Tech and AI

Ministers will legislate to stop children taking or sharing nude images on their devices after Apple and Google fall short

By Staff Writer  |  9 September 2026

Three months after the two operating system makers were set a deadline, the Culture Secretary told the Commons their commitments do not meet the scale of the crisis. Officials began drafting a bill the same day, and app providers will be brought in alongside the devices.

Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, made a statement on online safety on Tuesday 8 September 2026. In June the government had challenged industry on a three-month timeline to set out road maps for device-level protections that would prevent children taking, sharing or viewing nude images on phones and tablets. Since then, she said, officials from her department and the Home Office had run a work programme with Apple and Google, and both companies had provided substantial commitments and developed meaningful changes at operating system level, including the blocking rather than blurring of nude imagery on underage devices.

The proposals were a step in the right direction, she told the House, but they do not meet the scale of the crisis. The Internet Watch Foundation believes 91 per cent of these images are self-generated by children. Each year around 9,000 child sexual abuse offences involve an online element, and under-18s are the subject of almost a quarter of online blackmail.

Two commitments

The first is primary legislation requiring major technology platforms to build device-level protections for children, to be introduced as soon as the government can, with the caveat that if the platforms in scope develop and implement technical solutions while the work is ongoing, the need for legislation will be reassessed. The second is a requirement, as soon as possible, that apps used by children prevent them accessing or sharing nudity, so that the whole ecosystem changes rather than the handset alone.

Put simply, we will give tech companies the chance to lead; we will not give them the chance to lag. These measures, taken together, will make Britain the first country in the world to go this far, and a world leader in online safety. The message we are sending to tech companies is clear: planning must now become implementation, and progress must translate into protections that make a real difference to children's lives.

Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Pressed by the shadow Secretary of State, Rebecca Paul, on the absence of a timetable, Ms Nandy said she had instructed officials that day to begin working up the legislation and that the only reason there was no firm date was that no country had done this before. She said the bill will be developed regardless of what the companies do in the meantime, that privacy concerns would not be sidelined, and that there is a particular challenge around end-to-end encrypted services on which she wants cross-party discussion. Asked about older handsets passed down within families, she said officials are exploring solutions and that the government is trying to close loopholes from several directions at once.

Liz Kendall, who set out the earlier reforms this year before leaving office, thanked her for confirming that the vote on banning social media companies from providing services to under-16s will take place this year, for the ban to come into effect early next year. Ms Nandy said she could not yet give a timetable for the further measures on chatbots, overnight curfews and limits on scrolling for older children, but would return to the House with one.

Outside the chamber

Chris Sherwood, chief executive of the NSPCC, called the legislative plan a necessary move after the companies failed to meet the three-month deadline.

children cannot face more delays, so Government must act swiftly and ensure these measures are enshrined in law at the earliest opportunity

Chris Sherwood, chief executive of the NSPCC

Both companies responded through spokespeople. Apple pointed to the communication safety feature it launched in 2021 and said it had shared future plans with officials; Google said it had made progress and remained committed to the work. Neither statement carried a named executive. The Open Rights Group has previously warned that enforcing a block for children could push every adult through an identity checkpoint and scan private images by default; the government has denied the measure amounts to surveillance, and Ms Nandy told the House it is possible to do this without encroaching on privacy.

The technical shape of what the companies have built is not in the record. What the record does show is a Secretary of State who has stopped waiting: a bill in drafting, a second front against the apps, and a commitment made at the despatch box that the first country to do this will be Britain. The timetable, as the Opposition pointed out, is the missing line.