Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle provision of terrorist and extremist propaganda through social media, the internet and other online sources.

This Government has been clear there should be no safe space online for terrorists and their supporters to radicalise, recruit, incite, or inspire. The UK has been at the forefront of the online battle against extremist and terrorist material. The dedicated police Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) refers content that they assess as contravening UK terrorism legislation to industry and have secured the removal of over 280,000 pieces of terrorist-related material since its inception in February 2010.

This government continue to work with technology companies to encourage them to be more proactive in tackling terrorist material on the internet. Following a roundtable with the Home Secretary on 30 March 2017, Twitter, Facebook, Google and Microsoft announced they would look at options for establishing a global industry led forum specifically focussed on tackling online terrorist content. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism was formally launched on 26 June 2017. We continue to engage regularly with industry and international partners to ensure the forum will have a truly sustained and positive impact in tackling the evolving online threat posed by terrorists.