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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to regulate technology companies to improve online safety protection measures for children.

The Online Harms White Paper sets out our plans for world-leading legislation to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. We intend to establish in law a new duty of care on companies towards their users, overseen by an independent regulator. This regulator will set clear safety standards, backed up by mandatory reporting requirements and effective enforcement powers. This will make companies more responsible for their users’ safety online, especially children and other vulnerable groups.

In his statement to Parliament on 20 June 2019, the Secretary of State committed to producing a draft code of practice on child online safety to set clear standards for companies to keep children safe online, ahead of the new regulatory framework. The Secretary of State has commissioned new guidance, to be published in the autumn, about the use of technology to ensure that children are protected from inappropriate content online.