Digital Minister Margot James has said she is "extremely sorry" for the prolonged delay to a new age verification scheme designed to protect young people from watching online adult content.
New regulations to force adult websites to check that visitors are 18 and over were due to come into effect on Monday, but they have suffered repeated setbacks, most recently because the UK Government did not properly notify European regulators.
Ms James told the BBC: "I'm extremely sorry that there has been a delay. I know it sounds incompetent."
She added: "Mistakes do happen, and I'm terribly sorry that it happened in such an important area."
Culture Minister Jeremy Wright said last month that the failure to notify the European Commission as required meant that the introduction of the scheme would be delayed by another six months.
At the time, Christian advocacy group CARE, which strongly supports age checks, said the bureaucratic error was "frankly astonishing".
Responding to Ms James' comments, Sarah Wollaston, chairwoman of the Health and Social Care Committee, said the delay was "outrageous".
"It's another example of the government failing to protect children and young people," she told the BBC.
"I'm afraid everything in this place is being kicked down the road because of the delays caused by the leadership election and the Brexit process."
A 2015 poll conducted by ComRes for CARE found strong support for the implementation of mandatory age checks not only to view online adult content but to watch R-rated movies like Fifty Shades of Grey online.
According to the poll, around three quarters of the British public (74%) said that sites providing adult content to the UK – regardless of whether they are actually located in the UK – should be made to put in place age verification checks. A similar figure (73%) said that age verification should apply to 18 as well as R18 rated films streamed online.
