Carmaker warns PM against abandoning ban on sale of new petrol and diesel cars, while Labour brands approach ‘chaotic’
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has said Meta’s planned rollout of end-to-end encryption will create “safe havens” for paedophiles online unless robust safety measures are introduced, PA Media reports.
Braverman accused the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, of failing to provide assurances that underage users will be protected from sexual predators. Along with security minister Tom Tugendhat and safeguarding minister Sarah Dines, she has called on the firm to “work with us” and enable police officers to access data to build investigations where appropriate, PA says.
Here in our country we arrest about 800 perpetrators a month. We safeguard about 1,200 children a month. Those are monthly figures, not annual figures. We estimate there are up to 800,000 individuals in the country who pose a risk of sexual harm to children in some form or another.
And what we’re seeing is an increasing level of incidents of perpetrators, child sexual abusers, choosing, I have to say in the main, fora like Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct, both owned by Meta, to conduct these evil crimes. They groom children. They identify children. They solicit children online. They pretend that they are children. They dupe them. They gain their trust and then they manipulate them into performing sexual acts, indecent acts, pornographic acts … And that is child abuse. That is criminal behaviour. And this is happening on an industrial scale.
The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.
We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.
We should – as many other Western countries are already doing – delay implementing Net Zero commitments such as the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030. Other environmental regulations which are hiking the cost of living, like enforcing the replacement of gas and oil boilers, should also be abandoned.
Our climate is changing dramatically. The UK has carved out a world-leading role delivering net zero in a market-friendly way that will deliver clean, secure energy and thousands of jobs in deprived communities like Teesside. My Red Wall constituents overwhelmingly support it.
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