Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the implications of the proposed UN cybercrime treaty for (a) the UK’s child‑protection framework and (b) the implementation of legislation preventing registered sex offenders from changing identity without detection.

Nothing is more important than keeping children safe - inside and outside the home, and online.

The government is firmly committed to tackling all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse and wider reforms to the child protection system to ensure children are safeguarded effectively from wider harms. The UN Cybercrime Convention references the global imperative for action on these crucial issues.

With respect to the UK’s child protection framework, our national Families First Partnership programme is rolling out reforms to Family Help, multi-agency child protection and family group decision making that will make a real difference to children and families. Government has confirmed £2.4 billion funding for the programme over the next three years.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act marks the biggest overhaul of children’s social care in a generation. It includes a duty on safeguarding partners to establish new multi-agency child protection teams in every local authority area in England. Multi-agency child protection teams will bring a clear, sharp focus to child protection concerns, identify and respond to all types of significant harm - including online - and advise and guide their local Family Help systems.

Regarding registered sex offenders, the system for managing sex offenders and those that pose a risk of sexual harm is a crucial part of preventing sexual violence and delivering our mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

Registered sex offenders are required to notify the police of any change of name. Failure to comply with this is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. Through the Crime and Policing Act we are strengthening the approach by introducing measures which will enable the police to serve a notice on offenders who pose a risk in relation to name change, which requires them to seek authorisation before applying to change their name on identity documents. The measures will also require all RSOs to notify the police of an intended change of name in advance of using it.

These measures will be reinforced by operational safeguards to detect unauthorised name changes.