Digital Economy

I welcome the intervention from the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. Let me clarify here and now that the regulations are a very important step forward in preventing children from viewing pornography online. In particular, we are closing the loophole whereby children can stumble across such material inadvertently. However, my right hon. Friend is right that the regulations do not extend to social media platforms that contain pornographic content that is a relatively small minority of the content that they provide. This is not a foolproof guarantee that young people and children will not be exposed to pornography online. It is a significant step forward, but there is, as my right hon. Friend points out, the potential for people to access material on social media platforms, which do not fall within the scope of the regulations unless more than a third of their average content is pornographic.