Barely a day passes without reports of attempts by paedophiles to groom underage children for sexual liaisons using internet chatrooms or other contacts. But what is the government, which set up a high profile group to tackle the issue back in 2007, going to do it about? After more than two years we may be about to find out after it was confirmed on Friday that Gordon Brown will present a new national child internet safety strategy on 8 December at No 10.
Tanya Byron, the high-profile child psychologist and author of the 2008 government review, Safer Children in a Digital World, – is tight-lipped about what policy initiatives will emerge. She stepped down in September last year once her review led to the creation of the UK committee for child internet safety (UKCCIS), a coalition of more than 100 industry bodies. "I am [now] a critical friend of the review," she said at the Voice of the Listener & Viewer children's media conference last week. Success, she indicates, could depend on squeezing some money out of a government that is likely to be cash-strapped for some time, adding: "We'll see how much money it gets."
Since its launch in September 2008, UKCCIS, set up to devise internet safety strategies, has been remarkably silent, bar the occasional press release. Critics privately say it may be too big and unwieldy. However, members of the coalition have divided into working groups to prepare proposals for Brown on industry standards, education, classifying video games, and a public awareness campaign.
Tamara Littleton, a member of UKCCIS and the chief executive of eModeration, which supplies moderators to websites, says that a key issue was reviewing guidelines covering social networking, to improve self-regulation but crack down on practices that may encourage children under 13 to use sites. How that can be done remains to be seen.
