Online Safety: Children
Thursday, 12 November 2026
Contributions
Tom Collins (Worcester) (Lab)Labour
10. What steps her Department is taking to improve online safety for children.
The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Online Safety (Ian Murray)Labour
Keeping children safe online is a top priority for this Department and the Government. That is why we are taking urgent steps to clean up our online spaces, including by raising the age limit for social media to 16, dealing with the risks of children livestreaming themselves, stopping unknown adults from communicating with children through online services, including gaming, and switching off harmful features for 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds. We will also prevent under-18s from accessing chatbots that offer sexualised content. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to continue these discussions.
I am grateful to the Minister for his Department’s open initial response to the product approach, which would see digital products required to meet safety standards, just like every other product marketed in the UK. The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade has asked the Law Commission to look at this approach from a product liability perspective, and they are consulting on that now. Will the Minister and the Secretary of State work with their counterparts in that Department to explore treating digital products as products under the law?
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. He has recently launched a white paper on digital product safety, arguing that platforms, AI and social media should be subject to the same rigorous product safety frameworks as physical goods to protect the public without stifling innovation, and it looks at this from a hazards perspective rather than a harms perspective. It is an incredibly interesting piece of work. It is something that we are actively looking at, and platforms and social media companies should be looking at it to ensure that their products are safe by design for children.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)Liberal Democrat
Last week, analysis carried out by 17 expert organisations found that platforms are failing to protect women and girls online. This comes three years after the Online Safety Act and one year after Ofcom published its guidance. Does the Minister agree that this lack of action is unacceptable, and will the Government move quickly to strengthen the Act to better protect women and girls?
I agree with the hon. Lady. Tackling violence against women and girls is a top priority for the Government. We wish to halve violence against women and girls by the end of this Parliament. Platforms are not doing their duty in making sure that these harms are removed. We are talking about and majoring on tackling harms for children at the moment, but we are trying to create a better online experience for everyone in society, whether they are children or not.
Mr SpeakerSpeaker
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)Liberal Democrat
The Government are rightly trying to protect children’s safety online, but AI smart glasses risk undermining some of those protections. Children and adults, particularly women, are being filmed without their consent and the footage is being posted online and used to train AI. In the Westminster Hall debate I secured last week, the Minister for Safeguarding said that the Government are looking at options to restrict the use of smart glasses. Will the Minister for Online Safety confirm what measures are being explored and when they will be laid before this House?
Through the course of the consultation with Members, society and the industry on the under-16 social media ban, a lot of issues have arisen across the age ranges regarding smart glasses and some of the harms of new technologies. We are actively looking at what needs to be done in that area, particularly with smart glasses. It is a security issue and a safety issue; indeed, it is a consent issue. Smart glasses should not be any different from any other issues regarding people’s consent for using their images online and what is being done with those images.
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5436636.