Correspondence

Commitment to halve violence against women and girls: letter from DSIT Secretary of State to online service providers

Published 23 March 2026

The Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
22-26 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2EG

23 March 2026

To online service providers operating in the United Kingdom

This government has made an unprecedented commitment to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade. I am writing to set out what we have done, and what I now expect from you. The Online Safety Act is in force and is delivering real change. But we know there is more to do.

We have strengthened the criminal law and online regulatory framework to make online spaces safer for women and girls. We have announced new offences to outlaw harmful practices in pornography such as strangulation and semen-defacing images. 

And we are creating the most robust framework globally to tackle intimate image abuse. It is already a criminal offence to share, or even threaten to share, a sexually explicit deepfake without consent. But this government has gone further: by making these priority offences under the Online Safety Act, I am ensuring that all relevant services must take steps to prevent this content from appearing online and to remove it swiftly if it does.

Since the 6 February, the non-consensual creation of sexually explicit deepfake images is also a criminal offence. This law ensures that those responsible for such abhorrent harm face the consequences they deserve. We are urgently designating it as a priority offence under the Online Safety Act.

I am also tackling the use of AI tools to create non-consensual intimate images. We have introduced amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill to ban ‘nudification’ tools - AI technology that can transform ordinary images into fake nude pictures and videos, without the person’s consent – and to bring all AI chatbots into scope of the Online Safety Act’s illegal content duties. We are putting victims first. No-one should have to report the same image again and again, often never receiving a response. We are legislating to make online platforms remove non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours. But our mission to halve violence against women and girls also requires a truly transformational approach to how we respond to this issue across every part of society. Your platforms play a key part here. So, I am calling on you to step up to this challenge and help us make the digital world a place where everyone can participate safely and confidently.

I welcomed the publication of Ofcom’s important guidance: A Safer Life Online for Women and Girls and urge all technology companies to implement its recommended measures without delay. These steps are essential to better protect women and girls from the abuse, harassment, and harmful content that continues to proliferate online.

We urgently need to deal with the gender-based online harms Ofcom’s guidance identifies, including misogynistic abuse and sexual violence; pile-ons and coordinated harassment; stalking and coercive control; and image-based sexual abuse.

I know you do not want this kind of content on your sites. Ofcom’s guidance sets out steps you can take now to make your platforms safer for all users.

These include but are not limited to: 

• conducting risk assessments that focus on harms to women and girls
• conducting ‘abusability’ evaluations before launching new features and services
• setting strong and customisable default settings around user interaction and privacy
• demonetising user-generated content which promotes misogynistic abuse and sexual violence
• reducing the prominence of misogynistic abuse and sexual violence in search results and from content recommender feeds
• implementing rate limits to prevent mass-posting in pile-ons

I expect all platforms to implement Ofcom’s guidance by the end of this year at the latest.

I know that tech companies have the ability and the technical tools to block and delete online misogyny. We must not fail to act and let another generation down on this critical issue. 

So my message is simple: make your platforms safer for women and girls. I will monitor your progress closely to ensure change is delivered on this critical agenda. Women and girls should be able to be online without fear of violence, abuse or misogyny. Tech companies have a responsibility to make this happen.

Yours sincerely

The Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology