The Secretary of State for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy has updated parliament on the steps the government is taking to create a safer environment for children online.

Since June, government officials have been working with Apple and Google to explore new ways of preventing child sexual abuse and strengthening protections for children online. Now, both companies have developed changes the operating level to make it harder for children to share nude imagery, and progress has been made on the blocking of nude imagery on underage devices.

The government has committed to introducing primary legislation to require major tech platforms to build in device-level protections for children which will be introduced to parliament as soon as possible.

The government will also require apps that children use to prevent them from accessing or sharing nudity, as soon as possible and legislation will be explored to implement this as quickly as possible.