Offences against Children: Internet
(asked on 19th November 2020) - View Source
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many investigations have resulted in a prosecution relating to extreme and child pornography on social media in the last five years.
The Ministry of Justice has published information on prosecutions, convictions and sentences for offences relating to indecent images of children offences, up to December 2019, available in the ‘Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code’ data tool, here:
The Government is committed to bringing child sex offenders to justice and has made a significant investment in tackling all forms of CSA, including online, in recent years. Child sexual abuse is prioritised as a national threat to empower police forces to maximise their specialist skills and expertise to investigate these abhorrent crimes and bring offenders to justice.
In March this year, in collaboration with Five Country governments (USA, New Zealand, Canada and Australia) and following consultation with technology companies, we formally launched the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA). The principles include ensuring that existing and new child sexual abuse material doesn’t appear on platforms, preventing the livestreaming of abuse and taking steps to stop grooming and predatory behaviour. Among the companies to endorse the principles are Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Snap, Tik Tok and Roblox.
A key aim of this Government is to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. As set out in the Online Harms White Paper, the Government intends to establish in law a new duty of care on companies towards their users, overseen by an independent regulator. The duty of care will ensure companies have appropriate systems in place to deal with harmful content on their services and keep users safe, especially children. Companies will be required to take particularly robust action on tackling online child sexual exploitation and abuse and, as committed, we will publish an interim code of practice for CSEA alongside the full government response.