Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.