Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of France and Germany introducing compulsory age verification for adult content online.

The threat posed by online harms is global. The UK, France, Germany and the EU have similar objectives in our efforts to protect our citizens, including children. We work closely with France and Germany in the G7 and were pleased to see the agreement of Internet Safety Principles under our Presidency of the G7 in 2021. We are watching the development of the EU Digital Services Act with interest.

Our engagement with international partners on online harms includes the key issues of child online safety and the use of age verification. Protecting children was one of the agreed G7 Internet Safety Principles.

The strongest protections in the Online Safety Bill will be for children. Age assurance technologies, including age verification solutions, are a valuable child safety tool and will play an important role in supporting the Bill. Ofcom will take a robust approach to sites that pose the highest risk of harm to children, including sites hosting online pornography. This may include recommending the use of age verification technologies to prevent children from accessing pornography content.