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

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Online Safety Bill will ensure that commercial pornography websites do not carry any illegal content, such as (1) extreme pornography, or (2) prohibited images of children.

The Online Safety Bill principally applies to services that allow users to post content online or to interact with each other, and to search engines. Where commercial pornography websites facilitate user-generated content, they will have to deliver the illegal content duties under the Bill and, where the service is likely to be accessed by children, to protect them from harmful content. These will ensure that all platforms in scope of the Bill tackle illegal user-generated content on their services, including extreme pornography and prohibited images of children.

Where the illegal content is not user-generated but rather is created and published by the relevant company on its own site, then that website service is likely to be committing an offence so will potentially be liable for prosecution. Part 5 of the Bill creates a new duty on providers of published pornography, which includes some dedicated commercial pornography websites, to protect children from accessing pornographic content.