Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the Internet Watch Foundation Grant.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a technology-led child protection organisation, working alongside industry and law enforcement to find and remove child sexual abuse imagery online. It is a non-profit registered charity, with fee-paying Members comprising more than 175 companies, including some of the giants of the internet world.

The Home Office is collaborating with the IWF to support this important work. In particular, work is ongoing between the IWF and the Child Abuse Image Database (CAID) to support law enforcement and help the tech sector to find and remove copies of known child sexual abuse images online.

The IWF’s Annual Report for 2022 sets out full details of the IWF’s vital work tackling online child sexual abuse and exploitation, including the IWF CAID Taskforce. It states that, in 2022, the IWF discovered more Category A child sexual abuse material online than ever before and the number of webpages containing Category A material found by the IWF has more than doubled since 2020.