An internet safety campaigner has told Premier that government plans to install age-verification technology online is a good idea.
The consultation:
- sites could face fines of up to £250,000 unless they take action to prevent under-18s viewing explicit material
- age verification technology to prevent children accessing porn
- research shows 1.4 million under-18s visited adult sites from their desktop
- 13% of children aged six-14 visited an adult site in May 2015
Vivienne Pattison, is a Christian and heads up the charity Mediawatch. She told Premier's News Hour that age verification has worked well when it comes to children gambling. She said: "Rather than just ticking a box to confirm your age, records are cross-checked against things like credit card records or the electoral role and we've seen that children gambling - the problem has almost disappeared.
"And so what we would like to see are very similar messages brought in to protect children from pornography."
She was speaking after figures released on Monday showed that one in five children in the UK has looked at pornography online.
Under plans being looked at in a new consultation, these sites could face fines of up to £250,000 unless they take action to prevent under-18s viewing explicit material.
New laws will require adult websites to have some form of age verification technology to prevent children accessing them.
Vivienne Pattison said she wasn't surprised by the amount of children accessing pornography. She said: "We've had this figure, it's come out in numerous reports - the one that's come out today has come from the government.
"But we had similar figures come from the Children's Commissions a couple of years ago, the NSPCC have come up with figures like that.
"So really I think parents may be shocked, but it doesn't come as a surprise at all."
Alongside potential legal requirements for companies to put in place age verification technology, the Government will also establish a new framework to monitor and enforce compliance, with the ability to impose fines where breaches are identified.
Listen to Vivienne Pattison speak on Premier's News Hour here:
