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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether the filters adopted by mobile network operators based on British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) guidelines, and regulated by the BBFC, could be supported and promoted as a best practice solution to protect children from adult content online.

Protecting children is at the heart of our online harms agenda, and wider government priorities. The government has worked hard to ensure content is filtered in public places where children are likely to be, as well as at home.

The BBFC provides an independent framework for mobile network operators and defines content that is unsuitable for customers under the age of 18 based on their Classification Guidelines for film and video. Like current device level filters, and the filters used by every school in the country, filter software is provided to Internet Service Providers by well-established web filtering companies. There are no plans to require other providers of family friendly filters to use the BBFC’s framework.

Our forthcoming online harms proposals will deliver a higher level of protection for children than for the typical adult user. We expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate adult content and to protect them from other harms.