Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans he has to strengthen legislation against (a) cyberbullying and (b) online abuse.

The government is committed to making the UK the safest place in the world to go online. In April 2019, the government published the Online Harms White Paper, which set out plans to introduce world-leading legislation to make companies more responsible for their users’ safety online. We will establish in law a new duty of care on companies towards their users which will be overseen by an independent regulator.

We published the initial government response in February, which set out the direction of travel, and will publish the full government response to the Online Harms White Paper later this year. We will follow the full government response with legislation, which will be ready early next year.