Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help prevent criminal organisations committing sextortion offences.

“Sextortion”, or blackmail involving the use of indecent or intimate images, is a horrific crime which the government is determined to tackle.

The Home Office is providing £150k in 2022/23 to the Revenge Porn Hotline to support victims of non-consensual intimate image sharing, colloquially known as “revenge porn”, which includes victims of “sextortion”.

The Government remains firmly committed to tackling all forms of child sexual abuse online, including cases involving “sextortion”. Our approach is underpinned by the Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy which sets out firm commitments to drive action across the whole system. The Home Office invests in a number of capabilities to support law enforcement to tackle child sexual abuse.

The Home Office funds the National Crime Agency to use its unique capabilities to disrupt the highest harm child sexual abuse offenders and safeguard children. Since 2017, the Home Office has invested in a network of Undercover Online Officers in Regional Organised Crime Units to disrupt high harm offenders, including those seeking to groom or otherwise manipulate children into sharing sexual images.

We remain committed to continuing close collaboration with international partners to share best practice and insights and build international capacity to tackle all forms of child exploitation and abuse, including “sextortion”.