Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.