Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

Report (3rd Day)

Scottish legislative consent granted, Welsh legislative consent sought. Relevant documents: 21st and 44th Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee.

16:22

Amendment 90

Moved by

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

90: After Clause 27, insert the following new Clause—
“Report: barriers to parental support in the care and wellbeing of critically ill children(1) Within twelve months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report on the barriers preventing parents of critically ill children aged between 29 days and 16 years from being by their children’s bedsides during periods of hospital care and the impact and potential harms this has on children’s care, wellbeing and family life.(2) A report laid under subsection (1) must include assessments of—(a) the adequacy of existing measures in facilitating the care, wellbeing and family life of critically ill children aged between 29 days and 16 years by their parents,(b) the barriers facing parents of such children, including—(i) financial pressures,(ii) pressures arising from the parent’s existing or future employment commitments, and(iii) mental health difficulties,(c) options for providing additional support to the parents of such children during periods of hospital care, and(d) the impact such additional support would be likely to have on such children’s care, wellbeing and family life. (3) In preparing the report laid under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult—(a) parents of children who have received care in hospital for an extended period,(b) healthcare professionals, and(c) charities and civil society organisations offering support to parents of children receiving care in hospital.(4) In preparing a report laid under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must have regard to the UK’s international obligations, including under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989.(5) A Minister of the Crown must within the period of 28 Commons sitting days beginning with the laying of a report under subsection (1) make arrangements for a debate on the report by the House of Commons.(6) A Minister of the Crown must within the period of 28 Lords sitting days beginning with the laying of a report under subsection (1) make arrangements for a debate on the report by the House of Lords.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the barriers preventing parents of critically ill children aged between 29 days and 16 years from being by their bedside during periods of hospital care, including financial and workplace pressures, and mental health needs, and the impact this has on the child’s care, wellbeing and family life.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 90 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, seeks to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the barriers preventing parents of critically ill children being by their bedside.

I have been working with Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis for around a year. After their son Hugh passed away, they could have stepped back. Instead, they made a conscious decision to stand up and try to change the lives of other families. They are in the south-west Gallery today, as they have been for previous debates. They have turned the most devastating personal loss into a determination to make sure that other parents are not left to face the same failures that they experienced.

When Hugh died in 2021, Ceri and Frances left the hospital at 11.30 pm. When the doors closed behind them, Hugh was still in there, and suddenly they were out of the system. They stood outside with their bags, trying to work out how they could carry on. They had a three year-old child at home whom they had not seen for three weeks. There was no transport, which they did not expect, and they took an hour and a half taxi ride home in silence while the driver chatted about football and the weather, unaware that their world had just collapsed.

When they walked through their front door, everything was still there: toys, unfinished drawings and the remains of Hugh’s birthday cake still in the kitchen. The pain was unbearable. They woke the next morning and sat in silence. Then, Hugh’s younger brother, Raife, woke up, who they had not seen in three weeks, and said, “Where’s Hughie?” There was no guidance and no support, and they had to do what no other parent should ever have to do: look online.

Ceri tried to access mental health support, but no one could help. The GP was unaware of their situation and just offered sleeping pills. Charities said that there was a 12-week wait. Ceri has been very clear with me that he simply would not have survived 12 weeks without immediate support. By chance, he was introduced to a trauma clinic, and it literally saved his life. The GP and the community team never called; the family were literally on their own.

This experience is not rare. Research consistently shows that between 30% and 50% of parents of critically ill children meet the diagnostic threshold for PTSD, with symptoms beginning at, or shortly after, diagnosis, not years later. Studies show that mothers of seriously ill children face around a 50% increased risk of early death, driven by prolonged stress, cardiovascular strain and mental health deterioration. Fathers face significantly elevated risks, including higher rates of depression, substance misuse and suicide, yet are even less likely to be able to access support. Siblings—the forgotten children; the children not in the hospital bed—are often the most overlooked of all. Research indicates that they are up to three times more likely to experience long-term emotional or behavioural difficulties, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Despite these known risks, the NHS does not wrap its arms around these families. Instead, families are signposted to charities—charities that are themselves underfunded, overstretched and increasingly unable to fill the gaps left by statutory services. There is no consistent proactive pathway where a family is treated as a unit when a child receives a serious or terminal diagnosis. This stands in stark contrast to the support available for families with babies with a terminal diagnosis.

The amendment does not seek to assign blame for what has happened in the past. It does not mandate immediate spending or prescribe a single solution. What it asks for is something far more basic and overdue: it asks the Government to undertake a systematic review of how parents, siblings and families are supported when a child is critically ill or dies: from diagnosis, through treatment and, when it happens, into bereavement.

The amendment mentions

“preventing parents … from being by their children’s bedsides”,

but that does not have to be solely a physical presence. All too often, this means parents being mentally and emotionally available and present for their child. It seeks to ask why support is reactive rather than proactive; why mental health screening is not routine and moved into the community, with GPs and community nurses providing a unified effort to support these parents; why siblings remain invisible; and why families so often fall into the gaps between services. This is about understanding what works, where best practice already exists and how we can ensure that families are not abandoned at the point when they need support the most.

Just over two months ago, Ceri walked from the hospital where Hugh passed away to Downing Street, where he placed Hugh’s shoes on the steps of No. 10 —over 105 kilometres in two days. He carried a 20-kilogram rucksack on his back to signify the weight Hugh was when he died. He did this to signify the weight that parents carry when their child is diagnosed with a serious illness: a weight that most of us will never know or, thankfully, experience.

The amendment is about recognising that a child’s well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of their family. It is about making sure that no parent ever again has to walk out of hospital into the darkest moments of their lives and find that the system they relied on has simply disappeared. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak extremely briefly, having signed the amendment so powerfully introduced and presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I did so after having met Ceri and Frances. I saw that the amendment did not have a second name attached to it and thought that there needed to be a demonstration that there is broader support there. I have no doubt that many noble Lords will have been moved by what we have just heard and would absolutely agree that action is urgently needed. We need to assess the situation and come up with a plan to deal with it, so other families are not put in this situation. Happily, this is relatively rare, but some 3,000 families a year are placed in this situation and they must be supported. I hope that we will hear some positive words from the Minister.

Briefly, Amendment 99 has not yet been introduced, but it seeks to address another tragic situation, where, again and again, children are born and taken away, usually from the same mother. I spoke extensively on that in Committee, so I will not repeat it now.

This is an important group of amendments. I hope we can see some positive direction forward and a further demonstration in your Lordships’ House that campaigning, often by people who have suffered so much, can make a difference and improvements in our society.

16:30

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I urge my noble friend the Minister to look at the amendment and think carefully about what the Government could conceivably do. I honestly think that anyone who has met Ceri, Frances or both of them could do nothing other than to say that we really need this, urgently. I will speak only briefly. When I met Ceri this week, he was delighted to say that Brentford Football Club, as an employer, is already taking this on and doing something about it. Clearly, there are people who feel that this is not just urgent but a matter of decency and humanity. We should find a way of doing something about it.

[Baroness Cass (CB)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak to the amendment, but I also met Ceri this week, and it was a privilege to talk to him. I had not heard that part of his story until my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson told us about it.

I recently stepped down as a trustee of the children’s hospice Noah’s Ark, in Barnet. When I think about the support that families get there—not just during the course of their child’s illness and while they pass away but support for siblings, and the ability, through the Butterfly Suite, to be with the child they have recently lost for a number of days thereafter, through to follow-up and bereavement support that hospice staff provide, as well as advice on benefits and access, which might be crucial to the well-being of those parents —I am struck by the stark difference. That support is provided by charitable funds. It should not be that way. This is a postcode lottery. We have responsibilities to this group of families, who fight so bravely by themselves but who need our support and that holistic wraparound care.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 99 and 101, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. These are designed to tackle the sad and difficult problem of successive removals of children and babies from their parents, in particular from their mothers.

When a child is removed permanently under a court order, typically, a number of things can happen, and, indeed, not happen. The court which made the care order and consequent order for placement for adoption will have no further involvement. The local authority which brought the case may well have little or no further engagement with the birth family, who will receive no more attention and support, at least until there is another pregnancy, by which time it can be too late to address the underlying problems.

The mother, probably traumatised, may react to the first removal of a child with a bad decision to have another child, in the hope, rather than the expectation, that things will turn out better next time round, which is unlikely to occur. The mother and the father, if identified, will have become mistrustful of the local authority social workers and feel stigmatised and unwilling to seek or accept help. The mother may become hard to reach and may not reveal the next pregnancy until the last minute. Her underlying problems, by then, will not have been addressed; indeed, they may have become compounded.

Unless there has been some significant and unexpected change, the local authority will have no alternative but to start new care proceedings for the new child, usually with the same bad outcome as before. Speaking as someone who has had to deal with these cases, I know that those representing the mother and the court will struggle to find any real improvement or anything else to distinguish the case from that of the previous child. These are truly the most wretched cases for any court to deal with.

The charitable organisation Pause has considerable expertise in this area and has evolved a model of preventive support to break the cycle of repeated pregnancies and recurrent removals. The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and others have had valuable input into this problem and highlighted the statistics. One in five care proceedings are repeat proceedings. The repeat proceedings are more likely to involve babies, and almost half of all newborn babies subject to care proceedings are born to mothers who have had a previous child removed. Indeed, it is quite likely that the mother herself will have been in the care system not so long before. The additional financial cost to local authorities for care proceedings and consequential adoption proceedings, and the support required to pay for foster care and adopters, is enormous. The human cost, obviously, is unresolved misery and grief.

Amendment 99 would require local authorities to provide post-removal support where there is a risk of further removal, based on the Pause model of specialist focused and intensive support. Some local authorities do this work, but it should be universal. It has been suggested that, for every £1 spent, £4.50 would be saved in the next four years. However, some local authorities—understandably, given their constraints—are reluctant to look beyond this year’s budget. The Pause model does make a difference, and primary legislation can now make a real difference. That is the basis for Amendment 99.

Amendment 101 would provide for data collection, which would be a valuable aid to local and central government. Ironically, if Amendment 101 was agreed and Amendment 99 did not succeed, it would simply serve to highlight in the data which would be collected the support that should have been provided through Amendment 99. That opportunity should not be missed.

In Committee, the Minister was sympathetic and suggested that one way forward might be by way of family group conferencing, which is part of the structure of the Bill. Quite frankly, that would not be of particular value in these circumstances. The first set of proceedings probably would not have got to where they were if there had been a supportive family in the background, and it would, by then, be too late to prevent what had already become a further pregnancy. Therefore, I do not think that is the answer.

I have tried to avoid repeating points that were made in Committee. I simply quote the late Nicholas Crichton, a pioneering district judge:

“A family justice system that removes the fourth, fifth or sixth child from families without doing anything about the reasons for removal is a failing system”.


I commend Amendments 99 and 101 to the House.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to lend my support to all three of these amendments. I was very pleased to add my name to Amendments 99 and 101 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.

Listening to the debate today, I think this group is dealing with some of the most heartbreaking events that children and families ever face. It has really been very harrowing just to listen to the circumstances that some of these families have found themselves in. I was profoundly moved by the way the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, introduced her amendment. It is a really important amendment, and I very much hope that the Government will be able to look sympathetically at it.

I will just say a few words in addition to what the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has said, particularly about Amendment 99. As we heard from the noble Lord, almost half of newborns in care proceedings are born to mothers who have already been through proceedings with another child, so far too many children are entering care from parents who have already had at least one child removed from their care.

As we have heard, without support—and that is what this amendment is all about: the support that we want to see local authorities offering after a child is removed—parents, particularly mothers, are often left struggling to cope with all the existing difficulties that led to the child removal in the first place, while facing the additional trauma, grief and stigma of losing a previous child. This leads to further child removals too many times. It is simply a heartbreaking, vicious cycle.

But with the right support, parents can stabilise, overcome that trauma and make lasting change. The reason I feel so passionately about this is that in my time as chair of Cafcass, I was privileged to visit various Pause projects, to talk to the people who were providing the support and to talk to the mothers about the difference that having that support had made and why they now felt they could turn their lives around so that they would not find themselves in a position like that of a mother I was talking to—I think I said this in Committee, so forgive me if I am repeating myself—who had had eight children removed and now it was about the ninth child. We just cannot allow these situations to perpetuate. It is not something that a decent and humane society can do.

At the moment only about half of local authority areas are providing any support at all. This amendment is so critical to ensure that support is available and that this incalculable human suffering that we have heard about can be alleviated. I very much look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the Minister, and I really hope we can make progress here.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I echo other noble Lords and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey- Thompson, for her very powerful and moving speech. Sadly, like other noble Lords, I know families who have been touched in similar ways. Both personally and professionally, I hope that the Government listen to the noble Baroness’s advice.

My Amendments 99 and 101 have support from more than 20 children’s charities and the Children’s Commissioner, and I am very grateful to the co-signatories to my amendment. In Committee the response from the Minister focused on early help and family support that the Government will require local areas to deliver as a way of meeting the needs of these women. But as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, although the funding is obviously very warmly welcomed, it does not address the issues for families who have children removed into care, because once a child is removed from a parent’s care, services and support follow the child.

There is no requirement or expectation that the support needs formally identified for the woman during the care proceedings process will be provided after the removal of a child. Without support to change their circumstances, parents are vulnerable to repeat the same traumatic cycle that led to their first, second or—as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said—eighth child being removed. I think the late Nick Crichton removed a 14th child from the same woman, which led to the work that has been referred to today. We know that almost half of newborns in care proceedings are born to families who have been through proceedings at least once.

16:45

My Amendment 99 would provide for stopping this cycle of recurrent removals through the provision of specialist support for parents. This would be right from a human point of view, as we have heard very powerfully today, but also from a financial point of view. There is clear evidence, including from the research commissioned by the Department for Education, that investment in these services leads to significant returns, as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, referred to—£4.50 for every £1 invested over four years—and greater gains over the longer term.

My Amendment 101 is also important because most local authorities do not know how many families are affected or the costs involved. If we can collect and publish that information, it will allow for better planning, accountability and targeted support.

In his letter to Peers on 17 December, the Minister for Children and Families touched on the issues of post-removal support and wrote that the Government are offering to publish a post-separation good practice resource, are talking to pathfinder areas and will update statutory guidance and share good practice examples. That is all very helpful but very far from enough.

I will of course listen to the Minister’s response, but if I do not hear a much more positive response to my amendments than in Committee, I am inclined to test the opinion of the House.

[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak but I too was greatly moved by the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I have had the experience of trying to care for a child in intensive care while worrying about another child at home. It is not an experience I would wish on anyone. It led me to become a trustee of the Cosmic charity, which tries to help families going through these types of experiences at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, said, charities do incredible work supporting families in the most difficult circumstances. I urge the Government to think about what work they could do to look at the amendment and to see what more could be done to support parents and children in this situation.

Switching lanes to a Treasury mindset, I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendments 99 and 101. I know that the Government are sincere in their efforts to give every child the best possible start in life. I also know that at the Treasury and across Whitehall there is a huge push on government efficiency. This strikes me as an area where our failure to invest properly and consider how we can prevent these tragedies occurring has a huge fiscal cost, as well as the enormous emotional cost that we have heard about today.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, as others have said, this has been an important debate on two issues that go to the heart of how we need to care for those in the most vulnerable and difficult circumstances, and we share the objective of ensuring that we do better in both situations.

Amendments 99 and 101 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, concern support for birth parents who have had a child removed from their care and the collection of national data on repeat removals, respectively. This Government recognise that supporting birth parents can have a significant impact on keeping children safely at home and that more can and should be done.

I think it will be a theme of several of the groups this afternoon—in fact, it has been previously—that in some ways it is inevitable that as legislators we turn to legislation to deal with examples of not good enough practice where we want to achieve change. That is understandable, and in many cases, it is the right thing to do. Equally in my experience, strong practice, good evidence and innovation, often based on local needs, are a more effective way to achieve change. We need to be aware that mandating removes flexibility from local authorities to respond to local needs and priorities, increases local authority burdens and risks diverting funding from other preventive services that are not mandated by the legislation.

Also, we do not currently have a robust enough evidence base to mandate specific interventions nationally. This would also restrict innovation and deter locally developed interventions—for example, in Lincolnshire, whose TIME programme works with mothers who have experienced or are at risk of repeat removals of children from their care. Wolverhampton has a dedicated team supporting parents who have had a previous removal, and Warwickshire has its return home programme. We are already supporting the expansion of these services through the families first partnership programme, which is embedding the whole-family focus that noble Lords have rightly called for across children’s social care. That programme is backed by £2.4 billion of ring-fenced funding for prevention in this spending review period. It has, for example, already supported Redbridge to expand its pre-birth and post-birth service to promote earlier intervention with parents at risk of removals.

Through the families first partnership programme and wider reforms, we want to ensure that children’s social care support does not automatically drop away from a parent if they have a child removed from their care. The aim has to be to embed whole-family working throughout the children’s social care system in order to prevent future removals and to support children in returning home from care safely. We have previously committed to updating our Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023: Statutory Guidance to set out explicitly our expectations that birth parents are offered support. The updated FFP programme guide will also explicitly reference how the programme’s funding can be used to provide this support and will give examples of best practice.

On data collection, while equally, I support the sentiment of Amendment 101, once again I do not agree that a mandated collection is the right course of action or that it would have the desired impact. Mandatory collection would significantly increase the burden on local authorities, take resource away from service delivery and necessitate a significant change from existing practice that would require detailed work to assess feasibility and proportionality. Our wider reform programme is improving data collection and local information sharing. This will have a more positive impact on targeting support at a local level than a national collection.

Amendment 90, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, concerns a report into the barriers faced by the parents of critically ill children. I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Katz when a related amendment was tabled on Report on the Employment Rights Bill. I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this matter to the attention of the House, and, importantly, I acknowledge the resilience and courage shown by Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis in founding the charity It’s Never You and supporting other parents who find themselves facing similar unimaginably challenging personal circumstances. Parents and children in such a situation deserve and need support, and I know that that is the call noble Lords are making today.

My honourable friend in the other place, the Minister for Children and Families, Josh MacAlister, met with Ceri and Frances on 7 January, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson and the honourable Member for North East Hertfordshire, Chris Hinchliff, to discuss the charity’s work and this amendment. Caring for a critically ill child can affect parents’ mental health in different ways, as we have heard. The Government are committed to delivering the 10-year health plan, which sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country. We will transform the mental health system so that people can access the right support at the right time.

Other changes in the plan which will support parents of critically ill children include actively involving carers—in this case, parents—in the care planning of those they care for, as well as improved identification and support of people in such a situation to better understand their responsibilities and to provide more targeted support. In addition to mental health impacts and support, the amendment raises financial and employment pressures. The Government can provide financial support through the carer’s allowance and universal credit to those providing unpaid care to a severely disabled child, and are spending record amounts, due to be around £4.5 billion this year, on the carer’s allowance.

We recognise the considerable sacrifice that parents in this situation must make, and the impact that that can have on their employment. Parents who are employees are currently entitled to emergency time off for dependants, unpaid parental leave and unpaid carer’s leave, all of which may help them to manage situations of serious childhood illness. We know that many employers will go beyond the statutory minimum to support their staff in such distressing situations, and it was good to hear an example.

As announced by my noble friend Lord Katz at the Report stage of the Employment Rights Act, the Department for Business and Trade is working to launch a consultation on employment rights for parents and caregivers of seriously ill children. This will be the first government consultation specifically on the employment rights of these parents. This will consider whether a new leave entitlement in the workplace should be introduced, such as the proposal for Hugh’s law, campaigned for passionately and tirelessly by the charity It’s Never You.

On 11 December last year, my honourable friend the Minister for Employment Rights and Consumer Protection, Kate Dearden, announced that Hugh’s law will have its own chapter in the consultation. It will make sure that the voices of charities, healthcare professionals and families with a seriously ill child are heard, to ensure that any proposals put forward for consultation will reflect the needs of children and their parents. This recognises that more work needs to be done to understand the employment impact on parents of seriously ill children and the precise support that may be needed.

Lastly, in addition to this consultation, I am pleased to be able to tell the House that on the amendment before us calling for a report into barriers facing parents of critically ill children, the Government will take further action and commission a report on the mental health impact on the families of children with a terminal diagnosis. This will include a review of the available evidence and cost effectiveness. Ministers from the Department of Health and Social Care will meet with stakeholders, including Ceri and Frances, to discuss the scope of the report. We do not require a legislative duty to conduct this report, which could in fact slow down its progress, so we do not believe that this amendment is necessary. However, I hope that this commitment and other action being taken by the Government underscore the importance we are giving to this issue and to better supporting families in such difficult and tragic circumstances. I hope that noble Lords are reassured, and that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.

17:00

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate today. I will not seek to sum up because I know we have a heavy schedule of business, but I think I am right in saying that there has been universal support for the amendment, which shows the devastating impact that situations like this can have on families.

I want to place on record the immense bravery and resilience of Ceri and Frances for keeping going. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shawcross-Wolfson, for sharing her experience, and I thank the Minister in another place, Josh MacAlister, for the letter that I received when coming into the Chamber confirming that there will be a report on this issue.

I have a few things to mention. I am grateful that the wording and scope of the report, as mentioned by Minister MacAlister in his letter, is up for some discussion. We need to look at the point of diagnosis, as well as, when we are talking about families, making sure that we properly include siblings in that. I welcome the commitment in the letter to keep working with me, Frances and Ceri, alongside other experts. I hope the report he has agreed will be commissioned will be called Hugh’s report, and that we will be one step closer to making Hugh’s law actually happen.

Given the commitments received today from the Dispatch Box and in writing, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 90 withdrawn.

Amendment 91

Moved by

[Baroness Penn]

91: After Clause 27, insert the following new Clause—
“Guidance on the use of screens and communication with parents and carers in early years settings(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, update the early years foundation stage statutory framework for children aged 0 to 5 in early years settings to include guidance on— (a) the appropriate and safe use of screens and digital technology in early years settings, and(b) effective communication with parents and carers about screen use and digital technology.(2) The guidance must draw on advice from education and health professionals, researchers and academics including on the following areas—(a) the benefits, harms or risks of harm associated with the exposure of children of differing ages, including children with special educational needs or disabilities, to screens and other digital devices,(b) the balance between screen-based and non-digital activities for children in early years development and play,(c) age-appropriate limits for screen time for children in early years settings,(d) safeguarding policies for the use of personal devices and other screens in early years settings,(e) the impact of carers’ and parents’ use of personal devices and screens on child wellbeing and development,(f) the importance of screen-free times and environments, such as during meals, bedtimes, and outdoor play, and(g) practical examples and communication strategies for early years practitioners to share with parents and carers to support healthy screen use and promote positive parent–child interaction, including alternatives such as reading together, helping with daily tasks, and engaging with the natural environment.”

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 91, in my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, and Amendment 106, also supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.

I am conscious that I am the warm-up act for the debate on Amendment 94A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Nash, which is also in this group. However, it is right and appropriate that, before we discuss the issue of teenagers and social media, we think first about the early years. Ofcom data shows that the proportion of three to five year-olds using social media has risen from 25% in 2022 to 37% in 2024, with one in five of those using it independently of their parents. That data is reported by Ofcom but without any comment or action associated with it. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response as to whether the high-quality age verification that may accompany Amendment 94A in my noble friend’s name would be welcome in restricting use among our very youngest children also.

It is not just social media. Some 85% of three to five year-olds go online, with one in six owning their own mobile phone, while 98% of two year-olds watch television, videos or other digital content on a screen on a typical day, averaging around two hours each day—double the WHO recommendation—and among the top 20% of two year-olds that figure averaged five hours per day. Such levels of usage go against everything we know about what is needed for good development in the early years, where adult-child interaction is paramount. It goes against everything we know about how much physical and active play our youngest children need, the importance of outdoors activities and the development of healthy eyesight.

The reason this is so important is that we know that the early years are an important time for a child’s development and impact them much later on in life. That is why this Government have rightly placed so much emphasis on their early years strategy. In that context, the Government’s announcement last week that they will produce guidance for parents and carers on the screen time of preschoolers was incredibly welcome, if overdue. However, this will have a positive impact only if the high-quality guidance reaches parents and helps to change their behaviour. Can the Minister provide any more detail on the early years screen time advisory group that the Government are forming to develop this advice? We have the chairs and the terms of reference, but group membership and planned meetings remain to be updated “in due course” on the government website. Given that the guidance is being published in just three months, it would be useful to know more detail on that.

What plans do the Government have to publicise this advice once it is drawn up to reach parents where they get their information and ensure join-up across government, particularly with the Department for Health and Social Care so that it is integrated into the healthy child programme and available through health visitors and GPs, not just through Best Start Family Hubs? Given the importance of joint working in this area, would the Minister be happy to commit to a joint meeting between the two departments and experts to develop this further?

I turn to Amendment 91. The welcome action on guidance for parents makes the lack of any proper guidance and policy within early year settings an even greater outlier. There is policy around the use of technology in schools, but, in nurseries, often the most tech-rich environments as practitioners use tablets to log so much of a day’s activity, there is currently nothing. This is deeply problematic. It is problematic from a child development point of view, as the use of YouTube in early years settings has been described by one expert as “ubiquitous”, not just replacing the all-important adult-child interaction but using content that is too fast paced for children to learn from. This actually stimulates their fight or flight response, capturing their attention but in a way that is associated with hyper-alertness, hyper-wakefulness and later-life affective disorders. It is problematic from a safeguarding point of view, most starkly illustrated by the tragic case of Operation Lanark, where 18 nursery-issued devices were among the almost 70 seized from the home of a nursery worker charged with the most horrendous cases of abuse.

I am incredibly grateful that the Minister and her colleague Liv Bailey, the Early Education Minister, met me to discuss this and the parental guidance issue discussed earlier. I am really pleased that the Government’s intention is to update the voluntary guidance for settings on the help for early years platform, and, as part of their review into the non-statutory curriculum guidance, Development Matters, to not only include information on screen time and digital literacy but to include it in the next update to the statutory early years foundation stage framework. I would be grateful if the Minister could repeat this commitment today and give a clear timeline for when the amendment to the EYFS will be made.

In undertaking this work, will the department consider the impact of screen time and the wider use of technology and devices in early years settings, by children and practitioners, as well as child development and safe- guarding issues? Screen time is important but, based on research published about current levels of screen time use, “less is better” is an important message. The evidence shows that context and content matter too, and I hope the Government can commit to incorporating this in their approach.

I should be absolutely clear that those settings which choose not to use screens or tech should be free to do so. Tech is not needed for good child development in the early years. If it is being used, it should be informed by our understanding of early years development and accompanied by robust safeguarding practices and clear policy within the setting.

It is essential we get this right. I know a host of education, health and research professionals stand ready to support the Government in their work. I thank Katy Potts at the Digital Standards for Early Years Action Group, Professors Rachael Bedford, Tim Smith and Sam Wass, Birth to 5 Matters and Health Professionals for Safer Screens. These are among the many dedicated people who have been generous to me with their time and worked so hard in this area.

Finally, I should probably explain why it is so important to get clear reassurances from the Minister on this now. I first tabled amendments on this in May last year, but there was no mention of digital technology or screen time in the Government’s early years strategy published in July. Guidance for parents of preschoolers was announced only in January, with no accompanying detail of a campaign to reach parents. On the incorporation of guidance into the early years statutory framework, the Digital Standards for Early Years Action Group wrote to the previous Early Education Minister over a year ago calling for this to be incorporated into the update to the EYFS that went live last September. That call was rejected, although I have never been able to find out why.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to action now and believe it is genuine, but I need reassurance that, once the spotlight has moved on, work will not stop and delivery will happen at pace, in particular on making a substantive change to the early years foundation stage statutory framework this year; otherwise, a two year-old who started nursery when we first debated this issue will have left for school before any change is made. I beg to move.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the two amendments in my name, which are both amendments to Amendment 94A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. These are necessary if this House is to respond to the online harms that children face in a way that is effective, proportionate and grounded in evidence.

To be clear from the outset, I share the concerns across this House about the real harms that children face online. These range from exposure to age-inappropriate and damaging content to the disturbing prevalence of grooming and exploitation. Parents are right to be worried and Parliament is right to intervene. However, as the NSPCC made clear in its briefing to us, a complex safeguarding problem demands a risk-based response, not a blunt one-age ban.

My Amendment 94B would introduce a mechanism for limited and tightly controlled exemptions to a blanket minimum age requirement. Crucially, such exemptions could exist only where they demonstrably improved child safety, not where they weakened it. Any exemption would be jointly specified by Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner. That joint responsibility is deliberate and important. It would ensure that decisions were made independently of commercial interests and rooted firmly in regulatory expertise and the statutory duty to act in the best interests of children.

The amendment sets out a high evidential bar for platforms. Providers would have to show compliance with Ofcom’s risk-based guidance on minimum age, have full regard for UK GDPR principles and give explicit consideration to children’s rights as recognised by the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child. They would also be required to assess impacts on children’s mental health, examine whether their platform’s design or features encouraged addictive or compulsive use, and scrutinise the role of algorithms in content recommendations and targeted advertising for any products or services, including, for example, gambling content marketing. Importantly, any exemptions would be subject to periodic reviews, with powers for amendment or revocation if Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner were no longer satisfied that adequate protections were in place. This would place a burden squarely on the platforms to prove safety on an ongoing basis, rather than leaving children exposed to unmanaged risk.

The NSPCC, the 5Rights Foundation, the Molly Rose Foundation and 39 children’s rights and online safety organisations have warned us this week that

“blanket bans on social media would fail to deliver the improvement in children’s safety and wellbeing that they so urgently need”.

We already know that age limits are not meaningfully enforced, and these organisations are well respected up and down this country. The NSPCC estimates that, in the UK, more than 2.5 million children under the age of 13 are currently accessing social media. Raising the minimum age to 16 does not solve that problem. Indeed, it risks pushing children into less regulated and higher-risk spaces, including encrypted platforms, anonymous forums and unsafe gaming environments. Children who bypass age checks are likely to register as adults, placing them in an environment with weaker safeguards and a higher exposure to harm. There is also a real risk of unintended consequences. Safe, age-appropriate use of social media such as family group chats, peer support networks and access to services like Childline could be lost, particularly for vulnerable children. Bans may also deter children from reporting harm for fear of being punished for being online at all.

Briefly, Amendment 94C would ensure that the definition of “regulated user-to-user services” was aligned with the Online Safety Act 2023. This House invested significant effort in establishing a risk-based regulatory framework under the Act, and it is essential that this Bill operates coherently within it.

These amendments would not dilute child protection but strengthen it. They would move us away from a blunt, one-size-fits-all ban towards a proportionate, evidence-based approach that respected children’s rights, held platforms accountable and generally reduced harm. The public out there have sent a clear message that they want us to act. It is now up to us in your Lordships’ House and down the Corridor in the other place to act on this. We need to heed the warnings of these respected organisations that have written to us all and to say, “We hear you that there is a need for a ban, but we think we can look at a much more sophisticated model than just a simple, one age limit ban”.

17:15

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 92, 93 and 94A, in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Cass, Lady Benjamin and Lady Berger. As this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I should draw attention to my registered interests, particularly the fact that I am chair of a multi- academy trust and an investor in a number of companies, including tech and software companies.

I have three amendments in this group. Amendment 94A would raise the age limit for access to social media to 16. In fact, this amendment would do rather more than that; it would do five things. First, it would raise the age limit. Secondly, it would require social media companies to put in place highly effective age assurance—currently, many, if not most, social media companies have no really effective age assurance at 13. Thirdly, the amendment would direct the Chief Medical Officer to prepare and publish advice to parents and carers on the use of social media by children—so, if you like, the start of a public awareness campaign. Fourthly, the amendment would send a message that draws a line in the sand for parents, carers and others to use when discussing social media with children, which they are crying out for. Fifthly, it would allow 12 months for implementation.

We have reached an inflection point. We face nothing short of a societal catastrophe caused by the fact that so many of our children are addicted to social media. Many teenagers are spending long hours—five, six, seven or more a day—on social media. The evidence of the damage this is causing is now overwhelming. We have long passed the point of correlation or causation. There is now so much evidence from across the world that it is clear that, by every metric—health, cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime and economic productivity—children are being harmed. I have sent noble Lords an evidence document prepared by health professionals which sets out over 50 studies from around the world showing a clear link between excessive use of social media and harm to our children. Jonathan Haidt now calls this a “mountain of evidence”.

We are facing a health emergency confronting our children. Since 2016, there has been a 477% increase in children’s contact with mental health services, and eating disorders among 17 to 19 year-olds have risen sixteenfold. There has been a sevenfold rise in young girls admitted to hospital with eating disorders, and the evidence is clear that there is a strong link between this and the substantial increase in rates of ADHD, suicide, depression, anxiety and self-harm among teenagers with overexposure to social media.

Our teachers say that it is the number one cause of disruptive behaviour, and, in their view, it will be the biggest source of pressure for students in the future. Our children are turning up at school sleep deprived. It is clear that many are going to sleep in the small hours on many nights of the week. The NEU and NASUWT are in favour of raising the age limit to 16, as is the chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver.

Social media is at the centre of county lines and radicalisation, so much so that, in 2025, the heads of MI5, Counter Terrorism Policing and the National Crime Agency issued a summer holiday warning urging parents to keep their children safe online. More young people than ever have been arrested in recent years for terrorism offences. Children are increasingly seeing real-life violent content, which only 6% of them initially look for. The evidence is clear that people who watch or discuss violent images are, unsurprisingly, much more likely to commit crime, including knife crime.

I know that some are concerned that a 16 age limit would be to the detriment of particular groups of often vulnerable children, but it is the most vulnerable children who are the most susceptible to influence by social media. The police who specialise in child sexual abuse material and radicalisation say that it is precisely the help forums for groups such as LGBTQ+, those with eating disorders, those with ADHD, et cetera, where the worst abusers hang out and target children.

Social media is being used extensively for sextortion. There are even widespread cases of children hosting live sex shows for payment from their bedrooms on social media. So-called com groups are using social media to trap vulnerable children in games such as cutting games, where the person who cuts the deepest wins; choking games, which have proved fatal; or even games which encourage rape or suicide. One survivor attested to having seen multiple suicides.

Polling demonstrates overwhelming support. The vast majority of parents—75% of adults, including 75% of Labour voters—support raising the minimum age to 16. Most strikingly, young people themselves recognise the harm: 78% of Gen Z say they would try to delay their child using social media for as long as possible. Polling published today shows that 60% of 16 to 24 year-olds—those who have most recently had the experience of social media as teenagers—support a 16 age limit. Over half of 13 to 24 year-olds say that social media is fairly or completely responsible for increasing misogyny or violence against women and girls.

There is global momentum for this. Australia has raised the age limit to 16 and Malaysia is doing so. Many other countries, including Denmark, France, Norway and New Zealand, are considering restrictions. In November, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly for 16. Why 16? Because the teenage years between 13 and 15 are when teenagers are the most vulnerable to influence and have a very high risk profile. Some people call this a cliff edge. I do not see that. The amendment seeks merely to give teenagers a few more years to mature so that they can deal more effectively with social media, distinguish fact from fiction and exercise better judgment.

I know that some charities, including those involving bereaved parents, would like to see an approach which favours using the Online Safety Act and Ofcom more effectively. While we must try to improve Ofcom’s approach, the OSA catches harmful content only once it has been seen, often by children. With 70 million child sexual abuse images out there—and more being created every minute—beheading videos, et cetera, there is no way, even with the best will in the world, that all this content can be taken down and taken down fast enough. Our children will see it. We just want them to see it at a later age.

Nine bereaved families, many of whom are here today, wrote to the Prime Minister on Monday in support of my amendment. Of course, this approach would not deal with the grooming of children on social media channels. Others have proposed that we wait to see what happens in Australia, but what are we waiting for? We know our children are being harmed. We know that tech companies can put in place highly effective age assurance. That is what they are doing in Australia, with a high degree of accuracy—well above 90% at the initial age gate. By tracking the traffic and activity on social media, which they do for all of us, they can tell when a child has slipped through the net. There is a myth that children will get round age assurance, but that has grown up because hitherto there has been no generally effective age assurance at 13. There is concern that children will move to other sites. My Amendment 94A allows for these to be brought into scope. It also allows 12 months for implementation —plenty of time to learn from Australia.

This is going to happen. The only question is when. We have the opportunity to do it now, in this Bill. With every day that passes, more damage is being done to children. We must act now.

I turn to the Liberal Democrat amendments: Amendments 108, 94B and 94C. Well intentioned though they may be, they have been rushed out at the last minute. Surprisingly, in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, has just said, they bring into scope Wikipedia, WhatsApp, Tripadvisor, all gaming apps, and many special interest and health forums, with no ability to exclude them; whereas my Amendment 94A has that facility, which would almost certainly be used. Amendment 108 has no enforcement mechanism if social media companies do not comply with the 16 year- old age limit.

Amendments 108, 94B and 94C seek to avoid scrutiny by your Lordships’ House and the other place on which apps are in or out and seek to delegate this function to Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner, apparently sometimes acting jointly—I do not quite know how that would work—and acting on the basis of vague criteria, creating a huge amount of work for an already overworked body and massive scope for litigation. My Amendment 94A leaves that scrutiny firmly with Parliament. As well intentioned as these amendments might be, they are fundamentally flawed and, therefore, if they are sent back to the other place, as opposed to my Amendment 94A, it will be easy for the Government to knock them out on those grounds. My Amendment 94A has been well thought through and subject to scrutiny in Committee.

I turn to the Government’s proposal for a consultation, which they tell me will last for three months or so. First, the announcement of it on the eve of the vote is unfortunate. When will the actions arising from this consultation be published? We are still waiting for those in relation to the consultation on gender identity in schools nearly two years after the consultation closed —and that issue, complicated though it is, does not involve technology or multibillion-pound tech companies with all the lobbying at their disposal. The consultation talks about exploring ways to improve assessing age assurance. As I have already said, highly effective age assurance already exists. The Government are well behind the A ball. They want to assess the current age of digital consent. This is in fact only one means, and not the most usual means, by which social media companies lawfully collect personal data. Again, the Government are behind the A ball. They want to explore further intervention to support parents. Parents are arguing with their children daily about screen and social media time. They want a line in the sand now. The Government’s consultation is, in my view, unnecessary, misconceived and clearly a last-minute attempt to kick the can down the road.

My Amendment 92 seeks to raise the age of access to VPNs to 18, as it is clear that some children are using VPNs to get round age restrictions for gambling and pornography and might well use them for social media, so it is closely linked to Amendment 94A. On Amendment 93, I have had a constructive discussion with Ministers on this issue and more discussions are in progress, so I will not push that to a vote today. I urge noble Lords to vote for my Amendment 94A on social media and Amendment 92 on VPNs.

[Baroness Cass (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and the noble Lord, Lord Nash. When I was president of the paediatric college, an important part of my job was urging Government Ministers that protecting and investing in children is the only way to protect the future of our country because, as I believe I have said before in this House, children are 25% of our population and 100% of our future. If we fail to protect them, it is not just a moral issue but a financial disaster.

There are two questions we need to ask ourselves when we think about how social media is impacting our youth. First, are they at risk? Secondly, how do we eliminate, or at least minimise, that risk? With regard to younger children, I fully support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and I too welcome the planned guidance. I ask the Government to give careful thought to that guidance particularly in relation to vulnerable and disabled children. They may be more limited in their abilities for alternative physical activities so screen time is, understandably, an easier default, and advice for those families is particularly important. It is also important to think about how to reach those harder to reach families or marginalised families who may not easily access the guidance. A final thing I would say, following on from the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, about who will be in the group, is that the input of speech and language therapists will be particularly important, given their obvious involvement in early language development.

17:30

Turning to older children, last year my noble friend Lady Kidron and I hosted a meeting at the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. The meeting brought together representatives from across the medical specialties to discuss what they are seeing in out-patients, on wards, in GP surgeries and in emergency departments. We heard about cases of sextortion, cyber bullying and gaming addiction. We were told about children who could not leave their bedrooms, let alone go to school, and about the impacts of that inactivity, including obesity and musculoskeletal issues. Psychiatrists talked to us about young people who had been radicalised online and those who had learned self-harming behaviours online. We heard about children suffering PTSD after seeing beheadings or videos of animals being tortured. Clinicians working in emergency departments talked about young people coming in following strangulation, either as part of challenges or during sexual activity, or with injuries after being drawn into organised crime or county lines. The age range of the children presenting with injuries linked to harmful sexual practices is falling; we were told about fatal and near fatal injuries in children as young as 13. Doctors in that room described this as a public health emergency.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has since sent a letter, signed by every medical college president, to the Secretaries of State for DSIT and DHSC about what they described as an extraordinarily moving meeting with clinicians giving personal testimony about the horrific cases they had treated. My medical colleagues here, if there are any, will know that college presidents are like cats—you cannot herd them—so, when all 23 of them agree that there is a risk, you need to be very afraid.

Mental health problems are complicated and multifactorial, and it is very easy for academics to look at population data and say that social media is just one of a number of factors causing the dramatic rise in mental health problems. But these clinicians in the room were not describing data points or research subjects; they were describing real young people who had suffered direct, incontrovertible harm. They knew their names, they knew their families and they bore witness to the trauma and the distress. And as in so many other situations, disadvantaged children and those who were neurodiverse were felt to be at the greatest risk.

So I ask the Government how a consultation will weigh the testimony of a clinician, or indeed a parent who has sat by a dying child as a result of one of these horrific incidents, against the testimony of a parent from another part of the country who has not gone through that experience, or any other consultees. I do not understand what extra information this consultation is going to give; I find it extraordinary to think that a meaningful consultation can be conducted in three months; and I cannot see how the two sides of the debate can be weighed up any more effectively through that mechanism.

On Monday evening, I spent 25 minutes online using an incognito browser page. I learnt that I could end my life by inhaling helium, I watched two videos of girls being choked and I accessed a video with 10 tips about how to enhance my sex life with strangulation. This was not, I hasten to add, because I wanted to do any of those things; I just wanted to see how easy it was. It was easy, and no age verification was needed. If we think that children may be in danger, we act first and ask questions later.

On the wards, if we had concerns about the competence of a clinician, we suspended them from service first and investigated later. It was a neutral, not a punitive, act to the clinician, because we were protecting children and that was paramount. When small numbers of children died tragically as a result of nut allergies, we did not wait for RCTs, we transformed catering in schools and set up emergency protocols. Yet far more children are being harmed by social media and still we delay. You do not need an RCT to tell you that punching someone on the nose every day hurts and removing the aggressor provides dramatic relief. The phrase “evidence-based” is used very loosely in this Chamber, where I think it means hearing from somebody else, not the person whose views you did not like.

The amendment before us, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, gives the Secretary of State discretion to determine which social media apps should be unavailable to under-16s, but equally to opt-in apps which she deems safe. In the coming year, it would be possible for UK tech to have the opportunity to develop such apps. We are not necessarily talking about leaving children and young people in a black hole. However, this is just a beginning; it is not a panacea, and there is much more that we can do. If I was on an NHS computer, organisational protocols would block me from accessing YouTube or other social media apps, so there is no technological reason stopping the development of under-16 devices with national protocols which allow age-appropriate content.

With regard to the Lib Dem amendment and the potential risk of more young people going on to the dark web, if we again talk about evidence, where is the evidence that more children and young people will go on to the dark web than those who are doing so already, or that it will outweigh the number of children who are saved from seeing the sort of content that we are so worried about?

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step. The first step was the Online Safety Act, but maybe this is the second step. I really do welcome the fact that the Government have moved from questioning the evidence to recognising the national concern about this issue. However, our Prime Minister has said on numerous occasions that the first duty of a Government is to protect their citizens, and he is right. Here and now, we have a clear and present danger to children. The first duty of government is not to consult; it is to act.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I have followed these issues closely through my work on the Online Safety Act, first as a member of the Joint Committee, then on the Opposition Front Bench and now on your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee. I added my name to Amendment 91 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and I am delighted that that Government are listening and hope that Ministers can give the noble Baroness the reassurances that she seeks.

Turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, I first thank him for raising these important issues and detailing the harms so compellingly. The harms caused by social media are clear, both in terms of the harmful content and that they are addictive by design. The algorithms operate in a moral vacuum; platforms’ algorithms do whatever it takes to keep us on screen. I am attracted to the Government’s proposal in the consultation around banning addictive design rather than a blanket age ban. That could see a huge reduction in harm for all of us, as today’s University of Sussex research about doomscrolling demonstrates.

However, it is our children whom we most want to protect. My 14 year-old at home is time-limited on her phone; she is not allowed her phone in her room overnight and is limited to two social media accounts. This is difficult to parent, but it is our responsibility as parents to navigate it with our children. Incidentally, the two social media accounts she chooses are WhatsApp and Pinterest. Both are allowed under the Australian social media ban. One keeps her connected to family and friends, and the other she needs for her GCSE art. Under Amendment 94A, on my reading of it, it seems pretty categorical that it would include all social media platforms and she would be banned from both.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I am interested to hear from a Labour politician, for whom I have a great deal of respect, that there are parents who can control their kids, but it is the most vulnerable kids and the least advantaged kids who live in households in which there is no discipline who are the most exposed.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

The noble Lord and I debate with great respect and friendship. My reading of

“regulations made by statutory instruments require all regulated user-to-user services to use highly effective age-assurance measure to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users”

is that this is categorical.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, is that it would be up to the Government, approved by this House and the other place, which apps are in and out. Clearly, it would be possible for those apps suitable for children to be excluded, as would WhatsApp and Wikipedia. The Lib Dems have drafted their amendment in such a way that it would include everybody, and it would be up to this very complicated procedure with Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to work this out—which, frankly, would be a nightmare.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I will move on. I will try harder to read further to get to the same place as the noble Lord, Lord Nash—but I doubt it.

Pinterest was implicated in the suicide completed by Molly Russell. Molly’s father, Ian, is thoughtful, brave and inspiring. I listened to him talk on the BBC this week about why he and countless other expert children’s charities are against a blanket ban on social media for under-16s. They worry about the unintended consequences for children’s safety. A blanket ban is likely to lead to under-16s finding less regulated platforms to connect to online, such as gaming platforms or the dark web. It is worth noting that according to recent Internet Matters research, boys spend significantly more time on gaming platforms than on social media platforms.

Children may also turn to VPNs, which would then undermine the child safety gains of the Online Safety Act. The VPN amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, tries to address this, but age-gating VPNs may be extremely problematic. My phone uses a VPN, following a personal device cyber consultation offered by this Parliament. VPNs can make us more secure, and we should not rush to deprive children of that safety. A blunt, blanket ban—it is a struggle not to call it a Blunkett ban—would also deny young people the positives of some of the less addictive social media.

Young people will continue to want to connect with each other. They will want to share music, their photos and videos, and their creative content. I was of the mixtape generation, now replaced by the shareable playlist. Young entrepreneurs will want to market their products: will they have to use an adults account on an adult’s phone, and be exposed to the risks of adult content as a result?

When I speak to young people in my capacity as president of Young Citizens, I am struck by how well informed they are. They find out what is going on in the world through social media. Is it right that we lower the voting age to 16 and simultaneously prevent access to news for 15 year-olds when we want them to become well informed?

The arguments for doing something urgent and meaningful about the dangers to children of social media are compelling, but so are the arguments for doing it in a more sophisticated way. For that reason, we should back the Government’s consultation. I note that this is a three-month consultation. Can the Minister please reassure us that action will follow within the 12-month timeline suggested by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash?

We should at the same time urgently review how the Online Safety Act is working. We need to retain the risk-based approach to regulation in the Act. But Ofcom’s current stance of treating all children, all the way to 18, as the same is flawed. We need age-appropriate design, and we should give Ofcom the unambiguous requirement to ensure that age restrictions and guidance about social media access are rigorously enforced. This in turn requires mandated, robust age assurance. We must develop this, sensitive to the digital rights of children and mindful that we do not want unwittingly to require big tech to hold sensitive data about our children. I also echo Ian Russell’s call for us to listen to children and young people as we make these changes. That is one of the really good reasons why we should go ahead with a consultation.

I conclude by urging Ministers to act swiftly and to listen to parliamentarians, but also to experts and young people, and then to act robustly, platform by platform, to deliver the ambition of the Online Safety Act to make this country the safest place in the world for children to grow up.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight. Like him, I have been involved in debating online safety issues—from the internet safety Green Paper through to the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill, and then seeing the Online Safety Bill become an Act. I declare an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation.

I will speak in support of my noble friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley’s Amendments 94B and 94C, which are amendments to Amendment 94A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash. In doing so, I urge the House to strengthen his proposal by transforming it from a blanket ban into an effective, harms-based approach to social media regulation that can actually be implemented and enforced within the same timetable.

17:45

As we have heard, the Government have announced a three-month consultation on children’s social media use. That is a welcome demonstration that the Government recognise the importance of this issue and are willing to consider further action beyond the Online Safety Act. However, our amendments make it clear that we should not wait until summer, or even beyond, to act, as we have a workable, legally operable solution before us today. Far from weakening the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, our amendments are designed to make raising the age to 16 deliverable in practice, not just attractive in a headline.

I share the noble Lord’s diagnosis: we are facing a children’s mental health catastrophe, with young people exposed to misogyny, violence and addictive algorithms. I welcome the noble Lord’s bringing this critical issue before the House and strongly support his proposal for a default minimum age of 16. After 20 years of profiteering from our children’s attention, we need a reset. The voices of young people themselves are impossible to ignore. At the same time, tens of thousands of parents have reached out to us all, just in the past week, calling to raise the age—we cannot let them down.

The Government have announced that Ministers will visit Australia to learn from its approach. I urge them to learn the right lessons. Australia has taken the stance of banning social media for under-16s, with a current list of 10 platforms. However, their approach demonstrates three critical flaws that Amendment 94A, as drafted, would replicate and that we must avoid.

First, there is the definition problem. The Australian legislation has had to draw explicit lines that keep services such as WhatsApp, Google Classroom and many gaming platforms out of scope, to make the ban effective. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, has rightly recognised these difficulties by giving the Secretary of State the power to exclude platforms, but that simply moves the arbitrariness from a list in legislation to ministerial discretion. What criteria would the Secretary of State use? Our approach instead puts those decisions on a transparent, risk-based footing with Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner, rather than in one pair of hands.

Secondly, there is the cliff-edge problem. The unamended approach of Amendment 94A risks protecting children in a sterile digital environment until their 16th birthday, and then suddenly flooding them with harmful content without having developed the digital literacy to cope. As the joint statement from 42 children’s charities warns, children aged 16 would face a dangerous cliff edge when they start to use high-risk platforms. Our amendment addresses that.

Thirdly, this proposal risks taking a Dangerous Dogs Bill approach to regulation. Just as breed-specific legislation failed because it focused on the type of dog rather than dangerous behaviour, the Australian ban focuses on categories rather than risk. Because it is tied to the specific purpose of social interaction, the Australian ban currently excludes high-risk environments such as Roblox, Discord and many AI chatbots, even though children spend a large amount of time on those platforms. An arbitrary list based on what platforms do will not deal with the core issue of harm. The Molly Rose Foundation has rightly warned that this simply risks migrating bad actors, groomers and violent groups from banned platforms to permitted ones, and we will end up playing whack-a-mole with children’s safety. Our amendment is designed precisely to address that.

Our concerns are shared by the very organisations at the forefront of child safety. This weekend, 42 charities and experts, including the Molly Rose Foundation, the NSPCC, the Internet Watch Foundation, Childline, the Breck Foundation and the Centre for Protecting Women Online, issued a joint statement warning that

“‘social media bans’ are the wrong solution”.

They warn that blanket bans risk creating a false sense of safety and call instead for risk-based minimum ages and design duties that reflect the different levels of risk on different platforms. When the family of Molly Russell, whose tragic death galvanised this entire debate, warns against blanket bans and calls for targeted regulation, we must listen. Those are the organisations that pick up the pieces every day when things go wrong online. They are clear that a simple ban may feel satisfying, but it is the wrong tool and risks a dangerous false sense of safety.

Our amendments build on the foundation provided by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, while addressing these critical flaws. They would provide ready-made answers to many of the questions the Government’s promised consultation will raise about minimum ages, age verification, addictive design features and how to ensure that platforms take responsibility for child safety. We would retain the default minimum age of 16. Crucially, that would remain the law for every platform unless and until it proves against rigorous criteria that it is safe enough to merit a lower age rating. However, and this is the crucial improvement, platforms could be granted exemptions if—and only if—they can demonstrate to Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner that they do not present a risk of harm.

Our amendments would create film-style age ratings for platforms. Safe educational platforms could be granted exemptions with appropriate minimum ages, and the criteria are rigorous. Platforms would have to demonstrate that they meet Ofcom’s guidance on risk-based minimum ages, protect children’s rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, have considered their impact on children’s mental health, have investigated whether their design encourages addictive use and have reviewed their algorithms for content recommendation and targeted advertising. So this is not a get-out clause for tech companies; it is tied directly to whether the actual design and algorithms on their platforms are safe for children. Crucially, exemptions are subject to periodic review and, if standards slip, the exemption can be revoked.

First, this prevents mitigating harms. If Discord or a gaming lobby presents a high risk, it would not qualify for exemption. If a platform proves it is safe, it becomes accessible. We would regulate risk to the child, not the type of technology.

Secondly, it incentivises safety by design. The Australian model tells platforms to build a wall to block children. This concern is shared by the Online Safety Act Network, representing 23 organisations whose focuses span child protection, suicide prevention and violence against women and girls. It warns that current implementation focuses on

“ex-post measures to reduce the … harm that has already occurred rather than upstream, content-neutral, ‘by-design’ interventions to seek to prevent it occurring in the first place”.

It explicitly calls for requiring platforms to address

“harms to children caused by addictive or compulsive design”—

precisely what our amendment mandates.

Thirdly, it is future-proof. We must prepare for a future that has already arrived—AI, chatbots and tomorrow’s technologies. Our risk-based approach allows Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to regulate emerging harms effectively, rather than playing catch-up with exemptions.

We should not adopt a blunt instrument that bans Wikipedia or education and helpline services by accident, drives children into high-risk gaming sites by omission or creates a dangerous cliff edge at 16 by design. We should not fall into the trap of regulating categories rather than harms, and we should not put the power to choose in one person’s hands, namely the Secretary of State.

Instead, let us build on the foundation provided by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, by empowering Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to implement a sophisticated world-leading system, one that protects children based on actual risk while allowing them to learn, communicate and develop digital resistance. I urge the House to support our amendments to Amendment 94A.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, perhaps I am a simple-minded and naive bishop, but it seems we are getting into a debate we probably should have had in Committee on the different ways of approaching a quite specific issue, and I would rather we did not spend all night doing that. Yet we are where we are.

The very fact that we are mostly discussing Amendments 94A and 94B is a symptom of the fact that these issues have really come to the fore of the public’s concern in relatively recent times. I have got to the point where I am thinking, “I don’t care which amendment we pass tonight, as long as we pass something that then allows some time for things to go back to the Commons, for them to give consideration and for it to come back here”. Let us have that process. Even though we are at a relatively late stage of a Bill, we can have a good process beyond today, rather than trying to resolve the matter once and for all on the Floor of the House this evening. That is my main point.

My second point is on why we are perhaps in a better place now than we were a few months ago. It has worried me that we have not taken action against the big tech companies in the USA in recent times. We know that the US Government put this Government—us, our nation—under extreme pressure. Nobody has mentioned that today. It feels as if it is the elephant in the room. Perhaps we need to now show our courage and, particularly given all that is happening in and around Greenland, perhaps now is the time to say that we are not pusillanimous any more and that we are standing up for Britain and for what Britain needs, whatever the tech bros think is in their interests.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, it is an absolute pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, because I am going to mirror his words in many ways. Before I start, I thank our warm-up act, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn. It is a fantastic result. I hope that the Minister gives her all that she wants. She should be proud of herself that she has done it in just a couple of years, because the child born when I first raised it is probably in tertiary education by now, so two years is a very good timeframe.

I had written quite a different speech before I saw the Government’s consultation announcement. That made me rather angry, because it does not concern itself with the gaps in provision or enforcement of the Online Safety Act, nor the emerging or future threats that we repeatedly raise. It does not seek to speed up enforcement or establish why non-compliant companies are not named in Ofcom research or while they are being investigated. The consultation is entirely focused on two amendments that this House might send to the other House, which its Back-Benchers might agree to. The consultation’s purpose is to stave off a Back-Bench rebellion. It is not about child safety or governance; it is about party management. The UK’s children deserve better than that.

We have two amendments before us. Neither enjoys the support of all those who care about child safety. As the right reverend Prelate said, what a gift that has been to the Government, because it allows them to kick the issue down the road. The United Kingdom—once at the forefront of tech safety, commended on its AI Safety Institute, the age-appropriate design code, the Online Safety Act and the provisions for bereaved parents, all first and best in class—has squandered its advantage. Instead, we are becoming a case study for those who would like to prove that the tech sector is beyond national laws and is a law unto itself. Regulation has failed not because it cannot work but because the regime envisaged by Parliament was weakened by lobbying and critically undermined in its implementation. It is not regulation failing in principle; it is political will failing in practice.

There are very good reasons why all the child safety experts and organisations have urged the Government not to settle for a social media ban. Their collective view is clear that a ban is blunt and partial, fails to tackle root harms, shifts the burden from tech to parents and children and abandons 16 and 17 year-olds. Possibly the biggest thing they are saying we must hear is that it sends a dangerous message to a demographic that already experiences widespread disaffection that while the future is all digital and AI, they are not invited. I agree with every single one of those points.

However, over the last 15 months, the Government have ignored the howl of pain from parents and children, preferring to sup with big tech. Many have come to the view that if they cannot have the digital world that they were promised for their children after a decade of work on the Online Safety Act, they would rather have nothing at all. I say this reluctantly, but all the social media companies caught by Australia’s ban are already in scope of the OSA, so today marks a very low day for Ofcom. We are rehearsing in these two groups exactly what Ofcom was supposed to solve.

18:00

I will finally say in public—having resisted for some time—what others, including Ian Russell, have been saying for months. Ofcom is too timid. It is too close to tech; it is too secretive; it has narrowed the scope. It has tackled the Act in the most bureaucratic fashion possible and has held Parliament in contempt by failing to enact all parts of the Act, including the different ages, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said. Nothing will change until Ofcom changes.

What parents and children really need is an Online Safety Act that works as it was intended and resets the incentives and culture of the regulator. That means safety by design rather than box-ticking, outcomes not process, and overarching duty of care not safe harbour that allows companies to keep unsafe features with no penalty. It means mitigating all harms identified in risk assessments and speeding up enforcement.

The previous Secretary of State failed to take the opportunity to strengthen the OSA under Section 44 on the draft codes, but the current Secretary of State has the power to act under Section 47 on public safety grounds. We have police talking about a tsunami of AI child sexual abuse. We have heard that the royal medical colleges have announced a public health emergency. Similarly, the Secretary of State can issue guidance about Ofcom’s functions under Section 176—so far unused. What about safety by design, addictive and compulsive loops, violence against women and girls, and minimum standards in terms and conditions?

The Secretary of State could accept the amendments tabled to the Crime and Policing Bill that protect children from carelessly designed AI chatbots and protect women from sexual humiliation and pornography, and answer the calls from bereaved parents for rapid and automatic access to data. They were promised action and have been let down badly. It is not my intention to rehearse all that we can do, but please let us vote in the full knowledge that everything that could be done is not being done as we speak.

Desperate parents and teachers are losing faith that the institutions of government can act. That is dangerous for not only child safety but society as a whole. That begs the question: how am I going to vote? When I first entered the House, a debate raged just like this one between those who wanted to reform sex and relationship education in schools and those who wanted a wider PHSE settlement. Both sides had compelling arguments but, because we failed to come together, neither succeeded and children waited another 10 years before anything happened. Yesterday, the Secretary of State cited our differences as the reason for the government consultation, but that is false accounting. The desire for a ban is a direct result of the failure to do the better thing—to implement the Online Safety Act in its full scope. If children were protected by the OSA, there would be no outcry, no campaign and no need to get them offline.

The Government have shown that they will act only under pressure, not principle. That leaves me no good option on the table. I am not prepared to wait another 10 years. I will vote first with the Lib Dems and then with the noble Lord, Lord Nash. We must send something to the Commons so that they have to account for the needs of parents and children in the UK. I hope that the Government will have a better answer than a ban. But if we do not send them something, they will have nothing to answer. A consultation is the playground of the tech lobbyist and inaction is the most powerful tool in politics.

I make one final point. Law does not sit in a vacuum. The Australian Prime Minister, Albanese, is resolute. He has a determined position on child safety. He has brooked no compromises with the tech industry. Australia also has an experienced and fierce eSafety Commissioner, who is responsible to individual complainants. Her powers are robust and she can issue injunctions. Neither a ban nor the OSA will work unless we equip the regime with a route for individual complaints and vastly speeded-up business disruption measures, and put in robust leadership. Ministers are suggesting that the consultation is about practical decisions and getting more information. As the noble Lord said—Green Paper, White Paper, pre-leg, leg, consultation on what is illegal, consultation on the children’s code—we have been consulted. I have listed what we could do today. The Government are not doing it.

What Australia did was a political decision. It made a choice and is sticking to it. We could choose to make the OSA what it was supposed to be, and that is what I would like to see. Everybody in this House should suck it up and vote because we have to make it clear that this is not what we were promised and that this is not good enough.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, it is such a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. She is absolutely right. We have a choice today on whether we will send an amendment to the Commons to put pressure on the Government to act or whether we are going to flunk this opportunity. I support her conclusion that this is a moment when the House of Lords does need to act.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Penn for her Amendment 91, which is thoughtful, patiently put and important. I hope very much indeed that the Government pay attention to her notes on timetable and that, if necessary, she presses this point so that she gets what she needs.

I want to address Amendment 94A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Nash, and pay tribute to the noble Baronesses, Lady Cass, Lady Berger and Lady Benjamin, all of whom have made an enormous impact on this. Guardrails for our children are where we have landed. I say this with some regret, but it is important that we recognise this point.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cass, mentioned a meeting with the royal colleges. As a former Health Minister who has had many dealings with the herd of cats that are the royal colleges, I say that if they unify and say that there is a public health emergency, we should pay attention to that moment. We should not be brushed off by attempts to knock this into the long grass via public consultations. We should listen to our clinicians. Dr Rebecca Foljambe and the clinicians against smart- phones have done conclusive research on the harms done by screen time, by predators, by fraudsters, by the filth on the internet and by the sheer quantity of screen time that our children are subjected to. It is an utterly persuasive argument. Further research is not needed.

In fact, a consultation is the tobacco industry playbook, applied to smartphones for adolescents. Delay, consult, lobby, weaken—we know this playbook very well. We do not need a “get out of jail” clause for the tech companies; we need implementation. This is our opportunity for doing it.

Like many others in this Chamber, I worked really hard on the Online Safety Act to make it a success. It is a landmark piece of legislation. I am extremely proud of bits of it. But it assumed that we could work with the platforms to moderate their algorithms, to remove the filth, to prevent the predators, and to limit the screen time. It assumed that we were working in some kind of collaborative partnership with Facebook, Google, TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, Twitter and all the other social media companies to protect children and work towards some kind of better world.

That was a catastrophic misjudgment about the nature of these companies and of their leadership. The outcomes for our children, which have gone significantly backwards in the last two years, are testimony to that point. That damage done to our children is accelerating, with the tsunami of AI that is heading their way. The platforms have not reformed. They have not taken the bait. Instead, they have taken the mick. They are introducing artificial intelligence and totally inappropriate chatbots to our children.

The risk assessments that are an absolutely essential building block of the Ofcom regime and the Online Safety Act are an absolute insult to the intelligence of the regulators and of parents. How on earth did a risk assessment ever assess Grok’s new AI tools as being safe for children? It is a complete joke. The noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Clement-Jones, say that these platforms can be moderated, that they can be brought to heel, and that they will abide with the regulator’s will. But we have got to remember that they will not change, because around 25% of their clicks—the page views—come from the children they are targeting, and they are far too reliant on mis-selling those children’s eyeballs as adult eyeballs to advertisers. You cannot regulate far-off tech titans who are reliant on that income. You can only create perimeters in which they can hunt their profits, and that is exactly what the amendment seeks to do.

I recognise that there are sensible, respected voices who take a completely different view. Noble Lords have rightly paid tribute to the Molly Rose Foundation. I know that Ian Russell, and the NSPCC and other charities, have argued that instead of guardrails we should strengthen the Online Safety Act. They say that we should mandate well-being by design requirements, and Ian Russell has said that we should require platforms to prioritise child well-being in algorithmic design, and that age verification creates

“a false sense of security”.

I just do not think that is right. This argument rests on a false premise that we can somehow design our way out of the problem while keeping children on platforms whose entire business model depends on their exploitation. That cannot happen. You cannot algorithmically mitigate something that is not a design problem but a business model problem. The algorithm is not broken; it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: maximise engagement, keep eyes on the screen, and amplify provocative content, because provocative content keeps people clicking, including our children. This is not a market failure; this is a market working as designed by the companies that have monetised our children’s childhood as a commodity.

There are other noble Peers, such as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who are flying a kite on the possibility of some kind of film-style certification system. I also share that dream. What a wonderful world it would be to live in. I lived in that world for many years. Previous to being here, I was the strategy director of Capital Radio, in much-loved local radio, which, in the 1990s, was a warm and loving place to work and operate in. For every single local radio station, the Government had a licence which dictated exactly who they could broadcast to and what content they had on their radio station. If you breached that licence, they pulled it and gave it to someone else. It meant that local radio was extremely compliant with the licence details. Our broadcasting was a warm and lovely thing that was safe for children.

It is completely unrealistic that we are going to appoint something like a modern Radio Authority that will issue licences for every single website in the world and in some way oversee what our children access on those websites. How many bureaucrats would be needed to look at all those licences? How many armies of enforcement agents would be needed to issue the fines? How could we possibly read all that content?

18:15

Our children’s safety is far too important to be distracted by this. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is absolutely right. The Government’s suggestion of a consultation makes me very angry. It is not about evidence gathering; it is a mechanism for industry delay. It gives Meta, TikTok, Google and Snapchat six to nine months to lobby, propose alternatives, suggest that the amendment needs refinement, fund research suggesting age verification may or may not work—even though we know it does—and commission the same experts who said that the Online Safety Act would solve this problem.

The tobacco industry, which I know all about as a public health fanatic, played exactly the same game for 60 years. We banned smoking for children in 1908, and today 13% of the country still smokes. That is what we are looking at if we do not take the opportunity today to protect our children. We need to acknowledge the problem and create clear guardrails to protect our children. For that reason, I urge noble Lords to send a clear message to the Government by sending my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment to the Commons with a clear vote.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I support many of the amendments in this group, but I also want to express my concerns about Amendment 94A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I have listened carefully to his arguments and those of other noble Lords who support the amendment. I too am appalled by the many stories that we have heard. I too want to stop children being exposed to harms online. I hope my record in the debates on the Online Safety Act and other digital legislation show my support for measures to increase safety for children in the digital space. I, like all noble Lords, recognise that there are many harms online.

However, I do not think that an outright ban on social media for the under-16s will be effective in protecting children. I hesitate to disagree with my noble friend Lady Kidron, who I normally always agree with, but we should put all the pressure we possibly can directly on Ofcom to make sure we realise the hopes and dreams of the Online Safety Act.

Early this morning, I had an interesting conversation with Jason Trethowan, who runs headspace, Australia’s national youth mental health charity, which last year was accessed by 170,000 young people aged between 12 and 25 in 170 locations across the country. His organisation is at the sharp end of the social media ban in Australia. His main message was that we all want to stop online harms to children, but he called on the Government and legislators to listen to children as well as parents.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, has quite rightly highlighted the harms that exist for young people on social media. However, noble Lords also need to be aware of the crucial role that social media plays for young people in communicating with each other, getting information about the world and, very importantly, getting help and advice from like-minded people.

Jason said that we all need to understand that young people see the online world as their world. It is a central part of their existence, and no amount of bans will remove them from online space. headspace told me that the ban in Australia, which started on 10 December 2025, was a massive shock for many young people. They had been warned of its arrival for months but still were not prepared for the severing of their contacts on social media. Most did not have the phone numbers to continue communicating with their contacts and suddenly found themselves isolated from their peer groups. Many noble Lords will dismiss these severances as youthful folly, but the charity told me that of 3,000 young people who have been seen since the ban was introduced, 10% included social media bans among the reasons for their mental health deteriorating.

One young person on an isolated farm in rural Australia had used an LGBT group on social media to find like-minded young people. He lived in a household he regarded as homophobic, and was geographically far away from many of his online contacts. Suddenly, he found his support network taken away from him. The schools in Australia are on their summer break until the end of this month, so the full extent of the disruption to the lives of young people is not known.

The young LGBT person will not be able to renew his social media contacts, but rest assured he will find advice somewhere else on the internet. Young people who are banned from social media will find other ways online to assuage their appetites for communication, information and problem-solving.

In Australia, Headspace is already seeing this happening. Young people who can no longer use the 10 major sites, which include Snapchat, X, YouTube, Instagram and Kik, are now migrating to AI sites. Noble Lords have already had debates over concerns about AI as a form of gathering information. Many will be aware of what the West Coast techies call “hallucinations” —the rest of us call them “lies”—appearing in AI research.

Young people are using AI to resolve their problems. On 27 November last year, this House had a debate about banning AI companions, which many young people use for advice. They can be dangerous—my noble friend Lady Kidron told how this led to one young man committing suicide on the advice of an AI companion. Surely, noble Lords do not want to encourage young people to use these AI replacements for social media.

The tech companies will feed that appetite. I know that built into Amendment 94A there is a flexibility for which apps will be used. However, they found in Australia that new platforms are opening all the time. The Australian Government’s original Act banned 10 social media platforms, but already they have had to come up with another list of platforms to ban. This is a game of whack-a-mole, just as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said. It will not be solved by ban on social media platforms. The media will always outpace the legislation.

There are so many harms online, on social media and other platforms. We all agree on that. I have spoken to the charities that have been mentioned many times by noble Lords—the Molly Rose Foundation, Internet Matters, NSPCC and the Online Safety Act Network. They have all championed the development of online safety for children, as noble Lords have already mentioned, and all are against a blanket ban on social media for under-16s in this country. They suggest that instead of banning social media, the Online Safety Act should be amended. I know that my noble friend Lady Kidron has said that that is not possible to do.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I am sorry but the noble Viscount is misreading what I said. I said exactly that.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

I apologise. They suggest that the Act should be amended to ensure safety by design for all users, particularly young users.

There is a need to strengthen Ofcom’s response to tech platforms that breach their risk assessments. It needs to put the onus on the platforms to mitigate the risks, instead of defining the mitigation measures and taking action only when there is evidence that these measures actually work. This needs to be combined with the definition of “safety by design”.

I partially support Amendment 108 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. Children’s safety charities have long been calling for age-appropriate content requirements to be introduced for content on social media and across the internet. However, age-appropriate design should be introduced not just for 18 year-olds but for 16 year-olds and even 13 year-olds.

I completely support Amendment 109. I am glad the Government are having a consultation on this issue. I sincerely hope that noble Lords are wrong in saying that this is an attempt to kick this down the road. Addiction is a real problem. This is about engagement and economy, and it needs to be dealt with.

I support the call for Ofcom to revisit its interpretation of the Online Safety Act so that it includes addictive design as one of the harms that it needs platforms to mitigate against. I understand the powerful instinct of noble Lords and many parents to ban social media for under-16s, but I ask them to consider that young people will not be torn away from life online. It will not be possible to force them to leave the digital world, however much a majority of adults want that to happen.

[Baroness Bertin (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from my noble friend Lord Nash and thank all noble Lords who cosigned it. I am nervous about making this speech today because I am praying that my daughter does not read Hansard.

I speak as a member of this House, of course, but also as a mother. I have a direct and vested interest in this amendment and make no apology for that. But I also feel I have to speak for the army of parents who, like me, have watched, frankly, in disbelief as our children’s childhoods have been steadily hollowed out to varying degrees.

Obviously, lots of us are doing everything we can to keep our children safe. I am the devil incarnate at home because I have not allowed my daughter to use Snapchat. We have gone into a sort of plea-bargaining state, if I can put it that way, whereby I have not allowed Snapchat but have allowed Pinterest. I thought Pinterest was perfectly harmless. I thought it was a nice place where I picked wallpapers and had a jolly nice time going through it. What could possibly be the problem? I was delighted. I said, “Yes, of course you can have Pinterest”. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, it is quite an artistic way to operate. But in fact, Pinterest is now just pushing my daughter a whole load of consumer advertising. She has popped in that she wants a T-shirt of some make or other and, of course, now—bang, bang, bang—the notifications are coming in non-stop.

There is a big reason why we now have teenage girls—not even teenage girls; 11 year-old and 10 year-old girls—slathering their faces with hyaluronic acid and anti-ageing creams, products they should not even know about let alone be buying, not least because they are blooming expensive. It is ridiculous.

Adolescence is a period of profound emotional and neurological change— hormones, friendships, identity and insecurity playing out in a young developing brain. To then introduce the relentless comparison, exposure, validation and amplification of what social media does is to add a weapon to those brains, which are simply too young to cope. Crucially, they just should not be expected to cope.

I completely accept the arguments against a full ban. I hardly ever disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I met with Molly Russell’s father two days ago and have huge respect for him and for the other side of the argument that perhaps it is just too black and white. But I am afraid that these companies absolutely thrive in the complication, sophistication and difficulty. Meanwhile, as a parent, there I am trying to get the parental locks on and to work out how to turn off the mind-boggling push notifications and stop the device going into the bedroom—with degrees of success. Five years ago, a partial ban or platform-led safeguards might have been defensible, had we been dealing with companies worthy of trust. That trust has now completely disintegrated.

From the work I have done on the pornography review, we know that boys aged 11 and probably younger have seen pornography. A boy, before his first kiss, aged 13, will have seen rape porn, strangulation porn and incest porn. Where did he see that porn? Mainly on X. Eight out of 10 sites are social media sites, not pornography sites. That is an outrage, and it was something they knew about and, actually, were actively pushing. It was not that the kids were necessarily looking for it; they were pushing those algorithms on to them. So, how can we possibly trust having a dialogue with these firms when we know that that is their business model, as my noble friend Lord Bethell made very clear?

At the other end of the scale, research shows that 70% of offenders who attempt to contact children do so online. This is a business model that is borderline criminal, certainly very toxic, and so sophisticated. Regardless of the amendments that say, “We’re going to have conversations with Ofcom and we’re going to do X, Y and Z”, they have already made off like bandits with our children’s innocence, and to be perfectly honest I think they will carry on doing so if we take that approach. An overall ban is essential, then afterwards we can look at which apps and sites will be suitable.

18:30

During my meeting with Molly Russell’s father this week, we had one of the most thoughtful and constructive meetings I have had in a long time. Whatever the outcome of today, we have agreed to work together going forward. His campaigning has been principled and tireless and is rooted in love for his daughter. Respectfully, I believe that some of the arguments that have been put forward against the ban do not withstand scrutiny. Children do not need social media platforms to find protection, belonging or community. Childhood social networks existed a long time before algorithmic-driven platforms were optimised for engagement and profit. I accept the comments of my great friend the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, about children who are vulnerable when they lose their networks, but, with difficult issues such as this and difficult laws, you have to govern for the majority while being mindful that some minorities will suffer. What is causing more harm? I believe that social media, wholesale, is operating in a way that is causing huge harm for under-16s.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I do not accept that announcing yet another consultation is a serious response to a problem of this scale. A review at this stage, as she said, is just the cynical management of politics, and I hope that many of my esteemed friends in the other place will see it for what it is. We have got to send this back to the Commons. Regardless of whether we agree on a full ban or partial ban, we have a job to do. We must not lose this shot at helping and protecting our children in this way. We are not short of evidence; we are short of action.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, once upon a time, in a previous moral panic about children’s safety, parents reacted to the media and politicians catastrophising by stopping their offspring playing outside unsupervised. The unintended consequence was the creation of what became known as cotton wool kids, prone to risk aversion, anxiety, lack of resilience and social isolation. Ironically, to compensate, many of those children were forced to cultivate their activities online. Their social interactions became virtual, and here we are.

I worry that we risk similar unintended consequences now if we rush to pass a social media ban for under-16s, so I will be opposing Amendment 94A. I know it has become normalised that, whatever social, cultural or moral panics we encounter, we believe that we can legislate to make them go away. I fear that this sort of lawmaking can lead to avoiding tackling difficult problems and to attempts at quick-fix solutions that too often create a whole new raft of difficulties down the line.

I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, blamed social media for eating disorders, radicalisation, terrorism, the mental health epidemic, ADHD, poor behaviour in the classroom, misogyny, violence against women and girls, and on and on. At this rate, all that Parliament would have to do is ban the internet for everyone and all problems would be solved. There is a danger of looking for easy answers and scapegoating social media for all society’s ills.

I worry about attempts to push this through too quickly or to fast-track it. It is interesting that the three-week fast-track consultation put forward in the other place has been discussed as though it is holding things back. The leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, calls it more “dither and delay”. But this proposal is new; it has only just arrived here on Report as an amendment that would fundamentally change every citizen’s relationship with social media, not just children’s. I worry about attempts at steamrolling it through, with an assumption that everyone agrees that it is so obvious and inevitable that there is no point opposing it. I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, for an attempt at proportionality, even though I do not think it goes far enough.

We are hectored that this is what parents want. There has not been a referendum of parents, though there are polls. Many parents are pulling their hair out and will be tempted by it—it is so much easier to say, “You can’t because it’s against the law”, than it is to assert adult authority. Teenagers’ and children’s pester power can be the bane of all our lives. If only the law could be extended to ban other things and make them illegal—no, you cannot wear that hoodie; no, you cannot spend hours gaming; no, you cannot go to that sleepover; no, you cannot gorge on junk food; no, you cannot go to that party. In truth, this approach encourages parents to outsource their authority and shifts responsibility from parents to the state. All families ultimately are being told that they are incapable of managing their children's habits, and that is a dangerous precedent. It can disarm parents in the name of empowerment. Is there really a consensus among parents on this? Many of my friends are split down the middle, so I do not think we can claim the evidence is in.

What about the incontrovertible scientific evidence that backs a ban? The jury is out. The causal relationship between social media and mental well-being in teens and young people is much more contested than has been implied. Recent extensive research by academics at Manchester University found no evidence that social media has increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression. The chair of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group, Professor Louis Appleby, points out that the evidence is, at best, circumstantial, noting that self-harming in the young began well before social media took hold in that age group. That reflects what I know from my own work in relation to mental ill-health and young people; I do not think it can totally be blamed on social media.

An Oxford University study of nearly 12,000 children showed no correlation between screen time, including social media, and mental health. Instead, the way in which children engage with social media is what determines its impact and—shock horror—in many instances, evidence shows the positive impact of social media use. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said that no more research is needed. That is anti-scientific and complacent, and I do not think it is true.

Let us be clear about what this amendment as drafted would do in relation to user services. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out the dangers to, for example, WhatsApp, websites such as Wikipedia and so on. That needs clarifying at the very least.

Despite histrionic headlines, social media can be used for self-educational ends. There is a new generation of autodidacts who are teaching themselves coding, video producing, editing and even musical instruments, languages and chess. I know that sounds rose-tinted and a bit glib, but social media often is a tool for connections—finding your tribe, making new friends—and a place where you can cultivate solidarity and autonomy as a young person. It can be a counter to the social trend towards fragmentation.

What about allowing the young to explore diverse political perspectives? On the eve of 16 year-olds being given the vote, surely it is important, if not essential, that we do not narrowly restrict soon-to-vote teens to state-sanctioned media channels. We want them to broaden their horizons, and explore and develop a democratic curiosity about the world, and they are going to do that online. When talking to school pupils, as I do often, I recommend that they find out about their peers around the world as part of them learning about international relations. What civic lessons might British children learn by looking at those brave protesters in Iran whose commitment to freedom has given them the courage to take on a theocratic Islamic regime and whose stories we know because they used social media to organise and to connect with each other and the rest of the world? That was, of course, before the ayatollah shut down the internet—oh, the irony.

As for safety and whether this ban will throw children off a cliff edge, it risks not equipping youth with the skills to safely and responsibly navigate the online world, knowing how to identify problems, spot dodgy red flags and apply strategies to deal with them. As the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, pointed out, in all likelihood, many pre-16 year-olds will find ways of migrating to even riskier unregulated platforms or the dark web without guardrails and zero moderation. Our teenagers and children are clever and, dare I say it, devious. They will find a way. They will use VPNs—but it is okay, because noble Lords are going to ban those too. I hear that there is already a roaring trade in fake IDs among pre-teens.

Finally, how will over 16 year-old adults be affected by this ban? Whereas the Online Safety Act age-gated only certain types of harmful content, Amendment 94A would age-gate entire platforms, even when the content is child-friendly or harmless. According to Big Brother Watch, a 70 year-old accessing the neighbourhood news, a 50 year-old looking up the history of golf on Wikipedia, a 30 year-old small business owner responding to customers on Instagram and a 17 year-old wanting to message parents on the way home from school would all require age-verification measures. That is the threat to adult civil liberties and the right to privacy and, in effect, it means that we will have to digitally verify to participate in the public square. I do not necessarily think that young people will gain from this, despite the hyperbole.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I remind the House that we are on Report, and I think some of the contributions are in danger of erring on the wrong side of self-regulation. We should stick to the point; I will be very brief and simply try to explain for the benefit of the Government Front Bench, because in various Bills going through Parliament in the last month or so, this subject has raised itself in various forms. I sometimes notice the Front Bench being slightly amazed at what is coming at them from all sides and not necessarily understanding why. That is largely because they were not in your Lordships’ House at the time we went through the lengthy discussions about the Online Safety Act. What they are hearing today is a collective howl of rage and frustration across the House because what we thought we were very clear was meant to happen has not happened. I will give one or two facts which back up the view of my noble friend Lady Kidron that, whatever we do, we have to gather together—the right reverend Prelate made a very good point—and collectively send a message to the other place that this situation is simply not good enough.

Today, within the last 10 hours, a court case has been going on in California against Snap, Meta and TikTok where a group of parents are accusing those organisations of creating products which are addictive. It so happens that in the last 24 hours, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has settled with the complainants. That is because, I suspect, if they had not settled, the chief executive of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, would shortly have had to appear in person in the court to answer the case against his company. He chose not to do so. Mr Zuckerberg is apparently also in the queue to give evidence at this trial, and it will be interesting to see whether his company takes the same route.

Yesterday, along with many other colleagues, I was part of a session of Learn with the Lords in the Education Centre. I took the opportunity to talk to the young people, most of whom were 14 and 15, about what they thought of a social media ban, which all of them were aware of—probably through social media. Almost without exception, they said they were against it and gave the sort of reasons one would expect, such as “That’s where we get our news from”, and so on. The teachers were completely and utterly in favour of a ban. We can take from that what we will, but I suspect the fact that they see day in and day out in the schoolroom the effect on the pupils they are trying to help, to develop and to manage—and to mitigate, in some cases, difficult behaviours—means that are completely united that this is unsustainable.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, mentioned that in Australia they have a different regulator, an e-safety commissioner. Comparing the e-safety commissioner in Australia with what we have in Ofcom is a bit like comparing “Crocodile Dundee” with “Dixon of Dock Green”. The difference is that stark.

Last week in the Peers’ Lobby, I met one of the bereaved parents whose child has died as a result of exposure to social media. I told that bereaved parent that a group of us were going to meet the chief executive of Ofcom within the next couple of weeks. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Simon, would you give the chief executive a message from me?”. I said, “Yes, of course”. He said—and you will excuse my Anglo-Saxon—“Would you kick her up the arse?”.

18:45

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is occasionally accused of being somewhat angry and irate when we get on to these subjects. That is entirely understandable. She founded 5Rights in 2013. We are now 13 years later, and she is repeating some of the same arguments, warnings and evidence again and again. I remind your Lordships that for many of those years the noble Baroness was the person to whom all the bereaved parents would go, to have somebody who understood what they were going through and who would work to coalesce and bring them together so they had a community, because they had nowhere else to go. She has lived directly with the shame, the fear, the anger and the sorrow of those bereaved parents and has helped them deal with that. In so doing, she has worked with them, and everybody thought and hoped that delivering the Online Safety Act would provide, at least in part, an answer. That those parents are as disappointed as they are with where we are is a cry of shame which Parliament has to listen to. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron: I do not mind which way you vote—that is what I tell kids: “Whatever you do, vote”—but whichever way you vote, let us send a message back and get this dealt with.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lady Kidron and the right reverend Prelate. We have a choice to make today, and I hope that we will make the right choice.

I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, which is really important. Early years matter—they matter so much that we must do everything we can to protect them.

I also support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to which I have added my name. I wish to speak on Amendment 94A, which is really important, as I strongly believe that children under the age of 16 should not be able to access social media and have social media accounts. This is a necessary measure until the online platforms accept their responsibility, implement stringent safety controls and perform their duties to our children. We have given them the opportunities to do so; now is the time for us to act decisively. Each minute we wait, more damage is done to our children’s well-being.

It is great that the Government have moved on this issue, but they have done so in the wrong direction. There is no need for a consultation, which will cause even further delay. We have all the evidence we need; we have to stop this catastrophe now. The world is watching us, and I believe that many countries will follow suit, because this is a global crisis.

There are those who believe that this amendment is a blunt instrument and will prevent children accessing the outside world. I do not agree. Let us consider the options. What would we rather have: children becoming addicted, showing signs of anxiety, even taking their own lives and being exposed to the terrible age-inappropriate dangers allowed by social media providers, who do not have our children’s interests at heart, or protecting them until those social media providers get their act together? I know which option I would choose. This amendment sends a clear message to those who want to harm our children and fail to protect them. They have failed in their duty, and now is the time for us to act.

It is important to make clear that children do not need a social media account to access the internet. I am not proposing to ban children from the internet, which is a great source of information for their educational studies on platforms such as Wikipedia or BBC Bitesize. The amendment is preventive. It would prevent them having social media accounts where they can be contacted and reveal personal and private details that expose them to potential abuse, harm or coercive behaviour. The word “ban” is emotive, but the amendment is a preventive measure in the same way that children cannot buy alcohol or a lottery ticket. You would not allow your children to freely play on the motorway, so why do we allow them to easily open social media accounts that can cause harm and trauma and, in some cases, endanger their lives?

For the last 20 years or more, I have been speaking out and begging children to resist temptation and to be aware of what the online world was seducing them into. I have begged them to switch off and say no to these temptations, which lead them down a path of potential harm. Unfortunately, my message and warnings did not spread far enough and we are now facing a crisis, an epidemic of children suffering from mental health issues, depression, isolation, bullying, blackmail and intimidation—the frightening list goes on and on— because of their exposure to the dark side of social media.

What have we done to our children? Many of them have had their innocent childhoods snatched away from them, sliding down into a cesspit of uncontrolled harm, danger and disturbing behaviour. The scary reality of the depression and mental health issues that children are experiencing is frightening. According to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, there was a 22.7% increase in suicide rates of those aged between 10 and 24 between 2012 and 2022. It has been well documented that adolescents are showing rising addiction to social media and face a doubled risk of suicidal behaviour. There has been a fivefold increase in eating disorders among 11 to 16 year-olds, according to the NHS Digital mental health of children and young people in England survey. The Nuffield Foundation predicts that GCSE results will worsen steadily over the years to come, when fewer than 40% of pupils will achieve good grades in maths and English. The decline in children being exposed to books and reading skills is now becoming evident, and many organisations, such as BookTrust, are striving to encourage reading and to persuade children to pick up books and become lovers of the written word.

Another worrying concern for us all, as highlighted last year by the Children’s Commissioner, is that 59% of children first saw pornography by accident and 27% have seen pornography by the age of 11. One mother told me that her four year-old was abused by a 10 year-old who said to her, “I’m going to rape you and you’re going to like it”. Where did he get that kind of language from?

In one Demos focus group, every single girl had received unsolicited sexual images. There is also evidence that children are now using mainstream social media to host live sexual content for payment. How did we get to this? Why have we allowed it to happen? The proportion of children reported as perpetrators of sexual offences is rising, driven significantly by early exposure to pornography. This is something that I have long lobbied to prevent. Thank goodness we now have Ofcom-implemented protection due to the Online Safety Act.

Social media can be addictive and consume time and energy in a negative way, especially for young people. Research from the World Health Organization has found that 11% of adolescents globally show signs of problematic social media use: addiction-like symptoms, including the inability to control usage; withdrawal symptoms when offline; neglect of other activities; and signs of anxiety. In England, 20% of 11 year-old girls and 23% of 13 year-old girls have problematic usage. That is three to five times higher than adult alcohol dependency and 3.5 times higher than adult drug dependency. Let us release our children from this dependency and anxiety. Let us set them free from all this. We must do that.

Children need a world of positive role models, giving them a holistic understanding of the world around them, presented in a verified way, not an online environment that distorts their thinking, behaviour and perception of the world with misinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news—a world filled with influencers, a world making them feel inadequate. My daughter is a teacher and is having to deal with the outcome of all this on a daily basis, like so many other teachers across the country.

What is social media doing to our children today and exposing them to? What type of future is ahead of them? If we do nothing now to protect our children and grandchildren, we should be ashamed of ourselves, as the damage to young minds and heartaches of families will only increase. There is an argument for more parental control, but parents cannot look over their shoulder 24/7; they need our help.

I urge the Government to back the amendment and help to protect our children, because there is a strong case from teachers, health practitioners, parents and law enforcement that children under the age of 16 should not be able to access social media accounts. We have a huge responsibility to safeguard our precious children and their well-being. The amendment is vital. It would send a clear message to those who would harm our children and allow them to be scarred for life. As I always say and will say again, childhood lasts a lifetime. That is why I wholeheartedly support Amendment 94A, and I urge other Members to do the same.

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 94A, along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin and Lady Cass, and the noble Lord, Lord Nash. In the interests of time I will not talk about the other amendments, but I commend the noble Baroness on her introduction of this group of amendments.

There are a handful of issues that consume me on a daily basis, and the negative impact of social media on millions of children and young people in this country is one of them. Despite the important introduction of the Online Safety Act to control illegal material and prevent children accessing harmful and inappropriate content, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, expertly articulated, not a week goes by in this place when we do not hear how Ofcom is struggling to enact and enforce this important legislation. That law does nothing to protect the next generation from social media, with its highly addictive algorithms, its constant notifications, its ability for unsolicited contact by people unknown to children and its barrage of content that young people are not even seeking or searching for. While it might not fall under the definitions of illegal or harmful, it is still misogynistic, divisive and shaming; diminishes our children’s self-worth; is racist, dangerous, and violent; and contains a disproportionate amount of misinformation and disinformation. We are going backwards because, if we do nothing, the situation will only get worse as the tech companies continue to fight for our children and young people’s attention and develop their social media products to get as many eyeballs on their platforms as they can in the pursuit of profit.

As one of the handful of parents in this place with primary-age children, I am deeply concerned by the constant stream of case studies that I hear from other parents about the effect that social media is having on their children, who have had to move school due to bullying on social media, who have had the police turn up on their doorstep due to their children being groomed or exploited on social media platforms, or whose child is in in-patient mental health care for eating disorders they are suffering from that have been amplified due to social media use.

I am deeply concerned having listened closely to our teachers, who, as we have heard, are having to grapple on a daily basis in the classroom with the consequences of the content that our children and young people are being bombarded with on social media and the impact it is having on their attainment. That is no surprise, given that Ofcom tells us that the average time our children are spending on these platforms is 21 hours a week.

19:00

I am deeply concerned about the adverse impact of social media on mental health, reflecting on the wealth of stories I have heard over many years from clinicians, including from our accident and emergency departments. There are too many tragic cases where children and young people are experiencing trauma or have died by suicide or injury, following what they have seen or been subjected to on social media. The list of harms is so long it would take more time than I am allowed to set them all out with real-life case studies.

But this is about more than the stories that have been shared. There may not have been a referendum, but, staggeringly, nearly a quarter of a million parents, grandparents and carers in the past six days alone have taken time out of their busy days to write to every MP in the country calling for a ban via the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign. Some 75% of the British public want this, according to polling from More in Common just before Christmas. Polling out today shows us that a majority of 13 to 24 year-olds say that Governments should remove access to social media for those under 16. Significantly, 78% of Gen Z would delay giving their own child access to social media for as long as possible, having experienced social media themselves as a child.

But, of course, it is also about the evidence. Last year, I participated in the mental health advisory group for the Youth Futures Foundation, which published first-of-its-kind findings from research carried out by the University of Manchester and UCL. The research explored the population-level explosion in youth mental health problems that we are all well aware of. The most robust evidence indicates that, following the steep increase in young people’s social media and connected smartphone use, there has been a negative impact on our young people’s mental health, particularly symptoms of low mood and anxiety. The consistency of inference across research designs provides us with some confidence that a causal relationship exists.

Surveys tell us about teachers’ daily experiences in the classroom. Members of the NASUWT teaching union have identified social media specifically as the primary factor in the deterioration of behaviour in our schools, including primary schools, as well as the primary factor in the decline in empathy and respect, and the normalisation of abusive conduct, along with the reduction in attention span. Similarly, the National Education Union also tells us that this is having a damaging impact on schools and adding to the workloads and stress of our teachers, diverting time away from teaching and learning.

We already have the evidence we need that social media is causing irrefutable damage. I know some colleagues question increasing the age of access to social media to 16. I have looked very closely at the work of Labor colleagues in Australia who brought forward a world first and introduced a ban. Australia took 12 months to implement the legislation, which has now been in place for a month. Reflecting on the Australian eSafety Commissioner’s words after that first month, Australia is heartened and pleased that in the first week of a ban, 4.7 million social media accounts were deactivated in Australia. It is clear that the e-safety regulator’s guidance and engagement with platforms is already delivering significant outcomes.

There is no evidence from Australia that young people currently are migrating to the dark web or other unregulated spaces, but the law in Australia enables the regulator to track the migratory patterns of young people to see where they go next, to identify any unintended consequences and respond, which this amendment enables. This includes responding to any new technology that may crop up. Australia has done work with its youth mental health organisations to ensure that young people can access mental health referrals and support via alternative channels to social media, including hotlines.

To reply to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, Australia has looked at how to help young people engage with friends in other ways. All the while, they will be able to build digital literacy and resilience for more years before they are 16 and have access to social media. As the Communications Minister has said in Australia, they are

“Giving kids three more years to build their community and identity offline”.

This is just one measure that will make a difference. The Australians have been clear that this is a first step, certainly not a cure all. While some workarounds may emerge, just because some young people access as alcohol or tobacco under age, that does not mean we do not ban alcohol or tobacco; it is not a reason to rule out a ban. It is about setting a cultural standard and applying a precautionary principle that we have already applied in this country to so many other harms affecting our children.

So many people across this country want a ban: parents, as I have identified; the security services and the police, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Nash; our teachers, together with their unions; our medical professionals, as set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass; our doctors, who tell us that this is a public health emergency; adults who were recently adolescents; and bereaved parents, including Esther Ghey, many of whom I know are here today with us, have written to us so powerfully. Significantly, the majority of children and young people today say that they want a ban. It is too important not to adopt a minimum age when so many are calling for it.

I welcome the Government’s review, which acknowledges the harm of social media. It will take place over three months and report by the summer. I see it as complementary to this amendment, which allows the Secretary of State 12 months to bring forward secondary legislation and for the Secretary of State to determine which platforms should be included. The Australian list of 10 platforms is a very helpful starter for 10, but, to be clear and to respond to my noble friend Lord Knight, this amendment, in subsection (5), allows the Secretary of State to modify, add or exclude regulated user-to-user services.

In conclusion, I have had so many parents stop me to say that we need to get this through. One young person approached me on my computer the other day to say, “Please keep going—we need this change”. A mum from Manchester said, “As parents we are desperate, please do whatever you can to protect our youth who are drowning in mental health crises due to the impact of social media”. Another mum implored, “It is too late for my kids, but we need a ban for the younger ones. We have to do something to ensure that no other child goes through what mine has”. Sometimes, we have to say enough is enough and that we cannot wait any longer. The alternative is that in the quest for perfection we lose the good, and in doing so we condemn thousands more children to harms, ignoring the change we desperately need to see.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have absolutely no desire to stifle debate, but I ask anyone who wishes still to speak to be very mindful of the number of votes we are expecting at the end of this group. We also have very important dinner break business scheduled for tonight. Please be brief and to the point so we can move on with this important debate.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have two original points to make that have not been covered at all. We should bring ourselves back to the fact that there is an enormous amount of agreement around this Chamber. I think everyone will say we feel enormous sympathy for the families, some of whom are here today, who have lost family as a result of contact with social media. We all accept that we want 16 year-olds on the day of their birthday to be able to stride out into the world confident, capable, ready to step into adulthood. Most of us want to rein in the overwhelmingly powerful digital companies which have been allowed to run wild across the world by political decisions made by adults. I particularly commend the right reverend Prelate for naming the spectre in the room—Donald Trump and his tech bro friends. He is a spectre here and is now recorded in Hansard.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, that we have very broad agreement that the Online Safety Act has been a total failure and Ofcom is not delivering what it should be doing. Those are the points of agreement. Where my conclusions drive me is that I would back Amendment 91 from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, with some caveats, which I will get back to, but it is not my intention to vote for any of the ban amendments before us today. I have a great deal of sympathy with the Lib Dems’ brave effort to find a way through a middle road and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, almost swayed me that we should make a gesture. The case I put, argument one, is that your Lordships’ House is not the right place: we are not the right people to be making this decision. Many of us have joined since the depths of Covid, but those who were here then will remember when the House went largely remote and lots of people who had never used a computer before were suddenly on Zoom. We met their grandkids: “There you are, Granny. You are off mute now”.

I invite your Lordships to look at the people around you. We are extraordinarily unrepresentative of the country in many ways, but particularly in terms of age. This is where I draw on the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, but come to a different conclusion. I was also in the learning centre and spoke to some of the same pupils. They overwhelmingly said, “We do not want a ban”. My argument is that we must stop doing politics to young people. We must give young people agency and a sense of control. We have bequeathed to them a disastrous, damaging world; failing to give them a say in this is absolutely the wrong way forward.

On that point, I have a serious proposal for the Minister. In the consultation, are the Government prepared to include a people’s assembly that represents young people from around the country? Rather than just asking young people to tick a box in a survey—we all know what happens with “yes” or “no” votes—this would give them the chance to deliberate on how they think we can control the future and improve their situation.

My second point is important and has not been said before. In this debate we have heard a huge amount of scapegoating of social media. Social media is a mirror: it reflects the misogyny, violence, racism and fake news that runs across and through our society, it does not create it. If we could wave a magic wand and get young people off social media, they would still be affected by the dreadful levels of poverty and the schools that operate as exam factories, putting them under tremendous pressure and subjecting them to unbearable discipline. They would still have parents who are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. They would still encounter all the misogyny and racism in our society. When we are debating and voting on this, we must understand that social media is a mirror; it is not creating where we are now.

[Lord Tarassenko (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly about the lack of scientific evidence for Amendment 94A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. No one disputes that rates of suicide, depression, anxiety and self-harm have increased among teenagers in the last decade. However, the question before us is whether a social media ban for under-16s would decrease those rates.

I know that this has been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, but I still believe that evidence from randomised controlled trials is important, even in this context. There have been no randomised controlled trials of social media bans or restrictions for healthy under-18s. The lack of experimental evidence in adolescent populations may be because it is difficult to experimentally manipulate social media use in such an age group. There was one RCT of 220 adolescents and young adults aged 17 to 25 with pre-existing emotional distress, who were asked to reduce their social media use to one hour a day for three weeks. However, the sample participants selected were all experiencing at least two of four symptoms of depression and anxiety, and should therefore be classified as a clinical sample, not a representative sample of the general population.

There is an RCT of adolescent participants from which we can learn, even though it has not started. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust and it will take place in Bradford and feature adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16. The intervention will not be a ban, but will involve a smartphone app that, importantly, limits the use of social media apps using a co-produced combination of a daily budget of one hour per day and a night-time curfew between 9 pm and 7 am.

The co-production of the trial is very important. We need to hear the voice of young people when designing these interventions. They themselves are very concerned by the negative impacts of social media. Perhaps not surprisingly, the feedback from the teenagers in Bradford schools was that they would be against a ban, but they would be willing to accept significant time limits on their use of social media.

19:15

From April onwards, 4,000 students in years 8, 9 and 10 will be recruited from 10 Bradford secondary schools by a team led by Dr Dan Lewer, from the local NHS Trust, and Professor Amy Orben from the University of Cambridge. She is a recognised international expert on the links between mental health and digital technology use in adolescence. The trial will explore the effects of the intervention on all participants, but there will be a sub-group focusing on those with pre-existing symptoms of anxiety.

Unfortunately, a full analysis of the outcome data will not be available until early summer 2027, when results briefings will be available to policymakers. However, through serendipity, we have the largest before- and-after event study taking place in Australia as a result of the ban the Australian Government introduced in December. Before-and-after studies provide the lowest level of evidence for the effectiveness of healthcare interventions. However, if the ban, as blunt and imperfect an instrument as it is, leads to a reduction in suicides and all major mental health issues in children between the ages of 11 and 16, it would be morally wrong not to introduce such a ban in this country.

Australia’s e-safety commissioner has appointed an advisory group of 11 distinguished experts—led by Stanford University’s Social Media Lab, and including from this country Professor Orben from Cambridge University and Professor Etchells from Bath Spa University —to provide a robust and transparent evaluation of the outcomes of the social media ban in Australia for under-16s. In her reply, will the Minister undertake to report back, within 12 months of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill being passed, with an expert analysis of the impact of the Australian ban on key mental health statistics? I do not believe that we should introduce a ban in this country without some impartial analysis of the data being collected in Australia, even if it is preliminary. Amendment 94A makes no provision for analysis within 12 months of the most relevant evidence that we will have, and I therefore cannot support it.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will also endeavour to be brief. Like many who have spoken already, I spent a very large amount of time on the Online Safety Act. I agree entirely with the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. This is a cry of pain and anger from this House that I hope the Minister is hearing, but I do not think that banning social media for under-16s is the right thing to do. I will add two reasons that have not been discussed so far.

First, I worry that absolutely nothing will change by implementing a ban. We already have a minimum age of 13; go into any primary school and you will find how effective that is. I urge the Minister to tell us how she is going to implement the minimum age we already have. How is she going to stiffen Ofcom’s backbone to hold tech companies to account? Otherwise, we can legislate all we like, but it will not make any difference.

Secondly, I have huge respect for the eloquence with which my noble friend Lord Nash set out the horrors and harms that social media is undoubtedly doing, but there is one flaw in his argument. He quoted a lot of research that points to the harm that excessive use of social media does to children. A ban, however, is zero use. We must be very careful about that. Social media is part of the modern world; it brings good as well as ill, and to simply ban it is abdicating responsibility.

I worry hugely that we are letting the tech companies off the hook. We have to hold them to account to produce products that are age appropriate. We have done that with every other technology as it has grown up over the centuries, and we should not duck the issue now. That takes me to the right reverend Prelate’s point, which seems like quite a long time ago. I am in the same dilemma, because I am absolutely certain that change has to happen, that the Online Safety Act is not working as those of us who worked so hard on it envisaged, and that Ofcom is not delivering. I doubt that more consultation solves that problem. But I am worried about passing this baton back to our colleagues in the other place. I am worried because a ban on social media has a nice ring to it. I am worried when I hear Ian Russell say that we must not use our children as a political football. We must really work out what the right answer to this problem is.

I ask the Minister to listen to this emotional debate. Those of us who worked on the Online Safety Act can see that there are about hundredfold more people in this Chamber now than there were at any stage of the Online Safety Act. That shows how much we all care about it now—not just that everyone is waiting for a vote. I ask the Minister please to hear the concern, the fury and the need to act. But, my goodness, if we send this back to the other place, I hope it will not translate into a blanket ban on social media for under-16s but into proper action to make the internet a better place for our children.

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Front Bench!

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

With respect, everyone else has had an opportunity to speak, but no one from my party has, and I want to make some remarks. The House should draw a level of unity from the fact that, although a variety of solutions are provided by these amendments, common threads run between them: a common acceptance of the level of crisis that our young people face, and a common desire, I think, to provide greater levels of protection for our young people.

On the competing and well-argued cases for the amendments, I am more persuaded by Amendment 94A from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, which I believe is cleaner, clearer and bolder. Nevertheless, whichever amendment we settle on, I agree with others that the one thing we cannot afford to do as a House tonight is to prevaricate. I cannot put myself in the mind of the Government. Therefore, I cannot determine whether the proposed consultation is a sincere attempt to engage seriously with this issue or, as was suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, a cynical device to get past the problems internally in the Commons.

There are clear problems with the consultation. First, it does not produce any guaranteed outcome. A lot of us are concerned that, over a prolonged period of time, the muscle of the big tech companies will adjust that to water down whatever comes forward. Secondly, it does not produce swift results. We do not know a timeframe that ultimately will lead to implementation. The longer we delay, the more harm is caused to children. Where possible, we should always be reluctant to ban and restrict but, when we look at the protection of children, we have to make an exception to that. The case for action now is overwhelming.

During the passage of the Online Safety Bill, one of the most moving and significant meetings that I attended was one hosted by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, where she brought in families of children who had died as a result of various online harms. There was a common thread for a lot of those families: they had become victims because of social media. Whether that was issues around self-harm, suicide, sexploitation, bullying or a range of other things, a major danger is out there.

I acknowledge that the gathering mental health tsunami among our young people did not start with social media, but it has been exacerbated by it, and we need to take action against it. Even below that level, we are faced with, as I have seen it put, a “zombification” of our young generation. No one is suggesting in this debate that any solution that we produce will entirely be a panacea or 100% watertight and effective in its nature. But, if we took that approach to its logical conclusion, as indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, we would simply have no restrictions on young people on any subject or harm. So we need to grasp the nettle.

In conclusion, there is a stark choice before us tonight. We can either embrace the clarion call of the overwhelming majority of parents on this issue and take bold and decisive action to protect our young people, or we can kick the can down the road and neglect our duty to those young people. I hope the House chooses the former tonight.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. I will speak to my Amendments 108 and 110A, and briefly to Amendment 91 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I start by thanking the hundreds of thousands of mums, dads, grandparents, single parents, teachers, et cetera, who have kick-started this campaign. While politicians have not been able to get action, they have swung into action.

If noble Lords talk to any MP of any party in this Parliament, they will tell you that they receive hundreds of thousands of emails and letters. I was talking to our digital lead MP, Victoria Collins, and she told me that, in the last three days alone, she has received 1,500 pieces of paper about this. Why? It is because parents do not trust us to do anything. Of course, with the Online Safety Act, they were promised that we would see a new world, but when they look around they see that nothing has changed. Frighteningly, when I asked the Minister a few weeks ago how many companies have been fined or prosecuted for what they have put online, he did not know the answer. That does not fill us with confidence.

Creating a safer future for our children and grandchildren is at a critical crossroads. Our parents, teachers, experts and even young people themselves are calling for action. I hear from real teenagers talking about their experiences online. One teenager said:

“I look at my younger brother and I’m so worried about how much he seems addicted to screens, we have to do something”.


Another said:

“Help, I just can’t stop”.


When doctors discovered that smoking kills, and when research showed that seatbelts saved lives, we acted. Today presents an opportunity to take a similar life-saving action.

It is clear that everyone here is strongly committed to this end goal—to safeguarding children and protecting them from the risks of the online world. Parents and children are both telling us that they feel powerless in the face of platforms designed to maximise engagement at any cost. We see the evidence mounting in our schools, with rising rates of anxiety and depression among young people. Consultations that kick the can down the road are not enough when we face a public health crisis.

So the question before us is not whether or not we must act but how effectively and how quickly we can act. One approach, that of the the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is a blanket ban on social media for under-16s, as well as on many other areas of the internet. I fully support the intent of this approach. Again, we are all here in the name of children’s well-being and the decisive action that is needed. But, as we have heard, we have heard from over 42 charities and experts, including the Molly Rose Foundation, the NSPCC, the Internet Watch Foundation, the Centre for Protecting Women Online, and 5rights, and they all have major concerns about this approach. These are the experts—I am not an expert, noble Lords are not the experts, but they are and they deal with this every day, and yet they have concerns about this approach.

We can look to Australia and see why. When Australia banned social media for young people, it took an approach similar to that of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, creating a specific list of prohibited platforms. What was the result? Within 24 hours of TikTok’s ban, the company launched a new platform under a different name, one not on the banned list. More fundamentally, this list-based approach ignores the broader digital landscape: the harms presented in online gaming, which the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, does nothing about; AI-generated content; and countless other platforms that fall outside these narrow definitions.

19:30

The need for decisive action is beyond doubt, but action alone is not enough. We have a responsibility to ensure that what we put in place is effective and future- proof. That is why I have tabled Amendment 108. Rather than a blanket ban, we propose a risk-based model that considers the risk of platforms according to the actual harm that they pose. Think of how we approach film classification or toy safety: we do not ban all films for children, rather we rate them; we do not ban all toys, rather we accept the risks. This amendment applies the same principle to online platforms. Under our proposals, providers must submit a proposed minimum age of access as part of the children’s risk assessment, with a default expectation of 16 years for social media services—a ban by another name—because enough is enough. We must take action and put a line in the sand.

Importantly, non-social media platforms could propose a different age, higher or lower, if they can provide robust evidence, based on clear criteria, of the impact on mental health and psychological well-being, and based on the presence of addictive design features such as infinite scrolling. Ofcom would assess these proposals against clear standards. We could require a higher minimum age where there is evidence of greater risk. This would create a powerful incentive for platforms to redesign their services, making them genuinely safer for young people, and, crucially, it would future-proof our regulatory approach, providing clear standards of harm and therefore an age of access.

In today’s society, new harmful platforms will continue to emerge. Chatbots and AI-generated content will continue to grow more prevalent each and every day. It is therefore vital that a framework adapts based on harm, not through a game of whack-a-mole, as we have heard, and not by trying to define what counts as social media or by leaving these decisions to a single person. I recognise that there are different views in this House on the best path forward, and I welcome that debate. What unites us all is our determination to protect children from harm.

Amendment 108 offers a framework that commands broad support from numerous child safety experts. It is evidence-based and built to last, to keep our children safe online. The technology will continue to evolve and new platforms will emerge, but the principles at the heart of this amendment will endure: that we assess risk based on evidence of harm; that we hold platforms to account; and that we protect our children, while preserving their access to the beneficial aspects of the digital world. Amendment 108 would provide a solution that I believe would be more effective. A blanket ban may be the simple option and—to use an understandable phrase—a call to action. I understand that, but the evidence is clear: it can be improved. That is why the Liberal Democrats have been trying to work with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to reach consensus, highlighting the flaws in Amendment 94A and working together to ensure that our children are protected by the best possible legislation.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I must take objection to that. We had a meeting on Monday. I made some proposals, and then the noble Lords went away and I heard nothing. They came back with their amendment. I think that is slightly glossing over the facts.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

We must ensure that children are protected online and send a message to the Government that now is the time for action, not consultation. As Liberal Democrats, we know that children come before politics. We must work together for their safety and future.

I turn briefly to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I praise and thank the noble Lord for taking this initiative. He deserves a lot of thanks from this House. He has worked tirelessly to get a solution. I was concerned when he said that we had rushed out a counter-amendment. We have not rushed out a counter-amendment at all. Children’s charities came to us and expressed their concerns, and we wanted to ensure that we listened to what they said. We have tried to incorporate that in the amendment. We tried to work with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to achieve an amendment that we could both support.

At the end of the day, as I said on my previous amendment, it is children who are important. We are not interested in playing yah-boo politics or trying to score points. We will support Lord Nash’s amendment because we understand, as the right reverend Prelate rightly noted, that something has to come back to this House on which we, as a House, can then work together.

I turn briefly to Amendment 110A.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Storey (LD)]

This amendment is in my name. We are on to Front-Bench speakers and I have spoken for only 10 minutes.

In Amendment 110A, we propose raising the age for processing personal data in the case of social networking services from 13 to 16. This amendment covers platforms where users create profiles, interact and share content. It would exclude educational platforms used in schools and universities for educational purposes, as well as health services such as NHS Digital platforms and crisis helplines that process data and provide care and support.

Raising the age is vital to the well-being of children in this country, who must navigate an increasingly digitalised world. Social networking services often use personal data for the purposes of delivering personalised content, such as targeted advertising and curated recommendations. Such things have been condemned by Ofsted, as they can have a substantial negative impact on children. Algorithm-driven content can keep children scrolling for hours, disrupting sleep patterns, physical activity and face-to-face social development. Targeted advertising can exploit children’s vulnerabilities, promoting an unrealistic body image and exposing them to age-inappropriate products, as highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass. Recommendation algorithms can create echo chambers that amplify harmful content. Children can be exposed to content such as extreme dieting advice and self-harm material at a developmental stage when they are particularly impressionable and cannot critically evaluate what they are being shown. This amendment is therefore key to children’s well-being.

The years between 13 and 16 represent a critical window of opportunity where children can be susceptible to the design features that social media platforms employ to maximise engagement. By allowing platforms to harvest and exploit the personal data of 13 year-olds, we are essentially permitting commercial entities to conduct behavioural manipulation on children at their most vulnerable. The mental health crisis among young people, with rising rates of anxiety, depression and eating disorders, cannot be divorced from the datafication of childhood and the attention economy that profits from it. My amendment is simple: the age for processing personal data in the case of social networking services should be raised, so as to provide children with three additional years of protection from commercial data exploitation during a critical period of their development.

Finally—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I was going to speak to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, but certain Members are heckling me. I will just say how important this amendment is and that I hope the House will support it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, a good speech is a short speech.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I have spent most of this debate rewriting my speech. I have tried hard to listen to what noble Lords have said. We have three options before us tonight: the Government option of a consultation; the Liberal Democrat option; and the option from my noble friend, Lord Nash, as it relates to social media.

Briefly, before I talk about the three options, I would like to say to my noble friend Lady Penn that, rather than being a warm-up act, she gave us a master class in how to present an amendment. She made a well-argued, practical case for her amendment, underlining the importance of shifting norms for very young children at the earliest possible stage and calling urgently for firm action, and timing on that action, from the Government. Like others, we look forward to the Minister’s reply.

To return to the group of amendments that deal with social media use, we have before us, as we have heard, an opportunity to end the harm that our children and grandchildren are experiencing as a result of the hours that they spend on there. I was going to talk about the merits of my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment, but I think others have done that extremely ably.

I will therefore turn to the key differences between my noble friend’s amendment and that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Between the fiercely critical comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about Ofcom struggling and critically undermining implementation and wider failures, and the comparison made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, of Ofcom being to the tech companies as “Dixon of Dock Green” is to “Crocodile Dundee”, I think those noble Lords have done my job for me. The key element in the Liberal Democrat amendment is that we would give powers to Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to decide which apps are safe or not safe. Whether it is my noble friend Lady Harding, who may be in a slightly different place in this debate than I am, or many other noble Lords around the House, they have noted that Ofcom is struggling with the powers that it was given in the Online Safety Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Berger, put it extremely well. Do your Lordships want to give to a struggling organisation one of the most complicated jobs before us? I would suggest that we do not. It should of course advise the Children’s Commissioner and the Government, but it should not be responsible.

The second reason it should not be responsible is one of democracy. We have too many recent examples, of which your Lordships will be aware, where we have delegated incredibly important powers to unelected and relatively unaccountable officials, however competent they might be, and we should not do that again. Our democracy depends on our colleagues at the other end being given the chance to decide, and Parliament deciding, what is or is not appropriate for our children, taking advice from every expert that they can draw on, many of whom we have heard from this evening.

Thirdly—I was finding it hard to wait to the end to get to this point—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, should be not mentioned anywhere near this endless reference to a “blunt, blanket ban”. I was so grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, as I was about to read out proposed new subsection (5) of Amendment 94A from my noble friend and the noble Baroness. This would not be a blanket ban, and it is, if I may say so, irresponsible of noble Lords who kept asserting that and referring to it as such, even once my noble friend had clarified that it was not the case. Crucially, proposed new subsection (2)(b) would also give our Government time to learn both from some of the scientific work that is going on and from the Australian approach. Amendment 94B would add neither in terms of flexibility or future-proofing but would dilute democratic accountability, which we do at our peril.

Turning to the Government, I would say that now is the time for leadership on this issue. The proposed consultation and approach set out in yesterday’s Statement, with a government amendment at Third Reading, does not feel like leadership. We have heard tonight that we do not need another national conversation. The nation has spoken very clearly about its level of concern, and parents and children will not thank us for further delay. The Government argue that views are divided, and we have heard tonight that the children’s charities are split and bereaved parents are split. If we wait for consensus on this issue, the one thing I am confident of is that not a single one of us will still be in your Lordships’ House. As Martin Luther King wisely said,

“a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus”.

The Government need to get moulding, and fast, because we owe it to our children to act now to protect their childhood.

19:45

I could cover many other things. There is just one thing I would like to talk about extremely briefly, which is this point that my noble friend’s amendment would put pressure on parents and children. I really think that it would finally align commercial incentive with the law. If you lose 25% of your clients, you work out what you are going to do differently to keep them. The one thing that they could do tomorrow is to improve age verification, change the algorithms and make these places safe. Then we can benefit from the apparent opportunities for children that exist online. That argument, which was less explored, can also be rebutted.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, talked about the actions that the Government could take today to stop some of the harms that children experience online. I do not know why the Government’s announcement yesterday was not one that they were going to take some of those actions. Maybe we will get that next week—you live in hope when you are in opposition—but we need to take this step tonight. I appreciate that the Liberal Democrats argue that they have worked on their amendment. I know that my noble friend raised this at Second Reading, he brought these amendments in Committee, the House has had a chance to think about them, and my noble friend and other colleagues across the House have worked tirelessly on this. The evidence is absolutely clear of the need to act. There are parents behind me in the Chamber tonight—I can feel them behind me—but also all around the country who have watched their children suffer terrible pain and have suffered unimaginably themselves. There are parents who have spoken out, but there are also parents and children who carry their pain in suffering. This is the time to do the right thing and to support my noble friend’s amendment.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, it is clear from the debate that we have had this evening that this is an issue about which there is considerable concern. This Government recognise those concerns about the impact of screen time and about children’s online safety, particularly given some immensely troubling cases. This is a topic of profound national interest and, understandably, as we have also heard today, there are a range of opinions. However, one thing that we are all aligned on is the importance of keeping children safe. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology set out just yesterday in the other place, we are determined to help parents, children and young people to navigate these issues. We know many in this House and the other place have concerns around children’s online safety, how much screen time they get and how this can impact well-being. Rest assured that the Government hear those concerns and are prepared to act to deal with them.

I will come to yesterday’s announcement of a new consultation looking at how to improve children’s relationship with social media, but we should first recognise the significant action that this Government have already taken. The Online Safety Act brought in one of the most robust systems globally, with ground-breaking steps to tackle illegal content and activity and to protect children from harmful and age-inappropriate content. Much discussion today has been, as some have called it, frustration at the extent to which that is being fully utilised, but Ofcom has been prioritising its initial enforcement action against the most egregious harms, such as child sexual abuse material, self-harm content and children accessing pornography.

We fully expect further enforcement action to come. We have been very clear to Ofcom that it has the Government’s full backing to take enforcement action. We have since built on the Act’s foundations. First, we made content that promotes self-harm and suicide a priority offence. This provides users the strongest protections in the Act against this awful content. Last week my noble friend Lady Lloyd of Effra stood in this Chamber and confirmed that we will expedite legislation to criminalise the creation of non-consensual intimate images, and that this will be designated a priority offence under the Online Safety Act. Following this we made intimate image abuse and cyber flashing priority offences, and following that we have introduced an offence in the Crime and Policing Bill to criminalise AI models used to create child sexual abuse material. But we know that there is more to be done.

Amendments 91 and 106 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, seek to update the early years foundation stage statutory framework and ensure a public information campaign on screen use by children aged nought to five. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, has prosecuted this case with considerable energy and by bringing evidence to the Government. She has engaged well and the Government have taken action. Last week my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education announced that we will publish new practical, evidence-informed guidance for parents on early years screen time. Following a review led by the Children’s Commissioner and Professor Russell Viner, the new guidance will be published this April and made available to parents through the Best Start in Life website, giving them the clarity and support they are asking for to navigate screen time with their youngest children. The first meeting of the advisory group is tomorrow.

As part of this, we are going further still on screen time by developing guidance for parents of children aged five to 16, building on the early years guidance already under way. This will help parents to navigate the issue and support healthy conversations with their children about screen time. We are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS to ensure that screen time guidance and messaging to parents and families are delivered through the most suitable and impactful channels to ensure that all professionals, including those in the health system, have simple and practical messages to offer parents. We will use multiple routes, extending beyond government channels, to raise awareness of it among parent audiences, including the Best Start in Life website, designed to provide trusted and supportive information for parents.

We think this new guidance should be available for early years practitioners. We will update the non-statutory guidance to provide further information and emphasis on screen time and outline the considerations around adult use of technology within settings and any implications this has on interactions with children. Where needed, the provider guidance will go beyond the early years screen time guidance for parents and we will take the next opportunity to incorporate the updated help for early years providers guidance in the early years foundation stage frameworks. In addition, the department is preparing to review our non-statutory curriculum guidance for early years settings, Development Matters. As part of this, we will include information on screen time and digital literacy to support early years practitioners and teachers to build and design an effective curriculum.

We are taking more action on appointing an expert panel to inform guidance for the sector on the effective and safe use of digital devices and CCTV. If findings from that review indicate that the requirements within the early years foundation stage need to be strengthened, we will of course do so. On the point about timing, we are able to commit that substantial changes will be made to the early years foundation stage after September 2026, but we will do this as soon as possible and no later than April 2027.

The provisions of the Online Safety Act have set the foundations and we are taking further immediate action, with new screen time guidance to support parents of early years children and practitioners. But we have always been clear that we will continue acting to protect children online and their wider well-being. Most debate on amendments today has been on those that seek to regulate children’s relationship with social media. Amendment 92 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is on VPN services. Amendment 94A was also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I accept the points made by noble Lords that the noble Lord has prompted considerable debate on this. Amendment 94B was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. Amendments 108 to 110A were all tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. It is clear that there is a range of different views on the action that we need to take, even as there is a consensus that action is needed.

As many will be aware, yesterday the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology announced that we are taking still further action, because keeping children safe online is a top priority for the Government. We will launch a short, sharp consultation on how to improve children’s relationship with social media. This will be a three-month consultation, with the Government reporting back in the summer. We are determined to help parents, children and young people deal with these issues, with a lasting solution that gives children the childhood they deserve, enhances their well-being and prepares them for the future. As we have seen play out in this debate today, while there is consensus that a problem remains, there is a difference of opinion on how children’s relationship with social media and screen time should be further tackled. This is shown, as several noble Lords have identified, by some of the most prominent voices in this field believing that a social media ban is not the right answer. This is exactly why we are consulting on this matter.

As the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology stated yesterday, this is not about whether we should act; it is about how we should act. The consultation will seek views on a range of measures on many issues that have been raised: determining the right minimum age for children to access social media, including exploring a ban for children under a certain age; exploring ways to improve the accuracy of age assurance; and reviewing whether the current age of digital consent is the right age. It will also include reviewing children’s use of VPNs and how these can circumvent online safety protections. It will be accompanied by a national conversation. It is centring the voices of parents, children, those with lived experiences and people who work closely with children across the public sector. We will be sure to capture voices from across society, including the most vulnerable.

Rest assured that we intend to move quickly on this. As I say, it will be a three-month consultation, with the Government reporting back in the summer. To reassure the House, as the Secretary of State set out clearly yesterday, we want to act on this. We have had constructive conversations with noble Lords about these issues and we are keen to continue those conversations ahead of Third Reading to find a way forward on the Bill that allows action to be taken following the consultation and, if necessary, to bring forward an amendment at Third Reading to enable the Secretary of State, through secondary legislation, to deliver the relevant, evidence-based outcomes of the consultation. As I have set out, the question is not whether the Government will take further action—we will act robustly. The question is how to do this most effectively. I hope that this will reassure noble Lords of the Government’s intention and that they will feel able not to press their amendments in this area.

Finally, I turn to Amendments 93 and 110B, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Nash and Lord Storey. Amendment 93 would require any device sold in the UK to be preloaded with technology to prevent the recording, sharing and viewing of child sexual abuse material. Amendment 110B would prevent the creation, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material. I acknowledge noble Lords’ intention to protect children through these amendments. I want to be clear that the Government share the ambition to protect children from nude imagery and to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material online. That is why, in the violence against women and girls strategy, we have made it clear that we want to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view nude images.

20:00

However, we must get this right. Last week, my colleagues and I were pleased to meet the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and his colleagues, and representatives from British safety tech company SafeToNet, to discuss the practicalities of those measures. Ministers and officials from the Home Office and DSIT will be continuing this dialogue with tech companies over the coming weeks. As a Government, we are committed to this objective and to implementing effective solutions that stop the spread of child sexual abuse material.

On Amendment 110B specifically, this would duplicate provisions in the Online Safety Act which already require service providers to risk-assess, mitigate and proactively prevent users encountering child sexual abuse material on their service. The Act also requires services to report to the National Crime Agency child sexual abuse material they find on their service.

The Government have shown willingness, desire and, importantly, action in going further on issues relating to children’s online safety, wider well-being and screen time. The Online Safety Act and its enforcement, early years and older children’s screen time guidance, the consultation, national conversation and the VAWG strategy demonstrate this. Rest assured, we will continue to act to keep protecting our children, as noble Lords have asked for today. There is nothing more important and this Government are determined to deliver on that.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will be brief. My only plea to noble Lords, as we take this issue forward beyond today’s debate in the Chamber—as I have no doubt that we will—is that we keep the interests of our very youngest children in mind. If we think that companies and the regulator take this seriously, how can it be that the proportion of three to five year-olds using social media has risen from one in four to nearly 40% in just two years, since the Online Safety Act was passed? If the fact that one in five two year-olds is spending five hours a day on average on a screen is not a call to arms then I do not know what is.

On my Amendment 91, I welcome the commitments from the Government. The gap is now small, indeed it narrowed by a further few months during the course of this long debate, and I will hold them to account for delivering on it. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 91.

Amendment 91 withdrawn.

Amendment 92

Moved by

[Lord Nash]

92: After Clause 27, insert the following new Clause—
“Action to prohibit the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom(1) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed the Secretary of State must, for the purpose of furthering the protection and wellbeing of children, make regulations which prohibit the provision to UK children of a relevant VPN service (the “child VPN prohibition”).(2) Regulations under subsection (1)—(a) may make provision for the provider of a relevant VPN service to apply to any person seeking to access its service in or from the UK age assurance which is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not that person is a child;(b) must apply the child VPN prohibition to the provider of any relevant VPN service which is, or is likely to be—(i) offered or marketed to persons in the United Kingdom;(ii) provided to a significant number of persons;(c) must make provision for the monitoring and effective enforcement of the child VPN prohibition.(3) OFCOM may produce guidance for providers of relevant VPN services to assist them in complying with the child VPN prohibition.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.(5) For the purposes of this section—“child” means a person under the age of 18;“consumer” means a person acting otherwise than in the course of a business;“relevant VPN service” means a service of providing, in the course of a business, to a consumer, a virtual private network for accessing the internet;“UK child” means any child who is in the United Kingdom.” Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to take action to promote and protect children’s wellbeing, and to further support child protective measures in the Online Safety Act, by prohibiting the provision to children in the United Kingdom of VPN services which can facilitate evasion of OSA age-gating processes.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I beg to move.

20:02

Division 1

Amendment 92 agreed.

Ayes: 207

Noes: 159

20:13

Amendment 93 not moved.

Amendment 94 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendment 94A

Moved by

[Lord Nash]

94A: After Clause 27, insert the following new Clause—
“Action to promote the wellbeing of children in relation to social media(1) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must, for the purposes of promoting the wellbeing of children— (a) direct the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom (“the UK CMOs”) to prepare and publish advice for parents and carers on the use of social media by children at different ages and developmental stages, and(b) by regulations made by statutory instrument require all regulated user-to-user services to use highly- effective age assurance measures to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users.(2) Any advice published under subsection (1)(a) must have regard to—(a) the paper published on 7 February 2019 entitled “United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ commentary on 'Screen-based activities and children and young people’s mental health and psychosocial wellbeing: a systematic map of reviews'”, and(b) any scientific or other developments since the publication of that paper which appear to the UK CMOs to be relevant.(3) Any regulations under subsection (1)(b) must be treated as an enforceable requirement within the meaning of section 131 (and for the purposes of Part 7) of the Online Safety Act 2023.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1)(b) or subsection (5) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.(5) For the purposes of this section—“the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom” means the Chief Medical Officers for—(a) England,(b) Wales,(c) Scotland, and(d) Northern Ireland;“regulated user-to-user services” shall have the meaning given to it in the Online Safety Act 2023, subject to any modification, addition or exclusion as the Secretary of State may specify in regulations made by statutory instrument under this subsection.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to take action to promote children’s wellbeing in relation to their use of social media by commissioning advice from the Chief Medical Officers and introducing regulations to prevent under 16s from accessing social media.

Amendment 94B (to Amendment 94A)

Moved by

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley]

94B: In subsection (1)(b), at end insert
“subject to any exemptions under subsection (1A).
(1A) Any exemptions to regulations made under subsection (1)(b)—(a) must be specified only by Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner acting jointly, and(b) can only apply where—(i) the primary purpose of the exemption is to address or mitigate harms arising from social media use by children,(ii) the exemption specifies an alternative minimum age to that provided under subsection (1)(b), and(iii) the provider of the service has demonstrated to the satisfaction of Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner that it—(A) meets Ofcom’s guidance concerning appropriate, risk-based minimum ages,(B) has due regard to relevant standards and principles of the UK General Data Protection Regulation, (C) has particular regard to the importance of protecting the rights and best interests of children, as recognised by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,(D) has considered the potential impact of the service on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of children,(E) has investigated the extent to which the service’s design, functionalities or features may encourage addictive or compulsive use, and(F) has considered and reviewed the use of algorithms for content recommendation, amplification or targeted advertising.(1B) Regulations made under subsection (1)(b) must also provide for—(a) periodic review of any exemption to ensure the continuing adequacy of protection for children, and(b) amendment or revocation of an exemption where Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner are no longer satisfied as to the matters set out in subsection (1A)(b)(iii).”

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

I thank all noble Lords for the debate that we have had, but I would still like to test the opinion of the House.

20:14

Division 2

Amendment 94B (to Amendment 94A) disagreed.

Ayes: 65

Noes: 162

20:24

Amendment 94C (as an amendment to Amendment 94A) not moved.

20:25

Division 3

Amendment 94A agreed.

Ayes: 261

Noes: 150

20:36

Amendments 95 to 97 not moved.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a convenient time to break for dinner break business. We will return to the Bill not before 8.36 pm—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I meant 9.36 pm —wishful thinking; I was just checking that your Lordships are all with me—to allow time for ping-pong on the Holocaust Memorial Bill.

Consideration on Report adjourned until not before 9.36 pm.