Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the government consultation, but I am distressed by how very wide its scope is and, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, how very vague the outcomes seem to be.

The arguments that I put forward in my AI chatbot amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill also apply here. These amendments will allow the Secretary of State to age-gate any internet service or function. She will be able to determine at what age and by what methods a platform can be restricted. Any regulations under these powers will not be able to be amended by Parliament. All the arguments made by noble Lords last week about the severely limited parliamentary scrutiny of regulations are just as concerning this week with these amendments.

I support the Government carrying out a consultation on a social media ban for under-16s. Evidence of the effect of such a powerful measure needs to be examined and responded to. But I urge the Minister to look at the important changes that would be made to the Government’s amendment by Amendment 38E from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.

The government consultation needs to have parameters, which are provided by her amendment, as she has already set out. Many are issues that do not seem to have been covered by the Online Safety Act—addiction, different developmental ages, unsolicited contact and live-streaming. The restriction of these harms to children could be rapidly implemented under the amendment by the prospect of tech companies facing business disruption measures. These are the enforcement measures that so many of us campaigning against online harms have been calling for. All these issues would be considered not in a consultation without time limit but in one that must conclude within six months. I call on the Minister to take on board the concerns expressed in Amendment 38E and put them into action.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, as mentioned earlier, Google and Meta were today found in the Supreme Court of California to be guilty of causing pain and suffering to a plaintiff who had brought the case. The jury has initially ruled that $3 million in damages will be paid for that pain and suffering. The jury is now considering punitive damages for malice and fraud. I put it to your Lordships’ House that today we are the jury. We have heard about the malice and fraud that these companies are visiting on so many of our children and, indeed, on their unfortunate parents. We as the jurors should deliberate today and give a resounding verdict.

[Baroness Bertin (Con)]

My Lords, I will be brief, because others have spoken so eloquently. I support my noble friend Lord Nash in his heroic efforts to stop social media for under-16s, and I support the spirit of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, as well.

I feel that I must represent the army of parents out there who are bitterly disappointed that the Government are failing to act decisively and quickly. A consultation is always code for a fudge. We have been there; we know what that is. The Government’s amendments are presented as action, but in reality they offer very little certainty. They create space for delay and a future compromise that may arrive with limited scrutiny, as we have heard so eloquently put.

We are being asked to accept a risk, and not an abstract one. It is a risk with our children’s safety and it offers an olive branch—a wholly inappropriate olive branch now, with all the court rulings that we are hearing about—to social media companies that have already done so much damage to our children and their childhoods. They must be absolutely delighted with this compromise that the Government have come up with. I predict that, over the coming months, there will be a PR blitz about how great they are, how concerned they are with safety and how much safety by design they are putting into progress—all of which will no doubt have to be policed by us, the parents.

Instagram’s recent effort, which I am sure it wants a medal for, was to alert parents who have put the highly complicated safety notices on that their child is searching for self-harm material. Here is an idea: let us stop them seeing that material in the first place. Like so many families, we are constantly negotiating this space: what is allowed, what is not, what feels safe, what suddenly does not feel safe. Something that seems harmless can very quickly change. The point that the Pinterest boss made is very powerful, because a lot of these sites that feel harmless are in fact constantly trying to sell content to our children.