The UK government has announced plans to introduce new legislation to protect children from sexual abuse by ensuring sexual material is blocked on all smart devices across Britain. The move follows calls from politicians, campaigners and experts for new measures, and comes as research shows Britain is one of the biggest markets for child abuse material.
White Paper Calls for Device-Level Protections
A white paper launched on Wednesday (November 11) argues that device-level protections, similar to those the government has committed to for blocking images of nudity, can be adapted to prevent child sexual abuse material being viewed on smartphones, laptops and tablets. The paper is by the International Justice Mission (IJM) and experts in law enforcement, child protection and technology.
Polling showed 80% of people support technology blocking abuse being installed on their devices, with 5% opposed. Research by the Internet Watch Foundation found 73% of the child sexual abuse material analysed in 2025 was not self-generated and likely captured on adult devices.
Scale of the Crisis
The trade in child abuse material has become a global criminal industry, with Britain one of its biggest markets. The UK's child abuse image database held fewer than 10,000 images in the late 1990s, compared to 40 million today. The supply of material is now described as "limitless" at a time when AI-generated images identified by the Internet Watch Foundation increased from 13 in 2024 to 3,440 last year.
Britain is among the three biggest groups of customers in the world for what Europol calls the leading form of commercial sexual exploitation of children, with children in the Philippines and other poorer countries being abused live on camera to order. One in every 100 children in the Philippines was trafficked to produce child sexual abuse material in 2022, according to the IJM.
Calls for Action
Lord Nash, a Tory former education minister, said: "We are facing a crisis of online child sexual abuse. Seven per cent of British men admit to some form of online sexual offending against children. This material is no longer hidden on the dark web but on the apps that we all use every day. By the time the police are involved, a child has already been abused and the images and videos have gone round the globe."
Jess Phillips, former Labour violence against women minister, said: "Every day, children in this country and around the world are being sexually abused for an audience, and the images are traded and watched for years afterwards. Nowhere is that clearer than in the Philippines, where one child in every 100 has been trafficked to be abused live on camera to order, and where buyers in Britain are among the biggest customers in the world."
John Tanagho, executive director of IJM's Centre to End Online Sexual Exploitation of Children, said: "For too long, society's response to online child sexual abuse has focused on finding and removing abusive images and videos after children have already been harmed. This paper demonstrates that we now have the opportunity to do more by moving upstream and preventing the creation, streaming and viewing of child sexual abuse."
Government Response
A government spokesperson said: "We are putting in place the strongest online safety laws in the world. This includes preparing world-first legislation to call on the biggest technology companies to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images. We will also give the police the powers they need to keep pace with criminal use of emerging technologies in order to keep our children safe."
