To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of trends in the level of self-generated child sexual abuse images.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of trends in the level of self-generated child sexual abuse images online.

The WePROTECT Global Alliance (WPGA) is a global movement founded by the UK Government that brings together the influence, expertise and resources required to transform how online child sexual exploitation is dealt with worldwide.

The 2019 WePROTECT Global Alliance Threat Assessment stated that there has been a significant increase in Self-Generated Indecent Images in the last two years, whether produced consensually or as the result of manipulation or coercion.

In addition, the Home Office and the Internet Watch Foundation have a good partnership. In the first six months of 2019, the Internet Watch Foundation responded to 22,484 reports of self-generated CSAM online (exactly one third of all the reports they actioned in this period).

Of all the reports, 96% featured girls, 2% featured boys and 2% featured girls and boys together. Of this imagery, over 10% of this imagery of girls, and nearly 20% of the imagery of boys, featured children aged between 7 and 10 years old.

The Government set out in the Serious Organised Crime Strategy 2018 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/serious-and-organised-crime-strategy-2018 that companies must be at the forefront of efforts to deny offenders access to children and child sexual abuse material via their platforms and services, this includes self-generated Indecent images.