Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to protect children in private messaging spaces from computer-generated child sexual abuse material.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

Under the Online Safety Act, all regulated services must implement proportionate safety measures across all spaces. Platform design cannot be used as an excuse to avoid detection and reporting obligations.

Section 121 of the Online Safety Act allows Ofcom to issue ‘Technology Notices’, requiring in scope platforms to use their best endeavours to develop or adopt accredited proactive technology to detect child sexual abuse and exploitation in private messaging spaces.

The Government expects Ofcom to exercise its powers under Section 121 of the Online Safety Act where needed.

As part of the work to implement this, Ofcom ran a consultation on minimum standards of accuracy for accredited technology and draft guidance for providers, which closed in March 2025. Ofcom will publish their advice to the Government by April 2026.

The Crime and Policing Bill further strengthens protections for children against computer-generated abuse by:

• criminalising AI Child Sexual Abuse Material models,
• outlawing AI ‘paedophile manuals’, and
• introducing an AI model testing defence to prevent abuse at source.

We will also ban those abhorrent tools which are designed to generate non-consensual intimate images. Anyone who designs or supplies these vile tools will face time in prison.

Privacy and public safety are not mutually exclusive: we can, and must, have both.

Found: Letter from Lord Carlile of Berriew, Chair of the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee to Alex Norris

Found: Security & Asylum 2 Marsham Street London SW1P 4DF www.gov.uk/home-office Lord Carlile of Berriew