Tougher sanctions are being introduced by the UK Government to combat content online that advertises deadly, illegal knives and other weapons to young people.

The government had already announced a significant fine of up to £10,000 for individual tech bosses whose platforms fail to remove this content within 48 hours following a police warning.

However, following consultation with the UK’s Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime, the government is introducing an additional fine of up to £60,000 to be paid by the company itself.

This means tech platforms and their executives could collectively face up to £70,000 in fines for every post relating to knife crime that they fail to take down.

Further, a greater range of online platforms will be liable under these new laws, to include online search engines as well as social media platforms and marketplaces, in a move to capture all online providers who could fail to remove content.

As previously announced, the Home Office is also introducing a new system to be carried out by a new policing unit backed by £1.75 million in funding to tackle the sale of knives online.

The unit will be responsible for issuing content removal notices which inform the tech platform of illegal content, giving them a 48 hour window in which they must remove the content in question.

Dame Diana Johnson, the UK crime and policing minister, said: “The kind of content that young people scroll through every day online is sickening and I will not accept any notion that restricting access to this harmful material is too difficult.

“Our children need more from us. That is why we are now going further than ever to hold to account the tech companies who are not doing enough to safeguard young people from content which incites violence, particularly in young boys.

“Curbing the impact of this kind of content will be key for our mission to halve knife crime, but more widely our Plan for Change across government to do more [to] protect young people from damaging and dangerous content.”

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The new sanctions are part of a range of measures being introduced by the government in its mission to halve knife crime in a decade.

These include introducing stronger 2-step verification for online selling knives online, banning the delivery of weapons to alternative addresses that don’t match the buyer, and requiring online retailers to report any bulk or suspicious-looking purchases of knives to the police.