Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Collins Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Foxcroft]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on all the work he is doing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his local festivals. I would be more than happy to meet with him to discuss it further.

[Tom Collins (Worcester) (Lab)]

10. What steps her Department is taking to improve online safety for children.

[The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Online Safety (Ian Murray)]

Keeping children safe online is a top priority for this Department and the Government. That is why we are taking urgent steps to clean up our online spaces, including by raising the age limit for social media to 16, dealing with the risks of children livestreaming themselves, stopping unknown adults from communicating with children through online services, including gaming, and switching off harmful features for 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds. We will also prevent under-18s from accessing chatbots that offer sexualised content. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to continue these discussions.

[Tom Collins]

I am grateful to the Minister for his Department’s open initial response to the product approach, which would see digital products required to meet safety standards, just like every other product marketed in the UK. The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade has asked the Law Commission to look at this approach from a product liability perspective, and they are consulting on that now. Will the Minister and the Secretary of State work with their counterparts in that Department to explore treating digital products as products under the law?

[Ian Murray]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. He has recently launched a white paper on digital product safety, arguing that platforms, AI and social media should be subject to the same rigorous product safety frameworks as physical goods to protect the public without stifling innovation, and it looks at this from a hazards perspective rather than a harms perspective. It is an incredibly interesting piece of work. It is something that we are actively looking at, and platforms and social media companies should be looking at it to ensure that their products are safe by design for children.