Tony Vaughan

The hon. Gentleman raises a very interesting point, and Ofcom has recognised various different methods of age-verification. We must not exclude people based on whether they have one or other particular document. The Australian e-safety survey found that in 11% of cases a parent had helped a child to get around the ban. Those are sobering statistics that have to be taken into account, but most children in Australia who were still on restricted platforms did not actually need to get around anything. Around three in five said that the platform had simply taken no action on their existing accounts. The technology did not fail in their situation; the companies just did not use it. We are in a different place. As I understand it, Australia asks the platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent access by children. The UK position is that we require highly effective age assurance, and last week Ofcom confirmed that four methods of age verification could be used to meet the test at 16. My question to the Government is whether they foresee using any or all of the methods set out in the Ofcom report as a mechanism to police a ban.