Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology on expediting and expanding the Online Safety Act 2023 to tackle violence against women and girls.

The misuse of technology to abuse or harm others (including online) has a disproportionate impact on women and children and we know this is a significant and growing issue in the UK and worldwide.

Tackling VAWG in all of its forms, including when it takes place online, is a top priority for this Government, and that's why we have set out an unprecedented mission to halve these crimes in a decade.

We will go further than before to deliver a cross-Government transformative approach, underpinned by a new VAWG strategy to be published this year. On 22 January 2025, the Government introduced new legislation which will make creating sexually explicit 'deepfake' images a criminal offence.

The Online Safety Act 2023 designates material relating to child sexual exploitation and abuse as a priority offence. Platforms must put in place systems and processes to minimise and remove this content. The Illegal Harms Codes, laid before Parliament in December and coming into force from 17 March this year, sets out the steps companies must take to meet their duties under the Act to tackle this content.

On 31 January 2024, the Act's new offences of cyberflashing and the sharing and threatening to share intimate images including 'deepfake' pornography without consent came into effect. These are also priority illegal offences.

In addition, the Act requires Ofcom to produce guidance which summarises in one clear place measures that can be taken to tackle the abuse that women and girls disproportionately face online. Ofcom has begun developing this guidance and will consult on it this month.

I regularly meet with the Minster for the Future Digital Economy and Online Safety to discuss these matters, and my officials also engage regularly with DSIT on technology-facilitated VAWG.