Offences against Children: Internet

(asked on 10th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans her Department has to tackle online child sexual abuse and exploitation.


Answered by
Rachel Maclean Portrait
Rachel Maclean
This question was answered on 14th January 2022

The Government is firmly committed to tackling this horrific crime and keeping our children safe online here in the UK and working with partners around the world to address this complex and evolving threat.

The UK’s Online Safety Bill will, for the first time, place a duty on tech companies to keep their users safe, with a greater responsibility to remove and limit the spread of illegal content. We are also engaging with tech companies through our international partners to keep children safe from online sexual abuse, securing agreement to a G7 action plan which includes driving greater endorsement of the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and to take meaningful action to report against progress.

We are also continuing to work with law enforcement partners to improve technologies and capabilities to identify offending and bringing offenders to justice. This includes significant investment into the transformation of the Child Abuse Image Database programme, and the National Crime Agency resulting in an estimated 800 arrests or voluntary attendances, and an estimated 1,000 children safeguarded or protected every month.

We are determined to deliver on the commitments to tackling this horrific complex crime and we will continue to work with partners to achieve our goals as set out in the Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy published in January 2021.

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