Keir Starmer has said the UK Government must “protect our children from the tidal wave of violence freely available online.”
The Prime Minister said in a speech that it “cannot be right” that people can watch horrific videos on the internet.
It follows the Record’s ground-breaking ‘Our Kids…Our Future’ campaign, which has called for tough action to curb the epidemic of youth violence.
Starmer was speaking in Downing Street on Tuesday morning after Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to killing three girls.
The Labour leader said Britain faces a new threat of terrorism from “extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms”.
He said: “To face up to this new threat there are also bigger questions. Questions such as how we protect our children from the tidal wave of violence freely available online.
“Because you can’t tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible on mainstream social media platforms.
“That with just a few clicks, people can watch video after horrific video. Videos that in some cases are never taken down. No – that cannot be right.”
The Record’s Our Kids … Our Future campaign was launched nearly two years ago after we reported on a series of sickening assaults on youths across Scotland.
As part of the campaign we have demanded social media giants to remove violent clips of youths from their platform before they go viral.
In an exclusive interview with the Record from 2023, Starmer demanded social media giants stop “sitting on their hands” and clamp down violent videos. He urged the firms to take “responsibility” and said he would take action as Prime Minister.
We asked Starmer if the social media giants should be doing more: “Yes, I do. I think if you run a platform, you bear responsibility for what’s on that platform, and they’ve got to take more responsibility.”
He added: “There’s the opportunity now for votes to be had on platform providers taking more responsibility for what’s happening on their platform.
“What we’ve had for too long is platform providers just sitting on their hands saying ‘we just provide the platform, we have no real responsibility for the content’. That’s got to change.”
The Online Safety Act was introduced last year and is meant to force tech firms to take more responsibility for the content on their platforms. It should also protect children from some legal-but-harmful material. But some campaigners have said it doesn’t go far enough.
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