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<p>Child sexual abuse has been declared a national threat, and the Govern-ment is
investing millions of pounds to enable officers to actively seek out and bring offenders
to justice.</p><p>We have announced a £40m package of measures to protect children
and young people from sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking, and to crack down
on offenders. This includes a significant increase in resources to the National Crime
Agency, leading to a near doubling of the CEOP Command's investigative capability.</p><p>In
the Home Secretary’s speech on online child sexual abuse at the NSPCC on 3 September,
he announced that the Home Office will be investing an extra £21 million over the
following 18 months to bolster the response of our law enforcement agencies to these
types of crimes.</p><p>This money will be used to improve how our agencies reduce
the volume of offending and pursue the most dangerous and prolific offenders.</p><p>He
also announced a further £2.6 million to collaborate with child protection organisations
to improve our understanding of offender behaviour and prevent future offending. This
includes support to the Lucy Faithfull Foundation which aims to change the behaviour
of offenders and potential offenders by highlighting the harm and suffering that takes
place behind every image.</p><p>We have also made £250,000 available to support new
ideas on how to de-tect and disrupt the live-streaming of abuse.</p><p>Furthermore,
in November the Home Secretary co-hosted the Microsoft-led Hackathon in America, 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.</p><p>We have already committed to legislate and will set out
our plans in the forthcoming Online Harms White Paper. The White Paper will set out
new laws to tackle the full range of online harms and set clear responsibilities for
tech companies to keep UK citizens safe.</p>
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