Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to enact new laws designed to protect children who are at risk of sex abuse online.

Nothing is more important than the safety of our children. The UK Government is committed to stamping out all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse and continuing to be a global leader in tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Last year we announced an additional £30 million to safeguard children from child sexual exploitation and abuse, both at home and online. This includes £9.86 million to the National Crime Agency (NCA) to improve its ability to tackle perpetrators seeking to offend against children via the Dark Web and £3.36 million to further improve our understanding and tackle all aspects of the threat.

Recognising the unprecedented challenge posed by the impact of COVID-19 and restrictions to prevent its spread, the Prime Minister hosted a cross-Government Hidden Harms Virtual Summit, to bring together key decisions makers and agree actions to combat hidden crimes, including child sexual abuse. We have also worked across government, with law enforcement and the third sector to provide information and advice about child sexual exploitation and abuse to schools, parents, carers and children and to ensure that victims and survivors continue to have access to the greatest possible support.

For example through the NCA’s #OnlineSafetyAtHome campaign and their ThinkUKnow resources, as well as published guidance on GOV.UK. We have also galvanised industry and international partners to raise awareness of online safety in response to COVID-19 and formally launched the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.

In the Queen’s Speech in December 2019, the Government committed to develop legislation to improve internet safety for all. This will build on the proposals in the Online Harms White Paper, published in April 2019 which set out our plans for world-leading legislation to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online.

We intend to establish in law a new duty of care on companies towards their users, overseen by an independent regulator. The duty of care will require companies to put in place appropriate systems to deal with harmful content on their services and keep users safe. Companies will be required to take particularly robust action on tackling online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

On 12 February the Government published an initial response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation. We are working on a full Government response, which will be published shortly. This will be released alongside an interim code of practice to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse. This code will set out steps that companies can take to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse on a voluntary basis, ahead of any regulatory system introduced following the proposals in the Online Harms White Paper.