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'Breeding ground'

The government, and prominent child-protection charities, have long argued encryption hinders efforts to combat the growing problem of online child abuse.

"It is important that technology companies make every effort to ensure that their platforms do not become a breeding ground for paedophiles," the Home Office said.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) says research shows grooming and child-abuse-image crimes recorded in the UK have increased dramatically.

The charity's Richard Collard said the Online Safety Bill "will rightly make it a legal requirement for platforms to identify and disrupt child sexual abuse taking place on their sites and services and companies could be preparing by developing technological solutions that protect the safety and privacy of all users, not least that of child abuse victims".

"Experts have demonstrated that it's possible to tackle child-abuse material and grooming in end-to-end encrypted environments," he added.

The government said: "The Online Safety Bill does not represent a ban on end-to-end encryption.

"It is not a choice between privacy or child safety - we can and we must have both."

But critics say the only way to check the contents of encrypted messages for child-sexual-abuse material would be to have services scan them on a device such as a phone before they are encrypted and sent. And this client-side scanning undermines the privacy encryption provides.

Lawyer Graham Smith tweeted: "You could argue that you don't break a fence by digging round the end of it - literally true but where does it get you if the objecti[ve] is to trespass on private property? And once the hole has been dug, you might as well not have the fence."

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