Online Harm: Child Protection

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Today we are debating something that is very important: the protection of children from online harms is vital.

I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on what I thought was a very heartfelt speech, but I fear that her good intent has been rather thrown under the bus by her party leadership. Setting aside the importance of this subject, let us look at their method of bringing it forward—a point which has been raised rather expertly by Members from across the House. Today the Liberal Democrats are doing what they do best: slightly nutty stunts. With all the menace of Captain Mainwaring they are attempting to seize control of the Order Paper and effectively declare themselves not only Government for the day but, with their loosely defined online services Bill, rulers of the internet. It is a gimmick. It is the parliamentary equivalent of boinging into the Chamber on a giant bungee.

Though the hon. Member for Twickenham put a little bit of flesh on the bones in her speech, the motion itself simply requests the power to barge through this House with a blank-cheque Bill for which we have no details and in so doing let the Government Benches clean off the hook. It has all gone a bit Benny Hill. It is a great shame because it is a distraction when the moment of truth on social media for children is coming to us imminently. They know that from the panicked recess briefings that the Prime Minister has been caught on the hop on an issue that is of deep concern to families, children, teachers and communities across the country.

Before too long the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will return to this House and Members will have the chance to vote on a credible proposition: an amendment tabled by the noble Lord Nash that no child under the age of 16 should have access to harmful social media.

[Kirsty Blackman]

If this is the Conservative’s stance, why when consideration of the Online Safety Bill lasted for so long—it was even referred back into Committee, which no Bill had been in 20 years—did the Conservatives not ban social media for under-16s through that Bill when they were in government?

[Julia Lopez]

This is a Conservative amendment in the Lords that has gained cross-party support, so it will be coming back to us. The hon. Member raises an important point about why this policy was not brought in under the Online Safety Act. That Act tried to do many, many things. In many ways, it took so long because it risked becoming a Christmas tree Bill, and many good causes were hung off it. That did cause challenges.

I think that as the debate has moved on we have realised that it is not just about illegal content that children are being exposed to and some of the things that the Online Safety Act was trying to change. There is an issue in general about children being in this space: there are addictive algorithms, and it is not just about illegal material but the fact that it is changing how children are thinking about interacting. Maybe we have to stand back as a society and say, “This is simply not the right place for children to be. We can create adult online spaces, but for children we think that there are other ways in which they should be interacting with the world.”

[Victoria Collins]

You are talking about the Online Safety Act. Do you think the fact that—

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Collins]

Apologies. Does she think that the fact that the Leader of the Opposition tried to water down that Bill and said that we do not legislate for feelings has anything to do with the can being kicked down the road and us not having made the necessary progress?

[Julia Lopez]

There were very real and important debates during the passage of that Bill about legal but harmful material and whether people should be able to speak freely online. Our approach was to seek to create a space where adults can speak freely while accepting that children should not be in some of these spaces. That was the point that the Leader of the Opposition was trying to make.

We were moving very dangerously into the realms of free speech, and it is not for an online regulator to start telling people what they can and cannot say online when it is not something that is illegal to speak of in the real world. That was the challenge that we got ourselves into as a Government, and that is why we changed parts of the approach that we were taking to the Online Safety Bill. I appreciate the concerns that are being raised, and I am trying to answer them as honestly and straightforwardly as I can.

When we consider the amendment from Lord Nash, this House will have its opportunity to make an unequivocal statement of principle: that when we believe that something is harming children at scale, we accept that it is insufficient to leave the status quo unchallenged or simply to commission a consultation. That applies especially when it is a consultation to which this Government have provided absolutely no political direction or view and that has been much trailed but still not actually launched. In truth, this consultation was not ready. It was a mechanism to get the Prime Minister out of another of his tight fixes.

The Tech Secretary might be very good at emoting and telling us all how impatient she is for change, how she cares, and indeed for how many years she has cared, but when she made her statement on social media for children in this Chamber a few weeks ago, she said nothing about what the Government would actually do, beyond seeking more time to take a position. I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham for pointing that out, and I have sympathy with why she is trying to use this mechanism today, because we are all trying to tease out what the Government are seeking to do.

It was extraordinary to listen to the Government Minister, who said with great sincerity, “We will act robustly in responding to a consultation.” What does he actually believe? What do the Government think we should do on this issue? Nobody has a clue. They are talking about a huge range of things that could be done, but it is for a Government to provide political direction; it is not for a Government to seek consensus. [Interruption.] It is for a Government to take a position and to take a view. It is for a Government to have opinions. It is for a Government to have policy positions. It is not for a Government to try to make sure that everybody in this House agrees. [Interruption.] It is pathetic to see those on the Labour Benches getting out of their tree about this.

[Natasha Irons]

I sincerely thank the hon. Lady for giving way. When we talk about the consultation, it is not necessarily about seeking consensus in this place; it is about seeking consensus with parents and children, and with people outside this place. Banning social media for children is a good approach, but this is not just about that, is it? It is also about the time that our kids are spending on screens. That is what this is about: it is about having a digital childhood that we can all get behind and support.

[Julia Lopez]

I can agree with that. My point is that this Government are trying to suggest that a consensus can be found in the absence of their having a policy position. They are talking about a consultation, but what on earth are they consulting on? Nobody has a clue. They have not been able to say anything about what they actually want to do, because the Prime Minister has no opinions, which is why he is in such deep trouble. Those on the Labour Benches can get out of their tree and get all uppity about it, but this—[Interruption.] No, the Prime Minister is being blown around like a paper bag on this issue, and everybody knows it. First of all, he said that his children did not want to ban social media; now he says that his children are the reason why he wishes to ban social media. He said there is going to be a consultation, but it has not materialised. What does this man actually think?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I am glad that the hon. Member has been very clear that her position is that she supports the Lords amendment that seeks to ban social media for children. Is she aware that it would not apply in Scotland? The Lords amendment would not apply in Scotland, because the territorial extent of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, apart from one clause, does not include Scotland. I take it that her position is that she only wants a social media ban for children who do not live in Scotland.

[Julia Lopez]

I am sure the applicability of the legislation in Scotland is something that can be debated when the Bill comes before the House.

To give them credit, many Labour MPs understand the fact that there is an absence of any Government position, and they will not be taking their foot off the pedal. I suspect that many may have the guts to speak out today—although perhaps not. Those MPs recognised immediately that a consultation is a mechanism for a delay that goes beyond the summer and into another parliamentary year before the sniff of legislation. That holding position is now falling apart, as we have seen from the Minister here today. It is the threat of a very large group of Labour MPs backing the Conservatives’ Lords amendment that is pushing this Government into action—it is government by rebellion. We ask the Liberal Democrats not to let us be distracted from the moment of truth that is coming up, when we hope there will be cross-party support for the noble Lord Nash’s amendment.

For too long, the internet has been treated as a space that cannot be governed. It has functioned like a pioneer society, with extraordinary opportunity but minimal rules. However, pioneer societies improvise customs and eventually retrofit themselves with rules to sustain societies, often after hard-won experience and dispute. That is the process through which we are now going, and we are realising that, as the online society was built, we were not vigilant enough when it came to protecting childhood. We did not recognise that this new territory would bleed into the old world. [Interruption.] The Minister is shouting from the Front Bench that I am embarrassing myself. We as a Government brought forward the Online Safety Act, but there are gaps in it, and we have taken a clear position as the Opposition that we think children should not be on social media. He is looking very angry, but what is his view? Can he stand up and tell us what his personal view is? As the Minister with this responsibility, what does he think should be done, having launched his consultation with such earnestness? Come on, tell us! Would he like to tell us?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Could I just be helpful? A lot of help has been needed this afternoon. The Minister has not asked to intervene, and the hon. Lady cannot force him to intervene on her.

[Julia Lopez]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was pointing out that the Minister has no manners, but wishes to shout from a sedentary position. I sat listening to him and waiting to see if I could decipher, in his very long and self-regarding diatribe, whether he actually has any opinions, but it turns out that he does not. He is very comfortable to sit on the Front Bench and chunter away at me. [Interruption.] You see, he again says that I am such an embarrassment.

[Gareth Snell]

I have listened to what the hon. Lady has said, but last week I talked to a 15-year-old, who said to me, “We have no youth clubs. We go on the street, and I don’t feel safe and I get told I’m a nuisance. So I come home, and I interact with my friends online. Now I’m told I can’t do that.” I am not sure what the right answer is, and I sometimes think that not knowing the answer is as good as having absolute certainty all the time about everything. What would she say to that 15-year-old about the outcome for her? She is asking what she can do and how can she stay in touch with her friends. We do not have an answer to that yet, so what are the Conservatives offering?

[Julia Lopez]

I respect the hon. Member’s intervention for its politeness, but I do not think the answer is suddenly to encourage all children who are finding it hard to find purposeful and meaningful activities in the real world to retreat to their bedrooms. One of the challenges we have seen is that children have felt that the online space is the most stimulating for them. Unfortunately, that has led to an even greater retreat from the real world, and I think we can all recognise that that has been a negative for society.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady has been very clear that she wished the Government had just charged forward in some direction or other. I have had hundreds of constituents email me about this, from various perspectives and various concerns about the workability of certain solutions. I would like to listen to them, and I think it would be really helpful if the opposition parties tried to do likewise and to engage with this process, rather than just criticising whatever approach we take.

[Julia Lopez]

I appreciate where the hon. Member is coming from. I do not think it is wrong to seek evidence and ask for people’s views, but the Prime Minister should be honest about what he wants to do. The problem is that he has been floating various opinions, and he is being buffeted by Labour MPs and by the Opposition and others. If he does not think this is the right approach, he should feel confident in saying so. He has said a whole range of different things about this, and the Government are seeking to launch a consultation, but nobody actually knows what precisely is being consulted on.

If Labour MPs were honest with themselves, I think they would recognise that. I suspect they are having very serious conversations with the party’s Whips, saying, “Well, actually, we would like to know what the Prime Minister does think about this issue, because we’re not convinced by this consultation—we think it’s kicking the issue into the long grass, and we’re worried about the length of time that will mean before we get legislation to protect children from various challenges online.” That is the very reason why the Minister has stood up before them today to say, “We are probably going to do something—very definitely, maybe—in the summer.” He is saying that because the pressure is growing from Labour MPs. It is being briefed out that the Government are going to bring forward amendments to the Bill because they are being buffeted into doing so.

The problem is that nobody knows what this Prime Minister believes. On every single issue for the Government at the moment, and despite the very large Labour majority, this Prime Minister is being buffeted around, and that is the problem.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I am very much enjoying the hon. Member’s speech, and I am wondering why she therefore cannot support our motion this evening.

[Julia Lopez]

I set out clearly at the beginning of my speech why we cannot support the motion, which is effectively a blank cheque. Notwithstanding the fact that the hon. Member for Twickenham tried to set it out in her speech, nobody actually knows what the Lib Dems are trying to do here. The proposal before us is that the Liberal Democrats take control of the Order Paper and then can say whatever they like on internet governance. I am sorry, but I do not think that is the way to conduct ourselves in Parliament. There have to be clearer proposals.

[Gareth Snell]

I agree with the hon. Lady on this point. The other problem is that the motion caps the amount of debate at four hours—two hours for Second Reading, and then two hours for Committee and Third Reading. This will presumably have to be a meaty, multi-clause Bill to deal with an issue as complex as internet governance regulation, and it will be unamendable by this place because of the timescales available. It will not have the line-by-line scrutiny that would normally happen in Committee, and most of the amendments that get tabled will fall because there will not be time for Members to propose them. This is not a solution that brings consensus; this is the Lib Dems railroading through policies on a really complex issue that they cannot get through in conventional manners.

[Julia Lopez]

I agree with the hon. Member wholeheartedly.

Until now, we have implicitly decided that childhood must simply adapt to an environment that we as adults find totally overwhelming, undermining of our own sense of self and completely irresistible. We have been exposing our children to this place of no settled social rules where that exposure is constant, the boundaries are porous and responsibility is diffuse. Behaviour that would never be tolerated offline is normalised, monetised and then algorithmically amplified. The Online Safety Act, which we have discussed already, has been a step forward in trying to wrest back control, but it is, of course, an imperfect one. It focuses primarily on illegal content, seeks to keep the most extreme material offline and introduces age-gating for pornography and other over-18 content. That work does matter, but the problem before us today goes well beyond illegality and explicit material. There are also many concerns about the complexity of policing content, in terms of both the implementation and intent.

The central question is not just what children see but how social media works. Social media platforms are addictive by design. Their algorithms are engineered to maximise engagement and stickiness. They reward outrage, comparison, emotional intensity, competition and repetition. They draw children away from purposeful activity and into feedback loops that erode attention and resilience. Not all platforms operate like this globally, funnily enough. The Chinese version of TikTok is time-limited and feeds children content of scientific or patriotic value. In the west, it is emotional arousal that is fed to our kids.

Children are not simply consuming content; they are being shaped by the environment itself. It is happening when their brains are still developing. Their impulse control, emotional regulation and ability to assess risk are not the same as for adults. We recognise this everywhere else in law—in alcohol limits, in safeguarding rules and in age of consent protections—yet online we have decided to suspend that logic, and the consequences are increasingly visible.

[Natasha Irons]

I am new to this place and clearly still learning, but I am wondering why, in that case, measures on designing out at source the harms that the hon. Member is talking about were watered down in the Online Safety Bill. She is absolutely right: we are creating online worlds, and they should be designed to be safe. Just as we design clothes for children that do not have toxic materials in them, we would hope that the spaces they inhabit online also do not have toxic material in them, so why were those protections not strengthened in the Bill that the Conservative party passed when it was in power?

[Julia Lopez]

I have set out before what we were trying to achieve with the Online Safety Act and why certain things were in it and others were not. I do not want to go over that again.

The consequences of these design features are increasingly visible, including rising anxiety and low mood, poor sleep, shredded attention spans and cyber-bullying that follows children home.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

When I was growing up, social media was genuinely social—we would spend our time on it speaking to our peers and classmates. I remember MSN Messenger and Facebook when it first arrived. Social media has evolved to become this addictive, content-driven place where we are fed information. Does the hon. Member think we should perhaps differentiate between social media platforms that are genuinely for peer-to-peer interaction and help young people, and those that just feed content to them?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention—I went off on a nostalgia trip in my brain, thinking about MSN chatrooms and all the rest of it. That was a time when people were not really aware of the power of the internet, and the predatory behaviours subsequently started to become normalised and industrialised. Although it might be tempting to want to try to go back to that place, I do not know whether we can actually get there, but it is certainly something we can aim towards and aspire to. The hon. Gentleman has made an important point. The essence of social media does not involve bad intent; the problem that we are seeking to solve is the way in which it has been manipulated and changed over the years to amplify negative behaviour.

[Freddie van Mierlo]

What the hon. Member has just said suggests that she might actually support the Liberal Democrat policy of age-rating social media platforms. That might lead to a new ecosystem of genuinely peer-to-peer, lower-harm products, which would be a good thing for young people.

[Julia Lopez]

We think that the current priority is ensuring that under-16s are taken off harmful social media platforms, but I am sure that there is room for a market to develop, over time, that will not feature negative algorithms and activity, and that there is a world in which new products could retain the essence of positive social interaction.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

Is the hon. Lady not concerned about the possibility that if we simply ban a list of social media platforms, we will provide an opportunity for new ones to develop and cause a problem while not allowing existing ones to develop in ways that will be less harmful?

[Julia Lopez]

I am sure that the issue of the functionality list can be explored as time goes by.

It is important to point out that this is not a moral panic but a structural problem. Today the Leader of the Opposition gathered a panel of grieving parents who had lost their children, and in that context negative online activity was recognised to have real-world and utterly tragic consequences. The children had been drawn into dangerous challenges, coercive relationships, bullying and bribery, all of which created despair in those young minds.

That showed us plainly why the pioneer phase must now come to an end, at least where children are concerned. Pioneer societies do not remain lawless forever; eventually they are retrofitted with rules and boundaries, and protections for the vulnerable. It is striking that, after years of the problem building up, countries around the world are reaching the same conclusion with remarkable synchronicity—not because it is fashionable, because Governments are copying one another or because anyone thinks that this will be particularly easy to impose and enforce, but because the evidence has accumulated to a point at which denial is no longer credible. If social media were broadly harmless for children, this would not be happening, but Governments with very different. political traditions are acknowledging the same reality: that when it comes to children, some control must be wrested back. I suspect that this trend will be reflected vividly in the Chamber today, with examples from across the nation of what is happening in the real world because of the laxity in the online world.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I asked the hon. Lady’s Government to ban suicide forums that encourage young people to harm themselves. I asked her Government to ban eating disorder forums that encourage eating disorders. Her Government refused to do that in the Online Safety Act 2023, despite our asking for it to happen. How can she stand there now and take the moral high ground when her Government refused to ban the worst, most egregious, most harmful platforms? The Conservatives do not have a moral high ground on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

I am not seeking to occupy a moral high ground. I am seeking to set out a way towards keeping children under 16 off social media platforms, because trying to legislate for specific different activities is very challenging, as I think we saw with the Online Safety Act. There are very good causes and there are very important activities that we sought to stop online, but turning that into a workable law is a huge challenge. That is one of the reasons why we think it important to take a “whole of society” approach that tries to shift the debate and say that certain types of online space for people under 16 are simply not appropriate—a principles-based approach to governing the online world that tries to steer away from some of the difficult debates about how to write implementable law to stop nasty and negative behaviour.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way again; she is being very generous. I confess that I have not made my mind up on this. Let us suppose that there was a blanket ban preventing anyone under 16 from accessing material of this kind. How does the Minister envisage that being enforced? Will enforcement sit with the parents ultimately, and if they are not able to carry out that enforcement, what will be their criminal liability? There are genuine challenges when it comes to what children can access, and who is made ultimately responsible for enforcing a simple approach that could be quite complex to implement.

[Julia Lopez]

I would not envisage that parents would be responsible for that. There are mechanisms to make sure that platforms would not be permitted to provide accounts to under 16-year-olds and they would have to have highly effective age-assurance techniques. In fact, I have spoken recently to representatives of a major platform who said that they had very effective techniques for testing whether somebody trying to open an account is the age that they say they are. I will not take further interventions for a little while so that I can make progress, as I know other people want to speak.

There are serious arguments against implementing a ban, some of which have been heard, and they deserve to be addressed and not dismissed. We are likely to hear more about those doubts today and they must be listened to respectfully. Indeed, I hold some of those anxieties and reservations myself. The first argument is that a ban would be unworkable and that teenagers would find workarounds through virtual private networks, foreign platforms or fake credentials. They will, of course, because teenagers have always tested boundaries. Fake IDs, sneaky booze and under-age rule-breaking are traditional parenting challenges, but we do not abandon age limits simply because they are imperfect. Instead, we impose them because they change norms, shift behaviours and offer parents reinforcement rather than resistance. Of course, the mandatory age limit will not remove every child overnight, but it will remove a critical mass and that matters.

Some fear that such a ban would require de facto compulsory digital ID, undermining anonymity and civil liberties, and again, that concern must be taken extremely seriously. However, as I have just suggested to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), age verification does not require a single state-mandated digital identification system. Other jurisdictions have explicitly prevented platforms from requiring accredited digital ID and instead mandated multiple verification techniques, with responsibility placed on platforms and not citizens. As I said, I was speaking to a major tech platform recently that set out some of those techniques, which can now be used very accurately to assess a user’s age. However, we must be clear that we do not have a surveillance state simply because 13-year-olds are kept off Facebook.

A third argument, and a point that has been made, is that social media provides vital support and connection for many children, particularly those who feel isolated offline. That can be true, but it is not an argument for leaving the entire system untouched. This is not about banning the internet, messaging, educational platforms, health support or professional development services; those places can and should remain accessible, and that is happening in other jurisdictions. This is about a specific category of platforms whose business models depend on maximising attention and emotional arousal and which are demonstrably harmful at scale. Another concern is the unintended consequence that children may be pushed into darker corners of the internet. That needs to be included in the Government’s consultation when it eventually sees the light of day, particularly whether there needs to be parental consent required for downloading certain apps.

Doing nothing already leaves children exposed, in plain sight, on platforms that we know are optimised against their wellbeing. Protection will never be perfect, but neither is inaction benign. Doing nothing is not neutral. It leaves parents despairing, schools firefighting and children navigating a digital frontier with no one by their side. There is also a broader freedom argument, which is that by keeping children off adult social media platforms we can restore freedom to adults online and will no longer need to contort those digital spaces to be universally child-friendly, which is where some of the challenges have come in.

Finally, this is about leadership. As I said earlier, a consultation without direction is not leadership, and a consultation that pushes real change 18 months down the line is, in truth, a decision to do nothing now. Labour MPs know that, which is why the coming moment will not rest on this rather nutty Lib Dem takeover attempt. Instead, it will rest on the Nash amendment, when this House will have a clear choice: to accept that the pioneer phase is over; to recognise the sanctity of childhood, which deserves clearer rules; and to acknowledge that giving parents support is not the same as the state stripping them of their ultimate responsibilities. Parents will and must always be the first line of defence. When harm is real and growing, leadership requires a decision, even when the answers are not perfect.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

As Members will know, the debate has to conclude by 7 o’clock. There are slightly more than 10 people bobbing. I plan to move to the wind-ups at 6.40 pm, which should leave everyone plenty of time.