The National Crime Agency welcomes the Prime Minister’s announcement on device controls that prevent children from taking, sharing or viewing nude images, and we fully support any measures that make the online world safer for children.

From a law enforcement perspective, device restrictions have the potential to prevent some of the most serious forms of online child sexual abuse before they begin by stopping the creation, sharing and circulation of nude images involving children.

We have been clear that online platforms currently contain features that offenders exploit to groom, coerce and sexually exploit children at scale. Restricting access to those high‑risk features remains an important part of reducing harm.

But device‑level protections are also needed because they target a different stage of the offending process – stopping harmful content from being created and shared in the first place. Together, these measures strengthen safeguarding by reducing both the opportunity to offend and the ability to obtain sexual imagery of children. ​

This is particularly important in relation to grooming, financially motivated sexual extortion and self‑generated indecent imagery, where abuse often escalates rapidly once an image exists. Preventing images from being created or shared can significantly reduce the long‑term and repeated harm experienced by victims.

It is entirely right that the Government should intervene with legislation if the technology companies fail to act quickly enough, because the safety of children should be the overriding priority.

NCA Director General Graeme Biggar said: “Every day NCA officers and policing colleagues investigate horrific cases that prove the online environment as it stands is unsafe for children.

“Many of the most serious cases begin with offenders coercing children into creating and sharing sexual images of themselves. Once those images exist, they can be used for blackmail, humiliation and repeated exploitation.

“Preventing children from taking, sharing or receiving nude images can stop abuse before it starts and so would be an important step forward.

“This is one of six changes we called for last month. We also need tech companies to introduce effective age assurance, to stop algorithms from promoting harmful or illegal content, and to remove other high risk features that enable offenders to identify children at scale, to contact them directly, and to message them on end to end encrypted apps. Children should not have access to social media or gaming platforms that have these dangerous features. Taken together these steps can make the online environment safer for children.”