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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of the Online Safety Bill on the availability of online content that is harmful to children.

The Online Safety Bill will deliver world-leading protections for children from harmful content and activity online. All companies that are in scope will need to take robust steps to protect children from illegal content and activity, such as content assisting suicide, on their services.

In addition, companies that have services which are likely to be accessed by children will be required to protect children from being exposed to harmful content or activity including bullying and pornography. This includes ensuring that systems for targeting content to children, such as the use of algorithms, and other features and functionalities on the service such as live streaming and private messaging, protect children from harmful material. For services that pose a very high risk to the safety of children, such as pornography, we would expect companies to use a high confidence age assurance technology, such as age verification, designed to prevent children from accessing the service.