Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she plans to take to help tackle the use of end-to-end encryption in proliferating indecent images of children.

The implementation of E2EE without safety mitigations has catastrophic consequences. In 2024, tech companies reported 7 million fewer incidents of suspected child sexual abuse exploitation to NCMEC compared to 2023. This decline is linked to reduced detection capabilities due to E2EE and platform design choices. Offenders deliberately migrate to encrypted platforms to evade detection, using E2EE as a safe haven for grooming, sextortion, and CSAM distribution.

Technology exists to detect and prevent the abhorrent abuse of children, including in end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Platform design cannot be used as an excuse to avoid detection and reporting obligations. Under the Online Safety Act, in-scope services must assess and act on risks regardless of their technical architecture – including the risk of child sexual exploitation and abuse on public and private parts of their service. Section 121 of the Act gives Ofcom the power to issue a Technology Notice requiring a service to deploy accredited technology – or use best endeavours to develop or source technology – to detect and remove child sexual exploitation and abuse across public and private parts of the service, including encrypted environments, where necessary and proportionate. Where companies fail to protect users, the regulator, Ofcom, can issue fines of up to £18 million or 10% of a company's global revenue, whichever is greater.

The Government announced further work to protect children from sexual abuse online in the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. Government will work constructively with companies to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view a nude image. This is about prevention. Preventing the harm from happening in the first place whilst avoiding the need for data collection, data sharing or reporting. The technology exists. Now the government wants to work with tech companies to go further.