Home Office
Good afternoon.
Its a pleasure to be here with you today.
Before I begin, allow me to say a few words about the response to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
For those of you who took part, thank you. I know a lot of different experts have contributed in different ways to help our understanding and I hope youre understanding as well of the situation that were facing.
This independent enquiry was indeed a wake up call, it was extraordinarily important to shed a light on the unimaginable abuse that weve seen suffered by children over many many years. It found quite simply appalling examples of organisations placing their own interests ahead of childrens safety: either by turning a blind eye or covering up the abuse.
Frankly it is deeply dispiriting to see.
I deeply admire the courage of those survivors who came forward.
We owe it to them as well as to future generations to ensure that it never happens again.
Later today Ill be speaking to a group of students.
They are going to be asking the questions that students so often ask, Im sure.
They are going to be asking questions that are relevant to today and about gossip in the media that weve been hearing.
Theyll be asking about the challenges we face, and yes, occasionally heckling me
One thing I can guarantee Ill be asked is whether I would recommend politics as a career.
Its a difficult question to answer really and Ive never really known how to answer.
Ive never thought of politics as a profession, at least not in the traditional sense.
For me its a form of service.
Now, having already met a few of you Im very aware that Im speaking to an audience of professionals.
Many of you are at the top of your fields.
But I also understand that for many of you protecting children online isnt just a career.
Its more of a calling, every bit as personal as it professional.
The reason Im here today is that for me keeping children safe isnt just another issue, or even just the right thing to do.
Its personal, and every bit as important as my roles traditional focus on terrorism and state threats.
Let me explain why.
Earlier this year I visited the US to meet my counterparts in intelligence and homeland security.
While I was there I had the opportunity to visit the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, NCMEC for short, a heroic organisation on the vanguard of global efforts to keep children safe online.
NCMEC receives reports of suspected cases of child sexual exploitation from US-based tech companies including enticement, where children are lured into sharing explicit images and videos of themselves; sextortion, when predators target their victims using blackmail; and the online distribution of child sexual abuse material.
Ill be straight with you.
I wasnt prepared.
I wasnt prepared for the depravity of some of the examples of offending they gave.
I wasnt prepared for the scale of the threat that our children face.
And, as the father to a wonderful son and daughter of my own, I wasnt prepared for the horror that children just like them are made to suffer every day.
The thing that struck me was how vulnerable they are.
To predators, social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are a one stop shop.
Without leaving Metas ecosystem they can choose their targetdo their researchstart a conversation with themand transfer that conversation onto a private messaging service.
And thats exactly what they do in their thousands.
In 2022 NCMEC received over 32 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation and abuse.
21 million of these came from Facebook alone, which not only speaks to the severity of the issue they face.
It also leads me to suspect that other companies are significantly under-reporting.
I want to be clear this isnt a US issue.
We face exactly the same problem right here in the UK.
The NCA estimates that there are up 850,000 people in this country who pose a sexual risk to children, including both contact offending and offending online.
Of course, in reality the scale of the threat our children face is much larger.
We mustnt forget that the computers in our childrens homes, and the mobile phones in their pockets dont just make them accessible to people here in the UK.
They connect them to the world.
That works both ways of course.
Im appalled by the increase in so-called live streamed abuse, where predators pay to victimise children remotely and often in other countries via webcam.
The UK is one of the top 3 consumers of livestreamed child sex abuse from the Philippines.
Equally, in addition to the threat they face domestically, our children are also the targets of predators and offenders overseas.
Its clear, then, that this is a threat of immense scale and complexity, and Im grateful for the valiant efforts of our law enforcement agencies.
Every month UK law enforcement agencies arrest 800 people and safeguard 1200 children.
Last week, for example, Bernard Grace was sentenced to 8 years in prison for making 600 payments to direct and livestream the sexual abuse of children in the Philippines.
In March earlier this year, Christopher Manning was jailed for 25 years for using a chat platform to distribute child sexual abuse material and encouraging others to do the same.
And in 2021 the NCA caught David Wilson, one of the most prolific child sexual abuse offenders the UK has ever seen.
Wilson posed as a teenage girl on Facebook to manipulate his victims into sending sexually explicit material of themselves before using it to blackmail them into abusing their friends and siblings.
His case is the perfect illustration of why our partnership with tech companies and organisations such as NCMEC are so important.
He was brought to justice because law enforcement were able to access the evidence contained in over 250,000 Facebook messages.
And hes far from alone.
NCMEC sends suspected cases of child sexual abuse in this country straight to the NCA, who process them before sending the resulting intelligence to the police.
In 2021, they contributed to 20,000 criminal investigations across the UK.
For predators thats a significant deterrent.
And for their victims, its a lifeline.
That lifeline is now under threat.
Despite its past record of dedicated protection, Meta is planning to roll out end-to-end encryption on Messenger and Instagram Direct later this year.
Unless they build in robust safety measures, that poses a significant risk to child safety.
Let me be clear.
Privacy matters.
The UK government is in favour of protecting online communications.
And it is possible to offer your customers the privacy they expectwhile also maintaining the technical capabilities needed to keep young people safe online.
Meta are just choosing not to, many others have already taken the same path.
The consequences of that decision are stark.
Facebook and Instagram account for over 80% of global NCMEC referrals, meaning that 20 million suspected cases of child sexual abuse a year will go unreported.
Meta will no longer be able to spot grooming including cases like David Wilsons on their platforms, leaving tens of thousands of children in the UK, and around the world, beyond our help and in danger of exploitation.
Faced with an epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse Meta have decided to turn a blind eye, and are choosing to allow predators to operate with impunity.
This is extremely worrying.
But it also raises questions for parents like myself right across the country.
Questions about big tech, and the balance of power and responsibility enjoyed by social media companies.
My children love going to a playground near where we live.
While theyre there its clear whos responsible for their safety.
Me of course, as their parent but also the council, who have a duty to ensure the environment is safe and well-maintained, and our local police force, who have a duty to make sure nothing dangerous or illegal is taking place.
Both have clear lines of accountability to me and to our local community.
My children are currently too young to have social media profiles.
But what happens when they do go online?
Whos responsible for their safety?
And is anyone accountable to them or to me?
In my view its clear.
Companies like Meta enjoy vast power and influence over our lives.
With that power should come responsibility.
Its not acceptable for tech executives to make vast profits from their youngest users, only to pass the buck when it comes to protecting them from the dangers on their own platform create.
The first duty of government is to protect its people, and none are more precious than our children.
In that sense, the stakes couldnt be higher.
Over the past few minutes weve covered a lot of frightening statistics.
But we must never forget that behind every NCMEC referral, flagged image, and Police investigation is a real child being hurt in the real world, for whom the consequences of their victimisation are devastating.
However its not just these childrens futures that are at stake.
I personally believe you can judge a society by how it looks after its most vulnerable members, and that, in a nutshell, is why this is so fu