Jess Phillips has demanded Andy Burnham ‘come out swinging’ and act now to stop children taking and receiving naked pictures on their phones.
The former safeguarding minister told the new Prime Minister must ‘drive through’ an on-device nudity blocking law, as Big Tech firms look set to miss Sir Keir Starmer’s deadline to comply next week.
The Birmingham Yardley MP sensationally quit the government in May this year, saying Starmer had not been ‘bold’ in forcing ‘tech bosses’ to act on naked imagery of children.
The intervention comes as charities and campaigners warn the new law is the best way to stop rising numbers of children falling victim to sextortion scams online.
One of Sir Keir’s last acts as Prime Minister was to order Big Tech companies to implement device-level protects to stop children taking, receiving or viewing nude images.
He gave firms like Apple and Google three months – until September 8 – to activate the nudity blocking safeguards and vowed to change the law to force them to if they didn’t.
The September 8 deadline is now just days away, but Apple and Google have not announced the measures requested by ministers.
In an interview with , Phillips said there should now be ‘no more dilly dally’ over the plans.
She said: ‘The government has to legislate. That’s my message to them.
‘The new Prime Minister has to come out swinging and say the process of legislation will begin.
‘The deadline presents the government with a really brilliant opportunity to to say what our principles are and who are we for.’
Record numbers of children are reporting online sextortion attempts, when a person is manipulated into sending an explicit selfie or video to a predator who threatens to publish it online.
The Report Remove service, which allows children to flag intimate images or videos of themselves, said it received 394 reports from under-18s last year of blackmail attempts after sending sexual images to predators.
That figure is 34% higher than in 2024.
Jess Phillips, who spearheaded efforts to introduce on-device nudity blocking as safeguarding minister in Starmer’s government, said she had met parents of boys who had taken their own lives because of sextortion.
‘It is absolutely horrific,’ she added, ‘We need to put padlocks on this and be world leaders and then go on to seek that similar legislation all over the world.
‘I’m acutely aware that if I shut down the market for child sex abuse in our country that market goes to other countries.’
Phillips issued a blistering resignation statement in May this year, accusing Starmer of slowness to enforce technology that would block on-device nudity for children.
While she expects the government to say something when the deadline passes next week, she warned Burnham he would be ‘forced to’ act if he didn’t move quickly.
She explained: ‘The number of people in the Parliamentary Labour Party who care about this is huge.
Child safety campaigners and charities have also joined demands for Burnham to legislate to force tech firms to implement the crucial technology.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which identifies and removes online child sexual abuse imagery online, said they want to hear Starmer’s deadline be ‘reconfirmed’ by Burnham.
The charity’s Head of Policy, Hannah Swirsky, told : ‘We haven’t heard that yet from Andy Burnham.
‘We want to see what the government plans are for legislating for this.
‘The technology does exist. It is not something that is really far-fetched.’
The IWF runs the Report Remove service along with Childline and says they have observed a huge rise in the number of children taking naked images of themselves because of sextortion scams.
Boys aged 14-17 were the overwhelming victims of the sextortion reports they respond to.
Swirsky added: ‘It’s just so horrifying. We have seen cases where a child has gone to take their own life after being extorted.
‘On-device nudity blocking would really help when it comes to sexual extortion and it is something the government can and should be doing.
‘There is widespread feeling that some companies should be doing more. We want to know that this government is committed to that as well.’
Google’s Sensitive Content Warnings blur sensitive imagery in Google Messages for supervised users and signed-in unsupervised teens, but the feature covers images only, not video.
Apple has introduced age checks for iPhone users, which activates safety features as default for those who are not verified as over 18.
However nudity detection is not applied to the camera or broader apps, meaning children can still take, view, share and save nude images.
Campaigners and the government say this is not enough and want Apple and Google to block nudity across the whole device by default, so they can only be deactivated via age assurance.
Dr Elly Hanson, Strategy Director at the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation (CEASE) told she was ‘outraged and aggrieved, but not shocked’ that Apple and Google had not met the September 8 deadline.
She added: ‘We know from bitter experience that big tech tends not to protect children unless it is forced to – so now is the time to apply this force.
‘Device level protections must be mandated in legislation as a matter of national urgency.
CEASE’S Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Lauren Agnew, said that if Burnham’s promise to act goes ‘quiet’ it would be ‘a green light to companies that have shown voluntary measures don’t work’.
She added: ‘Every week this drags on, children are left exposed on devices that could be protecting them right now.’
The NSPCC’s Senior Police Officer, Lewis Keller, agreed that Big Tech had ‘failed to activate safety features that would stop nude images being taken, sent or received’.
He said the charity ‘expect the Government to announce plans to legislate and force these companies to implement technology that blocks inappropriate material on children’s devices’.
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘We are committed to making it impossible for anyone under 18 to take, receive, view or send nude images on their mobile phones and tablets as part of our pledge to halve violence against women and girls.
’We are working closely with both Apple and Google to make this happen. We are clear that if they do not act, we will legislate to protect our children from predators who seek to exploit them online.’
Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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