Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will take steps to include specific provisions to tackle violence against women and girls in the Online Safety Bill.

The Online Safety Bill includes stringent provisions to tackle online violence against women and girls, including domestic abuse.

All in-scope services will need to proactively tackle priority illegal content. This includes a number of offences that disproportionately target women and girls, such as offences relating to sexual images, such as revenge and extreme pornography, harassment and cyberstalking. The Government has also announced its intention to add controlling or coercive behaviour as a priority offence during passage through the Lords.

All services will need to ensure that they have effective systems and processes in place to quickly take down other illegal content directed at women and girls once it has been reported or they become aware of its presence.

The Government has also announced its intention to use the Bill to criminalise the sharing of people's intimate images without their consent. This, in combination with the measures already in the Bill to make cyberflashing a criminal offence, will significantly strengthen protections for women.

The strongest protections in the Bill will be for children, ensuring that they are protected from content that is harmful to them. Additionally, major platforms will have a duty to ensure that all adult users, including women, will be able to exercise greater control over the content and other users they engage with. Women and girls will also benefit from better mechanisms to report abuse online.

We also announced our intention to name the Victims’ Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner as Statutory Consultees for the codes of practice. These bodies will be consulted by Ofcom ahead of drafting and amending the codes of practice, ensuring the voices of those affected by these issues are reflected in the way this legislation works in practice.