UK Lords Take Aim at Ofcom's 'Child-Protection' Upgrades to Online Safety Act

The House of Lords is set to scrutinize the latest child-protection plans proposed by UK regulator the Office of Communications (Ofcom) under the Online Safety Act (OSA). On Tuesday, the Lords Communications and Digital Committee will hear from three prominent online safety advocates as it probes the regulator's proposed new measures.

Andy Burrows of the Molly Rose Foundation, Rani Govender from the NSPCC, and Baroness Kidron OBE of 5Rights will be questioned by peers about whether Ofcom's amendments will actually deliver more safety for children online or just add to the compliance burden, privacy nightmares, and unintended consequences.

Ofcom's proposed new measures aim to strengthen the OSA with fresh obligations for platforms. These include stricter age-assurance rules to determine when users are children, new restrictions on livestreaming that require platforms to disable virtual gifts and reactions when minors are involved, as well as blocking viewers from recording children's livestreams altogether.

The regulator also wants sites to deploy hash-matching to spot known illegal content – including child abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensual intimate images – and roll out automated tools to flag grooming, fraud, self-harm, and suicide content. The proposed new protections around livestreaming have sparked debate about whether children should be banned from participating in live streams altogether.

The Online Safety Act, pushed through in 2023 as the government's child-protection regime, promised to strong-arm platforms into compliance and scrub the internet of harmful content. However, critics have warned that it grants ministers and Ofcom powers broad enough to steamroll free speech and snoop on users.

Civil liberties groups argue that "legal but harmful" content rules creep dangerously close to censorship, while large parts of the Act risk being unworkable or undermining encryption. Tech firms and privacy advocates warn that highly effective age assurance could mean collecting biometric data, verifying IDs, scanning or estimating ages from faces, or forcing people to share private information – all of which create a loot-bag for abuse, hack, or mission creep by government agencies.

There has also been a backlash over enforcement mechanics. Some porn-site operators and smaller platforms say the cost and complexity of compliance are already driving them to block UK users or shut down entirely. VPN usage has surged as people try to sidestep geo-based blocks, age verification, or identity checks.

The House of Lords hearing will almost certainly press the witnesses on whether these new age assurance and livestreaming proposals will exacerbate those controversies. The Register will be watching for whether the answers suggest that Ofcom's proposals will be a genuine advance or yet another heavy-handed policy that promises safety but delivers expense and erosion of digital freedoms.