Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackl livestreamed child sexual abuse being accessed in the UK.

The Government is unequivocal in its commitment to protecting children from all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse. This includes ensuring that we are working to combat livestreamed abuse and ensuring that offenders cannot use technology to harm children with impunity.

The Home Office continues to invest in a network of Undercover Online Officers (UCOLs) in Regional Organised Crime Units. UCOLs deploy online to identify and pursue offenders seeking to sexually exploit children, including those who consume and facilitate livestreaming of child sexual abuse. Home Office funding supports the National Crime Agency to use its unique capabilities to disrupt high harm offenders, including those based overseas who seek to livestream abuse.

The UK is leading the way in supporting the building and developing thematic knowledge and operational capabilities of other international law enforcement agencies to work together to pursue offenders and safeguard children. In addition, the NCA is leading a number of initiatives with industry and engagement with the financial sector, to specifically prevent and detect livestreaming offending. This includes work to build on the UK-supported report by the Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) ‘Detecting, Disrupting and Investigating Online Child Sexual Exploitation’.

The Online Safety Act introduces world-leading protections for children. It places robust duties on tech companies to prevent and swiftly remove illegal content, including child sexual abuse material, and to take proactive steps to protect children from harm. Ofcom, as the regulator, will have strong enforcement powers to ensure compliance.

We also recognise the importance of device-level protections in preventing livestreaming abuse and we support the development and deployment of safety technologies that can help prevent abuse before it happens. This includes exploring the role of on-device tools that can detect and disrupt livestreamed abuse and other image-based harms, while respecting users’ privacy and maintaining end-to-end encryption.

The Government continues to work closely with law enforcement, industry, and child protection experts to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of efforts to tackle online child sexual abuse.