Home Secretary announces new measures to tackle child abuse

In a speech today Javid said the government will invest an extra £21m over the next 18 months to bolster the response law enforcement agencies to online grooming and videos and images of abuse.

The money will be used to improve how government agencies reduce the volume of offending and pursue the most prolific offenders.

Meanwhile, a further £2.6m will be provided to child protection organisations to improve understanding of offender behaviour and prevent future offending.

This will include support to the Lucy Faithfull Foundation which works to change the behaviour of offenders and potential offenders by highlighting the harm and suffering that takes place behind every image.

Javid said he also expects internet firms to take action on the issue, warning that if they do not, the government will, setting out appropriate legislation in the forthcoming Online Harms White Paper.

"How far we legislate will be informed by the action and attitude that industry takes," he said.

"Ultimately, what I want to see is a more effective partnership between technology companies, law enforcement, the charity sector and government so that we can be confident in our response to these types of crimes."

He said he expects technology firms to take action in five areas: blocking child sexual abuse material as soon as they detect it being uploaded; stopping child grooming taking place on their platforms; working with government to shut down live-streamed child abuse; helping law enforcement agencies to deal with the issue; and sharing best practice and technology with other companies.

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Javid's announcement comes as figures published by the National Crime Agency (NCA) show that referrals to it relating to images of child sexual abuse have increased by 700 per cent over the past five years.

Data published by the organisation show it received more than 82,000 referrals for child sex abuse images in 2017.

It also revealed that police arrest about 400 people in the UK every month for child sexual exploitation and other forms of sexual abuse offence.

NCA lead for tackling child sexual abuse director Rob Jones said the industry must invest in preventing online offences from happening, in particular, sharing indecent images of children.

"We are seeing an increase in the number of sophisticated offenders using the dark web to groom and harm children on the mainstream internet," said Jones.

"The technology exists for industry to design-out these offences, to stop these images being shared.

"Whilst some online platforms have taken important steps to improve safety, we are asking them to take it to the next step; to innovate, to use their brightest minds, and to invest in preventing these online offences from happening in the first place."

Findings from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which aims to eliminate child sexual abuse imagery online, backed evidence that online child sexual abuse is growing.

IWF chief executive Susie Hargreaves said offenders were becoming more sophisticated in their crime, using disguised website abuse to an unprecedented level.

From 2016 to 2017, IWF saw an increase of 86 per cent in disguised websites, from 1,572 to 2,909.

"These are websites where the child sexual abuse content is only revealed to someone who has followed a pre-set digital pathway," she said.

"To anyone else, they will only show legal content."

NSPCC Head of Child Safety Online, Tony Stower, said the rising cases of abuse were alarming but unsurprising.

"It's been evident for some time that the scale of online child sexual abuse is rising sharply, and technology makes it easier than ever before," he said.

Barnardo's chief executive Javed Khan warned that the government must force online companies to ensure effective safeguards were in place, or risk putting a generation of children in danger online.

"Feeling safe in their bedrooms, children can make friends quickly with strangers on social media or through gaming sites and don't see the risks they might pose," said Khan.

"Of the victims of online grooming referred to Barnardo's specialist support services, we know that nearly two thirds of them, some as young as 10, had also gone on to meet their attacker and were sexually exploited."

The NCA received 82,109 individual industry referrals for child sex abuse images in 2017.