All smartphones and tablets would be blocked from viewing or creating child sexual abuse material, under proposals to be put to parliament by a powerful cross-party alliance of peers and MPs.
Technology companies would be required under the plans to install software on all devices sold in Britain to prevent people being able to see explicit images of children. Images and videos of child sexual abuse, including AI-generated material, would be instantly blurred, and livestreaming of abuse would become impossible.
Older devices could also be covered using a mandatory software update.
The campaign is being spearheaded in the House of Lords by the Conservative peer and former education minister John Nash, who successfully championed a ban on social media for under-16s. The Labour former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who resigned over the failure of Keir Starmer’s government to act quickly enough to block nudity on children’s phones, is leading the charge in the House of Commons.
The government has already promised to legislate to force Apple and Google to prevent children from taking or sharing nude images on devices. In September, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said the tech companies had “failed to protect children from some of the worst harms” and she was determined to bring about “whole ecosystem changes, tackling the means by which children are most often abused or groomed in the online world”.
Andy Burnham said the protections would be “built into the device and switched on by default”.
Nash said there was a “ghastly worldwide industry” of child sexual abuse material being created, and that Britain was one of the biggest consumers of it, so had a responsibility to act.
“The government have very sensibly decided that they are going to block the ability of children in this country to take and send nude images, and view nude images,” he said. “If it can be done for children’s phones on these images, it can be done for child sexual abuse images on all phones. Frankly, these are trillion-dollar companies. Of course, if they are made to do it, they can do it.”
Although he insisted free speech was important, he added: “We are talking about stuff that is illegal. The harm that is being done to so many children, and to the people who are watching it, is so awful that we have to do this.”
If ministers do not legislate, Nash will introduce an amendment, probably to the forthcoming national security bill, which will include a raft of cybersecurity measures.
He is confident of getting a measure passed in the Lords, where peers voted overwhelmingly in favour of a social media ban for under-16s, but said: “Rather than going through the same palaver I went through last time, which was four votes in the House of Lords, each one with a bigger majority, and a last minute change of heart by the government, I would much rather the government did it themselves.”
Phillips insisted the software already existed to blur or block inappropriate images. “My absolute priority has always been protecting UK children, and I don’t want to derail that, but what I want the government to do is look at the technology that we are going to demand children have on their phones and see what else we can think about.
“I don’t want paedophiles in our country to be abusing children in the Philippines. If we could stop it, why would we not seek to try?”
Simon Bailey, the former chief constable of Norfolk, who was the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on child protection for eight years, insisted tougher regulation was needed. “The technology exists to be able to say with a degree of confidence: ‘This is child sex[ual] abuse material,’” he said.
Last year, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) removed more than 312,000 online child sexual abuse images – a 7% increase on 2024. Analysts also found 3,440 AI-generated videos of child sexual abuse, compared with only 13 in 2024.
A paper written by technology, law enforcement, cybersecurity and child protection experts, to be published this week, proposes a “paradigm shift” towards the prevention of child sexual exploitation by using AI tools to identify and disrupt suspected abuse on devices before images are viewed or shared.
The contributors to the paper include Mark Bevan, Interpol’s head of crimes against children, Dan Sexton, chief technology office at the IWF, and Sarah Napier from the Australian Institute of Criminology.
The public is overwhelmingly in favour of tougher action to protect children and prevent adults viewing illicit material, according to a poll by The Observer. Only 6% are very confident that the tech companies are doing enough to detect and remove child sexual abuse material.
After a short description of the blocking technology, 80% support it being installed on their smartphone or tablet, while only 5% oppose the move. Almost 90% of both Labour and Conservative voters back the software.
A government spokesman 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.”
Photograph by mihailomilovanovic / Getty Images