Internet Watch Foundation

Mr. Sarwar: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to strengthen child protection on the internet.

 

Paul Goggins: The Government are determined to do everything they can to protect children from the insidious use of the internet by paedophiles.

 

We have established the Task Force on Child Protection on the internet which includes representatives of the industry, the police, children's charities, MPs from the main parties and others, as a forum where ideas to protect children and promote safe use of the internet can be discussed and developed. Among the many initiatives to come out of the task force's work, the Home Office has run four public awareness campaigns to reinforce the basic safety messages to parents and children, has developed various models of good practice including access to content through mobile phones, and is close to finalising documents covering moderated chat and search services. The industry has worked, through the Internet Watch Foundation, to virtually eliminate hosting of illegal images of child abuse by UK companies and a number of providers have developed solutions to block access to material hosted overseas.

 

The Sexual Offences Act 2003, which came into force on 1 May 2004, made grooming a child, both offline and online, an offence, punishable by up to 10 years in jail. We have increased the maximum sentences for possession and distribution of indecent images of children (offences for possession from six months to five years and for production and distribution offences from three years' imprisonment to 10 years).

 

We also announced in April that we will set up a new Centre for Child Protection on the internet to support the police and child protection agencies. The centre will target paedophiles using the internet to distribute illegal images and "groom" children, and aims to reduce the harm caused to children, families and the wider community by child abuse facilitated by misuse of the internet. The centre will also include the Secretariat to the Virtual Global Taskforce, an international alliance of law enforcement agencies seeking to share lessons learned from investigations into on-line child abuse around the world.

 

This is an international issue and we continue to take a lead within international fora in tackling this problem, for example through the G8 where Ministers have recently committed to the development of an international database of child abuse images, and through initiatives such as a joint EU Presidency/Virtual Global Taskforce Conference to be held on 14–16 November in Belfast.

 

Source: Hansard 19.09.05