Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the safety of children online, including measures to combat cyberbullying, online grooming, and exposure to harmful content.

The strongest protections in the Online Safety Bill are for children. The Bill will require all services in scope to protect their users from illegal content. This includes all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse, including grooming, which have been designated as priority offences under the Bill. This means all in scope companies must take proactive, preventative measures to limit people’s exposure to this content and criminal behaviour.

In addition, where content is harmful to children but falls below the criminal threshold, service providers which are likely to be accessed by children will have to take action to protect children from encountering it. This includes cyberbullying, pornography and content which promotes suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. These duties extend to ensuring that systems for targeting content to children, such as the use of algorithms, and other features and functionalities on the service such as live streaming and private messaging, protect children from harmful material.