Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions he has had with social media organisations on age verification on their platforms.

The Home Secretary met US technology companies in November to discuss a range of issues on online child sexual exploitation and abuse, including how to ensure underage children are not given access to their platforms.

The Government have been clear that we expect tech companies to remove child sexual abuse content when they find it, stop online grooming, shut down live streaming and, where necessary, have robust age verification measures in place to keep children safe

The Home Office and Department of Culture, Media and Sport are engaging with the key industry stakeholders on the forthcoming Online Harms White Paper, which will set out a range of legislative and non-legislative measures to tackle online harms and set clear responsibilities for tech companies to keep UK citizens safe.