Verification was to start in April but will not now be enforced until after a public consultation

Privacy campaigners have claimed a victory after the government said it would delay the introduction of mandatory age checks for pornographic websites “to get the implementation of the policy right”.

All pornography sites had been expected to introduce age verification measures by April, but the policy will not be enforced until later in the year.

The delay is officially to give the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) regulator time to launch a public consultation on its draft guidance this month.

But Myles Jackman, a lawyer who, together with the Open Rights Group, has led a public campaign against the policy, said it was an admission that ministers had failed to understand the implications of their strategy until weeks before it was due to be implemented.

“Genuinely the privacy risk was so severe that if all that data were hacked they would never be taken seriously again when it came to holding private citizens’ data, whether covertly or otherwise,” Jackman said.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport revealed the delay at the end of an announcement of £25m funding for 5G network technology. “Our priority is to make the internet safer for children and we believe this is best achieved by taking time to get the implementation of the policy right,” it said.

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Private companies have been competing to devise age verification solutions, with the frontrunner in the process understood to be Mindgeek. It is the world’s biggest publisher of pornography and owns sites including Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube.

However, the BBFC was formally designated as the age verification regulator only in February, despite having been invited to take on the role and agreeing to do so in November 2016.

Critics of the policy have said age verification providers stand to accrue vast databases of users’ pornography proclivities, which are ripe for Ashley Madison-style hacks or leaks.

A DCMS spokesman would not be drawn into giving an exact date for the policy to come into force, but said: “We are making age verification compulsory for commercial pornography sites, as part of our work to make the internet a safer place for children. But we need to take the time to make sure we get it right, and it will come into effect later this year.”