Internet: Safety

(asked on 15th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of risk of online harm as more people spend time online during the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
James Brokenshire Portrait
James Brokenshire
This question was answered on 19th June 2020

We know that people are spending more time online during this period and this can put them at greater risk of experiencing online harm. We have been working closely with technology companies, civil society and academia to understand and respond to the risks presented during this period. Although it is too early to confidently analyse patterns from this period, there is universal concern about keeping children safe online.

HMG published new guidance on April 23rd to help all users to stay safe online during the coronavirus outbreak. It includes detailed advice on protecting personal data, cyber security and disinformation. It also provides additional guidance for parents on online safety issues affecting children such as child sexual abuse, exposure to age-inappropriate content and cyberbullying. In addition, the NCA has published information on how to avoid fraud and scams linked to Covid-19.

This Government is committed to delivering legislation to tackle online harms. This will introduce a statutory duty of care on companies to take steps to protect their users from harm, including child sexual exploitation and abuse. We are currently working swiftly to prepare a full Government response, which we will publish later this year. This will include more detailed proposals on online harms regulation and will be released alongside interim voluntary codes of practice on tackling online terrorist and child sexual exploitation and abuse content and activity. We will follow the full Government response by introducing Online Harms legislation in this session.

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