Recommendation 6

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

The Home Office is working closely with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) throughout the Children Online Wellbeing consultation to enable swift action on its outcomes, which will sit alongside wider interventions including safer platform design, robust age assurance, responsibilities on Artificial Intelligence (AI) providers, effective enforcement, and support for parents, professionals and young people. The Online Safety Act (OSA) represents one of the most significant pieces of UK legislation aimed at creating a safer digital environment. The illegal content and child safety duties in the Online Safety Act 2023 are now in effect and Ofcom as the independent regulator can now enforce against these duties. As of 17 March 2025, the illegal content duties in the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA) are now in effect. Providers in scope of the OSA are legally required to implement measures to remove illegal content from their platforms. This includes illegal content relating to terrorism and inciting violence. These measures aim to create a safer online environment by ensuring robust systems and processes are in place to protect users from illegal harms. The OSA provides additional protections for children to prevent them from encountering content depicting or encouraging violence that is legal, but which poses a material risk of significant harm to an appreciable number of children. The Home Office regularly shares information with Ofcom to support its risk assessments and ability to implement a regulatory regime that is effective and proportionate to the risks of harm posed by online terrorism and extremism on in-scope services. The Home Office agrees that tackling Com networks requires effective coordination across government, law enforcement, regulators and safeguarding partners. We already work closely with policing, the security and intelligence agencies, DSIT and other relevant departments to address online networks that facilitate serious harm. This includes sharing intelligence, supporting operational activity, and ensuring safeguarding responses are in place for those at risk. Multi-agency cooperation continues through the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) led taskforce. An intelligence coordination cell has been established as the national hub coordinating law enforcement and international action against Com networks to dismantle their online infrastructure. This intelligence coordination cell works with a network of Regional Com Threat Leads housed in Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) as well as the Police Service of Northern Ireland and Police Scotland to ensure coherent responses that link international referrals from Five Eyes partners with a local policing response. Since October 2025 it has processed 524 referrals, leading to 17 UK arrests, 27 individuals safeguarded, and 155 international referrals. Industry partners are engaging more actively on detection and removal, and the UK benefits from a single national intelligence picture of Com networks and a more coordinated response. In addition to its enforcement activities, the police-led taskforce has established a Prevent board overseeing stands of activity including behaviour-change interventions, deterrent messaging, research commissioning, legislative and financial disruption activity, and international Prevent work with Five Eyes and Europol partners. The Home Office continues to consider whether the current legal and regulatory framework provides the right tools to address emerging online threats, including decentralised networks operating across multiple platforms. Given the evolving nature of the threat, the Government keeps its approach under review and will continue to work across departments and with operational partners to identify where further action may be needed.