Two former ministers have called on the government to force manufacturers to install software on every smartphone, tablet and laptop sold in Britain that would block child sexual abuse material, including live-streamed abuse, before it reaches the screen.
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP who resigned as safeguarding minister earlier this year, and Lord Nash, a Conservative peer and former education minister, made the call at a parliamentary briefing on Wednesday attended by survivors of online child sexual abuse.
The demand goes further than the government's own plans. Ministers have committed to legislate so that Apple and Google must stop children taking, sharing or viewing nude images on their devices. Phillips and Nash want on-device blocking of abuse material extended to all devices, whoever owns them.
Lord Nash told the briefing that Britain faced an online child sex abuse "crisis" and that the material was no longer confined to the dark web but was "on the apps that we all use every day", according to GB News.
"By the time the police are involved, a child has already been abused and the images and videos have gone round the globe," he said.
Phillips, whose resignation from the Home Office followed what she described as a slow approach to legislation on children taking naked images of themselves, is now pressing the government from the backbenches. She wants ministers to "look at the technology that we are going to demand children have on their phones and see what else we can think about", Reclaim The Net reported.
The campaign group International Justice Mission was due to launch a white paper at the same event, which LBC said had been written by experts including from Interpol and the Internet Watch Foundation.
Nash has pursued the policy in Parliament for almost a year. In November 2025 he tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would have required the Secretary of State to mandate, within 12 months, software "which prevents the creation, viewing and sharing of child sexual abuse material on smartphones and tablets which are supplied in the UK".
He told the Lords at the time that the measure "would have the effect of software being used to screen out all child sexual abuse material, including live-streaming, on smartphones and tablets, and in due course on all devices". A revised version was debated on 2 March 2026 and withdrawn. Government ministers argued in those debates that nudity detection on children's devices, rather than a mandate covering abuse material on all devices, was the right approach, and recorded concerns about privacy.
In June, Sir Keir Starmer gave technology companies three months to introduce device controls for children. "Today I'm calling on tech companies operating in this country to introduce device controls that prevent children from sending and receiving sexually explicit images," he said.
When that deadline passed, the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, told the Commons on 8 September that the government would legislate to require Apple and Google to act. Despite "significant commitments" from the two companies, she said, their proposals did not "meet the scale of this crisis".
Privacy campaigners have objected to the wider proposal. Reclaim The Net argues that software cannot block an image without first scanning every image, video and livestream on a device. IBTimes has raised the right to a private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Internet Watch Foundation, the charity that removes abuse material from the internet, found 3,440 AI-generated child sexual abuse videos in 2025, against 13 the previous year. Of those, 65 per cent were rated Category A, the most severe classification. The charity described the rise as "frightening" and warned that AI was becoming a "child sexual abuse machine".
Join the Discussion
Have something to say? Join the conversation!
Sign in to share your thoughts and engage with other readers.
Sign In Create AccountNo comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this article!