Speaking at Westminster, Carla Lockhart said:

“The lack of any meaningful proposals around age verification for pornography sites was a great weakness in the original proposals for the Online Safety Bill brought forward by the Government.

Over recent months I have spoken in the House highlighting the inadequacy of the Bill in this regard. Working with MPs of like mind and online safety campaigners, like CARE, we set about forcing the Government to move to protect children and young people from accessing damaging adult material on the web. Today’s announcement from the Government is a welcome response to this campaigning.

The Bill will legislate that all platforms publishing pornographic content must put “robust checks” in place to ensure users are 18 or over. Failure to do so could result in sites being banned from the web in the UK, or hefty fines for publishers.

Until now access to pornography for children and young people has been too easy. All parents want their children to be safe online and to ensure that access to damaging content, such as pornography, is not possible. By putting in place this verification requirement, across all pornography sites, the Government is taking the right steps forward to making the internet a safer place for all.

I am meeting the DCMS Minister, Chris Philip, soon to discuss how similar verification procedures could be put in place across other platforms to protect people online. The Bill is evolving and becoming stronger, but more can still be achieved.”