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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what her timetable is for the introduction of the Online Safety Bill to Parliament.

In May we published the Online Safety Bill in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny. Pre-legislative scrutiny finished on 14 December, when the Joint Committee reported with its recommendations. The DCMS sub-Committee and the Petitions Committee have both since also published reports relating to the Bill. Our intention remains to introduce the Bill as soon as possible, subject to the parliamentary timetable.

We have listened to stakeholders’ and parliamentarians’ views and have already announced several major policy changes to the Bill as a result. These include strengthening and clarifying the approach to illegal content, and widening the scope of the Bill to ensure that all pornography websites will have a duty to protect children from accessing their sites. We expect companies to take steps now to improve safety, and not wait for the legislation to come into force before acting.