The Government says it is too easy for children to access pornography
Pornography websites will be legally required to carry out age verification checks under new online safety rules, the government has announced.
Ministers say it is “too easy” for children to access online pornography, and will introduce plans for British users to provide data such as their credit card or passport details to prove they are over 18.
Pornography websites that fail to comply with the new legislation face being fined 10 per cent of their income, or being blocked by UK internet service providers.
The bill closes what the NSPCC (the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) has described as the “OnlyFans loophole”, where sites were able to legitimately argue that it should not be covered by the Online safety bill because children did not constitute a significant portion of its user base.
Marking Safer Internet Day on Tuesday, Digital Minister Chris Philp announced the new “robust checks” would offer protection for children from pornographic content online.
“Parents deserve peace of mind that their children are protected online from seeing things no child should see,” he said.
“We are now strengthening the online safety bill so it applies to all porn sites to ensure we achieve our aim of making the internet a safer place for children”.
His comments follow research by the British Board of Film Classification which found many children – some as young as 7 years old – accidentally stumble upon pornography online, with 61 per cent of 11-13-year-olds describing their viewing as mostly unintentional.
Andy Burrows, head of child safety online policy at the NSPCC, said: “It’s right the Government has listened to calls to fix one of the gaps in the Online Safety Bill and protect children from pornography wherever it’s hosted.
“Crucially, they have also acted on our concerns and closed the ‘Only Fans loophole’ that would have let some of the riskiest sites off the hook despite allowing children access to extremely damaging material.
“But the legislation still falls short of giving children comprehensive protection from preventable abuse and harmful content and needs significant strengthening to match the Government’s rhetoric and focus minds at the very top of tech companies on child safety.”
Labour’s Shadow Minister for Tech, Gambling the Digital Economy, Alex Davies-Jones, welcomed the move but said there was still more to be done to protect children from online harm.
“We need strict age protection rules, while tightly regulating age-verification tech to ensure they are not being used to collect unnecessary personal data and to protect people’s privacy online,” he said.
“Ultimately the Tories’ persistent delays on online safety legislation means that another generation have grown up with access to harmful content online – they can and must do better.”
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