Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of requiring (a) smart phone, (b) tablet (c) and other technology manufacturers to incorporate (i) HarmBlock and (ii) other similar CSAM classifiers into operating systems for the purpose of preventing transmission of child sexual abuse material.

This Government is unequivocal in its commitment to protecting children from online sexual abuse. The previous Prime Minister announced on 8 June 2026 that the UK would become the first country in the world where it is impossible for children to take, share or view nude images on their devices. Government has engaged collaboratively with tech companies over the past three months, to explore how they can expand implement technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images for children.

The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport today (8 September) reiterated this commitment in an oral statement to the House. Since June, officials from the Home Office and DCMS have overseen an unprecedented work programme with Apple and Google, working with senior leaders and engineers to explore new ways of preventing child sexual abuse and strengthening protections for children online.

These proposals are a step in the right direction, but do not meet the scale of this government’s ambition. This government is therefore now preparing primary legislation to require companies to build in device operating system-level protections for children. In the meantime, we are also pursing secondary legislation to require any apps that children use to prevent them from accessing or sharing nudity.

This work will prevent predators from being able to exploit and abuse victims through their devices, as well as stopping children from being able to access pornography. Adults will still be able to take, share or view nude content through an age verification process. This will deliver on the commitment we made in the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy – Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy - GOV.UK.

The Government welcomes innovative technical solutions, which aim to keep children safer online and using smartphones and tablets. The Government’s policy is to focus on operating-system level detection of all nudity for child users, rather than attempting to identify and block only child sexual abuse material (CSAM).