David Cameron announced he would give pornography sites a chance to produce an effective voluntary scheme for age-restricted controls or shut them down.

At the election, the party promised to ensure children were locked out of adult content and to adopt a law to achieve this. According to a Childline poll, about 10% of 12-13-year-olds could be addicted to porn, while 18% had seen shocking or upsetting images. A consultation is scheduled for fall to seek views on how best to introduce measures to restrict children’s access to porn sites. At the same time, the industry (British websites or ISPs) can suggest proposals to block content via payment providers, like advertisers and other means. If no voluntary schemes are agreed with the porn websites, the consultation will also consider the best form of legislation to make it an offense in the United Kingdom to publish porn online without age verification controls.

The UK Prime Minister recognized that the spread of the worldwide web made it difficult to find a form of legislation that would cover such websites both locally and internationally. The suggestion was expressed to set up a pornography regulator to oversee the process and fine companies breaching the law or the voluntary agreements.

According to statistics, the top 10 popular porn websites in the country take more than half of traffic and have almost no controls. The goal of the government now is to make sure that the rules that apply offline apply online and allow children to use the Internet safely. According to the same statistics, 20% of under-18s in the country visited an adult site and 10% of UK visitors to adult sites were children.