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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to prevent proliferation of videos and documents published by the perpetrator or perpetrators of the terror attack on two Christchurch mosques on 15 March 2019 on (a) print and broadcast media, (b) social media and (c) other internet sites and platforms accessible from the UK.

The Government has been clear that tech companies need to act more quickly to remove terrorist content online and ultimately prevent new content being made available to users in the first place. There can be no safe spaces for terrorists to promote and share their extreme views. We are working closely with industry, including through the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, to encourage them to increase the use of technology to automate the detection and removal of content where possible.

The forthcoming Online Harms White Paper will set out a range of legislative and non-legislative measures detailing how we will tackle online harms and setting clear responsibilities for tech companies to keep people safe online.

Decisions on broadcasting regulation are a matter for Ofcom, whose Broadcasting Code sets strong standards for material broadcast on television and radio around harmful and offensive material, incitement of crime, disorder, and hatred or abuse. The press is subject to independent self-regulation, primarily through IPSO and Impress. These regulators issue their own codes of conduct which provide guidelines on a range of areas including discrimination, accuracy and the reporting of crime.