Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment the Government has made of the extent of online content that does not meet the criminal threshold, but facilitates abuse and grooming; and what steps she is taking through the Online Safety Bill to tackle that matter.

The Government is firmly committed to making the UK the safest place to be online and taking action against online material that may not be illegal, but is linked to abuse and grooming.

We are working across Government and engaging industry to prevent all forms of online child sexual exploitation and abuse. The interim code of practice on online CSEA made clear that we expect companies to already start taking voluntary action against such content, including material that doesn’t meet a criminal threshold.

The Online Safety Bill will require companies to ensure the safety of children on their services. They will need to seriously consider the risks their services may pose to children using their services and take action to mitigate this. This will include taking measures against all content that facilitates abuse or grooming of children on their services.

The Government is also continuing to engage with technology companies around the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, a framework of principles launched by the Five Country Ministerial partners in March 2020. These are a set of 11 actions tech firms should take to ensure children are not sexually exploited on their platforms, , including taking steps to stop the livestreaming of abuse and stop grooming and predatory behaviour.