Internet Watch Foundation

Extract from Child Sex Offender Review debate:

Margaret Moran (Luton, South) (Lab): I welcome the Home Secretary's recognition of the importance of the use, and indeed the abuse, of technology in tackling those issues. The Internet Watch Foundation will no doubt have informed him that there is growing concern about the proliferation of commercial child abuse sites, 90 per cent. of which involve children under 12 and 60 per cent of which involve grade four or five images—the worst possible images. In that context, will he look at tackling e-payment systems that allow paedophiles to bypass the ordinary credit card or banking payment systems, so that they can anonymously get on to those child abuse websites and perpetuate child abuse in this country and around the world?

 

John Reid: That is a very good point. As the House may know, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), chairs a taskforce on those matters, and it includes the internet service providers. We have touched on some of the problems and challenges that my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran) mentioned, and we will continue to do so. As she points out, the increasing sophistication of the internet is not always an opportunity for good and we have to be careful that we are ahead of the use by paedophiles of the opportunity to make contact with and to groom children.

 

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