Labour Press Team · @labourpress
21st Jul 2013 from TwitLonger
Yvette Cooper MP, Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, responding to the Prime Minister's comments on child abuse online, said:
"Child abuse is a hideous crime and its scale on the internet is deeply worrying, but the Prime Minister isn't yet going far enough to tackle it.
"David Cameron said he would make sure the police had the resources. But the truth is that Theresa May has cut by 10 per cent the resources for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency - which has identified 50,000 cases of British residents accessing child abuse online but only around 2000 were pursued last year.
"And the failure of the Government to develop workable proportionate communications data plans means CEOP often can't find out who is responsible for the IP addresses used for abusive child images.
"Companies do need to do much more - as Labour called for in our Parliamentary debate in June. But Ministers need to demonstrate that there will be Government action too - including quickly moving to ban depiction of rape in extreme porn as other countries have done.
"And if David Cameron is really serious about protecting our children he should stop blocking compulsory sex and relationship education in our schools which could teach all our children zero tolerance of violence in relationships and greater resilience against online abuse."
Helen Goodman MP, Shadow Culture Media and Sport Minister, said:
"Labour has already said we will support legislation to strengthen child protection online, but the Government failed to include it in the Queen's Speech.
"Child abuse online is already illegal , so we are calling on the Government to make sure the police have the right resources to tackle it.
"As far as stopping children seeing adult porn is concerned we want filters on all ISPs and a proper age verification system. I hope the PM will finally agree to bring this in - we know it works.
"Last week there was an embarrassing leak from No 10 asking the companies to say they had switched on filters when they haven't, which would be dangerous. Will the Prime Minister take this opportunity to stop advising the companies on how to spin and instead require the firms to make the real changes?"
Ends