A Tale of Two Safeties: Online Rhetoric vs. Real-World Risk

In a political landscape where “public safety” and “protecting children” are paramount, the government is lauded for fast-tracking the Online Safety Act. This legislation, with its focus on age verification and content removal, sends a clear message: the digital world is a priority. But a deeper look at three recent, interconnected issues—the Online Safety Act, the asylum hotel crisis, and the case of terror plotter Haroon Aswat—reveals a troubling contradiction. The question is not whether we should protect children online, but rather, what are we fast-tracking for the children on the ground, the children who are here, and the children who are being let down by a patchwork of real-world failures?

The Digital Fortress vs. The Ground-Level Crisis

The Online Safety Act is a powerful legislative tool designed to create a fortress against online harm. It places legal duties on social media companies to protect children from illegal and harmful content, from grooming to self-harm promotion. However, this laser-like focus on the digital sphere appears to come at the expense of addressing tangible, real-world threats.

The crisis in asylum hotels for unaccompanied children serves as a stark and disturbing example. Reports from leading organizations like the Refugee Council and ECPAT UK highlight a systemic failure:

• Hundreds of unaccompanied children have been wrongly age-assessed as adults and placed in adult accommodation.
• This practice, which a High Court ruling deemed unlawful, has been directly linked to an increased risk of trafficking and exploitation.
• Between July 2021 and June 2023, 440 children went missing from these hotels, with many still unaccounted for.

This raises a crucial question: how do we verify the relationships of men and children arriving on boats? Are we, by failing to provide robust vetting, inadvertently creating a route for child trafficking? Do we not have a duty to these vulnerable children, as we do to children here at home, to ensure their safety and well-being from the moment they arrive on our shores? It’s a matter of basic safeguarding—a principle that appears to be overlooked in the face of what some see as a more politically palatable fight.

A Dangerous Precedent: The Haroon Aswat Case

The contradiction between online and on-the-ground safety extends beyond vulnerable children to national security itself. The breaking news surrounding Haroon Rashid Aswat, a convicted terror plotter linked to the 7/7 London bombings, brings this into sharp focus.

• Aswat, who has been detained in a high-security hospital since his UK conviction, is now on the verge of release.
• Despite warnings from counter-terrorism officials, British law prohibits a full risk assessment due to his detention under the Mental Health Act.
• Upon his release, he will reportedly be subject to a basic notification order. This requires him to regularly report his address and foreign travel plans to the police but, as critics have highlighted, it is a form of supervision that lacks the intensive surveillance, electronic tracking, or strict curfews often applied to other high-risk individuals.

The message is chilling: while the government is eager to fast-track online safety, the mechanism for managing a convicted terrorist on the ground is constrained by what critics are calling a legal loophole. This begs the question: if we have such serious concerns about vetting those who arrive here and fail to provide robust supervision for an individual who allegedly stated “I am a terrorist,” can the government’s promise of public safety be trusted?

The Policy of Paradox

Taken together, these three issues reveal a deeply flawed set of priorities. So, while we have provisions to protect children from online harms, what about the real world?

• We have a digital-first approach to safeguarding while children on the ground are reported missing from state-run accommodation.
• We have rigorous legal and social protocols for our own citizens, yet questions remain about the vetting of those who claim asylum with no family ties.
• We are seeing a high-risk convicted terrorist potentially released with what is deemed insufficient supervision, all while the government’s focus remains squarely on the next online safety headline.

The time for a full and transparent accounting is now. The public deserves to know why the government is so quick to build a digital wall of protection but so slow to repair the cracks in our physical-world defenses.