Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Iqbal Mohamed and Gideon Amos

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman speaks to the language delays that are created by these apps. Does he agree that the fact that these additional needs are going to come into the system on top of reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities system—which parents are already worried about—will create extra anxiety and extra pressures, and is going to store up problems for the future if they are not tackled now?

[Iqbal Mohamed]

I do agree with the hon. Member. I sympathise with the Government—there are huge pressures in all policy areas, particularly children’s services, education and healthcare, and now they have to deal with the tech giants. The Government introduced age-gating for pornographic sites so that people under the age of 18 could not access them. That was absolutely the right thing to do; despite the fact that there are workarounds and technical ways for people to bypass that age-gating, it does project the majority of children from exposure to pornography. Now, the Government must deal with the virtual drug dealers. They must implement laws to protect our children from the harms those companies cause, and must also introduce laws to obligate them to change and redesign their platforms in order to design out those harms.

Academic studies have found that 24% of suicides among 10 to 19-year-olds are linked to high-risk use of digital technology. Heartbreaking cases such as that of the 14-year-old Molly Russell, who tragically took her own life in 2017 and whose legacy lives on through the Molly Rose Foundation, have demonstrated that social media use is undoubtedly contributing to rising rates of self-harm among young people. This is not some future risk; it is a real and present harm. We do not need more consultation, delay or half-measures; we need this Government to insist on safety by design to protect children from exposure to damaging content and platforms, and not to implement anything that aims at damage limitation. We need this Government to listen to our citizens, not to the tech giants. As such, I once again join right hon. and hon. Friends and Members across the House in calling on the Government to commit to raising the age of access to social media to 16 and banning the use of all mobile phones in schools, rather than continuing to leave children exposed to systems that are causing irreversible and unnecessary harm.