Claire Perry, the campaigning Tory MP against internet child pornography, will be alongside Prime Minister David Cameron at a crunch meeting on June 17 demanding that Google take immediate action to stop it.
Mr Cameron has become sickened by the proliferation of porn in the wake of the murders of Tia Sharp and April Jones by men obsessed by violent obscene images on the internet.
He has declared: “It pollutes the internet, twists minds and is quite simply a danger to children. Internet companies and search engines make their living by trawling and categorising the web.
“So I call on them to use their extraordinary technical abilities to do more to root out these disgusting images.”
And mother of three Mrs Perry, the MP for Devizes, who is Mr Cameron’s adviser on preventing the sexualisation of children, will be taking part in the crackdown talks with internet companies at No 10 Downing Street.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Mrs Perry declares:
“This could be the week we make real progress in defeating the evil of child pornography. In the past month we have been reminded once again of the dark underbelly of the worldwide web. “Sexual images depicting children have been found on the computers of two British men convicted of the abuse and murder of two innocent girls.
“We can’t say if access to these images contributed to or caused the crimes – but the fact that they were accessible, and correlated with such sickening behaviour, causes me great concern.”
She points out that the taking, making, distribution or possession of any sexual image depicting a child under 18 is illegal.
“Britain led the world in attacking the problem of online child-abuse imagery with the creation of the not-for–profit Internet Search Foundation (IWF) in 1996,” she adds.
“The IWF acts to identify websites showing this appalling material and issues to internet companies a blacklist of websites for blocking in the UK. But as websites containing this material proliferate like weeds in spring, many images slip through.
“At the moment, the protection system relies heavily on ordinary web users – you and me – taking the time to report an image, and to assuming that we would want to acknowledge to anyone that we had found such disgusting and disturbing material.
“More than 40,000 people took the time to do so last year. Of course, none of those reports are likely to come from people like Stuart Hazell or Mark Bridger (both convicted child murderers), who are actively looking for these terrible images.
And almost no reports come from internet service providers or search engine companies, although they acted with commendable alacrity in blocking images when the IWF reported it to them.
“Surely, the blocking would be much more effective if internet companies, whose business models are based on trawling websites across the world, did more to report sites containing illegal child abuse images to the IWF, and funded it better?”
And 49-year-old Mrs Perry adds: “We put up warning labels if people attempt to download pirated material on the internet, and we even put health warnings on cigarette packages, so why not alert people searching for child porn that it is illegal, that every child depicted in these images is a victim, and that the consequences of being found in possession of material could be severe?
“And why not go further, and use this information – known in the industry as a ‘splash page’ – to provide signposts to where someone struggling with an addiction to child porn could go to get help?
“Since I got involved in campaigning in this area, there have been calls for the Government to regulate. But, as the situation with illegal child porn images online demonstrates, the global nature of the internet means that even if the British Government outlaws something, it’s possible for a determined citizen to find it online.
“The only way to stay in front of the technical challenges is to make sure that the internet industry – which is constantly inventing and innovating – steps up to its responsibilities too. “There are encouraging signs they will do more so.”
Marlborough’s Question Time is all geared up for a royal birth and plenty of political fun
