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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to protect children from (a) harmful online content and (b) pornography.

Protecting children online is a priority for the government. The strongest protections in the Online Safety Bill are for children. All companies in scope will need to assess whether their service is likely to be accessed by children and if so, deliver additional protections to protect children from harmful content or activity. If they fail to do so, they will be subject to tough enforcement action by the regulator, Ofcom.

The Bill will cover all online sites that offer pornography, including commercial pornography sites, social media, video sharing platforms, forums and search engines. There is also a separate additional duty in the Bill which will require providers who publish pornographic content on their services to prevent children from accessing that content.