Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

Finally, it is certainly possible for young carers to have dumb phones. They have talked about the relief when, instead of carrying their phone, it is in the school office, and the school office can come and get them quickly if there is a problem. They will not have their phone if they are in the swimming pool or playing sports, but there are ways to make sure that they are contactable. We need to think about this as carefully as we can and not, as somebody said, feel that the exceptions undermine the principle.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I want to share the experience of schoolteachers, particularly head teachers. I and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, were on a call earlier this week with three head teachers from different parts of the country and from very different economic backgrounds. Their plea was: “You need to help us, because at the moment we have different policies on phones”. One, interestingly, was banning year 7s from having phones but not others. Another was to say: “Put it away. As long as we do not see it, it’s not a problem”. Others have pouches. A lot of their time is being taken up by a small group of vocal and often aggressive parents who demand that their children have their phones at school. Those head teachers are being distracted from their core duties to deal with this, and they were pleading with us, particularly with this vote tonight, to send a clear message to the Government that head teachers want to teach children rather than police smartphones.

The other thing I want to share is about the harms. We have talked a lot about social media, but often phones in schools lead to further bullying. We all saw a few years back the craze of happy slapping, where young people in playgrounds came behind others and slapped them, and the footage would be used and shared.

There is one other thing I want to share that is very personal. When one of my sons first started at a school in Rotherham, he was very keen to fit in—because we are from Sheffield—and he wanted to make friends. Unfortunately, a small group of so-called friends followed him into a toilet a few moments after he had gone in and, while he was sat on the toilet, they kicked the door in and took footage of him on the toilet. He did not tell me or the family. I got a phone call from a local community centre a week or two later to say, “Shaf, we are horrified by what we’ve seen. We’ve seen footage of your son. He didn’t know what to do, he couldn’t get up, and these kids were laughing. We saw it, and we think you should be made aware”. To their credit, the parents of the two young men who were involved came straight to our house when they found out; they were mortified. The school itself tried its level best, but, I have to say, we had to leave that school, and my son had to go to the other side of Sheffield to give him a fresh start.

There are real consequences. That is why, tonight, I will be backing the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the amendment of my good friend and colleague, my noble friend Lord Addington, on the requirements for people with special educational needs.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make just one point, following up on the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. The medical devices exception in the amendment is already provided for. If a more general exception were made for special educational needs—that is already close to 30% of children—the pressure on parents and pupils would be to game this, and the proportion of children with a special needs label would rise to truly stratospheric levels, at which point the phone ban would clearly have no meaning whatever. I urge noble Lords to think about the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, on other ways to provide the assistive functionality that might be needed.