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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent discussions he has had with mobile phone networks on preventing under-18s accessing inappropriate material.

Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with mobile network operators on a range of issues, including safeguarding children. Details of ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.

Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) provide a filter to restrict access to content that is unsuitable for customers under the age of 18. This has been the practice since the trade association, Mobile UK, first published a UK code of practice in 2004. The MNOs set these filters in accordance with a framework developed by the British Board of Film Classification.

Through the Digital Economy Act (2017), we are introducing the requirement for commercial providers of online pornography to have robust age verification controls in place to prevent under 18s accessing pornographic material. These controls will be at network level and effective regardless of the type of device being used.