Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the extent of similarities between YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok.

The Online Safety Act imposes a range of consistent duties on user-to-user service providers requiring them to proactively identify, mitigate and manage risks to users, and to be accountable for the safety of their platforms.

Service providers must proactively mitigate risk of use for illegal activity and must address illegal content when it appears. They must also prevent children from encountering the most harmful content and must implement age-appropriate measures to protect children from other kinds of harmful content.

Ofcom, the independent regulator, has powers to take robust enforcement action where service providers do not comply with Act duties.