Digital Safety: Children

Commons Urgent Question

The following Answer to an Urgent Question was given in the House of Commons on Monday 8 June.

“The Prime Minister has announced that this Government will take decisive action to strengthen children’s online safety, including new expectations on technology companies to introduce crucial safety measures on children’s phones. The Government are clear that children are facing unacceptable levels of sexual harm online, including grooming, sextortion and coercion into sharing intimate images. A single image can trap a child in a cycle of abuse—something I have personally heard about from young people, families and civil society. I hold them in my mind and heart as we take action to stop this harm at source.

To address this issue, we have set out expectations that technology companies introduce device-level protections for children. The protections will prevent children from taking, sharing or viewing nude imagery across all core device functionalities, including camera, messaging apps, search functions and file sharing. The protections are built directly into the operating system.

We recognise that companies have already developed and implemented nudity detection on devices, and we want to work collaboratively with industry to build solutions and call on companies to take action within three months. We have been clear that if industry does not meet our high expectations, we will not hesitate to legislate. Furthermore, the Government’s Growing Up in the Online World consultation closed on 26 May. The Government are reviewing the responses and will provide an update in the coming weeks”.

We recognise that companies have already developed and implemented nudity detection on devices, and we want to work collaboratively with industry to build solutions and call on companies to take action within three months. We have been clear that if industry does not meet our high expectations, we will not hesitate to legislate. Furthermore, the Government’s Growing Up in the Online World consultation closed on 26 May. The Government are reviewing the responses and will provide an update in the coming weeks”.

My Lords, there is total agreement across the House that children must be protected from harms online. Noble Lords will recall that amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Nash on the impact of social media on children’s well-being were repeatedly resisted by the Government. We therefore welcome the Government’s recognition that further action is needed.

The Government have said that industry has three months to act and that legislation will follow if companies fail to do so. If Ministers are satisfied that these protections are so necessary, why have they chosen to rely on expectations from tech companies rather than legislating directly now? The proposals also appear to involve age assurance, device-level protections and enforcement obligations. What assessment has been made of the risk that younger users will simply remain on old operating systems, and of the practical challenges of implementing these measures across different manufacturers? The Government have also suggested that some educational platforms may be treated differently. What criteria will be used to determine any such exemptions?

Finally, can the Minister assure the House that, if the industry fails to meet the Government’s expectations within the three-month period, the necessary legislation will be ready to proceed without further delay?

I agree with the noble Lord that there is unanimity on the importance of tackling child sexual abuse online and taking measures to further restrict that and make it harder. As my noble friend Lord Hanson made clear during the passage of the Act, device-level nudity detection can play an important role in preventing children taking, sharing or viewing nude imagery.

This measure really looks at how to prevent those images getting online. That is a very important part of the strategy; it stops harm before it happens, in addition to the law enforcement activity that must happen in parallel. It applies to both old and new smartphones and tablets, and we expect tech companies to set up controls so that, if a parent hands down a phone, for example, all they have to do is reset it to enact this operating-level facility.

In respect of making sure that legislation is ready, as the Minister for Online Safety said in the other place yesterday, he is working carefully and closely in parallel with the Home Office to draw up legislation should that be needed, should the protections not be put in place at scale as expected.

My Lords, I congratulate my honourable friend Munira Wilson on trying to extract some clarity from the Government after the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday before almost any of us arrived at London Tech Week. Sadly, it did not contain all of what was in the weekend media briefings. On these Benches, the Liberal Democrats have long called for a film-style harms-based age-rating system, with addictiveness as a central criterion, rather than a blanket ban on user-to-user services. Minister Narayan in the Commons subsequently indicated yesterday that addictiveness is

“very much on our minds”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/6/26; col. 31.]

Can the Minister confirm that the forthcoming consultation response will explicitly adopt addictive design, including infinite scroll, autoplay and recommender algorithms as a harm category, triggering age-based platform restrictions, rather than relying solely on content type or constituting a blanket ban? Can she confirm that this will be enshrined in legislation, rather than a voluntary expectation of tech platforms?

The consultation to which the noble Lord refers includes looking at features and functionalities; it looks at addictive algorithms, screen time and the impact on children’s health. The consultation has closed. There were many responses, and we are taking time to make sure that we have looked carefully at them—and, in addition to those responses, at the conversations that have gone on. I cannot pre-empt the Government’s response, which will come soon, but all the matters I have just mentioned were within the consultation for discussion.

My Lords, I declare an interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. Can the Minister tell us how the Government intend to safeguard against the obvious risks of requiring technology companies such as Apple to scan private messages before they are sent or received—also known, I believe, as client-side scanning? History teaches us that mass surveillance and censorship capabilities, however well intentioned, never remain narrowly scoped, whether in the hands of the state or private companies.

The particular expectation that has been set for industry is in relation to nudity detection, and that technology has advanced substantially. Apple has rolled out device-level age assurance too. This is not about threats to privacy; it is about keeping children safe online. An adult will be able to switch it off if they want to, if they are able to verify that they are over 18. This measure is about keeping children safe. It is about implementing nudity-detection technology on children’s phones.

My Lords, it is great that the Prime Minister finally met bereaved parents and acted upon some of their concerns, but a social media ban or restriction is entirely meaningless if the regulator lacks statutory teeth, which has been the fatal flaw of previous legislation. We need an enforceable regime that remains democratically accountable to Parliament, not closed-door consultations or industry-captured advisory panels to quietly water down rules over time. What steps are the Government taking to put in place robust regulations—for example, to prevent children using VPNs to get around age restrictions—close enforcement gaps and stop technology platforms shifting addictive features or constantly adapting their algorithms’ design to bypass regulations?

The noble Baroness is right to highlight the importance of the effectiveness of any regime; that is the central focus of what we are trying to do to keep children safe online. We need a regime that can be implemented, that can be navigated well by young people and their parents, and that is able to be communicated. That is one of the reasons we continue to support parents in having conversations with young people. The question about Ofcom’s enforcement powers is very important. We have made clear to Ofcom that it has the backing of the Government to take action. We have funded Ofcom so that it can take action and it has already launched 100 investigations and issued many millions of pounds in fines. That is the kind of regime we need. We need a regime that is effective and enforced.

My Lords, our debates around the issue of child safety in your Lordships’ House tend to highlight a lack of confidence that the big tech companies will do the right thing. They could make their products safe by design but they do not. If legislation is required after three months, can my noble friend the Minister assure the House that the legislation will be drafted and ready to go if, as many of us suspect, the companies do not act in the way that we want them to?

My noble friend is right to highlight the high expectations we have for this to be rolled out. We have made it very clear that, if those high expectations for the rollout at scale of this nudity-detection technology for children’s devices does not happen, we will legislate. The Minister for Online Safety yesterday confirmed to the other place that he is working closely with the Home Office to draw up this legislation in parallel, so that we can act should that be necessary.

I declare my interest as a recently retired chairman of Ofcom. It is very easy to criticise the Online Safety Act and to criticise the regulator, and it is even easier to criticise the Government, but does the Minister agree with me that the force of the Online Safety Act and the work that Ofcom and indeed the Government have done in persuading tech companies to change their behaviour is not all negative? Indeed, this week, X voluntarily agreed to tighten up its procedures in respect of illegal hate and terror content, which Ofcom has scrutinised and agreed. So there are some successes. We are making some progress in a very difficult area.

The noble Lord is right: there has been progress in implementing the Online Safety Act since the illegal content code and the children’s code came out. As I mentioned, there have been 100 investigations into companies. There is also the very important aspect of the communication with the wider public, and indeed with tech companies, on what action is expected and at what speed.