of children to online pornographic content. If there are comments to be made that would inform the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, we will make sure that that happens.

We need to focus on closer co-operation between the IWF and CEOP and on resource from industry to help the IWF to do its work. There should be greater focus on peer-to-peer networks, and a clear strategy to increase our international work, which is already taking place.

As the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said, there is a clear distinction between illegal child abuse images and age-inappropriate content.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

We can hold our heads high as being far more advanced than many other countries around the world. I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman with details of what other countries are doing and where we rank compared with them. It is also important to point out that those five ISPs cover the vast majority of customers using the internet at home.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said that we have not implemented the recommendations of the Bailey review, but I remind her that this Government set up that review because of this Prime Minister’s passion to protect children from the sexualisation of society. As Reg Bailey himself said in his recently published review of progress:

“I have been pleased to see that many parts of industry have risen to the challenge”

and that good progress has been made against his recommendations.

Bailey called for greater transparency in the regulatory framework through the creation of a single website for regulators. ParentPort, launched in 2011, is a single website, created by media regulators, through which parents can complain about inappropriate material. Bailey also called for a reduction in on-street advertising containing sexualised imagery that is likely to be seen by children, and the Advertising Standards Authority has issued guidelines on the use of such images in outdoor advertising. He also recommended restricting the employment of children as brand ambassadors and ensuring that magazines and newspapers with sexualised images on the cover are not sold in easy sight of children and that the content of pre-watershed TV programming better meets parents’ expectations.

Those recommendations and others have been met. Of course, that is not to say that every recommendation has been met in full. There is still work to do on, for example, online music videos.

[Stella Creasy]

The Bailey review also pointed out that, as much as we must try to adapt to many of the ways in which technology is changing, no filter or technology can compensate for parents and teachers giving positive examples. Yesterday the House had an opportunity to make sure that sensitive discussion of issues such as sexual consent, equality and respect in relationships was on the agenda, so is the Minister disappointed that his Government voted against putting sexual consent in the curriculum in a way that would allow young people to get training and advice on how to tackle these issues and let us build a filter in their heads about them, too?

[Mr Vaizey]

This issue was debated fully in the House yesterday and there are two Education Ministers present—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) and my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary. As the hon. Lady knows, sex and relationships education is compulsory in secondary schools. We trust teachers, who are best placed to provide the appropriate advice, guidance and support to children in their schools. Teachers who teach sex education follow the statutory guidance laid out by the Education Secretary, but we do not believe it is right to remove the ability of parents to withdraw their children from sex education at any key stage, as the Opposition advocate.