UK Home Secretary statement in support of IWF 2017 Annual Report launch

"This year has been one where the threat our children face, the generation and spread of online sexual abuse, continues to grow. We want to see Britain as the safest place to be online and the Internet Watch Foundation’s work is critical to our efforts to make this possible, efforts to which they bring twenty-one years of expertise and an ability to describe the changing nature of the threat with authority.

"The IWF are global leaders in the proactive identification and removal of illegal child sexual abuse imagery. They are a key partner of the WePROTECT Global Alliance and are sharing hashes derived from the UK’s world leading Child Abuse Image Database with six major technology partners, to speed up their identification and removal.

"I am encouraged that more of the public recognise child abuse material when they see it and are confident enough to report it, reflected in the statistics in this report. This demonstrates the success of the partnership between the Internet Watch Foundation and others, to encourage reporting this heinous material and to ultimately secure its removal.

"But there is clearly more that we need to do, with a worrying rise in material hosted in Europe, and the ever-evolving nature of offending as offenders exploit new vulnerabilities in the online environment to evade detection. We will continue to work together in our efforts to rise to this challenge and to evolve with it as we look to ensure the UK’s response remains as strong as it can possibly be."

The Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP
Home Secretary
United Kingdom