Ms Anna Morgan:

The consultation is central to examining these issues. We will pose the question of what the appropriate age of digital consent should be. We noted the representations made by various charities and children's representatives. Under section 31, a review of the age is to be carried out after three years and we hope the consultation exercise will provide us with valuable feedback on the opinions of stakeholders. That is connected to the exercise of children's rights, which is another pertinent issue under the Data Protection Act.

On the question on the operation of the age of digital consent, there are mechanisms such as age gating, which organisations use to verify children's age by asking for a date of birth, and giving only a certain number of attempts to demonstrate that they are over the age of digital consent. Lots of different sectors and jurisdictions have struggled with this and we are examining how to implement an effective age verification method, bearing in mind that when a platform tries to collect the age of users it will lead to the collection of age information on all users, which raises issues around the excessive collection of personal data under the GDPR provisions. They are complicated issues and we are hoping our consultation will throw some light on what may be best practice for organisations.