Rishi Sunak has declined to give his backing to calls by the mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey for social media apps to be banned on smartphones for under-16s.
Esther Ghey is campaigning for searches for inappropriate material to be flagged to parents in the wake of the sentencing of her transgender daughter’s killers.
Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe were both 15 when they killed Brianna, 16, with a hunting knife after luring her to Linear Park, Culcheth, a village near Warrington, Cheshire, on Feb 11 last year.
Jenkinson had watched videos of torture and murder online.
The Prime Minister, who is visiting Northern Ireland, said his thoughts were with Brianna’s family after the “unspeakable, unspeakable, awful act” but declined to say whether the Government might consider such a proposal.
Mr Sunak, echoing comments from Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, pointed to “tough new powers” now in force under the Online Safety Act which require social media companies to curb the spread of illegal content on their platforms and protect children from seeing potentially harmful material.
