Digital Safety: Children

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology if she will make a statement on the Government’s new policy announcements regarding children’s online safety.

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.

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for his response. Today and over the weekend, we have seen a Prime Minister who has spent months completely disengaged from the digital threats facing our young people suddenly experiencing an eleventh-hour damascene conversion. This sudden rush seems to be driven entirely by a looming ballot in Makerfield and a full-scale rebellion on his Back Benches. We Liberal Democrats will not criticise someone for reaching the correct position, even if it has taken them some time, but unfortunately this Government’s approach remains profoundly weak. It is shameful that the Prime Minister has to beg big tech to stop the proliferation of child sexual abuse imagery. He could and should make these changes anyway, so I appeal to the Minister and, if he is watching, the Prime Minister: just bring forward the legislation. Why is the Prime Minister still asking big tech to co-operate with him when it has constantly shown a total disregard for our children and young people? Broader proposals regarding a ban on harmful social media for teenagers were briefed to the newspapers over the weekend. The Liberal Democrats welcome these reports, and again urge Ministers to move quickly and decisively. Only through a smart film-style age-rating system can we protect children from harmful online content and algorithms. I am delighted that, in pursuit of a legacy, the Prime Minister seems to be borrowing more Liberal Democrat ideas wholesale—tiered age-rated access, ending infinite scrolling and tackling online gaming, not just social media—despite ordering his MPs and peers to vote repeatedly against many of those proposals during the passage of Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. However, today is not about who voted which way. I ask the Minister and, through him, the Prime Minister to remember the children who have lost their lives because of the harms they have encountered online, and those whose mental and physical health and education have been harmed by what they have been exposed to online. It is for those children that we must work together to bring about change. The Prime Minister must stop begging tech companies to protect our children and start acting himself—now.

It is astonishing to hear the Liberal Democrats mention a lack of action. On Grok, this Government stood up to the richest man in the world, stood him down and as a result secured protections for people in this country. We have acted on cyber-flashing and strangulation in pornography, banning nudification tools and criminalising nudification, and putting personal criminal liability on tech bosses if they do not act. I understand that the Liberal Democrats are seeking relevance by doing a strategy review, but their complaint is still too much.

I welcome this announcement, but is it not shocking that these companies have to be told what is unacceptable—that children should not be able to send and receive naked images? I ask the Minister: is this a tech problem or an issue of a lack of understanding and decency at the heart of these companies?

I thank my hon. Friend for a point well made. We have been consistently robust with tech companies on this question. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) for her leadership on this question. It is, to me, not a technology problem; we have the technology to act on this, and we will now deliver that in the real world.

I call the shadow Minister.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing this important urgent question, and suggest that the Minister perhaps shows a touch more humility on this important issue. His Majesty’s loyal Opposition would welcome measures to prevent under-16s from accessing harmful social media. After all, it has been our policy for some time, and we are glad that the Government are finally starting to catch up. This Government’s record of kicking the can down the road on children’s online safety contrasts starkly with the action taken by the Conservatives. The last Government brought in the Online Safety Act 2023, which is already cutting the number of children accessing porn. When it became obvious that more needed to be done, the Leader of the Opposition stood alongside parents and campaigners in calling for more. Only then did the Prime Minister leap swiftly into action—by announcing a four-month consultation on an issue so necessary and so blindingly obvious to the rest of us. Let us not forget that just six months ago, the Prime Minister was personally opposed to a ban. Now, with nothing else to show for his time in office, he has performed yet another U-turn and discovered that protecting children was his priority all along. This is not leadership; it is legacy hunting, and thin gruel after so many missed opportunities: the safer phones Bill, the amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, and my noble Friend Lord Nash’s amendment, which was opposed not once, not twice, but three times before the Government finally conceded. Labour constantly voted down the very protections it now says are required. So why now? Is it a genuine epiphany or is it the by-elections, or is it the rather inconvenient fact that a rival from the north has already staked out this ground, leaving the Prime Minister with little choice but to follow? Time and again, this Government have to be forced to do the right thing, and do it only after they have exhausted every other option. However, I do want this to work, so I ask the Secretary of State, via the Minister, three questions. Will these protections extend to existing devices or only to new handsets? If it is the latter, I am concerned that because 90% of 12-year-olds have hand-me-down phones, it will leave the most vulnerable children the least protected—

Order. I welcome the shadow Minister to the Dispatch Box, but he is supposed to have two minutes. He has now spoken for nearly three minutes, so I am sure that the Minister will have grasped what he had to say.

I first point out that in government, the Conservatives took seven years to pass a Bill and then found that law to be inadequate. That is why they are proposing all the things they are trying to do. This Government are listening to the people of Britain. I have been around listening to thousands of young people and families, and they say that they have a Government who are listening with humility and getting the action right on this central question. They say, on age assurance for adult content, that this Government have listened and acted robustly. They said so on Grok when the Opposition were missing in action. On the shadow Minister’s point about existing devices, I point out to him that a major provider has already applied age assurance at the device level for existing devices as well. We will learn the lessons and ensure that we are acting robustly in protecting young people.

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

I welcome the announcement today. The Education Committee recently took evidence from social media and gaming companies, which left every member of the Committee profoundly concerned. They downplayed the issues, denied the scale of harm and overplayed the magnitude and effectiveness of their own responses, so we have very little confidence that big tech knows what is required and has any motivation to do it. If, as seems likely, legislation is required after three months, can the Minister provide an assurance that the drafting of that legislation is already under way so that we do not lose any more time before our children are safe online?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that time is of the essence, and I can confirm that we are working closely with the Home Secretary and the Home Office to make sure that we are ready to go if the companies do not act in the way they need to.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) this urgent question. I am very disappointed that the Minister brought petty party politics into his response, because we have consistently proposed legislation that could have been implemented months ago. I speak on behalf of parents, teachers, carers and the children themselves in asking why the Prime Minister is pleading with tech companies about this. He is the Prime Minister; he should be leading the charge on blocking child sexual abuse material on smartphones. It is absolutely baffling that we have only reached this point now. We saw earlier this year the horrifying effects of Grok and other chatbots that are able to generate and share explicit content containing women and children at the request of online users. Children deserve far more than this dither and delay. The tech companies do not even deserve this three-month ultimatum. The Prime Minister should not be begging; he should be telling the big tech companies, “No to the proliferation of child sexual abuse imagery, and no to putting profit over the safety of children.”

Perhaps the hon. Member did not listen to the questioning about politics from his own party, but let me say two things. First, when I go around the country and speak to parents and young people, they say to me that the fact that 116,000 people have engaged with our consultation shows that this is a question on which the British public have strong views, but also that they have a British Government who are now putting those strong views directly into public policy action. On the question of pace, I simply point out to the hon. Member that we are moving at pace on this issue, and in particular that the Prime Minister has secured changes. When I went to Australia two weeks ago, they said to me, “Why was the UK the first place to secure changes on nudity blurring on operating systems for a major provider?” That is the result of the robust engagement we have had. The House is rightly questioning the pace of legislation. I am interested in the pace of outcome, and that is what we are delivering.

Social media companies have been conducting a social experiment on our children for too long and parents have been left trying to bear the burden. I thank the Minister very much for many meetings over many months. Can he tell us the criteria for deciding which platforms are going to be deemed safe or unsafe when determining what young people should have access to and at what age? In particular, can he reassure the House that this will not be left to parents, as YouTube, for example, is still pushing for?

I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a remarkable champion for young people and families on this question, and I have deeply valued her input and expertise. On her question about definition, I will not pre-empt the decisions that will result from the consultation, but her representations on harmful functionalities are very much top of mind for me. I assure her that it will not be parents who will bear the burden of enforcement; we will ensure that it is very much the platforms who are responsible for enforcement and for acting.

I call Father of the House.

Rather than trading party political points, can we all agree that these huge companies are rotting our children’s minds with addictive algorithms? While we know that banning things seldom works because people circumvent it and it leads to criminality, will the Minister and the Prime Minister go to these companies and say that they are in the last chance saloon—either they take decisive action, which we know they can do, or we will ban children from going on social media?

In characteristic fashion, the Father of the House has given wise counsel, and I will very much take it to heart in the way that the Government act.

It is clear that the sociopaths that run these platforms have no concern whatever for the welfare of anyone, but particularly our children, and that they will listen only if legislation is put before this House that makes them act and sends a clear message to them, so when are we going to do that?

I absolutely feel the weight of the point my hon. Friend makes about the inadequacy of what the tech companies have done so far. We are acting to make sure that young people in this country are secured from the harms they are experiencing. We have done that already by engaging robustly with the companies. As I said, we are already world-leading in that a major operating system has been reformed only in the United Kingdom to secure our children from harm. If that does not happen, we are working in parallel to make sure that the force of the law is felt as well.

It is a pity that the Minister has chosen attack as the best form of defence when so many Members across the Chamber have repeatedly raised their concerns about the issue over many years. Nevertheless, I will set aside his bombast in the hope that the implementation of these welcome changes is more thoughtful. Will part of the planned guidance for parents about screen usage, particularly by very young children, address parents’ screen usage in the presence of their young children? There is growing evidence that what is now called technoference is having a strong impact on the attachments that parents form with their children in the early months and years of life, and that that is being felt, certainly in Andover and elsewhere in my constituency, in primary schools when those children arrive. It would be helpful for parents to understand the impact that screen usage is having on them and on their attachment to their children.

The right hon. Member makes an incredibly thoughtful point about something that I have heard in anecdote when engaging with young families. I am conscious that we are running a large-scale media literacy campaign to support parents in their understanding of social media and its impact on them and their relationships with their kids. I will take his comments and ensure that they are fed into the guidance that is prepared.

The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) mentioned delay on this issue; perhaps she did not enjoy the same level of consultation that I and many of my Labour colleagues enjoyed with our constituents, which would be a shame. When I was in Ysgol Maes Garmon recently consulting with groups of parents, young people and students, I was surprised by how much commonality there was in what they asked for from this consultation, and it was my privilege to present what they said to the Minister last week. Does he agree with me, and indeed them, that it is the Government’s responsibility to call the tech companies to the table, so that there is an opportunity for parents, young people, Government and tech companies to all work together to protect our young people?

I thank my hon. Friend for her depth of engagement with young people and families in her constituency, which she has shown in her representations to me. I have heard consistently from young people, both here and abroad, that in the way that we have engaged on this question, we have made sure that we are doing politics differently: we are listening to the voices of young people and families and putting them at the heart of our decisions. She has done that in her community and we will do that across the country.

It is funny how the thought of the Prime Minister’s legacy has suddenly spurred him on to take action to protect our children, when he has resisted for so long. That being said, it is welcome that the Government are listening to the Liberal Democrats’ proposal for a harms-based approach and are considering restricting different social media sites at different ages, rather than imposing a blanket ban that will have unintended consequences and be unworkable. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will include addictiveness as a factor when determining age restrictions for different sites, platforms, games and features?

In the spirit that has been recommended by the House, I will ignore the political attack in the first part of the hon. Member’s question. Her point about addiction being an important vector of harm is very much on our minds as we think about the appropriate action.

Parents and teachers across North Warwickshire and Bedworth are worried sick that tech companies are wilfully allowing young people to share and access explicit content on their platforms and devices, and they are crying out for help. Does the Minister agree that it is high time the tech giants were held to account and forced into action to keep young people safe, and will the Government legislate without delay?

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend, who has been another remarkable champion: she has engaged with people in her community and represented those voices to me. We will ensure that those voices result in quick as well as deeply robust action.

The Minister is aware of my concern about the interaction between whatever the Government choose to ban and the workings of the Online Safety Act 2023 that we already have. I know the Minister recognises that that is an important interaction. Will he reassure me that the Government are fully aware that whether they ban access to social media entirely for children, or ban specific functionalities, we will need to ensure we do not undermine the duty of care that the OSA requires of social media platforms and others?

The right hon. and learned Member, with all his expertise and experience on this theme, makes an incredibly thoughtful point. He has made that point to me before, and I assure him it is on my mind to ensure that whatever we do, there is no levelling down of the force of the child safety duties under the Online Safety Act on the platforms—if anything, there is a levelling up.

To test Instagram’s claim that its teen accounts provide age-appropriate content, I set up a teen account as a 17-year-old boy called David. Without searching for anything, it took just 11 minutes of scrolling for David to be shown antisemitic conspiracy theories. Does the Minister agree that that is a disgrace? That is just one example of why it is time to stop asking social media companies to make their products safe and instead start requiring them to do so through regulation.

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important contribution. I brought together Jewish leaders to ensure that they got time with the companies to tell them about the depth of prejudice they experience online, and I was horrified when I heard a very similar set of anecdotes. I agree with her, and the Government will continue to ensure that we bring the full weight of regulation and policy to bear against the tech companies.

While we all welcome the fact that the Government are finally acting, I will point out to the Minister that not a single parent of the very many parents in Edinburgh West who have been in contact with me has requested that the Government ask the tech companies to behave differently. Every single one of them is concerned about their child—a child who is not the problem, but the victim of the tech companies. Is it not time to recognise that we made this mistake with the press? We left them to self-regulate over decades, and we ended up with Leveson and all sorts of problems, so why are we doing the same thing with the tech companies? We want change, so we should demand change and legislate for it, not let the people who created the problem decide when and how they will fix it.

I was visiting young people and families in Leith in Scotland just a few weeks ago. The thing I heard about more than anything else was the scale of harm that young people in those families were experiencing and a desire that we focus on doing the thing that stops that harm. That is why we will act robustly on the consultation we have done. In this instance, as I have mentioned before, we have already secured major changes; we will continue to do so and, in parallel, we will prepare legislation. I am interested in ensuring that young people in Edinburgh and across the country are protected from the horrific harms.

I welcome today’s decisive action. There have been the most appalling tragedies across the country, including in my constituency, where parents have lost children due to online harms. I know the Minister and the Prime Minister are working closely with parents, but may I urge the Minister to continue to do that, to carry out the type of engagement he has been carrying out, and to listen to the example from Australia? We look forward to hearing about more decisive action in the near future.

One of the big lessons of the Australian experience and beyond is that policy in this context is about not just short-term impact, but long-term norms. We will achieve that impact only if we bring parents and families with us. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has been a remarkable champion, particularly for bereaved families in his constituency who have experienced the utmost tragedy and, through it, have shown the most remarkable resilience.

While I welcome the Government’s belated intention to act in this area, does the Minister agree that there would be no need to wait for legislation if the social media companies actually started to enforce their existing age requirements for participating online? Many children under the age of 13 are able to create accounts and interact, despite the fact that that is completely against the terms of the platforms.

The right hon. Gentleman is totally right. Social media companies are already required to enforce the age assurance thresholds that they face under existing legislation. Where that is not happening, we continue to back Ofcom to ensure that it acts robustly and uses every single power it has. We will continue to review whether more is needed to ensure that that is robust action.

It has been more than 20 years since I was one of half a dozen people who co-wrote the world’s first code of practice to protect minors from age-inappropriate content. One of the biggest challenges we faced then was age verification. Will the Minister assure us that the technology and the devices are now there and in place so that under-18s can verify their age?

I have been very conscious of my hon. Friend’s expertise in this domain, but I am glad to hear of her pioneering experience on the question of age verification, too. We have taken this action because, through our engagement, we have made sure that the technology is now in a good place to robustly verify the age threshold of 18. That is why we want to see it extended, to make sure young people are secure online.

I have met victims of online sexual exploitation—it is an absolutely devastating crime that needs to be stopped. However, I fear that the Government’s plans are going to make things worse for everyone while taking little action to protect children online. The Australian model has not worked, and I fear that these Government plans will effectively open the door to state-mandated surveillance and digital ID for the entire population. We all want children to be safe online. Brilliant technology exists, such as parental control software and other excellent mechanisms; can we not use that technology more, rather than imposing an authoritarian ID database on the entire population?

That is a remarkable mischaracterisation of what the Government are looking to do, and I think the bulk of the House will feel the weight of what the right hon. and learned Member has just said. There is a straight choice here between backing parents and their families in a context where they are experiencing remarkable difficulties in keeping up with modern technology, and backing platforms. I am astonished that she has said that the Reform party is backing tech billionaires and platforms, not parents.

Unfortunately, I do not believe that the tech giants will do as they say and act in the right way on this issue. What consideration is the Minister giving to legislation, particularly to ensure that all platforms can meet the same standards, but also so that we can future-proof against new platforms?

I share my hon. Friend’s scepticism, so let me say two things. The first is that actions matter more than words, and we have already demonstrated that we can move in a pioneering way through the world-first action that we were able to take regarding a major operating system earlier this year—a move that has been praised by international partners. Turning to my hon. Friend’s point about law, as I mentioned at the outset, the Home Secretary, the Home Office and I are working closely together to prepare law in parallel, to ensure no stone is left unturned when it comes to securing our young people’s future.

I welcome the Government’s belated move on social media, but can the Minister clarify whether the technology prevents photos from being taken in the first place, or whether it scans people’s devices to prevent them sending photos? There are understandable privacy concerns. The Minister’s Department has also briefed the media that YouTube Kids will be excluded from any such action by the Government. Can he explain why?

On the hon. Member’s first question, while we will continue to look at the most effective ways of making this happen, the existing technology largely uses classifiers that ensure that, even at the point of taking the images, camera rendering can prevent those photos from being taken. On her second point, she will be aware that as a matter of course, I will not comment on briefings.

I have spoken to many young people in Aylesbury and the villages about this issue. One boy told me about the content he had seen, from terrorist beheadings to sexual abuse. He said to me, “Please don’t stop us communicating with our friends—we want to do that—but please stop us seeing this illegal and traumatising material, and please help us manage our addiction to these social media platforms.” Does the Minister agree that the tech companies cannot be trusted with our children’s safety or their futures, and that the Government have to step in now?

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend—she has also been a persistent campaigner on this question, and I have valued her input and the conversations I have had with her. Clearly, the experiment that we have allowed our young people to be a part of has not worked; we must bring it to an end, and we will do so robustly and imminently.

I welcome the proposals announced today, but I am concerned that they appear to be limited to nudity. Children who have been subjected to self-harm content or who have been encouraged to take their own lives, and those who have seen extreme violence, do not appear to be covered. My son George told me that without any attempt to find them, he was fed the images of Charlie Kirk’s murder pretty much as soon as it had happened, and I do not see anything in this change to prevent something like that from happening again. Can the Minister confirm that it will include measures on extreme violence, as well as on those awful sites that are causing children to hurt themselves?

It is valuable that the hon. Member has raised those particular harms. I assure her that extreme violence and self-harm content of the sort she has described are already significant and priority offences under the Online Safety Act. Platforms have liability for making sure that that sort of content is proactively rooted out, and where that is not happening, the regulator has the powers it needs to act against it and will continue to do so. The particular change we are considering is about a very specific classifier of nudity—it is much harder to build classifiers for particular types of violence. However, I will of course continue to work with the hon. Member, and any other Members who are interested, on what more we can do.