Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what additional resources she has allocated to keeping children and young people safe from online sexual abuse and exploitation following the introduction of the Government’s instructions to stay at home during the covid-19 outbreak.

n 2019, the Government significantly increased resources to the National Crime Agency leading to a near doubling of the CEOP Command’s online investigative capability. In September 2019, the Home Office announced an additional £30m funding for tackling child sexual abuse in 2020/21 to ensure offenders are no longer able to hide in the shadows preying on our society’s most vulnerable.

We are working with Law Enforcement, the UK Intelligence Community, safeguarding partners and the third sector to assess the threat and ensure they have the resources they need to tackle offending and provide the greatest protection for vulnerable children during COVID-19. The NCA and UK policing continue to relentlessly fight the online child sexual abuse threat; in the last seven weeks the NCA has developed and disseminated 2,600 online child sexual abuse (CSA) packages for police forces to investigate.

As part of this the Government has made £1.6 million available immediately for the NSPCC to expand and promote its national helpline for adults. Expanding the NSPCC Helpline will mean many more adults know how and where to raise concerns and seek advice or support about the safety and wellbeing of any children they are concerned about. The Home Office will further distribute £7.8 million in emergency support for charities helping vulnerable children who have been impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.

We are further working across government and agencies to ensure that teachers, parents and carers have access to the support they need to help keep children safe online. As part of this the NCA has stepped up its messaging on staying safe online through their #OnlineSafetyAtHome campaign and their ThinkUKnow resources. The Department for Education has published interim safeguarding guidance for schools and colleges encouraging them to disseminate advice on online safety and we have published guidance for parents and carers on gov.uk. We have also worked with our Five Country partners to galvanise industry action; in response, key industry partners have developed a campaign targeting parents, carers and children with information and advice on staying safe online.