Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment his Department has made of the role of social media platforms in facilitating (a) paid-to-party and (b) yachting modelling schemes; and what steps he is taking with the Secretary of State for the Home Department to prevent the recruitment of young women for exploitative purposes through such schemes.

The Government continually assesses online service providers’ duties to tackle harmful content and activity on their services, including content relating to sexual exploitation. Under the Online Safety Act, social media platforms need to assess the risk of their services being used to facilitate several kinds of priority illegal harms. These include sexual exploitation. Where there is a risk, platforms need to take steps to mitigate it. Ofcom is the regulator for this regime. It sets out steps that providers can take in codes of practice. This includes steps relating to the design and operation of their services, as well as content moderation steps.