The Online Safety Bill is a vital opportunity to protect children from a wide range of harms online.
Harmful content poses a serious risk to children’s mental health, and their understanding of consent and healthy relationships. It is essential that the Bill is not delayed and that age verification is enforced as soon as possible, to prevent children stumbling upon violent and extreme pornography.
As the Bill stands, content that is not permitted on DVD can still be published online. We urge MPs to correct this inconsistency to better protect children by ensuring that commercial pornography companies remove harmful, violent and abusive content from their sites. Given the growing danger posed by gangs, we are also calling for child criminal exploitation to be named as an offence in the Bill, alongside child sexual abuse.