Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, if he will make an assessment of (a) trends in the level of online abuse of sport people and (b) the effectiveness of online safety provisions.

The government is extremely concerned by the online abuse of sportspeople and will continue working with the sports sector to tackle this.

The Online Safety Act strengthens protections for public figures online. Harassment and hate crime are priority offences under the Act, requiring companies to proactively search for, remove and limit users’ exposure to such content and activity.

DSIT is working with Ofcom to develop a longer-term monitoring and evaluation framework to assess the Act’s impact, including assessing relevant data and crime statistics.