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

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the report of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Technology use and the mental health of children and young people, published in January 2020, what plans he has for a consultation on a voluntary harm reporting scheme for online platforms, similar to the MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme for monitoring the harms of medical products.

The government is developing world-leading plans to make the UK the safest place to be online. The Online Harms White Paper set out proposals to establish a statutory duty of care on online companies, overseen by an independent regulator with tough enforcement powers, to hold them to account. The regulator will have the power to require transparency reports from companies outlining what they are doing to protect people online, such as the processes to report content. These reports will be published so parents and children can make informed decisions about their internet use.