To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps the Government are taking to accelerate international co-operation to ensure the swift closure of websites hosted overseas which contain child abuse images. (149905)

The Government and law enforcement are working hard to build international co-operation and collaboration to improve all aspects of investigations into online child abuse.

This will cover not only investigations into websites hosting images of children being sexually abused; but, also, investigations to find the children who appear in these images and to identify those who are making, downloading, distributing and/or trading in images of children being sexually abused. A recent investigation led by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre led to the rescue of over 30 children from abuse and the identification of over 700 suspects worldwide.

The Government recognise the need to take action to shut down these sites and law enforcement are pro-actively seeking to build relationships in those parts of the world where it appears the majority of sites are hosted. We are also very supportive of CEOP’s initiative to embed law enforcement officers from overseas into CEOP to improve co-operation and to facilitate investigations.