Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to strengthen bilateral and multilateral cooperation with governments in countries with high incidences of livestreamed child sexual abuse production.

The Government is unequivocal in its commitment to protecting children from all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse This includes ensuring that we are working to combat livestreamed abuse and ensuring that offenders cannot use technology to harm children with impunity.

In order to tackle the threat and reduce livestreaming of child sexual abuse, which is an inherently transnational crime, the National Crime Agency (NCA) works in collaboration with law enforcement in the UK and internationally to pursue the highest harm offenders. The UK is also leading the way in supporting the building and developing thematic knowledge and operational capabilities of other international law enforcement agencies to work together to pursue offenders and safeguard children. In addition, the NCA is leading a number of initiatives with industry and engagement with the financial sector to specifically prevent and detect livestreaming offending. This includes work to build on the UK-supported report by the Action Taskforce (FATF) ‘Detecting, Disrupting and Investigating Online Child Sexual Exploitation’.

This UK Government is prioritising our response to this crime, including crucial action through multilateral and bilateral forums to lead the way in ensuring there is robust international capacity to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse, including in response to livestreaming and other online offending, and working to keep children safe online and in communities around the world.