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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to tackle online impersonations on (a) social media and (b) dating applications which are carried out for the purpose of coercive control.

The Online Safety Bill will require user-to-user services to tackle illegal content. This includes social media and dating apps.

We recently announced our intention to add the controlling or coercive behaviour offence to the list of priority illegal offences under the Bill. This means that in-scope services will be required to proactively prevent users from being exposed to this type of content, strengthening protections for users from this behaviour. They will also need to swiftly remove such content if it appears on their service.

The Online Safety Bill is scheduled to return to the Commons on 5th December for its second day of Report.