The government is "really working hard" to counter the impact of websites containing unlawful terrorist content, a minister told the Lords yesterday.
Conservative peer Lord Naseby had asked how many websites have been closed under the Terrorism Act 2006.
Security minister Lord West revealed that "it has not yet been necessary" for police to use the formal powers given under the Act to close websites.
"My Lords, the police's preferred route for removing potentially unlawful terrorist content is through informal contact with the internet service provider," he told the House.
"They are happy with the impact of this approach to date."
Lord Naseby said it was "extraordinary" that the power had not been used yet.
"We are still allowing these websites to exist and to be the lungs of publicity for the terrorists, modified only by the judgment of someone in the police force?" he asked.
Lord West said the government is not "allowing those things to happen".
"We are removing websites on a voluntary basis with the ISPs," he told peers.
"We are countering them by putting our own stuff on them.
"We are talking to local community activists, who put stuff on the websites.
"We are looking at how we can filter them.
"We have talked to all the various providers to ensure that we do that filtering, and we have looked at reducing access in areas of search engines and in things like Facebook.
"We are doing a huge raft of work.
"Indeed, I would be embarrassed to stand here, having been doing this for two years and pushing it, to find that we had not done that."
He added:
"We are out there in amongst it really trading blows toe-to-toe. We are doing that and we are actually getting somewhere on this."
Lord West said some police forces are not properly recording information about sites that have been closed at their request.
"We are in negotiations about that," he told peers.
He was pressed by his Conservative shadow Baroness Neville-Jones to reveal how many sites have been recorded as having been shut down.
Lord West said he was "nervous of giving a figure because it would be meaningless as records have not been kept by all 51 police forces around the country".
Lord Harris of Haringey wanted to know if co-operation was forthcoming "from all the internet service providers operating in this country, or are some providers perhaps less co-operative?"
Lord West said it would be "wrong to say that everyone is as co-operative, because they are not".
He pointed out that the issue requires international co-operation.
"However, I can assure this House that we are really working hard in this area. We will jolly well get there, and we will jolly well knock them for six finally."
Lord West also said that not all countries have co-operated.
"We have to confront the problem and approach it in other ways," he said.
"But we are working with many countries and trying to get international agreements.
"We have managed to do that in terms of paedophilia and child pornography and we need to try to do the same in this area, but it is much more complicated.
"What is violent extremism and what it is allowable for someone to say involve difficult nuances."
Lord West said he was particularly concerned about information available to potential terrorists.
"The whole area of CBRNE - chemical, biological, radiological and novel explosive-type stuff - the availability of such detailed information on the internet is quite worrying," he told peers.
"A lot of that - for example, stuff to do with biological - we cannot take off because there is no reason why it should not be there.
"However, it is extremely worrying because, more than ever, there is access to things that are very dangerous."
