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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to prevent children accessing pornography online now that they do not intend to introduce age verification for pornographic websites.

Protecting children is at the heart of our online harms agenda and is key to wider government priorities. The government published the Online Harms White Paper in April this year which proposed the establishment of a duty of care on companies to improve online safety, overseen by an independent regulator with strong enforcement powers to deal with non-compliance.

The White Paper sets out our expectation that companies should protect children from inappropriate content, including pornography, and we will produce guidance for companies to keep children safe online, ahead of the new regulatory framework.

We are committed to the UK becoming a world-leader in the development of online safety technology and expect age verification to continue to be a tool used by companies to keep children safe online.