Mr. John Church:

The Chairman asked about numbers and trends. The ISPCC has identified some trends in this area. We run Childline, a confidential listening service, which will probably answer approximately 1,200 calls today from children under the age of 18. Approximately 6,000 of the 350,000 calls received by Childline last year related to online bullying. We very often deal with the issues caused by bullying in general and our categorisation deals with behavioural issues as well as issues such as domestic abuse, sexual abuse, body image, online abuse and other bullying.

It causes us to look at our statistics and how we categorise it. If one considers the use of our online platform, last year we had just less than 30,000 conversations compared to just under 4,000 ten years ago. This is going to become an issue and I believe we will have to look at how we categorise conversations. When one looks at trends, we often use Childline figures but we also consult our child support workers in the community who do one-to-one counselling therapeutic interventions. We also have voluntary children's advisory committees set up. In those latter two areas we see a bigger rise, which is not fully reflected in our numbers.

The Chairman also asked about harmful communications and definitions. My colleague, Ms Jennings, will elaborate on that.