Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness May of Maidenhead (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the references he has made, on this occasion and on others, to the action that I took in relation to setting up the inquiry on child sexual abuse.

Child sexual exploitation takes place online and physically in the real world. Children are also groomed online, with a view to them then being abused physically —exploited, abused and raped. What representations are the Government making to the owners of social media platforms to encourage them—or request or require them—to take action to ensure that their platforms cannot be used for child sexual exploitation online, or for the grooming online of children, by either gangs or individuals, with a view to physical abuse and exploitation taking place?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I reiterate my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, for establishing the inquiry in the first place. She was right to do so, and in due course I want to do justice to the recommendations that have come out of that inquiry.

She raised an extremely important point about companies, because online grooming material, the deepfake stuff now coming out and a whole range other material are extremely worrying and perturbing. Social media companies must have responsibility for that as well as society. The Government will introduce a requirement for companies to report online child sexual exploitation and abuse identified on their services to the National Crime Agency. This requirement will be underpinned by regulations which will ensure that companies provide high-quality reports with the information that law enforcement needs both to identify offenders and to help support and safeguard victims. In-scope companies—and we will have to determine which those are—will have to demonstrate that they already report under existing mandatory or voluntary overseas reporting regimes, which will ensure that they are exempt from this recommendation and avoid duplication of companies’ efforts.

I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness completely that online companies have a real responsibility. They cannot just host material; they must have responsibility for some of that content. The steps that I have outlined, which are underpinned by the first three elements of the response to the report, are ones which the Government will take forward with some urgency.