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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to remove and prevent the selling of (a) illegal and (b) dangerous products on (i) online marketplaces and (ii) online community forums.

In December 2020 we published the full government response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation, setting out further details about the new online safety regulatory framework.

Under the new legislation, both online marketplaces and online community forums will need to take action to tackle criminal activity. This includes the sale of illegal products such as drugs and weapons. They will need to ensure that illegal content is removed expeditiously and that the risk of it appearing and spreading across their services is minimised by effective systems.

The Government is committed to tackling the sale of unsafe consumer products online. My officials engage regularly with the Office for Product Safety and Standards, which works to ensure that major online marketplaces play their part in protecting UK consumers from unsafe goods.

We are working on legislation at pace and it will be ready this year.