The move is being touted by the party mad UK government under new internet safety laws designed to protect children from visiting sites and seeing that sort of thing.

The draft Online Safety Bill. The measures, to ensure users are 18 or over, could see people asked to prove they own a credit card or confirm their age via a third-party service. Sites that fail to act could be fined up to 10 per cent of their global turnover.

Children's safety groups have long been calling for age verification on porn sites, over fears it is too easy for minors to access publicly available material online.

Announcing the age verification plans, Digital Economy Minister Chris Philp said: "Parents deserve peace of mind that their children are protected online from seeing things no child should see."

Of course they could take an interest in their children and see what they are looking at without having to outsource it to the government, but that might be a little too difficult.

The regulator Ofcom could block porn site that does not comply from being accessible in the UK. This wonderful strategy implies that a child interested in porn has no clue how to run a VPN and will favour foreign porn sites.

It will be up to companies to decide how best to comply with the new rules, but Ofcom may recommend the use of certain age verification technologies. The government says firms should not process or store data that is irrelevant to the purpose of checking someone's age, although it is unclear how that will be enforced.