Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 21 July 2020 to Question 75251 on pornography, what plans he has to publish the Government's analysis of pornography sites.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Details of how the online harms legislation will apply to pornography sites, will be published later this year in the Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that OpenReach connect properties and businesses in the Hassall Parish Council area that are yet to have fibre connections installed.
Answered by Matt Warman
The Connecting Cheshire programme, which covers Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton and Warrington Borough Councils, have launched a new procurement
exercise at the end of June, under the BDUK Superfast Programme banner. The available funding through this procurement is £4.5m targeting the remaining premises within the area that are currently without a superfast broadband connection. Until the procurement activity is concluded in the Autumn it isn't possible to confirm which supplier could be awarded a contract or which premises will benefit from this activity.
Hassall Parish Council and other rural areas can benefit from the Rural Gigabit Connectivity Programme. The Government wants to ensure nationwide coverage of gigabit capable broadband as soon as possible. Many addresses in the Hassall Parish Council may be eligible for the Rural Gigabit Voucher Scheme, which is delivered by many suppliers in the area, including Openreach.
The Government has also announced that it will invest a further £5 billion to provide gigabit-capable networks in the hardest to parts of the UK. This funding will focus on connecting more rural and remote areas but, alongside this, the Government is also taking action to reduce the barriers to deployment, and make it cheaper and easier for operators, including BT Openreach, to roll out broadband commercially.
Finally, some addresses may be eligible to request an improved connection under the Universal Service Obligation. BT is the designated Universal Service Provider for all areas
the UK, apart from Hull. The USO provides every UK household with the legal right to request a broadband connection that provides download speeds of at least 10Mbps and an upload speed of at least 1Mbps, where this is not already available or is not due to be made available within a year through a publicly funded intervention.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions the Government had with parents before reaching its decision to delay the introduction of statutory age verification for pornographic website by bringing forward new legislative proposals rather than by implementing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The government is committed to ensuring children are protected from accessing inappropriate content online. As we announced on 16 October last year, the government has decided that the policy objective of protecting children online from age inappropriate content can be best delivered through our wider online harms proposals. Our Online Harms proposals will deliver a higher level of protection for children and we expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate content such as online pornography. This approach will achieve a more consistent and comprehensive approach to harmful content across different sites and go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites.
We will publish a Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation later this year. We will follow the full Government Response with legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
The British Board of Film Classification, while designated as the age verification regulator under the Digital Economy Act, commissioned research on children’s access to pornographic content online. The research, published in early 2020, explored young people’s interactions with, and attitudes towards, online pornography and age verification. We will continue to develop our evidence base on online harms ahead of the implementation of the new online harms regulatory framework.
As a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures we expect more people, including children, to be spending more time online. Although it is too early to confidently analyse patterns from this period, there is universal concern about child online safety. We are working closely with technology companies, law enforcement and civil society to monitor trends, and to support users to understand and manage the risks and benefits of being online during this period.
Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with a wide range of stakeholders, including children’s charities, on a variety of issues. We engaged with a number of children’s charities on our proposals to protect children through the new online harms regulatory framework, as part of our wider public consultation on the Online Harms White Paper last year. Details of Ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, on how many occasions the Government has received representations from people in other jurisdictions wanting to learn about the age verification model presented by Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 to date.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The government is committed to ensuring children are protected from accessing inappropriate content online. As we announced on 16 October last year, the government has decided that the policy objective of protecting children online from age inappropriate content can be best delivered through our wider online harms proposals. Our Online Harms proposals will deliver a higher level of protection for children and we expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate content such as online pornography. This approach will achieve a more consistent and comprehensive approach to harmful content across different sites and go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites.
We will publish a Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation later this year. We will follow the full Government Response with legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
The British Board of Film Classification, while designated as the age verification regulator under the Digital Economy Act, commissioned research on children’s access to pornographic content online. The research, published in early 2020, explored young people’s interactions with, and attitudes towards, online pornography and age verification. We will continue to develop our evidence base on online harms ahead of the implementation of the new online harms regulatory framework.
As a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures we expect more people, including children, to be spending more time online. Although it is too early to confidently analyse patterns from this period, there is universal concern about child online safety. We are working closely with technology companies, law enforcement and civil society to monitor trends, and to support users to understand and manage the risks and benefits of being online during this period.
Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with a wide range of stakeholders, including children’s charities, on a variety of issues. We engaged with a number of children’s charities on our proposals to protect children through the new online harms regulatory framework, as part of our wider public consultation on the Online Harms White Paper last year. Details of Ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether online pornography operators will fall within the requirement to provide a duty of care as proposed in the Online Harms White Paper Initial Consultation Response.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Our Online Harms proposals will go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites and provide a higher level of protection for children. Our new approach will include social media companies and all sites on which there is user-generated content, including major pornography sites.
We published the Online Harms Initial Consultation Response in February this year. It was clear that the duty of care would ‘apply to companies that provide services or use functionality on their websites which facilitate the sharing of user generated content or user interactions’. Where pornography sites have such functionalities (including video and image sharing, commenting and live streaming) they will be subject to the duty of care. Our analysis indicates that where commercial pornography sites do not enable user-generated functionalities, they instead usually require payment, providing a deterrent for children from accessing them.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment the Government has made of the effect on child safety in respect of exposure to pornographic websites of its decision to delay the introduction of statutory age verification for such websites by bringing forward further legislation rather than implementing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The government is committed to ensuring children are protected from accessing inappropriate content online. As we announced on 16 October last year, the government has decided that the policy objective of protecting children online from age inappropriate content can be best delivered through our wider online harms proposals. Our Online Harms proposals will deliver a higher level of protection for children and we expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate content such as online pornography. This approach will achieve a more consistent and comprehensive approach to harmful content across different sites and go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites.
We will publish a Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation later this year. We will follow the full Government Response with legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
The British Board of Film Classification, while designated as the age verification regulator under the Digital Economy Act, commissioned research on children’s access to pornographic content online. The research, published in early 2020, explored young people’s interactions with, and attitudes towards, online pornography and age verification. We will continue to develop our evidence base on online harms ahead of the implementation of the new online harms regulatory framework.
As a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures we expect more people, including children, to be spending more time online. Although it is too early to confidently analyse patterns from this period, there is universal concern about child online safety. We are working closely with technology companies, law enforcement and civil society to monitor trends, and to support users to understand and manage the risks and benefits of being online during this period.
Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with a wide range of stakeholders, including children’s charities, on a variety of issues. We engaged with a number of children’s charities on our proposals to protect children through the new online harms regulatory framework, as part of our wider public consultation on the Online Harms White Paper last year. Details of Ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment the Government made of the (a) potential number of additional viewing incidences by children in of online pornography and (b) effect on child wellbeing of such viewing in its decision to delay the requirement for statutory age verification checks by bringing forward new legislative proposals rather than implementing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The government is committed to ensuring children are protected from accessing inappropriate content online. As we announced on 16 October last year, the government has decided that the policy objective of protecting children online from age inappropriate content can be best delivered through our wider online harms proposals. Our Online Harms proposals will deliver a higher level of protection for children and we expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate content such as online pornography. This approach will achieve a more consistent and comprehensive approach to harmful content across different sites and go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites.
We will publish a Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation later this year. We will follow the full Government Response with legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
The British Board of Film Classification, while designated as the age verification regulator under the Digital Economy Act, commissioned research on children’s access to pornographic content online. The research, published in early 2020, explored young people’s interactions with, and attitudes towards, online pornography and age verification. We will continue to develop our evidence base on online harms ahead of the implementation of the new online harms regulatory framework.
As a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures we expect more people, including children, to be spending more time online. Although it is too early to confidently analyse patterns from this period, there is universal concern about child online safety. We are working closely with technology companies, law enforcement and civil society to monitor trends, and to support users to understand and manage the risks and benefits of being online during this period.
Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with a wide range of stakeholders, including children’s charities, on a variety of issues. We engaged with a number of children’s charities on our proposals to protect children through the new online harms regulatory framework, as part of our wider public consultation on the Online Harms White Paper last year. Details of Ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment the Government make of the child safety implications of delaying the provision of statutory age verification by bringing forward new legislative proposals rather than implementing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The government is committed to ensuring children are protected from accessing inappropriate content online. As we announced on 16 October last year, the government has decided that the policy objective of protecting children online from age inappropriate content can be best delivered through our wider online harms proposals. Our Online Harms proposals will deliver a higher level of protection for children and we expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate content such as online pornography. This approach will achieve a more consistent and comprehensive approach to harmful content across different sites and go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites.
We will publish a Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation later this year. We will follow the full Government Response with legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
The British Board of Film Classification, while designated as the age verification regulator under the Digital Economy Act, commissioned research on children’s access to pornographic content online. The research, published in early 2020, explored young people’s interactions with, and attitudes towards, online pornography and age verification. We will continue to develop our evidence base on online harms ahead of the implementation of the new online harms regulatory framework.
As a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures we expect more people, including children, to be spending more time online. Although it is too early to confidently analyse patterns from this period, there is universal concern about child online safety. We are working closely with technology companies, law enforcement and civil society to monitor trends, and to support users to understand and manage the risks and benefits of being online during this period.
Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with a wide range of stakeholders, including children’s charities, on a variety of issues. We engaged with a number of children’s charities on our proposals to protect children through the new online harms regulatory framework, as part of our wider public consultation on the Online Harms White Paper last year. Details of Ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of the length of time it will take to introduce age verification for pornographic websites through an alternative option instead of implementing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The government is committed to ensuring children are protected from accessing inappropriate content online. As we announced on 16 October last year, the government has decided that the policy objective of protecting children online from age inappropriate content can be best delivered through our wider online harms proposals. Our Online Harms proposals will deliver a higher level of protection for children and we expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate content such as online pornography. This approach will achieve a more consistent and comprehensive approach to harmful content across different sites and go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites.
We will publish a Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation later this year. We will follow the full Government Response with legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
The British Board of Film Classification, while designated as the age verification regulator under the Digital Economy Act, commissioned research on children’s access to pornographic content online. The research, published in early 2020, explored young people’s interactions with, and attitudes towards, online pornography and age verification. We will continue to develop our evidence base on online harms ahead of the implementation of the new online harms regulatory framework.
As a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures we expect more people, including children, to be spending more time online. Although it is too early to confidently analyse patterns from this period, there is universal concern about child online safety. We are working closely with technology companies, law enforcement and civil society to monitor trends, and to support users to understand and manage the risks and benefits of being online during this period.
Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with a wide range of stakeholders, including children’s charities, on a variety of issues. We engaged with a number of children’s charities on our proposals to protect children through the new online harms regulatory framework, as part of our wider public consultation on the Online Harms White Paper last year. Details of Ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions he had with children's charities ahead of the decision to delay the introduction of statutory age verification for pornographic websites by bringing forward new legislative proposals rather than implementing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The government is committed to ensuring children are protected from accessing inappropriate content online. As we announced on 16 October last year, the government has decided that the policy objective of protecting children online from age inappropriate content can be best delivered through our wider online harms proposals. Our Online Harms proposals will deliver a higher level of protection for children and we expect companies to use a proportionate range of tools, including age assurance and age verification technologies, to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate content such as online pornography. This approach will achieve a more consistent and comprehensive approach to harmful content across different sites and go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites.
We will publish a Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation later this year. We will follow the full Government Response with legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
The British Board of Film Classification, while designated as the age verification regulator under the Digital Economy Act, commissioned research on children’s access to pornographic content online. The research, published in early 2020, explored young people’s interactions with, and attitudes towards, online pornography and age verification. We will continue to develop our evidence base on online harms ahead of the implementation of the new online harms regulatory framework.
As a result of Covid-19 lockdown measures we expect more people, including children, to be spending more time online. Although it is too early to confidently analyse patterns from this period, there is universal concern about child online safety. We are working closely with technology companies, law enforcement and civil society to monitor trends, and to support users to understand and manage the risks and benefits of being online during this period.
Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with a wide range of stakeholders, including children’s charities, on a variety of issues. We engaged with a number of children’s charities on our proposals to protect children through the new online harms regulatory framework, as part of our wider public consultation on the Online Harms White Paper last year. Details of Ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.