Protection of Children Codes of Practice

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for introducing this regret Motion. I am very familiar with it because, as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I was part of the team scrutinising it when it came in front of us. I welcome the Minister to her post. This is one of her early baptisms in the world of online safety and it will be the precursor, I suspect, to many more. I suspect that she will be on a fairly steep learning curve, and I wish her well.

Many people have spoken about the perception that many of us have that we thought we were being very explicit about our hopes and ambitions for the Online Safety Bill as it went through Parliament—with, in particular, a huge amount of time in this House. If she has not yet been able to, I suggest that the Minister could benefit from sitting down over a suitable libation with the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Clement-Jones, the noble Viscounts, Lord Camrose and Lord Colville, the noble Baronesses, Lady Harding and Lady Kidron, and others to understand what we thought we were being very clear about in terms of Parliament’s expectations when this Act passed and what we are now experiencing in terms of its enactment. That would be really helpful in understanding where we are coming from when we repeatedly raise some of these issues. That really comes under the heading of an insufficiency of ambition and of clarity of understanding about what it was that we thought we were being very clear about.

There is a failure of process in certain areas. I will not go into great detail, but the fact that smaller, high-risk sites are, to a large extent, excluded is madness. It is exactly on some of those smaller, high-risk sites where you have incidents of people being encouraged to self-harm, of people being encouraged to end their lives and of radicalisation. That is going on in plain sight. At the moment, Ofcom does not appear to feel that it has enough resources to do anything about it. I am also not sure that it feels it is entirely clear, under the auspices of the Act, whether this should indeed be a priority for it.

There are also structural flaws: the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, mentioned the safe harbour. There are three key questions that I will pose to the Minister— I do not expect her to be able to give a magic answer at the Dispatch Box—to really focus on trying to get an understanding of what is going on and some answers. I am sure she will be asked some of these questions in the future.

The first is: does Ofcom have sufficient resources and knowledge at its disposal to do what we very clearly intended it to do in the Act? Given the evidence at the moment of what it is able to do, I am not sure the resources are adequate. If the resources are adequate, they are not being tactically and strategically deployed in the best way to achieve what we were trying to do.

The second point was referred to briefly. We tried very hard, during the passage of the Act, to try to find a place for parents to go. If, under the terms of the Act, they are meant to go to the platform with which they have a problem—perhaps their child was harmed or, God forbid, even died—and the platform is unable to satisfy them and give them an adequate response, they have nowhere to go. We talked about that at length during the passage of the Act, and it is still the case. I do not think, in all conscience, that is adequate or appropriate. I encourage the Government to look carefully at that and how it might be mitigated. Talking to people such as Ian Russell and the Molly Rose Foundation would be a very good way of understanding what those families, who are not getting an adequate response, are going through and will continue to go through.

The third area is the level of scrutiny that the Act is undergoing. We fought in vain to encourage the then Government to agree to set up a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament to scrutinise the Online Safety Act on a continuing basis; to establish a dialogue with Ofcom in a direct and relatively open way, but also for it to be possible to do it, if needs be, more discreetly, away from the limelight and publicity; to try to understand some of the issues and problems that Ofcom may be having; and to see how we can help, rather than being slightly outside it, as it is currently constructed. I do not feel comfortable being critical of Ofcom without necessarily being in full receipt of the facts and understanding what is really going on inside. I think all those of us involved in the passage of the Act would like to help Ofcom do its job, not castigate it for not doing what we think it should have done. Trying to see whether there is a way in which we can have a more regular dialogue between Parliament and Ofcom, for each to understand where the other is coming from and to be better informed, would be a good step forward.

The day before yesterday, in our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, we had yet another statutory instrument on online safety, in this case from the Home Office. Again, I am afraid it was slightly disappointing news. This statutory instrument has a particularly catchy title. It is called the Online Safety (CSEA Content Reporting by Regulated User-to-User Service Providers) (Revocation) Regulations. For those at the Dispatch Box, it is Statutory Instrument 2025 No. 1066, like the Battle of Hastings. In this case, an online portal to enable all reports of child sexual exploitation and abuse to be aggregated in one place was meant to go live, I think, next month. For reasons probably to do with poor design and project planning, it will not go live. It is effectively having to be rebuilt and will hopefully go online, if it works, at some point in the spring. We will publish our report and noble Lords will be able to read it and see that the committee was not exactly happy. In this case, the Home Office provided an inadequate Explanatory Memorandum and has agreed to go back and do a better job. I can see the chair of our committee sitting behind the Minister; he will be well aware of that.

In conclusion, I think the status quo is untenable. Until and unless the group of us who were particularly closely involved in the passage of the Act are more confident that the victims who are suffering in the online world, particularly children, are better protected—until we feel that their concerns and experiences are being responded to more robustly, succinctly and accurately—we will continue to keep on raising this issue again and again.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise: I came to listen to this debate from the steps of the throne, but the more I listened, the more I thought I would make a very short contribution. I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his Motion. The noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Watson, and others in the House, will know that, as part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I and others have introduced a number of amendments that are relevant to our debate today. One would raise the age of access to social media for children from 13 to 15. Another would prohibit the use of VPNs by children. A third would ban the use of smartphones in schools during the school day.

The Department for Education and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, in their rejection of our proposed amendments in Committee, cited as reasons for waiting the lack of convincing evidence and the fact that these codes were going to be implemented, and said it was premature to act. I hope there is some way of making sure that the noble Baroness is briefed on today’s debate, because I think she might feel, if she listened to some of the comments around the House, somewhat less reassured. She would also have been less reassured if she had been present earlier this week at the round table we hosted, across parties and with Cross-Bench support, which took evidence from medical experts including the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, academic experts and safeguarding experts. What we heard was deeply troubling.

The Minister may be aware that there are a number of ongoing campaigns about aspects of this and the way in which social media has led to tragic deaths of children. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, referred to Ian Russell and his daughter Molly, but Esther Ghey, mother of Brianna Ghey, and Ellen Roome, mother of Jools, also lost their children tragically as a result of their involvement with social media. This is an opportunity for the Government to be on the right side of history. All the evidence seems to be going in one direction and one direction only in terms of harm to children. If there is ever a time to adopt the precautionary principle, surely this is it.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, began with an apology and I must do the same, because I did not leave my office soon enough and I missed the first few paragraphs of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to whom I personally apologise, and I apologise to the House in general for that. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, I am the chair of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, but I speak today in an entirely personal capacity.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has actually left very little to say—so I will say very little. I certainly agreed with the important points he highlighted and went into in some detail. The gaps remaining in those codes are a genuine concern. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Ofcom have pointed to the fact that they are simply the first iteration. That may well be the case, but both will need to ensure that any shortcomings that emerge are addressed at the earliest opportunity, and I hope it may be possible for my noble friend, whom I welcome to her post on the Front Bench, to offer an assurance that the necessary legislative changes that result from the shortcomings will be implemented as a matter of priority. Anything else would be entirely inappropriate, and indeed perhaps even unforgivable.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions today, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for initiating the debate. I absolutely acknowledge the huge expertise in the Room today. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for his suggestion of further discussions with individual Members.

I found reading the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report an excellent basis for this discussion. That committee plays a very important role, as do other committees, such as the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee and the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. The role of ongoing scrutiny by all these bodies is absolutely essential. On the matter of the specific committee that the noble Lord, Lord Russell, mentioned, it would be for the House to decide whether that would be set up to monitor this legislation and the codes.

As others have mentioned, we are working closely with Ofcom to monitor the effectiveness of the Online Safety Act. While the early signs are encouraging, the true test will be whether adults and children are having a safer online experience. Ofcom has put in place a robust monitoring and evaluation program, tracking changes firms are making in response to regulation, gathering data from the supervised services and commissioning research to measure impact. Some of that research has been mentioned in the course of the debate. It is quite extensive and provides a lot of information to civil society organisations, Members of this House and others.

What binds us together is the determination to do everything we need to do to keep children safe online, as built on the evidence. That is a priority. The previous Secretary of State, in issuing his statement of strategic priorities, made it clear that the first priority was safety by design. That builds on the safety by design measures within the codes, such as the safer design of algorithms to filter out harmful content from children’s feeds. On 25 July, Ofcom published its statement, setting out what it proposes to do in consequence of that statement of strategic priorities. Under the Act, it must publish further annual reviews of what action it has taken as a result of the statement of strategic priorities, including on safety by design.

We have taken action to strengthen the regulatory framework by making further offences priority offences under the Online Safety Act, reflecting the most serious and prevalent illegal content and online activity—for example, laying an SI to make cyberflashing, encouraging self-harm and the sharing of intimate images without consent priority offences under the Act.

Others have mentioned the importance of basing our decisions on good evidence of what is happening. Recognising that further research was required to improve the evidence base, the Government have commissioned a feasibility study to explore the impact of smartphones and social media use on children.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

On the point about evidence, I am absolutely not an expert in this but the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, definitely is. I think it would be a very good use of the Minister’s time to meet with her. She described a situation where the research that is being done is at a population level, where changes and attribution will be difficult to discern. I understood the noble Baroness to be making the case that—I do not want to misrepresent her—what clinicians are seeing has a lot of parallels with her review of the Tavistock. On the one hand, you wait for great population-level surveys, but you need to act on what is being seen. It is important that the Government look at both.

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that suggestion. I would be very happy to speak with the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, and leverage her experience in drawing up the right models of evidence-gathering and research.

To come back to the core of some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others were making about the implementation of the Act through the codes, Ofcom has met the 18-month statutory timeline that was set by Parliament to finalise the guidance and codes of practice relating to illegal harms and the protection of children. The illegal content safety duties came into force in March this year, meaning that all companies in scope will need to protect all users, including children, from illegal content and criminal behaviour on their services. On 24 April this year, Ofcom submitted to the Secretary of State the final draft protection codes of conduct. That regime came into force on 25 July, following parliamentary scrutiny.