Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will bring forward legislative proposals to provide police forces with the power to require the removal of (a) dangerous items and (b) content (i) online and (ii) for sale online.

The Online Safety Act requires platforms to take action to prevent the proliferation of illegal content online and ensure that their services are not used for offending. This means they will need to proactively mitigate the risk that their services are used for illegal activity or to share illegal content, and to design their services to mitigate the risk of this occurring.

Ofcom has now laid the first edition of the Illegal Harms Codes in Parliament, setting out what platforms need to do to comply with the Online Safety Act. These will come into force, subject to Parliamentary approval, on the 17th of March 2025. Firms do not need to wait for these duties to come into effect and can act now.

Ofcom has a tough suite of enforcement powers to use against companies who fail to fulfil their duties. This includes fines of up to £18 million or 10 per cent of qualifying annual global turnover (whichever is greater).

The Home Secretary has also outlined measures to prevent the online sale of knives and other weapons to children to reduce knife crime. We have already banned deadly zombie-style knives and machetes and are fast progressing with banning Ninja swords. We have also consulted on introducing personal liability measures on senior executives of online platforms and marketplaces who fail to take action to remove illegal content related to knives and offensive weapons off their platforms and marketplaces. The consultation closed on 11 December 2024 and we are currently analysing the responses. The Home Secretary has also announced that the Government intends to strengthen age verification controls and checks for all online sellers of knives at the point of purchase and on delivery.