Protecting children and freedoms

Lyndon Bowring, Executive Chairman of CARE, comments on the causes close to the heart of the Christian community

In my opinion, one of the Government’s most important duties is to protect children from harm. Rules about safeguarding are much stricter than they used to be. Anyone teaching in Sunday school or helping with church children and youth groups must now be DBS checked, and it’s the law to report any concerns if a child may be at risk of abuse or neglect.

All that is good, but sadly the same sort of vigilance doesn’t happen when young people go online, a place of wonderful potential and opportunity but also where so many dangers lurk. An alarming number of children, some as young as six, have seen explicit hardcore, violent, graphic material – often accidentally but some specifically seeking it out. Meanwhile, 55,000 UK children are classified as problem internet gamblers.

At CARE we’ve invested financial resources and hundreds of hours into this matter over many years. In 2015, the Government promised to stop children’s exposure to harmful sexualised content online, by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material and age-rating for all music videos. Thanks to the efforts of CARE, Christian MPs and others, the 2017 Digital Economy Act included this crucial measure. Unfortunately, it has never been implemented.

Fast forward to last December when the Government’s long and complex Online Safety Bill – which aims to strengthen protections for children, protect adults’ rights to free speech and make the online world more transparent and accountable – returned to the Commons. It has caused serious controversy. There are those seeking to shield children from potential online dangers such as grooming, revenge porn, hate speech, child abuse images and posts relating to suicide and eating disorders. Pitted against them are some of the advocates of freedom of speech who are concerned about censorship by the backdoor.

Of course, freedom is very important, but it needs to be balanced with responsibility. Adults wanting to access extreme pornography or publish hateful material to radicalise, evoke violence and other dangerous behaviours should be challenged. But we also need to protect freedom of speech for Christians to express their gospel beliefs and others who oppose the growing ‘woke’ influences in society that are intent on silencing them.

What can we do about this? It’s likely to be a long time before the Online Safety Bill becomes law. CARE will continue to keep a watchful eye on it, making sure that our concerns for children’s safety and the protection of freedoms are not lost. You may want to contact your MP to ask where they stand on this matter.

It’s also incredibly important to pray. You can contact CARE for free copies of ‘Ten Ways to Pray for Children and the Internet’ or access it at care.org.uk/prayer

This article first appeared in the March 2023 edition of Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

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