Written question asked by Margaret Moran (Labour) on Wednesday, 9 July 2008, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 14 July 2008. It was answered by Lord Coaker (Labour) on Monday, 1 September 2008 on behalf of the Home Office.

Offences Against Children: Internet

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment she has made of the trends in the number of prosecutions for possession of child abuse images arising from (a) websites and (b) peer to peer networks.

Answer: The number of prosecutions for possession of child abuse images does not indicate the method used to obtain those images.However the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre (CEOP) have observed that in the past year the use of peer to peer networks by offenders to share and distribute images of child abuse has increased. Other more ““traditional”” methods of obtaining such images, including downloading from websites, are still continued to be used by offenders.The Government are committed to the removal of all images containing child abuse images from the internet. We work closely with CEOP, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and industry in order to achieve this.

Secondary information