Mobile Phones and Social Media: Use by Children
Julia Lopez Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of her statement. What does an ailing Prime Minister do to demonstrate firm and decisive leadership? He launches a consultation, with a variety of options. What does he do when the Conservative party, the House of Lords, trade unions and more than 60 of his own Labour MPs line up against him on a tricky issue? Rather than take a clear position on a social media ban for children and getting phones out of schools, as the Conservative leader has done, this Prime Minister finds an unkempt meadow with some lengthy grass in it, and he boots the tricky issue right in. The House does not just need to take my word for it. One senior Labour MP has said that this consultation will “take too long”. Another said, referring to a social media ban,
“The immediate reaction is that this is just a way of kicking it into the long grass.”
There is a straightforward question that Ministers must answer today: is the Government’s apparent change of heart on a social media ban for real? Is this consultation a way of elegantly managing yet another U-turn, or is it simply a device to get the Prime Minister through the parliamentary week, while the position remains unchanged? If it is progress, it can be celebrated, but let us not forget that until very recently, the Prime Minister said that he was personally opposed to a social media ban for children. In December, the Culture Secretary confirmed that she is against one. The Business Secretary is opposed. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said on the media this very morning that the Government do not take a view. In fact, the only senior Labour figure we know who is clearly in favour of a ban is Andy Burnham. That is some leadership.
What is the Secretary of State’s personal view, and what is her message to Labour MPs who would like to vote for a ban this week? Each of those rebel MPs will be asking themselves, “After the Prime Minister has Grand Old Duke of York-ed me up and down so many hills, can I really trust him to see this through?” That is especially so given that this same proposal was tabled previously, and Labour voted it down, just as it voted down our amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on a phone ban in schools. It is just like when they were told not to support their own colleague, the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), when he had a private Member’s Bill on this issue. Knowing where the Secretary of State personally stands on a ban—not where she stands on a consultation and not what she thinks about having a variety of options—may help ease the minds of Labour MPs.
What of the timeline? Does a three-month consultation mean that legislation to introduce a social media ban will be ready in time for the King’s Speech? If not, and if MPs do not vote for a ban this week, they will not have another chance to do so for 18 months. The opportunity to change things is now. How many on the Government Benches will take that chance?
The Government must have a great deal of the evidence that they need. The Secretary of State’s predecessor commissioned a University of Cambridge review of children’s wellbeing in relation to smartphone use, messaging and social media, which was due to report in December. Can the Secretary of State tell us what the report said? The urgency is obvious. Everyone, especially parents, can see what social media is doing to children. It is not just exposure to extreme or explicit content, although of course that matters. The Online Safety Act 2023, which we introduced, is already addressing illegal material and age-gating, and that work is ongoing. However, the harm goes wider. Social media has created an anxious generation hooked by products designed to be addictive, displacing real-world activity and undermining attention, emotional regulation and mental health. Schools and families deal daily with the consequences: cyber-bullying, social anxiety and fractured concentration.
China’s version of TikTok, Douyin, limits children to an hour a day and promotes educational content, but western platforms do the opposite: engagement loops are optimised for emotional arousal. We welcome scrutiny of those algorithms and steps to stop children’s data being exploited, but there is a simpler option, which is to keep children off these platforms altogether while allowing adults the freedom that follows. Conservatives believe in parental responsibility: we believe in freedom for adults, but we also believe in protecting children. We believe in policing age, not policing speech. It is not to strip parents of their roles and responsibilities to recognise that the online world can be a discombobulating nightmare to supervise. It is not to be a modern-day Mary Whitehouse to worry deeply about children being exposed to images and topics that they are simply not equipped to deal with.
This consultation also includes a rethink on phones in schools. I see that the Education Secretary is present; for months she told us that it was a gimmick and unnecessary, although most secondary school pupils say that phones are still used extensively. By when will phones be banned in schools, and how quickly will Ofsted enforce that? Will it be enforcing against guidance or against the law, because guidance is simply not enough? We must be up front in saying that the challenges of implementing any social media ban are real. We support the Government as they navigate those challenges because we want this to work, but can the Secretary of State make it clear that digital ID will not be a requirement to pass age verification on social media sites?
The truth is that the internet grew as a pioneer society, with consequences that we are all reckoning with. It now needs to be retrofitted with very clear rules for children. They need to be protected. Other countries are taking the approach of a social media ban; will this Government in the UK do the same?
Liz Kendall
The hon. Lady has talked about leadership. May I remind the House that last week, when the Prime Minister and I showed strong and firm leadership on X and Grok, she claimed that the issues were a legal grey area—which they are not—and compared our stance to that of the mullahs of Iran, which would be laughable if it were not so offensive.
The hon. Lady asked whether we had published the research by Professor Orben. Yes, we have: we have published it today, and we are going further with some—[Interruption.]
Science and Discovery Centres
Julia Lopez Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) on securing this debate and bringing parliamentary attention back to a subject that has not been properly considered for some years: the role of science and discovery centres within our tech and science ecosystem, the pressures they face, and the contribution they continue to make.
I enjoyed hearing about the hon. Member’s connection to the Centre for Alternative Technology, which clearly has such personal resonance given his father’s link, as a founding member in the 1970s. I knew the hon. Member was a teacher, but I did not realise he was a drama teacher, which perhaps explains why he is so fantastic at carrying his voice in this Chamber and speaking with such incredible passion.
I confess that I had not appreciated how extensive the network of SDCs is. The Eden Project, which I visited again last year, is just one of the 28 science and discovery centres spread across every part of the UK, and it is a perfect example of what these institutions do so well. It is a major visitor attraction, it is deeply rooted in its local economy, and it has scientific discovery and public engagement at the heart of its mission. These centres are not arms of the state; they are independent, agile and largely self-sustaining organisations, generating income through admissions, partnerships and commercial activity.
Many SDCs were established around the turn of the millennium. Indeed, my first visit to the Eden Project was back in 2000, on my very first girls’ holiday. We did not, as Essex girls, choose Marbella; we chose Cornwall and Devon—very rock and roll. But the Eden Project really embodies the optimism of that moment. It is an old claypit, turned into a very future-focused and futuristic-looking plant wonderland with a scientific mission at its core.
While there were early Millennium Commission grants and support, that funding rightly came to an end, and these centres have now operated for many years without routine public subsidy. That independence has been a strength, allowing them to innovate and respond quickly to new scientific developments and to retain the trust of the communities they serve. But there was always an understanding that the materials in the buildings designed for the SDCs would require renewal after around 25 years, which is now. Many centres have now reached that point and face major capital projects at exactly the same time in a far more difficult operating environment.
SDCs are a distinctive part of our national infrastructure. They are the only places where cutting-edge science, public engagement and development of essential STEM skills come together under a single roof. Collectively, they reach more than 5 million people every year, and they have engaged with over a third of UK schools in the past two years alone.
The hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) talked with beautiful passion about the role of science in his own life, having been fired up by an early visit to a planetarium. It was the same for the hon. Member for Gravesham (Dr Sullivan). We also heard from the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) about his connection to the Look Out; as he was speaking, I thought back to the time I was hit by a Segway in Bracknell forest, and I started to get PTSD.
As SDCs rely on their own income rather than public subsidy, they have been particularly exposed to recent shocks, such as the pandemic and the energy price surge after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although Government support schemes helped many organisations through that period, SDCs fell between several stools. They were not eligible for cultural recovery funding, and they did not have national lottery support either. They survived those challenges, but they did not anticipate facing simultaneous capital renewal pressures alongside the impact of the 2024 Budget.
We have all spoken to hospitality businesses in our constituencies about the sharply rising costs, particularly when it comes to employing people, given the national insurance and business rates issues coming through. Those pressures are now pushing some of these science and discovery centres towards a tipping point. Two of the largest in the UK have announced significant redundancies. One set of accounts explicitly cites the inflationary impact of the Budget and increased national insurance costs, and 75 jobs have already gone at one centre. Some centres have warned that, without intervention, closures within the next 12 to 18 months are a real possibility.
All of this matters because the mission of science and discovery centres is to make science, technology, engineering and maths more accessible, engaging and relevant to people from all backgrounds. They provide trusted spaces where the public can explore new technologies to understand their applications and build confidence in engaging with them—a recent example is a project to demystify AI. The hon. Members for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg) mentioned how these centres play a critical role in the skills pipeline.
Glasgow Science Centre’s learning labs programme has worked with thousands of teachers and reached over 100,000 pupils. That shows how these centres complement formal education and help young people to see themselves as future scientists, engineers and innovators. The hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) talked about the importance of SDCs in challenging anti-science narratives. I congratulate him on his recent nuptials—I am sure Le Petit Château had a very lively night over the new year.
Ministers have recognised all these strengths. The Secretary of State herself has spoken in this Chamber about the National Space Centre, which is in her own city of Leicester, and the role it plays in future jobs and prosperity. The constituency of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), who is one of her Ministers, neighbours the amazing Dynamic Earth SDC. I know his constituency is not close to Montgomeryshire, but I am sure he does not want to take on and disappoint the Welsh mafia, if I may say that, in this Chamber by not backing SDCs very fully.
That touches the heart of the problem. These centres need a Department to recognise them, engage with them and champion them, and DSIT is their obvious home. These centres were born of a Government-led vision to create trusted environments for public engagement with science and tech, and they have built strong partnerships with universities, industry and local communities. They are ready to support national missions, but they need the Government to show them that ownership.
I have a number of fairly straightforward questions for the Minister, which are reflective of the very disciplined briefing behind the scenes by the Association for Science and Discovery Centres. I would be grateful if he could let us know whether DSIT will formally accept responsibility for the sector and act as its champion across Government. Will Ministers meet SDC representatives as a matter of urgency? Will the Department consider whether underspends can be directed towards the £20 million that the SDCs believe is essential for capital upgrades, which they are confident they can match-fund through partnerships? Will Ministers engage directly with DCMS colleagues on opening up access to national lottery funding for science and discovery centres? Finally, will the Minister make representations to the Treasury about the wider impact of current tax and business rates policy on SDCs, which runs directly counter to what the Government say they wish to promote when it comes to science and technology?
SDCs are a quiet success story. They are independent, entrepreneurial and deeply embedded in communities. They support public understanding of science, they develop future skills and they are inspirational to future generations. They are not asking to be taken over or paid for, and they know what to do when it comes to continuing their great work long into the future, but they need help with short-term challenges that are not of their own making. They are asking to be recognised, engaged with and enabled to continue doing what they already do well for the benefit of science, society and the economy.
Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)
As a senior member of the Welsh mafia, I am presumably the Godmother.
I now call the Minister, and I remind him to make sure he leaves time at the end for the Member in charge to wind up.
Social Media: Non-consensual Sexual Deepfakes
Julia Lopez Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of her statement. Last week, public outrage was rightly expressed about the use of artificial intelligence to undress women and children in photographs by X’s AI assistant Grok. The use of AI in that way without consent is wrong. It is disturbing, and in many cases it is illegal. We support Ofcom in taking enforcement action where an AI tool is used to generate illegal content, especially of children. We support the Government’s stance on nudification tools.
X itself has warned of consequences for anyone prompting Grok to make illegal content. The tools in question have been put behind a paywall, for the easy identification via name and bank details of anyone misusing them. Beyond the platform, however, the Internet Watch Foundation has identified cases where perpetrators have used Grok in tandem with other AI tools to generate category A material. As the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), has rightly said, such mainstream AI tools must not become an enabling step in the child abuse production pipeline.
Law already exists to deal with much of this, including the Protection of Children Act 1978, the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025—in which the Government voted against tougher amendments tabled by Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge—and the Online Safety Act 2023. Those laws should be enforced. We await Ofcom, the independent regular, setting out its next steps.
Regardless of the law, it is right to expect AI companies to anticipate and prevent misuse of products before their deployment through rigorous red teaming. I accept that for a law to deter, the enforcement threat must be credible, but its use must also be proportionate.
Notwithstanding the soft back-pedalling of the Secretary of State today, the Government’s appendage swinging over the weekend was extremely serious. Ministers mooted as an urgent remedy the banning of a site with 21 million monthly users in this country, despite another Minister guffawing that banning X was “conspiracy theory No. 3,627.”
Since their invention, the internet and social media have been misused—often criminally—by people traffickers, paedophiles and fraudsters: the gutter dwellers of our society. Nobody is on their side, but Government have never before proposed blocking TikTok, Google or Facebook wholesale for the frequent and often flagrant misuse of their sites. That would be an extraordinarily serious move against a platform that can be used for good—for uncovering scandals, sparking democratic revolution, and allowing the free exchange of ideas, day to day, including those that we do not like. It is that very power for good that makes Iran’s mullahs reach to block the internet in the face of courageous protesters.
This episode poses legitimate questions about who holds power in the internet age. Many worry about the accrued influence of big tech titans—me included—but they worry, too, about the power of Government to divert, hide and duck accountability. They worry about this Government.
The uncomfortable truth for all of us is that some of this imagery sits in a legal grey area. What Grok has produced at scale in 2026 is a modern-day iteration of an old problem, from crude drawings to photoshop. Grok is not the only tool capable of generating false or offensive imagery, and not all of this content will cross the threshold into illegality. Plenty of it is sick, degrading and morally repugnant but does not cross the criminal threshold. What, then, is the Secretary of State proposing to do about the difficult enforcement choices that a regulator or police force must make? The risk is that, with finite resource, and in a highly politically sensitive environment, regulators could be diverted from pursuing the most abhorrent and dangerous crimes.
If we wish to mitigate the risk to children, one simple intervention may help stop them sharing their own image too freely: raising the digital age of consent for social media to 16. The cross-party consensus is growing. The Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, agrees with that idea; does the Secretary of State? She knows that there are geopolitical consequences to her rhetoric. Figures close to President Trump have already threatened sanctions. Has the Secretary of State engaged with the US Government? Has she been advised on the nature of any retaliation, were the UK Government to block X? The US-UK tech deal has already been paused. We need clarity on what else is at stake.
To conclude, the Tech Secretary has said:
“We are as determined to ensure women and girls are safe online as we are to ensure they are safe in the real world”,
so will she ensure that the Government enforce against themselves for their failure to advance the rape gang inquiry, their failure to stop puberty-blocking trials, their failure to implement guidance on single-sex spaces, and their inability to deport illegal migrants who have committed sex offences? This Government rightly worry about the online sphere, and we support them on that, but there is plenty to be getting on with in the real world.
Liz Kendall
I was going to say that I was grateful to the hon. Lady for her support for Ofcom’s action and investigations, and her support for our action on banning nudification apps, and that I hope she and her party will actually vote for the Crime and Policing Bill in its final stages, but she then began her own campaign of misinformation in the House. I merely stated the facts about the Online Safety Act. There is a backstop power in the Act, which I remind her that her party voted for in government. Under that power, in the most serious cases, if Ofcom believes that a company is refusing to comply with the law, Ofcom has the power to apply to a court for serious business disruption measures to stop people accessing a platform. If she disagrees with her own Government’s legislation, she should make that clear to the House.
The legislation is extremely clear that it is a criminal offence to share or attempt to share non-consensual intimate images. It is going to be illegal to create or ask to create those images. The ban on nudification apps will be an important change. As I have said, this is nothing to do with freedom of speech; it is about upholding British values and the British law. I also gently point out to the hon. Lady, who mentioned our allies in the United States, that the President signed the Take it Down Act, which deals precisely with non-consensual intimate images. Maybe she should do a little bit more research, rather than just reading headlines, online or in newspapers.
I think the public will be clear about what change they want, and I genuinely hope that this is something we can work on across the House. It is because I am such a champion of freedom of speech that I do not want women to be bullied or harassed off any platform, and want their views and voices heard. The hon. Lady’s colleagues might wish that she would take the same approach; I see that from their faces.
Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund
Julia Lopez Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
I thank the Minister for his statement—or perhaps I should call him October’s cover star for The House magazine.
The Conservatives back today’s motion on the life sciences innovative manufacturing fund. It is a no-brainer, because the fund was established by us in government when my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) made £520 million available for life sciences manufacturing over five years—from 2025 to 2030. Funnily enough, it is the exact same amount that is being reheated today.
That fund built on a series of smaller, highly successful interventions that managed to attract £850 million of private investment for the £64 million of taxpayers’ money that we deployed. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry called the fund a step change in ambition and something that would strengthen our manufacturing base, addressing the weaknesses we saw during the pandemic in our supply chains. It was good for jobs, for health security, for our life sciences and for Britain. So yes, we support this fund because we designed it.
Let us be clear about what is happening here. The Minister is simply uprating for inflation the threshold at which payments must be approved by Parliament. That is fine and all very sensible, but what it is not is anything new. It is not new money. It is not Labour innovation or a sign that this Government are suddenly getting really serious about growth, and it is not the route to dealing with the crisis facing life sciences right now. It is what we were doing but in different wrapping paper. They have plonked a bow on it and called it a new strategy.
Let me tell you what I reckon has happened here, Madam Deputy Speaker. An edict has gone bouncing around Whitehall from the Treasury and No. 10 as the November Budget disaster looms, saying: “We need some growth announcements. Departments, please feed the comms grid. We need to give the markets and the OBR some confidence that we are serious about growth.” It is worth reminding the House what happened yesterday. UK Government borrowing figures in September hit the highest level for the month in five years. This is truly terrifying stuff.
I think the Secretary of State has gone and asked her officials, “What have we got in the cupboard to announce?”, and they have said, “Minister, we have a statutory instrument to table at some point. Do you want us to shove a bit of lipstick on it?” We have the spectacle of Ministers coming to the Chamber to tell us that a humble statutory instrument to uprate for inflation something already in the pipeline is a grand plan. In no way at all does it shift the dial on life sciences, because it is already baked in.
This is not a Government who are serious about growth. Let us look at what happened to the life sciences manufacturing fund when Labour took office. In early 2024 we used it to negotiate a £450 million vaccine manufacturing investment by AstraZeneca in Speke, Liverpool. That meant real jobs, real regional investment and greater resilience for our country. After that, AstraZeneca announced another £200 million investment in Cambridge, which meant 1,000 jobs. To drive that investment and growth, we also delivered one of the most competitive business tax regimes through policies such as full expensing.
Then the general election happened and our new Chancellor, in her infinite wisdom, put a pause on that investment—supposedly to get better value for money and fill the fantasy £22 billion black hole in the public finances. We all know what happened next. AstraZeneca pulled the £450 million investment, despite issuing private warnings to the Government that it needed certainty for business planning. But do not just take my word for it. When announcing Speke’s culling, AstraZeneca said that
“the timing and reduction of the final offer compared to the previous Government’s proposal”
was critical to losing that £450 million investment.
What else has happened since Labour took office? AstraZeneca paused the £200 million Cambridge investment. We lost Merck’s £1 billion King’s Cross R&D hub, which was cancelled after eight years in development. That is £1 billion, and the Secretary of State had nothing to say about it—diddly squat. Eli Lilly has put its £279 million research incubator in London on hold. Sanofi has said that it will not consider “any substantial investment” in UK R&D under current conditions. In fact, industry has warned that the UK is becoming uninvestable for the life sciences.
Does the Minister know how many meetings the Secretary of State has had with life sciences companies in the past month? As I understand it, the answer is very few. What has she been doing to rally colleagues across Government and make clear to the Chancellor, the Health Secretary and Prime Minister the scale of the peril? I have been looking at her statements, and it is not at all clear to me that she has been doing anything.
The fund, which we support, is a capital manufacturing fund. It helps de-risk certain projects and reduces borrowing for companies, but it does not fix the fundamental problem of the commercial environment for medicines in the UK. We all know that Labour has made the commercial environment worse in many ways, such as through national insurance rises and other tax increases, and that has also made successful people not want to base themselves here.
There are also long-standing issues that need fixing here, including drug pricing and the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth—VPAG—rebate, which risks becoming a tax on innovation. But the Labour Government have screwed the public finances so badly that they have nowhere to go on these issues, not least because the NHS has had to spend a large chunk of the money that the Government have taken from our constituents. They took a lot of money from our constituents and told us that it would make this big difference to the NHS, but the money went on wage deals in the NHS and national insurance rises. [Interruption.] Labour likes to talk about the tough choices it has made to the NHS, but I would ask Government Members to ask their constituents whether they are really seeing a tangible difference in the NHS. The Government have taken a hell of a lot of money from everybody and it is not working.
Normally I would be glad for the ability of the NHS to use its collective bargaining power to keep drug prices low, but there is now a real risk that life sciences companies will not be bringing new medicines to market in our country. That means my constituents and your constituents not getting cutting-edge treatments. It means pain, heartache and ill health, and it means that the life sciences industry that has served us so well is ebbing away and taking the high-quality, high-value jobs with them. This is a crisis. I must ask the Minister: can this fund succeed when the wider tax environment stands as is?
The issue of medicine pricing is fast coming to a head as President Trump plays hardball on drug costs. The US Administration have alighted on the UK’s low drug prices and are using them as a bargaining tool against the threat of tariffs. This Government have boasted of their special relationship with the US, and we have had endless excruciating shots of the Prime Minister prostrating himself before the President. Can the Minister tell us how that relationship is benefiting the life sciences, because I cannot see it for myself?
Can the Minister tell us whether the Secretary of State is aware that it looks as though His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has decided that companies providing medicines for clinical trials or compassionate use under the early access to medicines scheme should now be billed for VAT? That is a tax on medicines that are being provided for free. Apparently, one company has already received a bill and more are on their way for others. This could affect trials and people’s access to medicine. Will the Minister please commit to looking into that urgently as Labour scrabbles around for more revenue? Will he also ask HMRC to publish guidance confirming that in fact the early access to medicines scheme falls outside the VAT deemed supply rules?
Will the Minister tell us how much of the £520 million has been spent to date? What is the current investment pipeline? How does it compare to the one he inherited? Will he update the House on the current state of negotiations between industry and Government on the VPAG scheme and medicine pricing, and with the US on tariffs? What conversations—if the Minister knows—has the Secretary of State had personally with the Health Secretary and the Chancellor on these issues? This is an extremely perilous situation for our life sciences firms and for patients’ access to new drugs.
Britain’s life sciences sector is worth over £100 billion to our economy and supports about 300,000 jobs. It is massive. It is one of our defining national strengths: a source of innovation, prosperity and national pride. Of course, it is also the key to better health for our constituents and people across the world. The life sciences innovative manufacturing fund remains a Conservative achievement, but unless the Government act swiftly to restore competitiveness and rebuild investor confidence, we risk losing our place at the forefront of global life sciences. I am afraid that no amount of rebadging, repackaging or recycled announcements will change that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Digital ID
Julia Lopez Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
Nearly three weeks ago, the Prime Minister unveiled a plan for mandatory digital identity that will fundamentally shift the balance of power between citizen and state. He did not announce it here in this House, but at a love-in of the progressive left, sponsored by Labour Together and haunted by the ghost of Tony Blair. The justification was his own catastrophic failure on migration. He knows it will not stop the boats. When Brits are forced to have ID as illegal migration continues unabated, it will simply confirm fears of a two-tier society, fuelling the division and conspiracy theories that he so arrogantly claims he is the antidote to. What a cynical mess. Can the Secretary of State set out how the scheme will identify illegal migrants working in the black economy, when their gangmasters are experts at avoiding any state interaction? She rather slinked away from those key points in her wonderfully innocuous statement about making it easier to join libraries. We have in the official press release this glorious piece of doublethink:
“It will not be compulsory to obtain a digital ID but it will be mandatory for some applications.”
When employment itself requires Government-issued identity, you cannot meaningfully consent—unless, of course, you never want to work.
Here is the fundamental issue: in a free society, the burden of proof has always rested with government to justify its actions to earn our trust. Mandatory digital identity reverses that. While today the scheme focuses on work checks, Labour says it wants to extend this type of mandate into more areas of our lives. Which areas? Where does it stop? I understand that even 13-year-olds are now being considered. What about those without digital access? Labour has deprioritised gigabit roll-out and published a very worthy digital inclusion action plan without any action.
The Prime Minister points to Estonia and India as models we should seek to replicate, despite serious cyber vulnerabilities. The UK’s own sign-on system was breached during red team testing this very March. When 2.8 million people petitioned against the plan, the Government assured them that they would adhere to the highest security standards. Can the Secretary of State confirm to us here today that the system on which her mandatory ID will be built already meets those standards, and that the National Cyber Security Centre will publicly back her up?
This crafty scheme was not in Labour’s manifesto. Even the Cabinet think the whole thing is a fantasy. The Secretary of State cannot even bring herself to tweet about it. Why does the Prime Minister keep handing her his steaming messes to scoop up? The migration argument has totally bombed—we heard it here today. She and the Prime Minister are now reframing this whole thing as the route to better online services—no more rifling around for utility bills; not an ID, we hear today, but a key. They are deliberately conflating two very different things.
Better and more convenient online services were already coming in. We already had right to work and rent checks, convenient DBS—Disclosure and Barring Service—checks and driving licence renewals, all designed with choice, consent and privacy in mind, paper options retained, nobody forced down the digital route and trust as the key, and private identity providers enabled. This is not about Luddites versus modernisers; this is about the fact that Labour cannot resist its big fat socialist dreams: centralised databases, state mandation, big money, the exclusion of private sector expertise. Why create this honeypot for hackers? How much will it cost? Why should we trust Labour to be the verifier of someone’s identity, when during the passage of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 it would not even commit to recording someone’s sex accurately?
Let me be clear: Conservatives oppose mandatory digital identity in principle and in practice. If we believed it was necessary, we would have introduced it in government. We chose not to because you can deliver better online services without resorting to a costly, controlling, complex and risky system. This is a cynical distraction from a desperate Prime Minister. He wants people to believe that mandatory ID will fix his migration mess, but it will not. Channel crossings will continue until he introduces a real deterrent, but he has not got the guts to take on the lawfare industry that made him.
We believe that government should empower citizens, not the other way round; that government should earn citizens’ trust, not the other way round. Only those entitled to benefits should receive them and those with no right to be here must leave, but those imperatives are not best delivered by controlling British people instead of those who do not play by the rules. The Government who promised to tread lightly on our lives have got their boots out. Will the Secretary of State now kill this plan, rather than be the sacrificial lamb for another of this Prime Minister’s grubby mistakes?
Liz Kendall
Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, that is definitely the first time I have been called a big fat socialist. [Laughter.]
The hon. Lady asks how it will help crack down on illegal immigration. Making ID mandatory and digital will really help us to get, much more swiftly and automatically, more actionable intelligence about rogue employers, and about who are doing the checks they are required to do and who are not.
Secondly, the hon. Lady talks about those who are digitally excluded. As I said in my statement, I take that issue extremely seriously. We actually have a digital inclusion action plan. The Conservatives did not do one for 10 years. If they cared so much about it, perhaps they would have done.
Understandably and rightly, I am sure we will have lots of questions about having the highest possible standards. We will be working to international best practice standards. There are not many advantages to lagging behind so many other countries—many other countries—that have digital ID, but one is that we can learn from their experience when things have gone wrong and how they improved their security. That is what we intend to do.
I finish by saying this. The hon. Lady comes to the Dispatch Box with fire and brimstone, but it is quite interesting that she differs from the shadow Home Secretary. Back in February, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) backed the idea, saying there were “very significant benefits”. In August, he said the Conservatives should consider it. The Conservatives’ leader in June said that she had moved her position on digital ID and that if it could answer difficult problems then, yes, that was something they would look at. Given the amount of flip-flops on the other side of the Chamber, you would think it was still summer. They are not serious, and they are not credible. Until they are, they are not electable.