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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what the cost to the public purse was of developing policy on Age Verification for online pornography since 2015.

Development costs from 2015-2016 were met through existing DCMS headcount resources. Since 2016, the government has spent approximately £2.2million through a contractual agreement with the British Board for Film Classification to implement age verification for online pornography. Building on on that work, we are now establishing how the objectives of Part Three of the Digital Economy Act can be delivered through our online harms regime.