Government wasted more than £2m on 'botched' age verification policy for online pornography
2 min read
The Government wasted more than £2million on a “botched” age verification policy for online pornography, a minister has revealed.
The controversial policy was scrapped last week after repeated difficulties and delays in trying to bring in the policy aimed at preventing children from watching adult content on the internet.
And now digital minister Matt Warman has admitted the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has spent “approximately £2.2million” of taxpayer cash on the project.
It was first proposed by the Conservatives during the 2015 General Election campaign, but took several years to develop.
It would mean sites hosting adult material would need people to prove they were over-18 to access it, but privacy campaigners were worried information from browsing histories could be used to identify users.
A press release from DCMS back in April said the proposals would come into force in July this year, but it was postponed for at least six months after the government failed to inform the EU of the plans.
And the Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan confirmed last week the policy would be abandoned completely, and she would instead focus on introducing measures to protect children online in the online harms white paper.
Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson asked the department how much it had cost, with Mr Warman writing in response: “Development costs from 2015-2016 were met through existing DCMS headcount resources.
“Since 2016, the government has spent approximately £2.2million through a contractual agreement with the British Board for Film Classification to implement age verification for online pornography.
“Building on that work, we are now establishing how the objectives of Part Three of the Digital Economy Act can be delivered through our online harms regime.”
Mr Watson told PoliticsHome: “This was a popular policy to protect children that the Government has completely botched.
“It was beset with delays and has now been dropped completely despite the Government spending £2million on it.
“We urgently need comprehensive new tech regulation to be introduced to protect our children.”
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