Ms Niamh Hodnett:

Safety by design is really important to us. As part of our consultation on the draft online safety code, which we published in December, we proposed in our guidance that safety by design should underpin all measures being adopted by the platforms. In order to ensure that there is not a whack-a-mole scenario after the fact, safety really needs to be baked in at the outset - at the design of the product, algorithm or service - because it is very difficult to address the issue, or retrofit it, afterwards. As part of the guidance, we also consulted on having a child-centred approach in the context of Article 24 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which puts the child's right at the centre. It is one of the specific supplementary measures that we consult on, in addition to having it in guidance around our online safety code. We also have it as a supplementary measure, that safety by design would be taken on board by the platforms in the design of their products so that in the same way that they would do a data protection impact assessment or a privacy impact assessment during design of a new product or service to ensure it is GDPR-compliant, a similar safety impact assessment would be undertaken at the outset too.