UK Government commits to strengthening Children’s Safety Code following Children’s Coalition calls

19 July, London

The UK Government has committed to strengthening online safety regulation following calls from the 5Rights-led Children’s Coalition for Online Safety.

In a statement to The Times, 23 members of the Coalition raised concerns that Ofcom’s plans to enforce the Online Safety Act - set out in its Children’s Safety Code of Practice - will risk codifying already-existing and weak industry practice if it does not robustly tackle risky features and functionalities and require safety by design.

The Coalition called on Ofcom to go further in its plans to ensure the regulation delivers on the needs of children and the intention of Parliament. The group has called for the Code to:

  • Address all risks to children surfaced during a risk assessment.
  • Prioritise proactive and preventative safety by design measures to tackle risk of harm at the design level before it has taken place.
  • Protect the youngest children by enforcing minimum age limits on services.

Following the statement, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle MP, committed to ensuring the Code and the Act works as intended for children and pledged to build on it if necessary.

This week, 5Rights also published its full response to the draft Code, having measured the proposals against the baseline recommendations set out by the Coalition earlier this year. These proposals do not yet deliver what is needed to create the online world the Act aspires to build and there are several areas of concern which must be addressed before publication of the final Code. 5Rights has made five recommendations to ensure the Code delivers for children:

  1. Ofcom must require regulated services to take a safety by design approach by addressing risk created by all aspects of service design, including features and functionalities
  2. Ofcom must require that regulated services to give separate consideration to children in different age groups by implementing age-appropriate design
  3. Ofcom must require regulated services to set and enforce minimum age requirements
  4. Ofcom must require services to enforce their minimum age requirements effectively
  5. Ofcom must fully identify the limits of its regulatory powers that prevent it creating comprehensive codes of practice. To the extent that its powers are insufficient to fulfil any aspect of the Act, Ofcom must report this to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.

You can read 5Rights full response to the consultation here.

You can read the statement from the Children’s Coalition here.

You can read the Children’s Coalition baseline of recommendations for the Children’s Safety Code here.

 

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