Smartphones and Social Media: Children

Debate between Vicky Ford and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Chris Bryant]

It needs to be UK-wide, but it also needs to recognise devolution. We have been talking about schools, for instance, and some of those issues are devolved responsibilities in Scotland, Northen Ireland and Wales, so we need to work across the whole UK. Of course, some of these issues are not just national, but international, because in many cases we are dealing with companies whose profits may be made in this country but who may not be taxed in this country and are headquartered elsewhere.

Let me state some first principles. First, obviously the primary duty of any Government is to keep its citizens safe. We say that endlessly and repeatedly, but we seem to always think that it means national security and policing. Actually, it is also about online safety for children, as has been said by several Members today.

Secondly, mental health is just as important as physical health. To anybody who thinks it is just about people pulling up their socks or whatever, I say that that just does not meet the need. We should all have understood that better by now. I will say this gently: it was a misstep and a mistake for some to refer to the Online Safety Act as “legislating for hurt feelings.” Hurt feelings can lead to very serious physical harm. We know the story of Brianna Ghey. I will not rehearse it, but I pay enormous tribute to her mother, who has shown extraordinary levels of humanity.

[Vicky Ford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the right hon. Lady does not mind, because I have several points to make— I am terribly sorry.

Physical and personal interaction with others is vital to humanity. I apologise for the casual sexism of the early 17th century, but John Donne said:

“No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

…

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.”

We are fundamentally social beings, and sometimes social media can enable that. Grandparents FaceTime with their grandchildren, and they would of course never have dreamed of being able to do so 30 years ago. That is wonderful, but where social media replaces social interaction, we have long-term problems.

Of course, social media and the internet can be enormously valuable. As the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge said, she gets lost if she does not have Google Maps working—sometimes I cannot get it to work properly. I do not know how anybody ever managed to meet up back in the 1960s and 1970s. These are all wonderful innovations, and they are great for kids, too. They have a place in education: I want lots of kids to learn how to create apps and be part of the vibrant UK economy by creating video games and all the rest of it. That is part of the issue, but we cannot just bow down before that altar and surrender everything.

My other fundamental principle is that no executive is above the law, which is why I believe that swift and full implementation of the Online Safety Act is so important. I echo the points that have already been made. The Minister probably agrees that it has taken us too long to get to this point with the Online Safety Act. I will not make partisan points about all the ups and downs and ins and outs, but it has taken too long, and I worry about whether the next processes will happen anywhere near fast enough.

There are some things that Labour is keen to do. First, we need better mental health support for young people. It is shocking that one in four 17 to 19-year-olds in England now have a mental health problem. That is up from one in 10 in 2017, which is a dramatic increase. That may be partly to do with covid, but it is a significant problem. We want to put many more specialist mental health professionals into schools. I have family members who work in this field, and they desperately need more support. Early support is really important in preventing escalation. The problem of brain injuries in schools has hardly been recognised, and the Government will not even be able to give us proper numbers on how many kids in schools have had a brain injury and needed support. Also, creative education can be an important part of fostering better self-confidence, self-understanding, socialisation, and team working, and one of the problems over recent years is that that has fallen away.

Age guidelines must be truly effective, and it is worrying that Ofcom’s early research on stopping children using social media finds that it is almost impossible to do so even for children as young as five. That is highly problematic, and much more work needs to be done. For all sorts of economic reasons of their own, social media companies have failed to regulate themselves. They have sometimes not told the full truth about what their algorithms do, or about their economic model. The divide between those who argue, “No nanny state,” and those who argue, “Protect our children,” is a false dichotomy. The question is not “What legislation?” but, “How do we make sure that we have the right legislation?”

Prime Minister’s Meeting with Alexander Lebedev

Debate between Vicky Ford and Chris Bryant

Thursday 7th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

I would say that—I will follow up as well to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)—the Prime Minister did commit yesterday that he would follow up on the question from the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North at the Liaison Committee. He did commit to that. I have asked whether there is more detailed information on the discussions, but I do not have any information about the content of those discussions at this time.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, I think the Minister inadvertently misled us earlier, because the Prime Minister yesterday—I was at the Liaison Committee—did not say what she said. He did not say—to the best of my memory, anyway—that he had notified other officials. If he had notified other officials, surely, as the Minister would understand, that meeting would have appeared on the transparency records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for April 2018 and it is not there. So, either she has misled us inadvertently today, or the Prime Minister did so, perhaps more deliberately, previously.

[Vicky Ford]

Obviously, I was not at the Liaison Committee yesterday. I was, as you may know, Mr Speaker, giving a ministerial statement on fast-tracking the ratification of Finland and Sweden joining NATO, another measure that is absolutely crucial to our safety and security here and, later in the Chamber, ensuring that we passed the funding. On the question, I repeat what I said in my opening words. It is my understanding that the Prime Minister confirmed that he had met Mr Lebedev without officials present and that he subsequently reported those meetings to officials. That is my understanding and that is what I have been told. If that is not an accurate reflection, I apologise. But this is not me misleading; that is what I was told.

NATO Accession: Sweden and Finland

Debate between Vicky Ford and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

I know my right hon. Friend makes an important contribution in the discussions he often has with NATO colleagues. He rightly points to one of the many reasons why it is so important that Finland and Sweden should be enabled to accede to NATO as quickly as possible. That is why the UK is going to push a faster approval process than is normal, and why we encourage our NATO allies to also ratify as quickly as possible.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Of course I completely support Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO. Indeed, I remember having conversations with Alexander Stubb back in 2009, trying to persuade him to put this matter more firmly on the agenda for Finland. However, one of my anxieties around NATO is that my Ukrainian friends have been telling me that the lethal equipment that is being provided by different countries around Europe comes in 34 different shapes and sizes, with 34 different manuals. Would it not be much more sensible, if we are really to make sure that Putin does not win, to have an industrial strategy to ensure that the equipment provided to Ukraine is usable by the Ukrainians and does not require 34 different training sessions?

[Vicky Ford]

I remind the House that the UK has played an absolutely central role in providing military assistance to Ukraine. Indeed, only last week the Prime Minister announced a further £1 billion-worth of military support to Ukraine, and we will be adding additional cutting-edge multiple launch rocket systems. On training, which is important, over the past decade we have trained over 22,000 Ukrainian troops. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about making sure that, where possible, there is a joint approach in the support for Ukraine, but I also point him to what was agreed at the Madrid summit last week, which was a historic agreement by all NATO partners to step up support for Ukraine and to provide it with advice, training and equipment.

Afghanistan: Humanitarian Crisis

Debate between Vicky Ford and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

The Afghan citizens resettlement scheme was announced by the Minister responsible, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), just last week. She pointed out that it is coming into place this year. We have announced an aim to settle 5,000 people in the first year of the ACRS. She also announced that, in the light of the emerging situation and the success of evacuation efforts, we will exceed that aim. The first to be resettled included women’s rights activists, journalists and prosecutors, as well as Afghan families of British nationals.

I would encourage my hon. Friend to work with the Minister for Afghan Resettlement on any individual cases that he has, but I would also say, as this question points out, that we need to support those in the country; it is not going to be possible to resettle every single case.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am sorry—this is terrible. Every single element of this was not only predictable but predicted repeatedly for 18 months and longer. Operation Pitting was a disaster. We did not actually prioritise the right people, or we have no confidence that we prioritised the right people. We have abandoned lots of people, as the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said. All of us have constituency connections with people who are stuck in Afghanistan, and the Minister has no means of enabling them to get to safety. We have abandoned them to a future where there is not enough food, there is not enough money to pay the bills, there is no electricity and most of the hospitals are not working properly. We have a complete disaster, and part of the blame for that lies at the Government’s door.

[Vicky Ford]

During Operation Pitting, we worked at great speed. Our armed forces on the ground worked at great speed and in great danger to evacuate around 15,000 people to the UK. That was the second largest number evacuated by any country, behind only the United States. We are supporting people in Afghanistan.

Ukraine

Debate between Vicky Ford and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

Russia is very clearly in breach of the commitments it signed up to under the Budapest memorandum through its failure to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and through its use of force against Ukraine. We remain willing to engage in consultations, as provided for under that memorandum, as we did back in March 2014 in Paris after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Russia is refusing to engage, despite the fact that the memorandum obliges it to do so in circumstances where the memorandum is questioned.

We will stand by the people of Ukraine. We are considering extending the support we are giving to Ukraine to help it defend itself, but I need this to be clear: there is nothing in that support that could be construed as offensive or as a threat towards Russia. NATO is a purely defensive organisation and itself poses no threat to Russia.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The difficulty is that Russia under Putin has behaved with extraordinary consistency. If we look at what it did in Georgia and its activities in Greece, in North Macedonia and in Republika Srpska, in so many different places it has engaged in a deliberate act of semi-war, trying to engineer difficulties in each of those democracies. Do we not need to match that consistency with internal consistency of our own, tackling the dirty money in the British public and ensuring that the whole of our democratic and political system is safe from assault by the Russians?

[Vicky Ford]

I have been very clear, and it is very clear in the integrated review, that Russia’s actions pose an acute and direct threat to the national security of not only the UK but its allies. We maintain functional channels of engagement with the Russian Government to ensure we can make points to them on those issues, and as a fellow permanent member of the UN Security Council we engage with them, but that does not mean we do not call them out. The Foreign Secretary met Foreign Minister Lavrov last Thursday, 2 December, when she absolutely restated the UK’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and urged the Russians to de-escalate the situation. The Ministers also discussed Belarus, Iran and Afghanistan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vicky Ford and Chris Bryant

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

I thank all schools, especially those special schools that have helped to care for vulnerable children throughout the pandemic. Attendance has risen. We have provided bespoke advice on testing children with special educational needs, and we will provide families of all pupils with access to home testing, including those with special educational needs. That will help to keep covid out of the classroom. Where a teacher is supporting a clinically extremely vulnerable child, as the care provider that teacher may also be entitled to a vaccine, and those decisions are made locally.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

What estimate he has made of the number of pupils under the age of 18 who are in receipt of specialist education support as a result of experiencing a brain injury in the last 12 months.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)]

The Department does not collect specific data on brain injuries. A pupil’s acquired brain injury could manifest in many different ways, and support should be tailored to their learning barriers, irrespective of the diagnosis. The SEND code of practice asks schools and colleges to address pupils’ individual educational needs, regardless of their condition.

[Chris Bryant [V]]

Happy St David’s day, Mr Speaker.

I really find that a disappointing answer. There will be children going back to school after several weeks who will have had brain injuries of various kinds. If the Department does not even keep statistics on them, it is probably likely that lots of headteachers will not even know whether their children have had acquired brain injuries. Sometimes, the results of a brain injury can look remarkably like being naughty or unco-operative in school, and kids end up being excluded despite the fact that they have a medical condition. The special educational needs code still does not even mention brain injury. How are we ever going to take this seriously if we do not even gather the information and make sure that those children who really need support get it? It is often referred to as a hidden disability; well, it is completely hidden from the Minister herself.

[Vicky Ford]

No, the Government take brain injury and the devastating impact that it can have on a child’s life especially seriously, but the important thing is to make sure that each child gets the support that they need for their particular circumstances. That is why the SEND system is specifically designed to get the right support to each individual child, and that is what we are working on through the SEND review. I am very happy to discuss with the hon. Member exactly how we are working on making sure that each child gets the support that they need for how the brain injury manifests for that child.