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<p>The Government set out plans for tackling online harms and keeping children safe
online, including from child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA), in the Online Harms
White Paper. The White Paper sets out our plans for world-leading legislation to make
the UK the safest place in the world to be online and hold companies to account for
tackling a wide range of online harms.</p><p>This includes an overarching statutory
duty of care on companies: this will place a legal responsibility on companies in
scope to take reasonable steps to keep their users safe and tackle illegal and harmful
activity on their services. This will be overseen and enforced by an independent regulator.</p><p>The
regulator will issue codes of practice that set out what companies should do to fulfil
their new duty of care. Reflecting the threat to national security or the physical
safety of children, the regulator will require companies to take particularly robust
action to tackle terrorist or CSEA content. The Government will publish interim codes
of practice providing guidance about tackling terrorist activity and online CSEA later
this year</p><p>In addition, the Home Secretary has been clear with industry that
they should be proactive in combatting child sexual exploitation. The Home Secretary
set out five key demands of industry at his speech at the NSPCC on 3 September, including
stopping online grooming and live-streaming of abuse.</p><p>As part of this commitment
to protect children from online harms, in November the Home Secretary co-hosted the
Microsoft-led Hackathon in the US, where he met with leading industry stakeholders
to identify robust ways to tackle and prevent child sexual abuse on the internet.
A prototype tool was developed at the Hackathon that can be used to automatically
flag potential conversations taking place between online groomers and children, which
will be licensed free of charge to technology companies worldwide. In June the Home
Secretary also announced an additional £300,000 to take forward new technological
innovations to target livestreaming of child abuse.</p>
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