Digital Economy

I chaired the UK Council for Child Internet Safety for two and half years. While I applaud the regulations that the Minister is bringing forward, this is scratching the surface. The problem is that these days very few young people pay to access hardcore pornography on the internet. Unless we have some form of verifiable, age-based permission such as the use of a credit card—even if that is not charged for—we are not going to prevent this from happening. Actually, the much bigger problem is on social media, with sexting and everything else that goes on. Social media companies, including ones that we have had in front of the Home Affairs Committee, are turning a blind eye to the hosting of exceedingly dangerous material that young people are accessing and normalising, and then they are transferring that to their relationships during impressionable years. We really have got to do so much better than this.