Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the Online Safety Act 2023 on protecting children and young people from online harms.

I met and made clear to Ofcom’s chief executive that keeping children safe online is my top priority.

Since taking post I’ve already strengthened the Online Safety Act: to make encouraging self-harm and cyber-flashing priority offences, so services must proactively remove this abhorrent content.

And today I can announce we will amend the Crime and Policing Bill to ensure AI models cannot produce child sexual abuse material, and address vulnerabilities where they can.

I will not hesitate to go further where evidence shows it’s needed.

Parents should be able to have confidence that children and young people are safe as they benefit from the opportunities that being online offers.