Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps she is taking to improve the safety of young people online in North East Somerset and Hanham.

Protecting children from harm online is a priority for the Secretary of State. That is why the Secretary of State launched the consultation ‘Growing up in an Online World’ on how to go further to protect children and has committed to respond by the Summer. This builds on action to designate encouraging self-harm as a priority offence under the Online Safety Act, close loopholes and bring AI chatbots into scope of the Act, criminalise AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material; and criminalise people who write guides on how to exploit legitimate AI tools to generate child sexual abuse.