§ Mr. HunterTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will take further measures to prevent advances to children for sexual purposes(a) on the internet and (b) elsewhere. [82675]
§ Hilary BennThis Government's Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet set up in May 2001 has developed proposals for a criminal offence to tackle the "grooming" of children by paedophiles online or offline. This is intended to allow prosecution at an early stage when children are being groomed, before an existing sexual offence has been committed. In addition, the proposals include the creation of a new civil protection order relating to behaviour towards a child for an illegal or harmful sexual purpose. These proposals were announced in the Government's command paper on Sex Offence Reform, "Protecting the Public" on 19 November 2002.
In addition, the task force has developed, run and now evaluated a successful national awareness campaign targeted at both children and parents about internet safety. Independent evaluation of the campaigns shows significantly improved awareness of the key messages in both target audiences. The task force is now considering that evaluation and how to build on the momentum created.
Practical online child protection measures have included draft models of good practice for service providers in respect of chat, instant messaging and web services. These encourage, among other things, clear and accessible safety messages and advice and user-friendly mechanisms for reporting abuse. The drafts are being considered by the wider industry through the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) and the London Internet Exchange (LINX).
The task force will next be looking at: consideration of the extent to which the criminal law currently covers unsuitable material being sent to children and all forms of indecent representations of children; an assessment of the new challenges posed by development of 3G mobile phones; and developing basic training materials for child protection staff on children's internet use.
In parallel with the task force, the UK has played a leading role in the development of a G8 strategy for protecting children from sexual exploitation on the internet. The strategy, which is not yet finalised, will cover issues such as: victim identification; intelligence gathering and sharing; location of suspects; enforcement tools and training: awareness building and prevention; and police working with industry and non-governmental organisation's (NGOs). The task force will take forward the UK's domestic actions where it can to support the leading role played by the UK so far in this field.
The "Protecting the Public" command paper, published on 19 November 2002 also included details of proposed sex offence reform that will further protect children from sexual activity. New or expanded offences of adult sexual activity with a child, familial sexual abuse of a child, commercial sexual exploitation of a child, sexual activity between minors and abuse of trust are designed to protect children from those who seek to exploit or abuse them sexually.
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