New culture minister resists ISP porn ban

 

Gallery

By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 10 Sep 2012 at 10:39

The new culture secretary has suggested keeping children safe online should be the responsibility of parents, not ISPs.

Maria Miller took over as culture secretary from Jeremy Hunt last week, as a government consultation on parental controls came to an end - with a 125,000-strong petition in favour of a default porn block submitted to her new office.

Miller said a network-level, UK-wide block on porn was still a consideration, but suggested that such controls should be down to parents.

"I think the responsibility is very strongly with parents to make sure that they really understand how their children are using the internet... to make sure that they are safe," Miller told The Sunday Times.

"I think probably the awareness of those sorts of pieces of software you can buy or indeed what you can do is not as high as it needs to be," she added, saying she understood why parents feel unsure about technology. "It's not easy to keep up to date with your kids' intake of these things."

Her previous government roles have focused child protection, acting as shadow minister for family welfare and looking into child maintenance and other issues around families as part of the Department for Work and Pensions. Her other new role is as women's minister.

Despite that background suggesting she might have sided with the child protection agencies calling for the porn block, Miller's comments suggest her thoughts on the subject largely mirror Hunt's, who resisted calls from Claire Perry MP for a full block.

Instead, he repeatedly called for ISPs to implement "active choice" - in which service providers ask all new customers if they want a filtering system switched on, but don't turn it on by default.

In 2011 he called for tougher controls on online porn, but the action his department actually took turned out to be no more than working with the industry on a code of practise to encourage ISPs to offer free filtering systems to all new customers.

After Perry reignited the issue this spring, Hunt appeared to stick with those existing "active choice" plans. "Across government we are looking at many of the issues raised, such as the progress in implementing Active Choice and whether legal powers might be necessary as a backstop to voluntary measures that the ISPs adopt," he said at the time.

Miller has been quick to lay out where she stands on broadband issues, last week unveiling plans to cut red tape holding back broadband infrastructure upgrades, meaning ISPs no longer need to seek council approval for new street-side cabinets.