The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-09-06.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to reduce (a) trolling and (b) cyber-bullying.
Sarah Newton
We continue to make tackling all forms of bullying, including cyberbullying, a priority. All schools are required by law to have a behaviour policy with measures to tackle bullying among pupils, including cyberbullying.
Since September 2014 e-safety has been taught at all four key stages of the curriculum. We have made sure schools have the power to search for, and if necessary delete, inappropriate images (or files) on electronic devices, including mobile phones.
We have invested £3.85 million in a new phase of our This is Abuse campaign, which tackles abuse within teenage relationships and was launched in March. The National Crime Agency’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) has developed a comprehensive education programme, called Thinkuknow, which provides targeted advice to children, parents and carers, including on how to use social media safely.
We have taken action to improve the police response to online abuse. Since the introduction of the College of Policing’s Cyber Crime Training course in February 2014 over 150,000 modules have been completed across all forces and, in September last year, the College of Policing launched the second phase of its Mainstream Cyber Crime Training course for police forces.
Additionally, over 3,900 National Crime Agency officers have completed Digital Awareness training as part of equipping the next generation of highly skilled digital detectives. 1,200 Digital Media Investigators have been trained over the past 18 months.
Work is under way to ensure the appropriate recording of digital crime and abuse. The Home Office launched a mandatory ‘online’ flag as part of the police recorded crime data collection from April 2015. These data are currently in development and will be published in due course.
The Crown Prosecution Service annual Violence Against Women and Girls Report published on September 6 shows that there have been more offences prosecuted under section 127 of the Communications Act and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. Under s.127, in 2015-16 there was a rise in prosecutions related to grossly offensive or indecent communications to 2,026. In total the offences under s.127 of the Communications Act rose by 13% and s.1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 by 32%. There have also been 206 prosecutions for the new offence of disclosing private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress.
