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Internet (Child Protection)

I will address that issue, but as chair of the Home Secretary's taskforce for child protection on the internet I have worked with officials from many Departments, who come to the meetings and are involved in developing good practice and discussing the various issues. The Department for Children, Schools and Families is a new Department, with a particular emphasis on preventing harm to children and protecting families, and that is one reason why the Byron review is being conducted under that Department. However, I have also met Dr. Byron, and will do so again, to talk about the work that we are doing. I know that she is especially interested in the way that the taskforce has taken the agenda forward. It has brought not only Departments together, but industry and children's charities—those who have an interest in making progress in this area. Whatever system we set up—and the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford may also consider that—it is important to ensure that the work of Departments is co-ordinated and that we involve industry and stakeholders in the machinery of government. We will see over the next few weeks that that collaboration and co-operation has resulted in significant progress, without any debate about possible legislation. The hon. Member for East Devon mentioned the terrible events in Bridgend, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) has a debate on the issue tomorrow. She has already met with various people to discuss those events. I wish to extend my sympathy to the families and all those affected. However, the issues behind the deaths are likely to be very complicated. We are very much aware of some media reports claiming that there is an internet aspect to these incidents, but other reports cast doubt on that. It would be wrong to prejudge the investigations that are already taking place, and we will wish to follow further developments closely. We also recognise that young people will discuss many difficult issues, including that of suicide, on various websites. That requires very sensitive handling and we need to be wary of preventing them from discussing their thoughts and feelings openly. We are working, through the Home Secretary's taskforce for child protection on the internet, with social networking companies to ensure that there are links to support bodies such as ChildLine and the Samaritans for those who seek support and advice on this issue. On the very separate matter of what are commonly referred to as suicide websites, the Government have been working with service providers to discourage them from hosting sites that appear to encourage suicide. While the internet remains a fantastic environment for obtaining all sorts of information, there is no doubt that it does have a darker side. Indeed, the Prime Minister has recently shown his concern about the issue of harmful and inappropriate content by setting up the Byron review. The Byron review team has been doing a lot of work to gather views from all stakeholders, and is due to report in March. The Home Office fully supports the review, and looks forward to seeing the final report. I have met with Dr. Byron and her team, as I said, and have been impressed by the work that they are doing—indeed, one member of her team attended the most recent taskforce meeting—and the approach that they are taking in working with all groups to look at the problems in this area. The internet and mobile technologies have helped to provide children with education, entertainment, and the ability to communicate with their friends. These technologies bring our children new opportunities and lots of fun, but we need to balance that with the risks and worries that parents have about their children accessing inappropriate content. There is no doubt that most of the time the internet is a safe place, and the Government have encouraged its use in schools and the home. It therefore rightly falls on Government to help to develop a response to help protect our children and we have been active in that area. Since 2001, the Home Secretary's taskforce has been a very successful method of bringing together Departments, industry, law enforcement and charities to develop measures to help protect children from illegal content and sexual predators in the fast-moving world of technology and the internet. The taskforce is periodically reviewing its membership and is eager to include all bodies involved in protecting children online. Indeed, cyber-bullying is a relatively new phenomenon and we are looking to widen the range of partners involved in the taskforce in order to look at the issue more closely. I look forward to meeting the Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), to discuss the matter in the near future. I would welcome further information from the hon. Member for East Devon on the South Korean model that he mentioned. That could be a good focus for the meeting that I suggested. If the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford wants to come to that meeting, I would be happy to hear in more detail about the points that he has made. I am not averse to learning from other countries. If they have something that might benefit us, we ought to try to learn from that. I will be happy to meet both hon. Gentlemen and to talk to them about that model. I welcome the support that industry has given to the process, which I believe is an exceptionally useful method for tackling issues effectively and in a collaborative way through self-regulation and without the need for legislation. One of the major pieces of work that the taskforce has recently completed is the definition of a British Standards Institution specification for filtering tools for home users of the internet. Although filtering tools have been around for many years now, concerns have been raised about the effectiveness of the tools and their usability. The new specification will allow the developers of filtering products to test them against the standard designed to protect children and other users from illegal or unsuitable content. That specification has been developed with the BSI, Ofcom and industry and will be launched in the near future. Companies whose products pass the tests will be able to display the child safety online kitemark on their products, allowing members of the public to identify them as having reached that standard. I want to encourage as many companies as possible that offer filtering products to the market to apply for the kitemark once it is launched. I am sure that we all hope that that will happen. All hon. Members will also be aware that the internet is misused by paedophiles to share and distribute terrible images of children being sexually abused. We also know that adults will use the internet to gain access to children and young people so that they can groom them for sexual abuse. I am sure that we all agree that everything that can be done should be done to prevent the distribution of these images and to protect children from unwanted contact from predatory adults. The Internet Watch Foundation was funded and formed by the industry in 1996 following agreement between the Government, police and the internet industry that a partnership approach was needed to tackle the distribution of child sexual abuse images on the internet. The IWF operates the only authorised hotline in the UK for the public to report their inadvertent exposure to illegal content on the internet, providing a notice and take-down service to internet service providers in the UK so they can remove potentially illegal content from their servers. The IWF works closely with law enforcement agencies at home and abroad to help them trace offenders. The IWF estimates that since 2003, less than 1 per cent. of child abuse image websites are hosted in the UK compared to 18 per cent. in 1996. We would all like that figure to be 0 per cent., but that shows considerable progress. In addition, the IWF has developed a service to provide a list of URLs where illegal images are hosted. That list, which has been made available to the industry, enables the sites containing child abuse images to be blocked. Since 2004, blocking of these sites on consumer broadband in the UK has gone from nothing to 95 per cent., thanks to the work carried out by the industry. The Home Office is working with a number of smaller ISPs to identify ways that they can implement blocking economically. Once that has been done, the number of connections covered by blocking will rise further.