Great Western Railway: Infrastructure
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Lord Davies of Gower
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the condition, maintenance, and long-term resilience of rail infrastructure on the Great Western Railway network; and what steps they are taking to ensure its reliability following recent flooding and extreme weather.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, Network Rail has robust plans in place to deal with resilience because of climate change. The Wales and western region will see a £2.6 billion spend on asset renewals and £1.6 billion invested to maintain assets from 2024 to 2029. There is also a comprehensive weather resilience and climate change adaptation plan focusing on safe- guarding assets, embedding resilience into daily operations and adapting to climate change impacts along the route.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, recent months have seen the western region suffer delays and cancellations through infrastructure issues. Signalling failure is partly to blame, but inclement weather frequently causes severe flooding. In particular, Chipping Sodbury tunnel, built in 1902, has been plagued by flooding issues since the day it opened. Successive Governments have funded remedial work over the years on a piecemeal basis, but, as the Minister is aware from his former role at Network Rail, this has not provided a solution to the ongoing problem. Can he therefore commit to resolving the issue in order to bring travel in the western region into the 21st century? As the operator, can he take steps to ensure that GWR provides a full set of rolling stock on its intercity services, as opposed to the frequently provided overcrowded half-set of carriages?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord knows more about Chipping Sodbury now because I arranged for the route director for the western route to talk to him. He is right that it was opened in 1902. Great Western Railway built the cutting and the tunnel straight through an aquifer and it has been flooding ever since. The good news is that remedial work over the past five years has significantly reduced the delays created by flooding in that location. However, there are many other examples of flooding due to climate change, including, as he knows, one recently in Neath, which has never flooded before.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change. My sub-committee’s recent advice to the Government was that we need to prepare for 2 degrees of warming by 2050. That implies that, in many areas, typical weather will be rather like the extreme weather we see today, and extreme weather will be much more extreme than that, with maximum temperatures potentially towards the mid-40s. Can the Minister assure the House that the HS2 line to Birmingham and the recently announced Northern Rail developments will be ready for this weather?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The truth is that the whole railway network has to be adapted to weather that was once exceptional and is now common- place. The budget for Network Rail, as the current infrastructure owner, was at least quadrupled compared with 2019 to 2024, precisely to cope with that. I am sure that the new lines, such as HS2 and the Liverpool to Manchester line, will be built with that mind, but our greater preoccupation at the moment is our existing railway and its reliability.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, recent reports in the press have highlighted the serious shortages of carriages on Great Western Railway services, with one in three engines not functioning properly due to fuel pump issues. What are the Government doing to ensure a fully operating service now, as well as when the Government start to directly run this part of the railway?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Baroness is completely right. At one stage, out of the total train fleet for long-distance services, with 400-odd engines in those trains, some 110 of them were not functioning due to a fault that appears to be something to do with fuel supply and fuel pumps. The good news is that the number is now down to 38. I am very frustrated by the time it has taken to fix them, but they are being fixed.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches, and then we will come to the Conservative Benches.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, I am confident that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, will join with me in praising the care of the GWR staff. Nevertheless, both he and I suffer on our journeys, often together, from Swansea, because of the delays. Can my noble friend the Minister say where the GWR stands in the comparative performance rates of all the railways in this matter?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
It was pretty good. It has got worse because of the engine shortage. Reliability has been very poor. I am expecting it to now recover. I am on its back.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, about the quality and care that GWR staff take in looking after their customers, of whom I am one.
I take the Minister back to his Written Answer about Chipping Sodbury. He knows that I raised that issue when I was Secretary of State and he was chair of Network Rail, and I was assured that work had been done to solve the problem. It has improved it, as he said. It delayed the flooding impact of Storm Claudia by 27 hours. He says that more work is going to be done in 2026-27. Is that work planned to fix the problem once and for all?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think the noble Lord is a bit optimistic. If mother nature continues to pour water into the railway infrastructure, because of the way it is built, any fix will be related to what the climate is actually doing.
Network Rail is very confident that there can be further reductions, some of which will be through big infrastructure, such as building small reservoirs and fitting more pumps. So, I cannot guarantee that the tunnel will never flood, but I can guarantee that every effort is being made to reduce the delays when it does.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, the points that have been raised by the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Anderson, are absolutely right. In particular, west of Cardiff, there are severe problems going through to Carmarthenshire. This is probably due to underinvestment over a number of years. Can the Minister give a commitment that he will look at the situation running through to west Wales, in view of the recent experiences?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I have spoken to the Welsh regional manager of Network Rail in the past 24 hours to ask him what the incidence of flooding was in south Wales, in preparation for this question. As I said earlier, there are several sites which have never flooded before—Neath and west of Swansea—and Network Rail it is looking very urgently at dealing with those issues in order to keep the reliable railway running.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, Brunel built the South Devon Railway in 1842, alongside the River Exe estuary and down past Dawlish—a very scenic route. By 1860, it was realised that that route was unsustainable, and an alternative route was planned over the Haldon Hill. Over recent years, we have seen the line collapse in Dawlish and, on an almost monthly basis, overtopping along the Powderham banks alongside the Exe estuary. What plans have the Government to reroute that line to one that is sustainable in the long term? I note my interest as a local resident.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Since the collapse of the line into the sea in Dawlish in 2014, about £140 million has been spent on resilience to keep the railway running. There is work left to do, in particular on the cliffs at Teignmouth, but there is no practicable, affordable alternative route that can be provided any time soon. So railway colleagues have to keep going on keeping that line open, whatever the weather.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
I warn my noble friend that this morning the Environment and Climate Change Committee took evidence from three water companies. We discovered that storing water in reservoirs is very expensive; it is a lot cheaper to store it in aquifers. So what are the prospects of extending the aquifer that is the cause of the problem to the railway?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I could do without anybody storing water in the aquifer next to the Chipping Sodbury tunnel and cutting. If they try it, there will be some serious legal action. The water companies have their part to play in managing surface water, just as landowners do and just as Network Rail does. It is an increasing problem, it needs to be treated seriously and a lot of public money is going into dealing with it.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I appreciate the difficulties for the Minister. However, changing the subject slightly, if there is so little money available for rail infrastructure and so many demands on it, why are the Government persisting with this plan that Great British Railways should build its own retail website and app for selling tickets when that is done perfectly well by the private sector already? Is it not time to abandon this vanity project?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Nobody said that there was too little money. A lot of money is being spent on railway infrastructure. The problem has been that the climate has changed faster than adaptation of the railway infrastructure. The noble Lord is quite wrong about ticket retailing. There are currently 14 websites from train operating companies. They are very confusing. Many people do not think that you can buy a ticket for First Great Western from South Western, but you can. The objective of GBR is to replace this system with one that people can trust and will use to increase rail travel.
Age of Criminal Responsibility
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Chakrabarti
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government want to prevent children who have committed crime from re-offending and to help them lead happy, useful and productive lives. Setting the age of criminal responsibility at 10 allows the justice system to intervene early with some children, which can help to prevent future crimes. Children are treated differently in that they are dealt with by youth courts and given different sentences from adult offenders.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I am grateful, as always, to my noble friend, but wonder whether the child welfare system would not be more appropriate than the justice system for 10 year-olds. How does the Government’s position square with international comparators, UN advice, modern neuroscience and humane values?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
With the greatest respect to my noble friend, that is quite a lot of questions in one. I can confirm that the UK complies with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Making international comparisons in this area can be imprecise, and some of our international partners are lowering their age of criminal responsibility. For example, Sweden is proposing to reduce its from 15 in response to an increase in gangs recruiting children to commit serious offences precisely because they know they cannot be prosecuted. We make every effort to keep children out of the criminal justice system unless it is absolutely unavoidable.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, have the Government made any assessment of the carefully considered change enacted in Scotland in 2019, when the minimum age was raised to 12 with the intention of protecting younger children from earlier criminalisation and exposure to the criminal justice system? Does the Scottish experience not increase confidence for similar reform in England and Wales?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
My Lords, there are certain cases where the offending is so serious that a criminal justice response is required. For example, everybody in your Lordships’ House will remember the case of the killing of James Bulger, in which two 10 year-olds were involved. The important thing is that every effort is made to keep children out of the criminal justice system unless it is absolutely necessary to monitor them and to contain them in the public interest.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, the Government and this House take pride in pursuing evidence-led policy, yet an age of criminal responsibility of 10 flies in the face of all the evidence about brain development, general maturity, responsibility and judgment. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, Scotland has raised the age to 12, and many European countries have an age of 12 or 14. Granted, the UN convention does not insist on a particular age but the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urges states to adopt 14 as the minimum age. How can a progressive Government justify criminal responsibility for 10 year-olds?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
My Lords, the efforts made to keep children out of the criminal justice system are all going in the right direction. In 2024, only 13% of all children sentenced were aged 10 to 14 and that is a sustained downward trend.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the Minister said that children are in the criminal justice system only when it is “absolutely necessary”. But at a meeting in Parliament yesterday about the jury proposals, the heads of the Criminal Bar Association and the Bar Council and the leaders of most of the circuits were clear that there are young people in the criminal justice system who are being treated too harshly and that this has a devastating effect on their lives. May I challenge the Minister to meet with those representatives, because that does not match the “absolutely necessary” wording she used?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I reiterate that we are moving in the right direction. Not only is the number of children sentenced aged between 10 and 14 going down, but in 2024, of the 1,687 sentences passed on 10 to 14 year-olds, only 23 resulted in custody—again, a consistent trend reduction. I am, of course, always delighted to meet with anybody who wishes to discuss these matters, but the Government are content that this is the correct way of dealing with things.
Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Meston, indicated that Scotland raised the age to 12 and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, referred to the age of criminal responsibility in most of Europe, which is a good deal higher than in England and Wales. Your Lordships might be surprised to know that in Russia it is 16, save for very serious offences, for which it is 14; and in China it is 16, save for very serious offences. Are the Government at least able to commit to look at the evidence and consider whether the time has come to raise the age of criminal responsibility?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
The Government are always concerned about the position of children and keep all these matters constantly under review.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, the Minister referred a few moments ago to Sweden lowering its age below 15. I have done a quick google check, and as far as I can understand, it has lowered it to 14, which is rather different from 10. Can she confirm that that is correct?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I thank the right reverend Prelate. I think it is from 15 to 13.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, as has already been noted, until just a few years ago, the age of criminal responsibility in Scotland was eight. In the last three or four years, it has been raised from eight to 12. Does the Minister agree that before we take any further steps with regard to the age of responsibility in England, it would be appropriate to examine and analyse the impact of the changes on policing, crime prevention and public safety in Scotland which have emerged since the change in the age of criminal responsibility there almost four years ago?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I say to the noble and learned Lord that the Government keep all these matters under review.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, is this not a class issue? People who live in leafy suburbs think it is a bad idea; people who live in council houses, often targeted by young people, think that, while every effort should be made to keep children out of the judicial system, there has to be that penalty if they continue with the actions they take.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the four Children’s Commissioners of the four parts of the United Kingdom wrote a report several years ago saying that this country is the most punitive of all European countries towards children?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
Noble Lords will probably be interested to know, if they are not already aware, that the Code for Crown Prosecutors has the age and maturity of a defendant as a specific public interest factor tending against prosecution. There are a number of other factors in the Crown Prosecution Service’s legal guidance that point towards keeping children out of the system when that is in their best interests and when it is not necessary for a criminal prosecution to take place.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, given the range of concerns and questions raised across the House, will the Minister and her department consider putting in the Library or otherwise providing a briefing for Members of this House about the numbers of children involved in the criminal justice system, their race, gender and class—if my noble friend insists on that—and how they affect these matters?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
We can of course provide such statistics as we hold, although I think those on class might be a little more difficult to define than, for example, those on race and gender. It is important to recognise that there are issues relating to children from particular parts of society who are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, and the Government are extremely keen to continue the work of the previous Government to ensure that they are diverted, so that they can lead productive lives in the future.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, joint enterprise has given rise to a certain notoriety in the criminal justice system. Given the way that gangs of children tend to go around together, is not the age of 10 a real problem? Children of 10 can be convicted of murder simply because one teenager further up the pecking order murders someone.
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
The noble Lord refers to the law in relation to joint enterprise. The Law Commission is currently looking at all cases of murder that include joint enterprise and will report in due course. The Government will consider that very seriously because we understand entirely the point the noble Lord is making.
Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Hazarika
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to implement the violence against women and girls strategy, published on 18 December 2025.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Baroness Smith of Cluny) (Lab)
We will deliver the strategy through a truly cross-government approach, recognising that halving VAWG within a decade requires action from every part of society. Implementation will be overseen by cross-government governance, including the VAWG ministerial group, meeting next on 27 January, and an external VAWG stakeholder advisory board. Progress is already under way, with media initiatives launched and further commitments rolling out throughout 2026 under a 10-year adaptive plan supported by regular updates.
Baroness Hazarika (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that Answer, and I genuinely welcome the strategy, particularly because, for the first time ever, it focuses on engaging boys and young men. They must be part of the solution, and they too can be victims of the very aggressive, violent, hypersexualised online world. The TV presenter, Ore Oduba, recently spoke out with great courage about his own addiction to pornography and the damage it has caused. He will not be alone. Can the Minister tell us how this important training in schools will be designed and resourced to make sure that teachers feel confident and teenage boys do not feel alienated.
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises a very important issue and I am grateful for the opportunity to address it. We know that men and boys experience these types of behaviours. We also know that their experiences are unique. Indeed, one in five men experience domestic abuse. That is why we have produced the Men and Boys Explanatory Note, which details how the strategy reflects their unique needs. The strategy also recognises that these behaviours are disproportionately experienced by women and perpetrated by men. As the noble Baroness alluded to, the key to addressing both of these equally important matters is through education. That is why we have announced a £20 million funding package, to ensure that every secondary school has a credible package to offer.
Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, I was very pleased to see reference to honour-based abuse in the violence against women and girls strategy, including a commitment to introduce a definition of it. Has there has been any progress on the Government introducing a definition in the Crime and Policing Bill that we are currently considering? I suggest that that is an excellent way to implement part of the strategy.
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises an important issue. Honour-based abuse is directly addressed in the strategy, as the noble Baroness has observed. It is often hidden in nature. That means we must try harder to address the needs of victims and build trust with them. We have set out clear action within the strategy, which includes continuing to fund the Karma Nirvana national honour-based abuse helpline, and have committed, as the noble Baroness identified, to a statutory definition of honour-based abuse. The strategy, as with all matters contained within it, has a collaborative, adaptive approach, and that is why we will be engaging with stakeholders as we develop that.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, the violence against women and girls action plan sets out clear steps for schools in updating relationships and sex education, making it mandatory for all pupils and students. Are teachers also having training in recognising children who may be at risk from domestic abuse at home and on how to refer them to experts? I ask because, although money for training on RSE is there, it is not evident in the action plan.
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
The key point to note is that the entire strategy is fully funded. At least £1 billion is being spent across government over the spending review, and that includes funding for education. Indeed, there are other government programmes, because it is a cross-government approach, through other departments, such as the Department for Education, to address the very matters that the noble Baroness raises.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the strategy’s introduction of a firewall between the police and immigration enforcement to protect migrant domestic abuse survivors, but the requirement that the police must first seek the consent of the survivor has raised concerns that it will not provide reliable protection for survivors who do not speak English as a first language or who are afraid to object to the police passing on information. What training will police officers receive to ensure that migrant survivors feel confident to exercise this new and welcome right to a firewall?
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
As the noble Baroness identifies, training is critical to the whole-society approach that the strategy sets out, and policing is a key part of that. That is why £13.1 million has been provided to set up the national centre for VAWG and public protection, which will improve policing and deal with many matters, including the one that the noble Baroness raises.
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
In her Statement in the other place announcing the strategy before Christmas, the Safeguarding Minister highlighted the corrosive influence of online content that acts as a driver of violence against women and girls, stating that access by children to such harmful content should be made as difficult as possible in the UK. She is of course correct. One way of doing this would be to curb children’s access to social media. Does the Minister accept that this provides yet another reason why the Government should take action to ban social media for under-16s?
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this prescient and important issue. I am pleased to report that the Government are taking action. That is why a consultation on this issue has been announced. The reason for announcing a consultation is that, on such a vital issue, we must be evidence-led. There is not a consensus on this issue. Powerful and important groups, such as the NSPCC, have voiced opinions in one direction, and we have heard strong advocation for the other side of the argument. Australia is undertaking a living experiment that we can learn from, so we will consult, we will be led by the evidence, and we will report back to this House.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
It is the turn of the Cross Benches.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
I heard of a case of a four year-old boy in a refuge hitting a three year-old girl because that is what daddy did to mummy at home. Is the Minister aware of how early children need to be supported on this?
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
The Government are aware, and that is why we have taken a whole-system approach in the strategy. A cross-government approach means that the housing needs of such children will be addressed through the strategy, as well as social care, education and any relevant criminal justice needs. The central plank of the strategy is that it is cross-governmental, as a well as taking a whole-system approach more generally.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, there is an international dimension to this, though the strategy is domestically focused. The crime of honour-based violence, as raised by noble friend Lady Sugg, as well as FGM and forced marriage, carry an international dimension. When may we expect the action plan, the details of which were announced in the strategy, to be formally launched?
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
I am pleased to be able to tell the noble Lord that the Government will host a round table on FGM in March. It will be focused on prevention, investigation and prosecution, and is part of the whole-society approach to which I have already alluded.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, the Istanbul convention was signed up to by the British Government when it was promulgated. It took several years, until 2022, for it to be considered ratified and its provisions incorporated into British law. However, Article 59 remains beyond our reach. It seems that a pilot scheme that was set up in 2022, or at least announced then, has yet to report. This concerns the rights of migrant women and the protections that we ought to be affording them. In the words of my predecessor, when may we expect the outcome of the pilot report so that the Istanbul convention can finally and completely be ratified?
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
My Lords, the structures that have been put in place around the strategy will ensure that any schemes or questions that remain outstanding will be picked up. A cross-government ministerial group will be meeting quarterly, reporting to the safer streets mission board and directly to the Prime Minister. We will be held to account externally on any matters that Members of this House or anyone in the wider society believe are outstanding. We will report annually on our progress, with measurable metrics by which we can be held to account.
Motorway Speed Cameras
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of reported errors of speed cameras on national motorways.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
This Government are working to fix an anomaly dating back at least to 2021 affecting how some speed cameras interact with variable speed signs on some motorways and A roads. A small number of motorists have been impacted, and the police are contacting each of those affected. The public must have confidence in technology on our roads, which is why my department has announced an independent review into how the anomaly occurred, its handling and the changes needed to ensure that this cannot happen again.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. National Highways is clearly doing all it can to remedy the injustice done by the erroneous recording of speeding offences. Is the Minister satisfied that all those involved have now been contacted, with fines repaid and points restored? What about those who had to take time off work to attend speed awareness courses and, more importantly, what about those who lost their licences because of the accumulation of points, and thereafter lost their jobs? What compensation will be offered to them?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
We estimate that approximately 2,650 incorrect activations took place between 2021 and now, and we are checking further back. The number of drivers affected is considerably lower, as not every activation resulted in enforcement. The relevant police forces will contact those affected directly with details on what action is being taken to provide redress. All those notified by the police will receive details on how to contact National Highways if they have evidence of costs associated with this incorrect enforcement—for example, those associated with licence loss.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, will the independent review look at how long the highways agency has known about this defect in its speed cameras? What confidence do the Government have that speed cameras on other roads are not affected?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I can confirm that the review will look at the time it took between first knowledge and public action. We remain very confident that this is both a subset of speed cameras and a subset of variable speed signs, and that it applies only to some motorways and, I think, two A roads.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, there is considerable concern at the vast numbers of different speed limits that are now being applied in this country, both fixed and variable. I understand that the rules are being changed regarding the implementation of 20 mph speed limits in rural areas and some urban areas. Can the Minister update us on the present position regarding the 20 mph speed limits?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The 20 mph speed limit is utilised in areas where local highway authorities believe that road safety would be enhanced by its imposition. The Government do not intend to try to write the rules for all those circumstances; it is for local highway authorities to make judgments about speed limits and the road safety that is derived therefrom.
Lord Geddes (Con)
My Lords, in his initial reply to my noble friend Lord Young, the Minister mentioned the importance of maintaining public confidence. I declare an interest in having been done for doing 60 mph in a temporary 50 mph motorway limit in broad daylight with fine weather, no roadworks, no obstruction and no accidents. Can the Minister persuade the highway authorities not to abuse these temporary limits?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord is subject to the same legislation about driving properly as all the rest of us. The variable speed limit signs are particularly used on busy urban roads to even out the flow of traffic, because stop-start jams, particularly on motorways such as the M25, both create some dangers themselves and, crucially, lower the capacity of the road. My advice to people when the speed limit goes down is to follow it, because that will save them getting into a huge jam.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, what confidence do the Government have in the agency when the software upgrade that led to this issue took place in 2019 yet the Department for Transport was informed only last September, some six years later?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think the date was October, not September, but we can confirm that. The purpose of the review, which is a serious activity, is to make sure that this does not happen again. In the process, we will discover how long it took to identify, whether that should have been done faster, how it has been handled and what changes are needed to avoid such a thing happening again. The noble Lord is right: we should have confidence in government agencies, and it is important in these matters that people follow the signage and have confidence in the enforcement that goes with it.
Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, has identified some of the financial costs that might flow from being wrongly picked up for speeding, and it is good to hear that the Government are working on a plan to compensate people. In this context, points do not mean prizes. They mean increased insurance premiums, and it can be extremely difficult for any of us to understand precisely why an insurance premium has increased from one year to another. Will the Government be sympathetic to those who are unable to produce precise figures because their insurers will not give them to them?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I understand the point that the noble and learned Lord is making. The Government have to be a good custodian of public money and therefore should understand whether there is a loss and what it is, but if I were a claimant I would think the evidence of one year’s premium against another, if it related solely to points and not to any other form of driving, was admissible.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)
Anyone who drives north out of London on the M1, as I do twice a week, knows that there is always a 60 mph variable speed limit throughout Bedfordshire, whatever the traffic conditions and whatever the weather, which are usually identical to the weather and traffic conditions north and south of Bedfordshire. Can the Minister inquire why Luton needs to have the traffic going so slowly past it, and does the department occasionally question highway authorities to see whether some are not tempted to use variable speed limits plainly as a way of raising revenue by way of fines?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I defer absolutely to the noble Lord’s knowledge of the M1 in Bedfordshire and will, of course, ask National Highways officials whether it is the case that it is permanently at 60 mph and, if it is, why. The reasons for variable speed limits and speed limits in general are road safety and traffic management, not revenue raising.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I assure my noble friend the Minister that there is nothing wrong with the speed cameras on the M5 motorway in the West Midlands, as those of us who have recently completed a speed awareness course will testify.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
If that was a question, all I can say is that the noble Lord has given his own answer.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, the highways agency and the police forces have acted responsibly in this case by paying compensation, but in London responsibility for enforcing moving traffic offences is almost entirely devolved to the boroughs. I believe those powers have been enacted and made available in the rest of the country as well. In cases where cameras are used for the enforcement of moving traffic offences—I appreciate that they do not have very many variable speed limits—what audit are the Government undertaking of the systems being used to ensure that they do not have bugs and problems as well?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
It is important to note that this is an issue because of the interaction of two systems. The technology used for camera enforcement is obviously checked and there is an audit process—I cannot describe it to the noble Lord in detail. The matter we are discussing about enforcement of variable speed limits has come about because of the interaction of two systems, and the noble Lord is describing circumstances about cameras used only either for speed enforcement or, more often, yellow boxes and suchlike.
Business of the House
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Smith of Basildon
That Standing Order 38(1) (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with on Tuesday 27 January to enable Committee stage of the Crime and Policing Bill to begin before oral questions that day.
Local Elections: Cancellation
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, we have consistently asked the Government to share a definitive timescale for local government reorganisation and the establishment of new strategic mayoral authorities. Given that the imminence of this restructure is the sole reason that the Government have given for yet another delay in local elections, will they please, for the sake of local councils and their residents, share their timetable once and for all? If not, why not? Does it exist? How can they even begin to justify the cancellation of elections if it does not exist?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
We are undertaking a once-in-a-generation reorganisation of local government. We have now received proposals on this issue from all areas and from councils across the political spectrum. It is only right that we listen to councils when they express concerns about their capacity. Local leaders know their areas best and are best placed to judge their own capacity.
On the noble Baroness’s question about the timescale, if she is referring to the timescale for the reorganisation, we have been very clear with local authorities about when we wanted their proposals in. The priority areas are moving ahead at pace now, and we are going out to consultation on the other areas in February. We will be come back to them before the Summer Recess to let them know of the Secretary of State’s decisions.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, it is disappointing that the Government appear set on disregarding the Electoral Commission’s views, which were that
“we do not think that capacity constraints are a legitimate reason for delaying long planned elections”.
However, as that seems to be the course that we are set on, can the Minister confirm that county councillors in places such as Sussex will have their term of office extended only by one year, and that the Government will not end up extending their term of office by two years until the new councils are due to come in? An extension of two years would mean that councillors elected for four years would end up serving a term of seven years. Can the Minister unequivocally rule out any possibility that councillors will end up serving seven-year terms?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
On the noble Lord’s point about the Electoral Commission, we wrote to the Electoral Commission to notify it, and last week I met the commission to discuss the matter. On elections to county councils, our intention is to hold elections for the shadow authorities in 2027.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, my question is asked in the light of the result of today’s Horsley by-election for Derbyshire County Council, in which the Green Party took the seat from Reform with 43% of the vote. Reform had 35% of the vote, the Conservatives 14% and Labour 4%. Given that the political landscape is clearly changing, and people’s political views are changing very fast, is it not right that every community in the land should have representatives who reflect their current political views?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
If those elections are agreed for cancellation, the councillors who would have been due for election will already have an electoral mandate. The councils have decided whether they wish to go ahead with the elections. This is about the capacity of the councils; it is not a political issue.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, this Government have, rightly, condemned some of the ethical standards of the previous Government. They have prided themselves on setting up an Ethics and Integrity Commission, whose work includes, inter alia, ministerial standards, the Electoral Commission, and, above all, the Nolan principles, one of which is accountability. Which of these codes, commissioners for standards and so on has the ability and the right to enforce the Nolan principle of accountability and ensure that elections take place?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I agree with the noble Baroness about accountability and the Nolan principles. It is also the duty of councillors to make sure that they can provide the quality of public services that we expect of our councils. If they are struggling with capacity, it is for them to come forward as part of this process and let us know that that is the case.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, the Minister will perhaps recall 1968 and the GLC coming into consideration. To the best of my knowledge and memory, those procedures were terminated temporarily, and then local elections went ahead. The key point is accountability of those who have been carrying out services for the public over the last couple of years or whatever it is. There should be a judgment on that, which is what these elections are all about.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
As I said, it was up to councils to determine how they responded. The vast majority of places that were due to have elections will have them. Where councils have responded that they feel that it will cause them some difficulty as part of the reorganisation process, the Secretary of State will give due consideration to that.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, there has been all-party consensus on the postponement of elections in the past—for example, in World War II, for foot and mouth disease, and for Covid—but there was no such all-party agreement in this case, and no such extenuating circumstances can be justified. But, if there were, would it not be right for Parliament to have a say on whether elections can be postponed?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
There is clear precedent for postponing local elections where local government reorganisations are in progress. It can prevent costly and distracting elections for short-term posts that may soon be abolished. For example, between 2019 and 2022, the previous Government postponed elections in Buckinghamshire, Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Somerset, and Weymouth and Portland. This responsibility has been delegated by Parliament to the Secretary of State.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, on Monday at 5.38 pm, the Minister gave details of letters that had been sent to four councils—Norfolk, Essex, Southampton and Oxford—and said that they were expected to reply by 10 am the next day, indicating their views. The Minister was asked just now about the timetable that is being followed. Given that we are now well beyond the limited timetable that was given to those four councils, why is it not possible for the Government to give a timetable on which they will take a decision for those who are entitled to a vote on 7 May?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The Secretary of State wrote to four councils following the responses that came in on 15 January because it was not clear from their responses whether they were requesting a postponement. That is why there was a short-term deadline for them to reply on that specific issue. The Secretary of State is now considering all the views provided before he makes the final decision, and he will make that decision as quickly as possible. He is very aware of the timetable needed for elections.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that there seems to be some form of collective amnesia on the Benches opposite? I well recall, as an employee of the Greater London Council, that the 1985 local elections in Greater London, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Merseyside, the West Midlands, et cetera were all cancelled for the political convenience of the Government at the time, without particular reference to democracy. They just believed that they were in the right in getting rid of those councils, and that was simply it.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My noble friend is quite right to say that there is a precedent for cancelling elections. I have been involved with local government for a very long time. At many times in the past, there has been tinkering at the edges of reorganising local government. If we do not reorganise local government, it will not be sustainable for the future. This is the biggest reorganisation of local government for over 50 years. We have asked the councils, if they wish to postpone their elections, to let us know about that. We are now considering their responses.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)
My Lords, later today, the House will debate the children Bill, which proposes an enormous increase in the duties and responsibilities of local authorities. How will postponement of elections help the preparation for those changes, given that they will be working while hoping, but not knowing, that the structures necessary for them to be implemented will exist?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
As the process of reorganisation and devolution has gone forward, a key aspect that the department has focused on with our colleagues in local government has been a smooth transition of key public services such as children’s services. We are reassuring ourselves as we go through that process that all the areas where reorganisation is taking place have a clear plan for the transition of their service from one organisational structure to another.
Sentencing Bill
Wednesday 21st January 2026
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
Lords ChamberSentencing Bill 2024-26 View all Sentencing Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL BIll 161-I Motion for Consideration of Commons Disagreement and Amendments in Lieu - (21 Jan 2026)
Lord Timpson
That this House do not insist on its Amendment 7 and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 7A and 7B in lieu.
“Provision of transcripts of sentencing remarks to victims
(1) Subsection (2) applies if a victim (“V”) requests the Secretary of State to supply V with a transcript of sentencing remarks that are relevant to V.
(2) The Secretary of State must supply the transcript to V, or arrange for the transcript to be supplied to V—
(a) free of charge, and
(b) before the end of the period specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
This is subject to regulations under subsection (3) and Criminal Procedure Rules under subsection (5).
(3) The Secretary of State may by regulations—
(a) make provision about how a request under subsection (1) is to be made;
(b) make provision about the information to be provided in making such a request;
(c) provide for exceptions to the requirement in subsection (2) to supply a transcript of sentencing remarks;
(d) provide that, in circumstances specified in the regulations, a transcript must be provided with the omission of information so specified;
(e) make further provision about the supply of a transcript under subsection (2).
(4) Regulations under subsection (3) may, in particular—
(a) confer a function (including the exercise of a discretion) on the Secretary of State or another person or description of person;
(b) make provision which refers to Criminal Procedure Rules (including as amended or replaced from time to time).
(5) Criminal Procedure Rules may make provision about the supply of a transcript under subsection (2) (including any provision that may be made by regulations under subsection (3) or by virtue of subsection (4)(a)).
(6) A power to make regulations under this section includes power to make—
(a) supplementary, incidental, transitional or saving provision;
(b) different provision for different purposes.
(7) Regulations under this section are to be made by statutory instrument.
(8) The Secretary of State must consult the Lord Chief Justice before making regulations under this section.
(9) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(10) In this section—
“sentencing remarks” means remarks made by a judge of the Crown Court in England and Wales when sentencing an offender for an offence;
“victim” has the meaning given by regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(11) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the circumstances in which, for the purposes of this section, sentencing remarks are relevant to a victim.”
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to see the Sentencing Bill return to your Lordships’ House for, I hope, the final time. Subject to your Lordships’ agreement, the Bill will have completed all its stages and will shortly become law. That moment will be hugely significant for our prison and probation services. It will put them on a sustainable footing and deliver punishment that works. I am very proud of having played my part in taking the Bill through Parliament. Apart from a brief Bill on the Sentencing Council, this is my first experience of getting a Bill through, and I have been struck by the fantastic teamwork from everyone involved.
I will briefly set out the Government’s rationale for disagreeing with Amendment 7 and tabling our own amendments in lieu. Before I do so, I thank again the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks. In keeping with their approach throughout the passage of the Bill, they have engaged constructively and openly. Once again, their interventions have made this a better Bill.
The Government fully supported the intention of Amendment 7: to promote transparency in the courts and improve the experience of victims as they navigate the justice system. We could not accept it as drafted due to the risk that it would significantly increase judicial workload at a time when courts are working intensively to drive down the court backlog. However, I am delighted that we have tabled an amendment in lieu, which expands the provision of Crown Court sentencing transcripts, free of charge, to all victims who request them. This new clause represents an important step forward for victims, ensuring that they are able to request and receive relevant sentencing remarks for free.
Sentencing remarks set out the judge’s reasoning, helping victims to understand how the sentence was reached without having to visit the courtroom—an experience that can be retraumatising for many. This change will embolden victims to look back on their bravery, and to process their experience at their own pace. This clause also delivers a major step forward for transparency more broadly, enabling victims to digest sentencing remarks outside the pressures of a courtroom setting, and free of charge. This is consistent with Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts and the 2017 Lammy Review, which sought to shape a more open justice system fit to serve every victim.
The detail on timeframes and processes for providing transcripts will be set out in regulations, but I can confirm to the House that our intention is that the regulations will specify that transcripts will be provided within 14 days of a request being made. This timeframe will support requests under the unduly lenient sentence scheme, which currently allows referrals up to 28 days after sentencing. I also assure the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, that we are considering his amendment to the Victims and Courts Bill, which would extend this deadline to 56 days, extremely carefully.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the honourable Member for Chichester in the other place for raising important questions about the definition of “victim” and why it is necessary to allow for exceptions. We are carefully considering the scope of the definition of victim for these purposes, but I assure noble Lords that this clause does not restrict us to a narrow definition. We will ensure that there is as much consistency as possible in the definition of victim for the purpose of the code, and we will specifically consider the circumstances that the honourable Members for Chichester and Bexhill and Battle raised in the other place yesterday, where a victim is personally unable to request sentencing remarks. We have no intention of restricting access in these circumstances.
Further details will be set out in regulations, including any necessary safeguards or limited exceptions. We will ensure that any exceptions are limited, and our intention is that all victims will be able to request and receive their Crown Court sentencing remarks free of charge. But there may be circumstances where exceptions or omissions are necessary; for example, to protect the identity of another victim. I reassure noble Lords that these regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure, so your Lordships’ House will have the opportunity to scrutinise the regulations carefully.
I can also confirm that an assessment of the previous pilot for free sentencing remarks for rape and serious sexual offence victims is under way. The results will be published shortly. This explores application volumes, costs of provision and any feedback from the courts on the process. It also includes applicant survey feedback, shared by victims or by those applying on their behalf.
This change represents a profound step forward for victims and for transparency in our justice system. For the first time, every victim whose case is heard in the Crown Court will have the right to access, free of charge, a clear explanation of how the sentence was reached. This is a landmark moment for transparency and open justice and a meaningful improvement for victims across the country. I urge all noble Lords to support the Government’s Motion, and I beg to move.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his remarks and the explanation he gave for the government amendment in lieu of our own amendment. I also thank him for his sustained engagement with Peers across the House, both in and outside the Chamber.
The Government have now committed to publishing sentencing remarks for all Crown Court trials, and we thank the Minister for this step. It was only in response to our successful Conservative amendment that the Government finally acted. It was regrettable that they opposed our original amendment in both Houses, but we welcome their amendment as a step forward in the right direction.
Sentencing remarks explain the judge’s reasoning in determining the sentence imposed. This is important not only for the victims, whose lives are disrupted in the most profound way by crime, but for the transparency required in the justice system. The provision of sentence remarks upon request will mean that victims who are unable to visit the courtroom, whether for practical reasons or because the experience is simply too traumatising, will be able to understand the reasoning behind sentences handed out to offenders.
This amendment builds on the work of the previous Conservative Government, who successfully piloted free access to sentencing remarks for victims of murder, rape and other sexual offences. This amendment now rightly widens that scope to all victims. It is wrong that a victim of, for example, aggravated burglary should have to pay to read the reasoning behind the sentence of the criminal who robbed their shop. This was a clear gap in the law that will now be filled.
The government amendment contains provisions for the timeline and processes for providing transcripts to be set out in regulations. I thank the Minister for his assurance that regulations will specify that transcripts will be provided within 14 days of a request being made. Under our current system, victims have just 28 days to submit an application for the unduly lenient sentence scheme. This can be a complex legal process to contend with in less than a month. It is our intention, as indicated by the Minister, to double the time that victims have available to 56 days. I am grateful that the Minister shares my commitment to ensuring that victims receive their transcripts before that point. Without timely access to these remarks, victims would risk being shut out of the scheme and denied access to justice.
Finally, I turn to the matter of publication. Open justice is an essential foundation of our democracy and sentencing will no doubt become more complex and discretionary under this Bill. We therefore believe that, in principle, sentencing remarks should be made available to the wider public to maintain transparency and accountability. Although the Government are unable to commit to the public release of sentencing remarks at this point, we note the progress made on this issue and we will raise the matter again during the passage of the Victims and Courts Bill.
This amendment represents a significant step forward for victims and for transparency in our justice system. It ensures that those affected by crime can access the reasoning behind sentences, and it builds on a clear Conservative record of reform. While there is more to do, we have now made real progress, and we will continue to press for full public access to sentencing remarks in future legislation.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Marks will no doubt repeat some of the niceties, but I too am glad to see this step forward. I shall ask the Minister some questions on the government amendment.
First, there is the phrase
“sentencing remarks … relevant to”
the victim will be supplied. From what the Minister has said, is that distinguishing one particular victim from another victim in the same case, or what is meant by sentencing remarks relevant to the victim? I have to say that, if I were a victim, I would think that everything that was said in sentencing would be relevant. It also occurs to me that, if the court is required to edit the remarks before supplying them, that is actually more work for the court, which is something that the Government are obviously aware of. I take it that “remarks relevant to the victim” are different from
“circumstances in which, for the purposes of this section, sentencing remarks are relevant to a victim”,
in paragraph (11) of the proposed new clause. Can the Minister clarify what is meant by “circumstances” in this context?
There is also provision for the “omission of information” and making
“further provision about the supply of a transcript”,
which I take it covers not supplying it, though I am obviously not pushing that point. Like the noble and learned Lord, I am concerned to know about publication. A number of us have heard from the Lady Chief Justice of the progress that has been made and the success in using new technology in this context. I also ask what consultation is planned on circumstances, on exceptions and so on—the various points that will be covered by the regulations.
The Minister has said, and we are grateful for this, that answers will be given to questions asked by my honourable friend the Member for Chichester. Briefly, they are whether the term “victim” is to be the same as the definition used in the victims’ code, including where the victim is unable personally to request sentencing remarks; and, where the amendment provides for exceptions, what sort of exceptions—this goes back to my point about consultation—and what sort of information may be omitted. And possibly overarching all this, will the Government be publishing a review of the pilot that was carried out recently? We have heard about it, we gather it has been successful, if limited, so can we hear more about it?
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, we will also support the Government on their amendments in lieu. I say at the outset how grateful I am, and we on these Benches are generally, to the Minister and the Government for tabling the amendments in lieu, which mean that victims will have full transcripts of sentencing remarks free of charge. These will explain the reasons that offenders have been sentenced as they have and will enable victims to understand those reasons, come to terms with them and consider them.
I am also grateful, along with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, for the Minister’s kind remarks about me and him, and for his engagement with us throughout the course of this Bill and on these amendments in lieu. This Bill, which we agree is a better Bill for its passage through this House, has benefited enormously from the work that he, the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, and the whole of the Bill team have put into providing an expert and collaborative approach to the Bill.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, the amendments are certainly an improvement. Obviously, the Bill does not go as far as many of us would have liked, but it is still a pretty good Bill. In fact, if every Government Minister engaged as well and as comprehensively and listened as carefully as the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, this House would be a much calmer place. Perhaps he could give a few lessons to other people sitting on the Front Bench.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank all noble Lords, especially the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for their insightful contributions to today’s debate. I would like to think that my years of doing business deals have helped in trying to get this through. What I have learned doing business deals is that the way to get a good deal is to listen to everybody and, where good ideas come from all places, you take them on board: that is how you get a good deal. I hope the Sentencing Bill is a good Bill, because my colleagues and I have listened and it has been a very constructive process.
On the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I think I answered a number of those points in my opening speech, but I will carefully go through Hansard. Where I did not refer directly to their questions, I will write to them with exact details, and I am very happy to meet up to go through those points.
For me, victims come first and it is our intention to provide full sentencing remarks. We want to focus on the victims of the case, not the victims of different crimes. The involvement of family in this will be dealt with through regulations. We have a broad definition of “victim” and the exceptions will be very limited, but I want to make sure we get this right. We need to make sure that victims are not retraumatised by the process and, where some very vulnerable victims in a small number of cases may not be capable of asking for these, we need to make sure that that is dealt with. I am very happy to write and meet up to get this right.
It would be remiss of me to conclude my remarks without thanking those who have made a vital contribution. I again thank all noble Lords for their careful and constructive engagement through the Bill’s passage. That expertise has strengthened it in many important respects. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, for his expert guidance. I also thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his support, and the Minister for Sentencing for guiding the Bill so skilfully through the other place.
Finally, I thank all the officials across government for their skill and devotion to delivering the Bill. They are a really great team. I beg to move.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
20:02 - Division on Amendment 92 - Ayes: 207 / Noes: 159 - Amendment 92 agreed.
20:14 - Division on Amendment 94B (to Amendment 94A) - Ayes: 65 / Noes: 162 - Amendment 94B (to Amendment 94A) disagreed.
20:25 - Division on Amendment 94A - Ayes: 261 / Noes: 150 - Amendment 94A agreed.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
“Report: barriers to parental support in the care and wellbeing of critically ill children(1) Within twelve months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report on the barriers preventing parents of critically ill children aged between 29 days and 16 years from being by their children’s bedsides during periods of hospital care and the impact and potential harms this has on children’s care, wellbeing and family life.(2) A report laid under subsection (1) must include assessments of—(a) the adequacy of existing measures in facilitating the care, wellbeing and family life of critically ill children aged between 29 days and 16 years by their parents,(b) the barriers facing parents of such children, including—(i) financial pressures,(ii) pressures arising from the parent’s existing or future employment commitments, and(iii) mental health difficulties,(c) options for providing additional support to the parents of such children during periods of hospital care, and(d) the impact such additional support would be likely to have on such children’s care, wellbeing and family life. (3) In preparing the report laid under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult—(a) parents of children who have received care in hospital for an extended period,(b) healthcare professionals, and(c) charities and civil society organisations offering support to parents of children receiving care in hospital.(4) In preparing a report laid under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must have regard to the UK’s international obligations, including under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989.(5) A Minister of the Crown must within the period of 28 Commons sitting days beginning with the laying of a report under subsection (1) make arrangements for a debate on the report by the House of Commons.(6) A Minister of the Crown must within the period of 28 Lords sitting days beginning with the laying of a report under subsection (1) make arrangements for a debate on the report by the House of Lords.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the barriers preventing parents of critically ill children aged between 29 days and 16 years from being by their bedside during periods of hospital care, including financial and workplace pressures, and mental health needs, and the impact this has on the child’s care, wellbeing and family life.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 90 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, seeks to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the barriers preventing parents of critically ill children being by their bedside.
I have been working with Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis for around a year. After their son Hugh passed away, they could have stepped back. Instead, they made a conscious decision to stand up and try to change the lives of other families. They are in the south-west Gallery today, as they have been for previous debates. They have turned the most devastating personal loss into a determination to make sure that other parents are not left to face the same failures that they experienced.
When Hugh died in 2021, Ceri and Frances left the hospital at 11.30 pm. When the doors closed behind them, Hugh was still in there, and suddenly they were out of the system. They stood outside with their bags, trying to work out how they could carry on. They had a three year-old child at home whom they had not seen for three weeks. There was no transport, which they did not expect, and they took an hour and a half taxi ride home in silence while the driver chatted about football and the weather, unaware that their world had just collapsed.
When they walked through their front door, everything was still there: toys, unfinished drawings and the remains of Hugh’s birthday cake still in the kitchen. The pain was unbearable. They woke the next morning and sat in silence. Then, Hugh’s younger brother, Raife, woke up, who they had not seen in three weeks, and said, “Where’s Hughie?” There was no guidance and no support, and they had to do what no other parent should ever have to do: look online.
Ceri tried to access mental health support, but no one could help. The GP was unaware of their situation and just offered sleeping pills. Charities said that there was a 12-week wait. Ceri has been very clear with me that he simply would not have survived 12 weeks without immediate support. By chance, he was introduced to a trauma clinic, and it literally saved his life. The GP and the community team never called; the family were literally on their own.
This experience is not rare. Research consistently shows that between 30% and 50% of parents of critically ill children meet the diagnostic threshold for PTSD, with symptoms beginning at, or shortly after, diagnosis, not years later. Studies show that mothers of seriously ill children face around a 50% increased risk of early death, driven by prolonged stress, cardiovascular strain and mental health deterioration. Fathers face significantly elevated risks, including higher rates of depression, substance misuse and suicide, yet are even less likely to be able to access support. Siblings—the forgotten children; the children not in the hospital bed—are often the most overlooked of all. Research indicates that they are up to three times more likely to experience long-term emotional or behavioural difficulties, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms.
Despite these known risks, the NHS does not wrap its arms around these families. Instead, families are signposted to charities—charities that are themselves underfunded, overstretched and increasingly unable to fill the gaps left by statutory services. There is no consistent proactive pathway where a family is treated as a unit when a child receives a serious or terminal diagnosis. This stands in stark contrast to the support available for families with babies with a terminal diagnosis.
The amendment does not seek to assign blame for what has happened in the past. It does not mandate immediate spending or prescribe a single solution. What it asks for is something far more basic and overdue: it asks the Government to undertake a systematic review of how parents, siblings and families are supported when a child is critically ill or dies: from diagnosis, through treatment and, when it happens, into bereavement.
The amendment mentions
“preventing parents … from being by their children’s bedsides”,
but that does not have to be solely a physical presence. All too often, this means parents being mentally and emotionally available and present for their child. It seeks to ask why support is reactive rather than proactive; why mental health screening is not routine and moved into the community, with GPs and community nurses providing a unified effort to support these parents; why siblings remain invisible; and why families so often fall into the gaps between services. This is about understanding what works, where best practice already exists and how we can ensure that families are not abandoned at the point when they need support the most.
Just over two months ago, Ceri walked from the hospital where Hugh passed away to Downing Street, where he placed Hugh’s shoes on the steps of No. 10 —over 105 kilometres in two days. He carried a 20-kilogram rucksack on his back to signify the weight Hugh was when he died. He did this to signify the weight that parents carry when their child is diagnosed with a serious illness: a weight that most of us will never know or, thankfully, experience.
The amendment is about recognising that a child’s well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of their family. It is about making sure that no parent ever again has to walk out of hospital into the darkest moments of their lives and find that the system they relied on has simply disappeared. I beg to move.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I will speak extremely briefly, having signed the amendment so powerfully introduced and presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I did so after having met Ceri and Frances. I saw that the amendment did not have a second name attached to it and thought that there needed to be a demonstration that there is broader support there. I have no doubt that many noble Lords will have been moved by what we have just heard and would absolutely agree that action is urgently needed. We need to assess the situation and come up with a plan to deal with it, so other families are not put in this situation. Happily, this is relatively rare, but some 3,000 families a year are placed in this situation and they must be supported. I hope that we will hear some positive words from the Minister.
Briefly, Amendment 99 has not yet been introduced, but it seeks to address another tragic situation, where, again and again, children are born and taken away, usually from the same mother. I spoke extensively on that in Committee, so I will not repeat it now.
This is an important group of amendments. I hope we can see some positive direction forward and a further demonstration in your Lordships’ House that campaigning, often by people who have suffered so much, can make a difference and improvements in our society.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I urge my noble friend the Minister to look at the amendment and think carefully about what the Government could conceivably do. I honestly think that anyone who has met Ceri, Frances or both of them could do nothing other than to say that we really need this, urgently. I will speak only briefly. When I met Ceri this week, he was delighted to say that Brentford Football Club, as an employer, is already taking this on and doing something about it. Clearly, there are people who feel that this is not just urgent but a matter of decency and humanity. We should find a way of doing something about it.
Baroness Cass (CB)
My Lords, I was not intending to speak to the amendment, but I also met Ceri this week, and it was a privilege to talk to him. I had not heard that part of his story until my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson told us about it.
I recently stepped down as a trustee of the children’s hospice Noah’s Ark, in Barnet. When I think about the support that families get there—not just during the course of their child’s illness and while they pass away but support for siblings, and the ability, through the Butterfly Suite, to be with the child they have recently lost for a number of days thereafter, through to follow-up and bereavement support that hospice staff provide, as well as advice on benefits and access, which might be crucial to the well-being of those parents —I am struck by the stark difference. That support is provided by charitable funds. It should not be that way. This is a postcode lottery. We have responsibilities to this group of families, who fight so bravely by themselves but who need our support and that holistic wraparound care.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 99 and 101, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. These are designed to tackle the sad and difficult problem of successive removals of children and babies from their parents, in particular from their mothers.
When a child is removed permanently under a court order, typically, a number of things can happen, and, indeed, not happen. The court which made the care order and consequent order for placement for adoption will have no further involvement. The local authority which brought the case may well have little or no further engagement with the birth family, who will receive no more attention and support, at least until there is another pregnancy, by which time it can be too late to address the underlying problems.
The mother, probably traumatised, may react to the first removal of a child with a bad decision to have another child, in the hope, rather than the expectation, that things will turn out better next time round, which is unlikely to occur. The mother and the father, if identified, will have become mistrustful of the local authority social workers and feel stigmatised and unwilling to seek or accept help. The mother may become hard to reach and may not reveal the next pregnancy until the last minute. Her underlying problems, by then, will not have been addressed; indeed, they may have become compounded.
Unless there has been some significant and unexpected change, the local authority will have no alternative but to start new care proceedings for the new child, usually with the same bad outcome as before. Speaking as someone who has had to deal with these cases, I know that those representing the mother and the court will struggle to find any real improvement or anything else to distinguish the case from that of the previous child. These are truly the most wretched cases for any court to deal with.
The charitable organisation Pause has considerable expertise in this area and has evolved a model of preventive support to break the cycle of repeated pregnancies and recurrent removals. The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and others have had valuable input into this problem and highlighted the statistics. One in five care proceedings are repeat proceedings. The repeat proceedings are more likely to involve babies, and almost half of all newborn babies subject to care proceedings are born to mothers who have had a previous child removed. Indeed, it is quite likely that the mother herself will have been in the care system not so long before. The additional financial cost to local authorities for care proceedings and consequential adoption proceedings, and the support required to pay for foster care and adopters, is enormous. The human cost, obviously, is unresolved misery and grief.
Amendment 99 would require local authorities to provide post-removal support where there is a risk of further removal, based on the Pause model of specialist focused and intensive support. Some local authorities do this work, but it should be universal. It has been suggested that, for every £1 spent, £4.50 would be saved in the next four years. However, some local authorities—understandably, given their constraints—are reluctant to look beyond this year’s budget. The Pause model does make a difference, and primary legislation can now make a real difference. That is the basis for Amendment 99.
Amendment 101 would provide for data collection, which would be a valuable aid to local and central government. Ironically, if Amendment 101 was agreed and Amendment 99 did not succeed, it would simply serve to highlight in the data which would be collected the support that should have been provided through Amendment 99. That opportunity should not be missed.
In Committee, the Minister was sympathetic and suggested that one way forward might be by way of family group conferencing, which is part of the structure of the Bill. Quite frankly, that would not be of particular value in these circumstances. The first set of proceedings probably would not have got to where they were if there had been a supportive family in the background, and it would, by then, be too late to prevent what had already become a further pregnancy. Therefore, I do not think that is the answer.
I have tried to avoid repeating points that were made in Committee. I simply quote the late Nicholas Crichton, a pioneering district judge:
“A family justice system that removes the fourth, fifth or sixth child from families without doing anything about the reasons for removal is a failing system”.
I commend Amendments 99 and 101 to the House.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I rise briefly to lend my support to all three of these amendments. I was very pleased to add my name to Amendments 99 and 101 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.
Listening to the debate today, I think this group is dealing with some of the most heartbreaking events that children and families ever face. It has really been very harrowing just to listen to the circumstances that some of these families have found themselves in. I was profoundly moved by the way the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, introduced her amendment. It is a really important amendment, and I very much hope that the Government will be able to look sympathetically at it.
I will just say a few words in addition to what the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has said, particularly about Amendment 99. As we heard from the noble Lord, almost half of newborns in care proceedings are born to mothers who have already been through proceedings with another child, so far too many children are entering care from parents who have already had at least one child removed from their care.
As we have heard, without support—and that is what this amendment is all about: the support that we want to see local authorities offering after a child is removed—parents, particularly mothers, are often left struggling to cope with all the existing difficulties that led to the child removal in the first place, while facing the additional trauma, grief and stigma of losing a previous child. This leads to further child removals too many times. It is simply a heartbreaking, vicious cycle.
But with the right support, parents can stabilise, overcome that trauma and make lasting change. The reason I feel so passionately about this is that in my time as chair of Cafcass, I was privileged to visit various Pause projects, to talk to the people who were providing the support and to talk to the mothers about the difference that having that support had made and why they now felt they could turn their lives around so that they would not find themselves in a position like that of a mother I was talking to—I think I said this in Committee, so forgive me if I am repeating myself—who had had eight children removed and now it was about the ninth child. We just cannot allow these situations to perpetuate. It is not something that a decent and humane society can do.
At the moment only about half of local authority areas are providing any support at all. This amendment is so critical to ensure that support is available and that this incalculable human suffering that we have heard about can be alleviated. I very much look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the Minister, and I really hope we can make progress here.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I echo other noble Lords and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey- Thompson, for her very powerful and moving speech. Sadly, like other noble Lords, I know families who have been touched in similar ways. Both personally and professionally, I hope that the Government listen to the noble Baroness’s advice.
My Amendments 99 and 101 have support from more than 20 children’s charities and the Children’s Commissioner, and I am very grateful to the co-signatories to my amendment. In Committee the response from the Minister focused on early help and family support that the Government will require local areas to deliver as a way of meeting the needs of these women. But as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, although the funding is obviously very warmly welcomed, it does not address the issues for families who have children removed into care, because once a child is removed from a parent’s care, services and support follow the child.
There is no requirement or expectation that the support needs formally identified for the woman during the care proceedings process will be provided after the removal of a child. Without support to change their circumstances, parents are vulnerable to repeat the same traumatic cycle that led to their first, second or—as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said—eighth child being removed. I think the late Nick Crichton removed a 14th child from the same woman, which led to the work that has been referred to today. We know that almost half of newborns in care proceedings are born to families who have been through proceedings at least once.
Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con)
My Lords, I did not intend to speak but I too was greatly moved by the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I have had the experience of trying to care for a child in intensive care while worrying about another child at home. It is not an experience I would wish on anyone. It led me to become a trustee of the Cosmic charity, which tries to help families going through these types of experiences at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, said, charities do incredible work supporting families in the most difficult circumstances. I urge the Government to think about what work they could do to look at the amendment and to see what more could be done to support parents and children in this situation.
Switching lanes to a Treasury mindset, I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendments 99 and 101. I know that the Government are sincere in their efforts to give every child the best possible start in life. I also know that at the Treasury and across Whitehall there is a huge push on government efficiency. This strikes me as an area where our failure to invest properly and consider how we can prevent these tragedies occurring has a huge fiscal cost, as well as the enormous emotional cost that we have heard about today.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, as others have said, this has been an important debate on two issues that go to the heart of how we need to care for those in the most vulnerable and difficult circumstances, and we share the objective of ensuring that we do better in both situations.
Amendments 99 and 101 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, concern support for birth parents who have had a child removed from their care and the collection of national data on repeat removals, respectively. This Government recognise that supporting birth parents can have a significant impact on keeping children safely at home and that more can and should be done.
I think it will be a theme of several of the groups this afternoon—in fact, it has been previously—that in some ways it is inevitable that as legislators we turn to legislation to deal with examples of not good enough practice where we want to achieve change. That is understandable, and in many cases, it is the right thing to do. Equally in my experience, strong practice, good evidence and innovation, often based on local needs, are a more effective way to achieve change. We need to be aware that mandating removes flexibility from local authorities to respond to local needs and priorities, increases local authority burdens and risks diverting funding from other preventive services that are not mandated by the legislation.
Also, we do not currently have a robust enough evidence base to mandate specific interventions nationally. This would also restrict innovation and deter locally developed interventions—for example, in Lincolnshire, whose TIME programme works with mothers who have experienced or are at risk of repeat removals of children from their care. Wolverhampton has a dedicated team supporting parents who have had a previous removal, and Warwickshire has its return home programme. We are already supporting the expansion of these services through the families first partnership programme, which is embedding the whole-family focus that noble Lords have rightly called for across children’s social care. That programme is backed by £2.4 billion of ring-fenced funding for prevention in this spending review period. It has, for example, already supported Redbridge to expand its pre-birth and post-birth service to promote earlier intervention with parents at risk of removals.
Through the families first partnership programme and wider reforms, we want to ensure that children’s social care support does not automatically drop away from a parent if they have a child removed from their care. The aim has to be to embed whole-family working throughout the children’s social care system in order to prevent future removals and to support children in returning home from care safely. We have previously committed to updating our Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023: Statutory Guidance to set out explicitly our expectations that birth parents are offered support. The updated FFP programme guide will also explicitly reference how the programme’s funding can be used to provide this support and will give examples of best practice.
On data collection, while equally, I support the sentiment of Amendment 101, once again I do not agree that a mandated collection is the right course of action or that it would have the desired impact. Mandatory collection would significantly increase the burden on local authorities, take resource away from service delivery and necessitate a significant change from existing practice that would require detailed work to assess feasibility and proportionality. Our wider reform programme is improving data collection and local information sharing. This will have a more positive impact on targeting support at a local level than a national collection.
Amendment 90, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, concerns a report into the barriers faced by the parents of critically ill children. I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Katz when a related amendment was tabled on Report on the Employment Rights Bill. I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this matter to the attention of the House, and, importantly, I acknowledge the resilience and courage shown by Ceri and Frances Menai-Davis in founding the charity It’s Never You and supporting other parents who find themselves facing similar unimaginably challenging personal circumstances. Parents and children in such a situation deserve and need support, and I know that that is the call noble Lords are making today.
My honourable friend in the other place, the Minister for Children and Families, Josh MacAlister, met with Ceri and Frances on 7 January, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson and the honourable Member for North East Hertfordshire, Chris Hinchliff, to discuss the charity’s work and this amendment. Caring for a critically ill child can affect parents’ mental health in different ways, as we have heard. The Government are committed to delivering the 10-year health plan, which sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country. We will transform the mental health system so that people can access the right support at the right time.
Other changes in the plan which will support parents of critically ill children include actively involving carers—in this case, parents—in the care planning of those they care for, as well as improved identification and support of people in such a situation to better understand their responsibilities and to provide more targeted support. In addition to mental health impacts and support, the amendment raises financial and employment pressures. The Government can provide financial support through the carer’s allowance and universal credit to those providing unpaid care to a severely disabled child, and are spending record amounts, due to be around £4.5 billion this year, on the carer’s allowance.
We recognise the considerable sacrifice that parents in this situation must make, and the impact that that can have on their employment. Parents who are employees are currently entitled to emergency time off for dependants, unpaid parental leave and unpaid carer’s leave, all of which may help them to manage situations of serious childhood illness. We know that many employers will go beyond the statutory minimum to support their staff in such distressing situations, and it was good to hear an example.
As announced by my noble friend Lord Katz at the Report stage of the Employment Rights Act, the Department for Business and Trade is working to launch a consultation on employment rights for parents and caregivers of seriously ill children. This will be the first government consultation specifically on the employment rights of these parents. This will consider whether a new leave entitlement in the workplace should be introduced, such as the proposal for Hugh’s law, campaigned for passionately and tirelessly by the charity It’s Never You.
On 11 December last year, my honourable friend the Minister for Employment Rights and Consumer Protection, Kate Dearden, announced that Hugh’s law will have its own chapter in the consultation. It will make sure that the voices of charities, healthcare professionals and families with a seriously ill child are heard, to ensure that any proposals put forward for consultation will reflect the needs of children and their parents. This recognises that more work needs to be done to understand the employment impact on parents of seriously ill children and the precise support that may be needed.
Lastly, in addition to this consultation, I am pleased to be able to tell the House that on the amendment before us calling for a report into barriers facing parents of critically ill children, the Government will take further action and commission a report on the mental health impact on the families of children with a terminal diagnosis. This will include a review of the available evidence and cost effectiveness. Ministers from the Department of Health and Social Care will meet with stakeholders, including Ceri and Frances, to discuss the scope of the report. We do not require a legislative duty to conduct this report, which could in fact slow down its progress, so we do not believe that this amendment is necessary. However, I hope that this commitment and other action being taken by the Government underscore the importance we are giving to this issue and to better supporting families in such difficult and tragic circumstances. I hope that noble Lords are reassured, and that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate today. I will not seek to sum up because I know we have a heavy schedule of business, but I think I am right in saying that there has been universal support for the amendment, which shows the devastating impact that situations like this can have on families.
I want to place on record the immense bravery and resilience of Ceri and Frances for keeping going. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shawcross-Wolfson, for sharing her experience, and I thank the Minister in another place, Josh MacAlister, for the letter that I received when coming into the Chamber confirming that there will be a report on this issue.
I have a few things to mention. I am grateful that the wording and scope of the report, as mentioned by Minister MacAlister in his letter, is up for some discussion. We need to look at the point of diagnosis, as well as, when we are talking about families, making sure that we properly include siblings in that. I welcome the commitment in the letter to keep working with me, Frances and Ceri, alongside other experts. I hope the report he has agreed will be commissioned will be called Hugh’s report, and that we will be one step closer to making Hugh’s law actually happen.
Given the commitments received today from the Dispatch Box and in writing, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Penn
“Guidance on the use of screens and communication with parents and carers in early years settings(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, update the early years foundation stage statutory framework for children aged 0 to 5 in early years settings to include guidance on— (a) the appropriate and safe use of screens and digital technology in early years settings, and(b) effective communication with parents and carers about screen use and digital technology.(2) The guidance must draw on advice from education and health professionals, researchers and academics including on the following areas—(a) the benefits, harms or risks of harm associated with the exposure of children of differing ages, including children with special educational needs or disabilities, to screens and other digital devices,(b) the balance between screen-based and non-digital activities for children in early years development and play,(c) age-appropriate limits for screen time for children in early years settings,(d) safeguarding policies for the use of personal devices and other screens in early years settings,(e) the impact of carers’ and parents’ use of personal devices and screens on child wellbeing and development,(f) the importance of screen-free times and environments, such as during meals, bedtimes, and outdoor play, and(g) practical examples and communication strategies for early years practitioners to share with parents and carers to support healthy screen use and promote positive parent–child interaction, including alternatives such as reading together, helping with daily tasks, and engaging with the natural environment.”
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 91, in my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, and Amendment 106, also supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.
I am conscious that I am the warm-up act for the debate on Amendment 94A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Nash, which is also in this group. However, it is right and appropriate that, before we discuss the issue of teenagers and social media, we think first about the early years. Ofcom data shows that the proportion of three to five year-olds using social media has risen from 25% in 2022 to 37% in 2024, with one in five of those using it independently of their parents. That data is reported by Ofcom but without any comment or action associated with it. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response as to whether the high-quality age verification that may accompany Amendment 94A in my noble friend’s name would be welcome in restricting use among our very youngest children also.
It is not just social media. Some 85% of three to five year-olds go online, with one in six owning their own mobile phone, while 98% of two year-olds watch television, videos or other digital content on a screen on a typical day, averaging around two hours each day—double the WHO recommendation—and among the top 20% of two year-olds that figure averaged five hours per day. Such levels of usage go against everything we know about what is needed for good development in the early years, where adult-child interaction is paramount. It goes against everything we know about how much physical and active play our youngest children need, the importance of outdoors activities and the development of healthy eyesight.
The reason this is so important is that we know that the early years are an important time for a child’s development and impact them much later on in life. That is why this Government have rightly placed so much emphasis on their early years strategy. In that context, the Government’s announcement last week that they will produce guidance for parents and carers on the screen time of preschoolers was incredibly welcome, if overdue. However, this will have a positive impact only if the high-quality guidance reaches parents and helps to change their behaviour. Can the Minister provide any more detail on the early years screen time advisory group that the Government are forming to develop this advice? We have the chairs and the terms of reference, but group membership and planned meetings remain to be updated “in due course” on the government website. Given that the guidance is being published in just three months, it would be useful to know more detail on that.
What plans do the Government have to publicise this advice once it is drawn up to reach parents where they get their information and ensure join-up across government, particularly with the Department for Health and Social Care so that it is integrated into the healthy child programme and available through health visitors and GPs, not just through Best Start Family Hubs? Given the importance of joint working in this area, would the Minister be happy to commit to a joint meeting between the two departments and experts to develop this further?
I turn to Amendment 91. The welcome action on guidance for parents makes the lack of any proper guidance and policy within early year settings an even greater outlier. There is policy around the use of technology in schools, but, in nurseries, often the most tech-rich environments as practitioners use tablets to log so much of a day’s activity, there is currently nothing. This is deeply problematic. It is problematic from a child development point of view, as the use of YouTube in early years settings has been described by one expert as “ubiquitous”, not just replacing the all-important adult-child interaction but using content that is too fast paced for children to learn from. This actually stimulates their fight or flight response, capturing their attention but in a way that is associated with hyper-alertness, hyper-wakefulness and later-life affective disorders. It is problematic from a safeguarding point of view, most starkly illustrated by the tragic case of Operation Lanark, where 18 nursery-issued devices were among the almost 70 seized from the home of a nursery worker charged with the most horrendous cases of abuse.
I am incredibly grateful that the Minister and her colleague Liv Bailey, the Early Education Minister, met me to discuss this and the parental guidance issue discussed earlier. I am really pleased that the Government’s intention is to update the voluntary guidance for settings on the help for early years platform, and, as part of their review into the non-statutory curriculum guidance, Development Matters, to not only include information on screen time and digital literacy but to include it in the next update to the statutory early years foundation stage framework. I would be grateful if the Minister could repeat this commitment today and give a clear timeline for when the amendment to the EYFS will be made.
In undertaking this work, will the department consider the impact of screen time and the wider use of technology and devices in early years settings, by children and practitioners, as well as child development and safe- guarding issues? Screen time is important but, based on research published about current levels of screen time use, “less is better” is an important message. The evidence shows that context and content matter too, and I hope the Government can commit to incorporating this in their approach.
I should be absolutely clear that those settings which choose not to use screens or tech should be free to do so. Tech is not needed for good child development in the early years. If it is being used, it should be informed by our understanding of early years development and accompanied by robust safeguarding practices and clear policy within the setting.
It is essential we get this right. I know a host of education, health and research professionals stand ready to support the Government in their work. I thank Katy Potts at the Digital Standards for Early Years Action Group, Professors Rachael Bedford, Tim Smith and Sam Wass, Birth to 5 Matters and Health Professionals for Safer Screens. These are among the many dedicated people who have been generous to me with their time and worked so hard in this area.
Finally, I should probably explain why it is so important to get clear reassurances from the Minister on this now. I first tabled amendments on this in May last year, but there was no mention of digital technology or screen time in the Government’s early years strategy published in July. Guidance for parents of preschoolers was announced only in January, with no accompanying detail of a campaign to reach parents. On the incorporation of guidance into the early years statutory framework, the Digital Standards for Early Years Action Group wrote to the previous Early Education Minister over a year ago calling for this to be incorporated into the update to the EYFS that went live last September. That call was rejected, although I have never been able to find out why.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to action now and believe it is genuine, but I need reassurance that, once the spotlight has moved on, work will not stop and delivery will happen at pace, in particular on making a substantive change to the early years foundation stage statutory framework this year; otherwise, a two year-old who started nursery when we first debated this issue will have left for school before any change is made. I beg to move.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I rise to speak to the two amendments in my name, which are both amendments to Amendment 94A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. These are necessary if this House is to respond to the online harms that children face in a way that is effective, proportionate and grounded in evidence.
To be clear from the outset, I share the concerns across this House about the real harms that children face online. These range from exposure to age-inappropriate and damaging content to the disturbing prevalence of grooming and exploitation. Parents are right to be worried and Parliament is right to intervene. However, as the NSPCC made clear in its briefing to us, a complex safeguarding problem demands a risk-based response, not a blunt one-age ban.
My Amendment 94B would introduce a mechanism for limited and tightly controlled exemptions to a blanket minimum age requirement. Crucially, such exemptions could exist only where they demonstrably improved child safety, not where they weakened it. Any exemption would be jointly specified by Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner. That joint responsibility is deliberate and important. It would ensure that decisions were made independently of commercial interests and rooted firmly in regulatory expertise and the statutory duty to act in the best interests of children.
The amendment sets out a high evidential bar for platforms. Providers would have to show compliance with Ofcom’s risk-based guidance on minimum age, have full regard for UK GDPR principles and give explicit consideration to children’s rights as recognised by the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child. They would also be required to assess impacts on children’s mental health, examine whether their platform’s design or features encouraged addictive or compulsive use, and scrutinise the role of algorithms in content recommendations and targeted advertising for any products or services, including, for example, gambling content marketing. Importantly, any exemptions would be subject to periodic reviews, with powers for amendment or revocation if Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner were no longer satisfied that adequate protections were in place. This would place a burden squarely on the platforms to prove safety on an ongoing basis, rather than leaving children exposed to unmanaged risk.
The NSPCC, the 5Rights Foundation, the Molly Rose Foundation and 39 children’s rights and online safety organisations have warned us this week that
“blanket bans on social media would fail to deliver the improvement in children’s safety and wellbeing that they so urgently need”.
We already know that age limits are not meaningfully enforced, and these organisations are well respected up and down this country. The NSPCC estimates that, in the UK, more than 2.5 million children under the age of 13 are currently accessing social media. Raising the minimum age to 16 does not solve that problem. Indeed, it risks pushing children into less regulated and higher-risk spaces, including encrypted platforms, anonymous forums and unsafe gaming environments. Children who bypass age checks are likely to register as adults, placing them in an environment with weaker safeguards and a higher exposure to harm. There is also a real risk of unintended consequences. Safe, age-appropriate use of social media such as family group chats, peer support networks and access to services like Childline could be lost, particularly for vulnerable children. Bans may also deter children from reporting harm for fear of being punished for being online at all.
Briefly, Amendment 94C would ensure that the definition of “regulated user-to-user services” was aligned with the Online Safety Act 2023. This House invested significant effort in establishing a risk-based regulatory framework under the Act, and it is essential that this Bill operates coherently within it.
These amendments would not dilute child protection but strengthen it. They would move us away from a blunt, one-size-fits-all ban towards a proportionate, evidence-based approach that respected children’s rights, held platforms accountable and generally reduced harm. The public out there have sent a clear message that they want us to act. It is now up to us in your Lordships’ House and down the Corridor in the other place to act on this. We need to heed the warnings of these respected organisations that have written to us all and to say, “We hear you that there is a need for a ban, but we think we can look at a much more sophisticated model than just a simple, one age limit ban”.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 92, 93 and 94A, in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Cass, Lady Benjamin and Lady Berger. As this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I should draw attention to my registered interests, particularly the fact that I am chair of a multi- academy trust and an investor in a number of companies, including tech and software companies.
I have three amendments in this group. Amendment 94A would raise the age limit for access to social media to 16. In fact, this amendment would do rather more than that; it would do five things. First, it would raise the age limit. Secondly, it would require social media companies to put in place highly effective age assurance—currently, many, if not most, social media companies have no really effective age assurance at 13. Thirdly, the amendment would direct the Chief Medical Officer to prepare and publish advice to parents and carers on the use of social media by children—so, if you like, the start of a public awareness campaign. Fourthly, the amendment would send a message that draws a line in the sand for parents, carers and others to use when discussing social media with children, which they are crying out for. Fifthly, it would allow 12 months for implementation.
We have reached an inflection point. We face nothing short of a societal catastrophe caused by the fact that so many of our children are addicted to social media. Many teenagers are spending long hours—five, six, seven or more a day—on social media. The evidence of the damage this is causing is now overwhelming. We have long passed the point of correlation or causation. There is now so much evidence from across the world that it is clear that, by every metric—health, cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime and economic productivity—children are being harmed. I have sent noble Lords an evidence document prepared by health professionals which sets out over 50 studies from around the world showing a clear link between excessive use of social media and harm to our children. Jonathan Haidt now calls this a “mountain of evidence”.
We are facing a health emergency confronting our children. Since 2016, there has been a 477% increase in children’s contact with mental health services, and eating disorders among 17 to 19 year-olds have risen sixteenfold. There has been a sevenfold rise in young girls admitted to hospital with eating disorders, and the evidence is clear that there is a strong link between this and the substantial increase in rates of ADHD, suicide, depression, anxiety and self-harm among teenagers with overexposure to social media.
Our teachers say that it is the number one cause of disruptive behaviour, and, in their view, it will be the biggest source of pressure for students in the future. Our children are turning up at school sleep deprived. It is clear that many are going to sleep in the small hours on many nights of the week. The NEU and NASUWT are in favour of raising the age limit to 16, as is the chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver.
Social media is at the centre of county lines and radicalisation, so much so that, in 2025, the heads of MI5, Counter Terrorism Policing and the National Crime Agency issued a summer holiday warning urging parents to keep their children safe online. More young people than ever have been arrested in recent years for terrorism offences. Children are increasingly seeing real-life violent content, which only 6% of them initially look for. The evidence is clear that people who watch or discuss violent images are, unsurprisingly, much more likely to commit crime, including knife crime.
I know that some are concerned that a 16 age limit would be to the detriment of particular groups of often vulnerable children, but it is the most vulnerable children who are the most susceptible to influence by social media. The police who specialise in child sexual abuse material and radicalisation say that it is precisely the help forums for groups such as LGBTQ+, those with eating disorders, those with ADHD, et cetera, where the worst abusers hang out and target children.
Social media is being used extensively for sextortion. There are even widespread cases of children hosting live sex shows for payment from their bedrooms on social media. So-called com groups are using social media to trap vulnerable children in games such as cutting games, where the person who cuts the deepest wins; choking games, which have proved fatal; or even games which encourage rape or suicide. One survivor attested to having seen multiple suicides.
Polling demonstrates overwhelming support. The vast majority of parents—75% of adults, including 75% of Labour voters—support raising the minimum age to 16. Most strikingly, young people themselves recognise the harm: 78% of Gen Z say they would try to delay their child using social media for as long as possible. Polling published today shows that 60% of 16 to 24 year-olds—those who have most recently had the experience of social media as teenagers—support a 16 age limit. Over half of 13 to 24 year-olds say that social media is fairly or completely responsible for increasing misogyny or violence against women and girls.
There is global momentum for this. Australia has raised the age limit to 16 and Malaysia is doing so. Many other countries, including Denmark, France, Norway and New Zealand, are considering restrictions. In November, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly for 16. Why 16? Because the teenage years between 13 and 15 are when teenagers are the most vulnerable to influence and have a very high risk profile. Some people call this a cliff edge. I do not see that. The amendment seeks merely to give teenagers a few more years to mature so that they can deal more effectively with social media, distinguish fact from fiction and exercise better judgment.
I know that some charities, including those involving bereaved parents, would like to see an approach which favours using the Online Safety Act and Ofcom more effectively. While we must try to improve Ofcom’s approach, the OSA catches harmful content only once it has been seen, often by children. With 70 million child sexual abuse images out there—and more being created every minute—beheading videos, et cetera, there is no way, even with the best will in the world, that all this content can be taken down and taken down fast enough. Our children will see it. We just want them to see it at a later age.
Nine bereaved families, many of whom are here today, wrote to the Prime Minister on Monday in support of my amendment. Of course, this approach would not deal with the grooming of children on social media channels. Others have proposed that we wait to see what happens in Australia, but what are we waiting for? We know our children are being harmed. We know that tech companies can put in place highly effective age assurance. That is what they are doing in Australia, with a high degree of accuracy—well above 90% at the initial age gate. By tracking the traffic and activity on social media, which they do for all of us, they can tell when a child has slipped through the net. There is a myth that children will get round age assurance, but that has grown up because hitherto there has been no generally effective age assurance at 13. There is concern that children will move to other sites. My Amendment 94A allows for these to be brought into scope. It also allows 12 months for implementation —plenty of time to learn from Australia.
This is going to happen. The only question is when. We have the opportunity to do it now, in this Bill. With every day that passes, more damage is being done to children. We must act now.
I turn to the Liberal Democrat amendments: Amendments 108, 94B and 94C. Well intentioned though they may be, they have been rushed out at the last minute. Surprisingly, in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, has just said, they bring into scope Wikipedia, WhatsApp, Tripadvisor, all gaming apps, and many special interest and health forums, with no ability to exclude them; whereas my Amendment 94A has that facility, which would almost certainly be used. Amendment 108 has no enforcement mechanism if social media companies do not comply with the 16 year- old age limit.
Amendments 108, 94B and 94C seek to avoid scrutiny by your Lordships’ House and the other place on which apps are in or out and seek to delegate this function to Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner, apparently sometimes acting jointly—I do not quite know how that would work—and acting on the basis of vague criteria, creating a huge amount of work for an already overworked body and massive scope for litigation. My Amendment 94A leaves that scrutiny firmly with Parliament. As well intentioned as these amendments might be, they are fundamentally flawed and, therefore, if they are sent back to the other place, as opposed to my Amendment 94A, it will be easy for the Government to knock them out on those grounds. My Amendment 94A has been well thought through and subject to scrutiny in Committee.
I turn to the Government’s proposal for a consultation, which they tell me will last for three months or so. First, the announcement of it on the eve of the vote is unfortunate. When will the actions arising from this consultation be published? We are still waiting for those in relation to the consultation on gender identity in schools nearly two years after the consultation closed —and that issue, complicated though it is, does not involve technology or multibillion-pound tech companies with all the lobbying at their disposal. The consultation talks about exploring ways to improve assessing age assurance. As I have already said, highly effective age assurance already exists. The Government are well behind the A ball. They want to assess the current age of digital consent. This is in fact only one means, and not the most usual means, by which social media companies lawfully collect personal data. Again, the Government are behind the A ball. They want to explore further intervention to support parents. Parents are arguing with their children daily about screen and social media time. They want a line in the sand now. The Government’s consultation is, in my view, unnecessary, misconceived and clearly a last-minute attempt to kick the can down the road.
My Amendment 92 seeks to raise the age of access to VPNs to 18, as it is clear that some children are using VPNs to get round age restrictions for gambling and pornography and might well use them for social media, so it is closely linked to Amendment 94A. On Amendment 93, I have had a constructive discussion with Ministers on this issue and more discussions are in progress, so I will not push that to a vote today. I urge noble Lords to vote for my Amendment 94A on social media and Amendment 92 on VPNs.
Baroness Cass (CB)
My Lords, I have added my name to the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and the noble Lord, Lord Nash. When I was president of the paediatric college, an important part of my job was urging Government Ministers that protecting and investing in children is the only way to protect the future of our country because, as I believe I have said before in this House, children are 25% of our population and 100% of our future. If we fail to protect them, it is not just a moral issue but a financial disaster.
There are two questions we need to ask ourselves when we think about how social media is impacting our youth. First, are they at risk? Secondly, how do we eliminate, or at least minimise, that risk? With regard to younger children, I fully support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and I too welcome the planned guidance. I ask the Government to give careful thought to that guidance particularly in relation to vulnerable and disabled children. They may be more limited in their abilities for alternative physical activities so screen time is, understandably, an easier default, and advice for those families is particularly important. It is also important to think about how to reach those harder to reach families or marginalised families who may not easily access the guidance. A final thing I would say, following on from the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, about who will be in the group, is that the input of speech and language therapists will be particularly important, given their obvious involvement in early language development.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, I have followed these issues closely through my work on the Online Safety Act, first as a member of the Joint Committee, then on the Opposition Front Bench and now on your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee. I added my name to Amendment 91 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and I am delighted that that Government are listening and hope that Ministers can give the noble Baroness the reassurances that she seeks.
Turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, I first thank him for raising these important issues and detailing the harms so compellingly. The harms caused by social media are clear, both in terms of the harmful content and that they are addictive by design. The algorithms operate in a moral vacuum; platforms’ algorithms do whatever it takes to keep us on screen. I am attracted to the Government’s proposal in the consultation around banning addictive design rather than a blanket age ban. That could see a huge reduction in harm for all of us, as today’s University of Sussex research about doomscrolling demonstrates.
However, it is our children whom we most want to protect. My 14 year-old at home is time-limited on her phone; she is not allowed her phone in her room overnight and is limited to two social media accounts. This is difficult to parent, but it is our responsibility as parents to navigate it with our children. Incidentally, the two social media accounts she chooses are WhatsApp and Pinterest. Both are allowed under the Australian social media ban. One keeps her connected to family and friends, and the other she needs for her GCSE art. Under Amendment 94A, on my reading of it, it seems pretty categorical that it would include all social media platforms and she would be banned from both.
Lord Nash (Con)
I am interested to hear from a Labour politician, for whom I have a great deal of respect, that there are parents who can control their kids, but it is the most vulnerable kids and the least advantaged kids who live in households in which there is no discipline who are the most exposed.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
The noble Lord and I debate with great respect and friendship. My reading of
“regulations made by statutory instruments require all regulated user-to-user services to use highly effective age-assurance measure to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users”
is that this is categorical.
Lord Nash (Con)
The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, is that it would be up to the Government, approved by this House and the other place, which apps are in and out. Clearly, it would be possible for those apps suitable for children to be excluded, as would WhatsApp and Wikipedia. The Lib Dems have drafted their amendment in such a way that it would include everybody, and it would be up to this very complicated procedure with Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to work this out—which, frankly, would be a nightmare.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
I will move on. I will try harder to read further to get to the same place as the noble Lord, Lord Nash—but I doubt it.
Pinterest was implicated in the suicide completed by Molly Russell. Molly’s father, Ian, is thoughtful, brave and inspiring. I listened to him talk on the BBC this week about why he and countless other expert children’s charities are against a blanket ban on social media for under-16s. They worry about the unintended consequences for children’s safety. A blanket ban is likely to lead to under-16s finding less regulated platforms to connect to online, such as gaming platforms or the dark web. It is worth noting that according to recent Internet Matters research, boys spend significantly more time on gaming platforms than on social media platforms.
Children may also turn to VPNs, which would then undermine the child safety gains of the Online Safety Act. The VPN amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, tries to address this, but age-gating VPNs may be extremely problematic. My phone uses a VPN, following a personal device cyber consultation offered by this Parliament. VPNs can make us more secure, and we should not rush to deprive children of that safety. A blunt, blanket ban—it is a struggle not to call it a Blunkett ban—would also deny young people the positives of some of the less addictive social media.
Young people will continue to want to connect with each other. They will want to share music, their photos and videos, and their creative content. I was of the mixtape generation, now replaced by the shareable playlist. Young entrepreneurs will want to market their products: will they have to use an adults account on an adult’s phone, and be exposed to the risks of adult content as a result?
When I speak to young people in my capacity as president of Young Citizens, I am struck by how well informed they are. They find out what is going on in the world through social media. Is it right that we lower the voting age to 16 and simultaneously prevent access to news for 15 year-olds when we want them to become well informed?
The arguments for doing something urgent and meaningful about the dangers to children of social media are compelling, but so are the arguments for doing it in a more sophisticated way. For that reason, we should back the Government’s consultation. I note that this is a three-month consultation. Can the Minister please reassure us that action will follow within the 12-month timeline suggested by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash?
We should at the same time urgently review how the Online Safety Act is working. We need to retain the risk-based approach to regulation in the Act. But Ofcom’s current stance of treating all children, all the way to 18, as the same is flawed. We need age-appropriate design, and we should give Ofcom the unambiguous requirement to ensure that age restrictions and guidance about social media access are rigorously enforced. This in turn requires mandated, robust age assurance. We must develop this, sensitive to the digital rights of children and mindful that we do not want unwittingly to require big tech to hold sensitive data about our children. I also echo Ian Russell’s call for us to listen to children and young people as we make these changes. That is one of the really good reasons why we should go ahead with a consultation.
I conclude by urging Ministers to act swiftly and to listen to parliamentarians, but also to experts and young people, and then to act robustly, platform by platform, to deliver the ambition of the Online Safety Act to make this country the safest place in the world for children to grow up.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight. Like him, I have been involved in debating online safety issues—from the internet safety Green Paper through to the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill, and then seeing the Online Safety Bill become an Act. I declare an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation.
I will speak in support of my noble friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley’s Amendments 94B and 94C, which are amendments to Amendment 94A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash. In doing so, I urge the House to strengthen his proposal by transforming it from a blanket ban into an effective, harms-based approach to social media regulation that can actually be implemented and enforced within the same timetable.
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.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, it is such a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. She is absolutely right. We have a choice today on whether we will send an amendment to the Commons to put pressure on the Government to act or whether we are going to flunk this opportunity. I support her conclusion that this is a moment when the House of Lords does need to act.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Penn for her Amendment 91, which is thoughtful, patiently put and important. I hope very much indeed that the Government pay attention to her notes on timetable and that, if necessary, she presses this point so that she gets what she needs.
I want to address Amendment 94A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Nash, and pay tribute to the noble Baronesses, Lady Cass, Lady Berger and Lady Benjamin, all of whom have made an enormous impact on this. Guardrails for our children are where we have landed. I say this with some regret, but it is important that we recognise this point.
The noble Baroness, Lady Cass, mentioned a meeting with the royal colleges. As a former Health Minister who has had many dealings with the herd of cats that are the royal colleges, I say that if they unify and say that there is a public health emergency, we should pay attention to that moment. We should not be brushed off by attempts to knock this into the long grass via public consultations. We should listen to our clinicians. Dr Rebecca Foljambe and the clinicians against smart- phones have done conclusive research on the harms done by screen time, by predators, by fraudsters, by the filth on the internet and by the sheer quantity of screen time that our children are subjected to. It is an utterly persuasive argument. Further research is not needed.
In fact, a consultation is the tobacco industry playbook, applied to smartphones for adolescents. Delay, consult, lobby, weaken—we know this playbook very well. We do not need a “get out of jail” clause for the tech companies; we need implementation. This is our opportunity for doing it.
Like many others in this Chamber, I worked really hard on the Online Safety Act to make it a success. It is a landmark piece of legislation. I am extremely proud of bits of it. But it assumed that we could work with the platforms to moderate their algorithms, to remove the filth, to prevent the predators, and to limit the screen time. It assumed that we were working in some kind of collaborative partnership with Facebook, Google, TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, Twitter and all the other social media companies to protect children and work towards some kind of better world.
That was a catastrophic misjudgment about the nature of these companies and of their leadership. The outcomes for our children, which have gone significantly backwards in the last two years, are testimony to that point. That damage done to our children is accelerating, with the tsunami of AI that is heading their way. The platforms have not reformed. They have not taken the bait. Instead, they have taken the mick. They are introducing artificial intelligence and totally inappropriate chatbots to our children.
The risk assessments that are an absolutely essential building block of the Ofcom regime and the Online Safety Act are an absolute insult to the intelligence of the regulators and of parents. How on earth did a risk assessment ever assess Grok’s new AI tools as being safe for children? It is a complete joke. The noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Clement-Jones, say that these platforms can be moderated, that they can be brought to heel, and that they will abide with the regulator’s will. But we have got to remember that they will not change, because around 25% of their clicks—the page views—come from the children they are targeting, and they are far too reliant on mis-selling those children’s eyeballs as adult eyeballs to advertisers. You cannot regulate far-off tech titans who are reliant on that income. You can only create perimeters in which they can hunt their profits, and that is exactly what the amendment seeks to do.
I recognise that there are sensible, respected voices who take a completely different view. Noble Lords have rightly paid tribute to the Molly Rose Foundation. I know that Ian Russell, and the NSPCC and other charities, have argued that instead of guardrails we should strengthen the Online Safety Act. They say that we should mandate well-being by design requirements, and Ian Russell has said that we should require platforms to prioritise child well-being in algorithmic design, and that age verification creates
“a false sense of security”.
I just do not think that is right. This argument rests on a false premise that we can somehow design our way out of the problem while keeping children on platforms whose entire business model depends on their exploitation. That cannot happen. You cannot algorithmically mitigate something that is not a design problem but a business model problem. The algorithm is not broken; it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: maximise engagement, keep eyes on the screen, and amplify provocative content, because provocative content keeps people clicking, including our children. This is not a market failure; this is a market working as designed by the companies that have monetised our children’s childhood as a commodity.
There are other noble Peers, such as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who are flying a kite on the possibility of some kind of film-style certification system. I also share that dream. What a wonderful world it would be to live in. I lived in that world for many years. Previous to being here, I was the strategy director of Capital Radio, in much-loved local radio, which, in the 1990s, was a warm and loving place to work and operate in. For every single local radio station, the Government had a licence which dictated exactly who they could broadcast to and what content they had on their radio station. If you breached that licence, they pulled it and gave it to someone else. It meant that local radio was extremely compliant with the licence details. Our broadcasting was a warm and lovely thing that was safe for children.
It is completely unrealistic that we are going to appoint something like a modern Radio Authority that will issue licences for every single website in the world and in some way oversee what our children access on those websites. How many bureaucrats would be needed to look at all those licences? How many armies of enforcement agents would be needed to issue the fines? How could we possibly read all that content?
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.
Baroness Bertin (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendment from my noble friend Lord Nash and thank all noble Lords who cosigned it. I am nervous about making this speech today because I am praying that my daughter does not read Hansard.
I speak as a member of this House, of course, but also as a mother. I have a direct and vested interest in this amendment and make no apology for that. But I also feel I have to speak for the army of parents who, like me, have watched, frankly, in disbelief as our children’s childhoods have been steadily hollowed out to varying degrees.
Obviously, lots of us are doing everything we can to keep our children safe. I am the devil incarnate at home because I have not allowed my daughter to use Snapchat. We have gone into a sort of plea-bargaining state, if I can put it that way, whereby I have not allowed Snapchat but have allowed Pinterest. I thought Pinterest was perfectly harmless. I thought it was a nice place where I picked wallpapers and had a jolly nice time going through it. What could possibly be the problem? I was delighted. I said, “Yes, of course you can have Pinterest”. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, it is quite an artistic way to operate. But in fact, Pinterest is now just pushing my daughter a whole load of consumer advertising. She has popped in that she wants a T-shirt of some make or other and, of course, now—bang, bang, bang—the notifications are coming in non-stop.
There is a big reason why we now have teenage girls—not even teenage girls; 11 year-old and 10 year-old girls—slathering their faces with hyaluronic acid and anti-ageing creams, products they should not even know about let alone be buying, not least because they are blooming expensive. It is ridiculous.
Adolescence is a period of profound emotional and neurological change— hormones, friendships, identity and insecurity playing out in a young developing brain. To then introduce the relentless comparison, exposure, validation and amplification of what social media does is to add a weapon to those brains, which are simply too young to cope. Crucially, they just should not be expected to cope.
I completely accept the arguments against a full ban. I hardly ever disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I met with Molly Russell’s father two days ago and have huge respect for him and for the other side of the argument that perhaps it is just too black and white. But I am afraid that these companies absolutely thrive in the complication, sophistication and difficulty. Meanwhile, as a parent, there I am trying to get the parental locks on and to work out how to turn off the mind-boggling push notifications and stop the device going into the bedroom—with degrees of success. Five years ago, a partial ban or platform-led safeguards might have been defensible, had we been dealing with companies worthy of trust. That trust has now completely disintegrated.
From the work I have done on the pornography review, we know that boys aged 11 and probably younger have seen pornography. A boy, before his first kiss, aged 13, will have seen rape porn, strangulation porn and incest porn. Where did he see that porn? Mainly on X. Eight out of 10 sites are social media sites, not pornography sites. That is an outrage, and it was something they knew about and, actually, were actively pushing. It was not that the kids were necessarily looking for it; they were pushing those algorithms on to them. So, how can we possibly trust having a dialogue with these firms when we know that that is their business model, as my noble friend Lord Bethell made very clear?
At the other end of the scale, research shows that 70% of offenders who attempt to contact children do so online. This is a business model that is borderline criminal, certainly very toxic, and so sophisticated. Regardless of the amendments that say, “We’re going to have conversations with Ofcom and we’re going to do X, Y and Z”, they have already made off like bandits with our children’s innocence, and to be perfectly honest I think they will carry on doing so if we take that approach. An overall ban is essential, then afterwards we can look at which apps and sites will be suitable.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, once upon a time, in a previous moral panic about children’s safety, parents reacted to the media and politicians catastrophising by stopping their offspring playing outside unsupervised. The unintended consequence was the creation of what became known as cotton wool kids, prone to risk aversion, anxiety, lack of resilience and social isolation. Ironically, to compensate, many of those children were forced to cultivate their activities online. Their social interactions became virtual, and here we are.
I worry that we risk similar unintended consequences now if we rush to pass a social media ban for under-16s, so I will be opposing Amendment 94A. I know it has become normalised that, whatever social, cultural or moral panics we encounter, we believe that we can legislate to make them go away. I fear that this sort of lawmaking can lead to avoiding tackling difficult problems and to attempts at quick-fix solutions that too often create a whole new raft of difficulties down the line.
I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, blamed social media for eating disorders, radicalisation, terrorism, the mental health epidemic, ADHD, poor behaviour in the classroom, misogyny, violence against women and girls, and on and on. At this rate, all that Parliament would have to do is ban the internet for everyone and all problems would be solved. There is a danger of looking for easy answers and scapegoating social media for all society’s ills.
I worry about attempts to push this through too quickly or to fast-track it. It is interesting that the three-week fast-track consultation put forward in the other place has been discussed as though it is holding things back. The leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, calls it more “dither and delay”. But this proposal is new; it has only just arrived here on Report as an amendment that would fundamentally change every citizen’s relationship with social media, not just children’s. I worry about attempts at steamrolling it through, with an assumption that everyone agrees that it is so obvious and inevitable that there is no point opposing it. I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, for an attempt at proportionality, even though I do not think it goes far enough.
We are hectored that this is what parents want. There has not been a referendum of parents, though there are polls. Many parents are pulling their hair out and will be tempted by it—it is so much easier to say, “You can’t because it’s against the law”, than it is to assert adult authority. Teenagers’ and children’s pester power can be the bane of all our lives. If only the law could be extended to ban other things and make them illegal—no, you cannot wear that hoodie; no, you cannot spend hours gaming; no, you cannot go to that sleepover; no, you cannot gorge on junk food; no, you cannot go to that party. In truth, this approach encourages parents to outsource their authority and shifts responsibility from parents to the state. All families ultimately are being told that they are incapable of managing their children's habits, and that is a dangerous precedent. It can disarm parents in the name of empowerment. Is there really a consensus among parents on this? Many of my friends are split down the middle, so I do not think we can claim the evidence is in.
What about the incontrovertible scientific evidence that backs a ban? The jury is out. The causal relationship between social media and mental well-being in teens and young people is much more contested than has been implied. Recent extensive research by academics at Manchester University found no evidence that social media has increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression. The chair of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group, Professor Louis Appleby, points out that the evidence is, at best, circumstantial, noting that self-harming in the young began well before social media took hold in that age group. That reflects what I know from my own work in relation to mental ill-health and young people; I do not think it can totally be blamed on social media.
An Oxford University study of nearly 12,000 children showed no correlation between screen time, including social media, and mental health. Instead, the way in which children engage with social media is what determines its impact and—shock horror—in many instances, evidence shows the positive impact of social media use. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said that no more research is needed. That is anti-scientific and complacent, and I do not think it is true.
Let us be clear about what this amendment as drafted would do in relation to user services. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out the dangers to, for example, WhatsApp, websites such as Wikipedia and so on. That needs clarifying at the very least.
Despite histrionic headlines, social media can be used for self-educational ends. There is a new generation of autodidacts who are teaching themselves coding, video producing, editing and even musical instruments, languages and chess. I know that sounds rose-tinted and a bit glib, but social media often is a tool for connections—finding your tribe, making new friends—and a place where you can cultivate solidarity and autonomy as a young person. It can be a counter to the social trend towards fragmentation.
What about allowing the young to explore diverse political perspectives? On the eve of 16 year-olds being given the vote, surely it is important, if not essential, that we do not narrowly restrict soon-to-vote teens to state-sanctioned media channels. We want them to broaden their horizons, and explore and develop a democratic curiosity about the world, and they are going to do that online. When talking to school pupils, as I do often, I recommend that they find out about their peers around the world as part of them learning about international relations. What civic lessons might British children learn by looking at those brave protesters in Iran whose commitment to freedom has given them the courage to take on a theocratic Islamic regime and whose stories we know because they used social media to organise and to connect with each other and the rest of the world? That was, of course, before the ayatollah shut down the internet—oh, the irony.
As for safety and whether this ban will throw children off a cliff edge, it risks not equipping youth with the skills to safely and responsibly navigate the online world, knowing how to identify problems, spot dodgy red flags and apply strategies to deal with them. As the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, pointed out, in all likelihood, many pre-16 year-olds will find ways of migrating to even riskier unregulated platforms or the dark web without guardrails and zero moderation. Our teenagers and children are clever and, dare I say it, devious. They will find a way. They will use VPNs—but it is okay, because noble Lords are going to ban those too. I hear that there is already a roaring trade in fake IDs among pre-teens.
Finally, how will over 16 year-old adults be affected by this ban? Whereas the Online Safety Act age-gated only certain types of harmful content, Amendment 94A would age-gate entire platforms, even when the content is child-friendly or harmless. According to Big Brother Watch, a 70 year-old accessing the neighbourhood news, a 50 year-old looking up the history of golf on Wikipedia, a 30 year-old small business owner responding to customers on Instagram and a 17 year-old wanting to message parents on the way home from school would all require age-verification measures. That is the threat to adult civil liberties and the right to privacy and, in effect, it means that we will have to digitally verify to participate in the public square. I do not necessarily think that young people will gain from this, despite the hyperbole.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I remind the House that we are on Report, and I think some of the contributions are in danger of erring on the wrong side of self-regulation. We should stick to the point; I will be very brief and simply try to explain for the benefit of the Government Front Bench, because in various Bills going through Parliament in the last month or so, this subject has raised itself in various forms. I sometimes notice the Front Bench being slightly amazed at what is coming at them from all sides and not necessarily understanding why. That is largely because they were not in your Lordships’ House at the time we went through the lengthy discussions about the Online Safety Act. What they are hearing today is a collective howl of rage and frustration across the House because what we thought we were very clear was meant to happen has not happened. I will give one or two facts which back up the view of my noble friend Lady Kidron that, whatever we do, we have to gather together—the right reverend Prelate made a very good point—and collectively send a message to the other place that this situation is simply not good enough.
Today, within the last 10 hours, a court case has been going on in California against Snap, Meta and TikTok where a group of parents are accusing those organisations of creating products which are addictive. It so happens that in the last 24 hours, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has settled with the complainants. That is because, I suspect, if they had not settled, the chief executive of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, would shortly have had to appear in person in the court to answer the case against his company. He chose not to do so. Mr Zuckerberg is apparently also in the queue to give evidence at this trial, and it will be interesting to see whether his company takes the same route.
Yesterday, along with many other colleagues, I was part of a session of Learn with the Lords in the Education Centre. I took the opportunity to talk to the young people, most of whom were 14 and 15, about what they thought of a social media ban, which all of them were aware of—probably through social media. Almost without exception, they said they were against it and gave the sort of reasons one would expect, such as “That’s where we get our news from”, and so on. The teachers were completely and utterly in favour of a ban. We can take from that what we will, but I suspect the fact that they see day in and day out in the schoolroom the effect on the pupils they are trying to help, to develop and to manage—and to mitigate, in some cases, difficult behaviours—means that are completely united that this is unsustainable.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, mentioned that in Australia they have a different regulator, an e-safety commissioner. Comparing the e-safety commissioner in Australia with what we have in Ofcom is a bit like comparing “Crocodile Dundee” with “Dixon of Dock Green”. The difference is that stark.
Last week in the Peers’ Lobby, I met one of the bereaved parents whose child has died as a result of exposure to social media. I told that bereaved parent that a group of us were going to meet the chief executive of Ofcom within the next couple of weeks. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Simon, would you give the chief executive a message from me?”. I said, “Yes, of course”. He said—and you will excuse my Anglo-Saxon—“Would you kick her up the arse?”.
Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lady Kidron and the right reverend Prelate. We have a choice to make today, and I hope that we will make the right choice.
I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, which is really important. Early years matter—they matter so much that we must do everything we can to protect them.
I also support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to which I have added my name. I wish to speak on Amendment 94A, which is really important, as I strongly believe that children under the age of 16 should not be able to access social media and have social media accounts. This is a necessary measure until the online platforms accept their responsibility, implement stringent safety controls and perform their duties to our children. We have given them the opportunities to do so; now is the time for us to act decisively. Each minute we wait, more damage is done to our children’s well-being.
It is great that the Government have moved on this issue, but they have done so in the wrong direction. There is no need for a consultation, which will cause even further delay. We have all the evidence we need; we have to stop this catastrophe now. The world is watching us, and I believe that many countries will follow suit, because this is a global crisis.
There are those who believe that this amendment is a blunt instrument and will prevent children accessing the outside world. I do not agree. Let us consider the options. What would we rather have: children becoming addicted, showing signs of anxiety, even taking their own lives and being exposed to the terrible age-inappropriate dangers allowed by social media providers, who do not have our children’s interests at heart, or protecting them until those social media providers get their act together? I know which option I would choose. This amendment sends a clear message to those who want to harm our children and fail to protect them. They have failed in their duty, and now is the time for us to act.
It is important to make clear that children do not need a social media account to access the internet. I am not proposing to ban children from the internet, which is a great source of information for their educational studies on platforms such as Wikipedia or BBC Bitesize. The amendment is preventive. It would prevent them having social media accounts where they can be contacted and reveal personal and private details that expose them to potential abuse, harm or coercive behaviour. The word “ban” is emotive, but the amendment is a preventive measure in the same way that children cannot buy alcohol or a lottery ticket. You would not allow your children to freely play on the motorway, so why do we allow them to easily open social media accounts that can cause harm and trauma and, in some cases, endanger their lives?
For the last 20 years or more, I have been speaking out and begging children to resist temptation and to be aware of what the online world was seducing them into. I have begged them to switch off and say no to these temptations, which lead them down a path of potential harm. Unfortunately, my message and warnings did not spread far enough and we are now facing a crisis, an epidemic of children suffering from mental health issues, depression, isolation, bullying, blackmail and intimidation—the frightening list goes on and on— because of their exposure to the dark side of social media.
What have we done to our children? Many of them have had their innocent childhoods snatched away from them, sliding down into a cesspit of uncontrolled harm, danger and disturbing behaviour. The scary reality of the depression and mental health issues that children are experiencing is frightening. According to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, there was a 22.7% increase in suicide rates of those aged between 10 and 24 between 2012 and 2022. It has been well documented that adolescents are showing rising addiction to social media and face a doubled risk of suicidal behaviour. There has been a fivefold increase in eating disorders among 11 to 16 year-olds, according to the NHS Digital mental health of children and young people in England survey. The Nuffield Foundation predicts that GCSE results will worsen steadily over the years to come, when fewer than 40% of pupils will achieve good grades in maths and English. The decline in children being exposed to books and reading skills is now becoming evident, and many organisations, such as BookTrust, are striving to encourage reading and to persuade children to pick up books and become lovers of the written word.
Another worrying concern for us all, as highlighted last year by the Children’s Commissioner, is that 59% of children first saw pornography by accident and 27% have seen pornography by the age of 11. One mother told me that her four year-old was abused by a 10 year-old who said to her, “I’m going to rape you and you’re going to like it”. Where did he get that kind of language from?
In one Demos focus group, every single girl had received unsolicited sexual images. There is also evidence that children are now using mainstream social media to host live sexual content for payment. How did we get to this? Why have we allowed it to happen? The proportion of children reported as perpetrators of sexual offences is rising, driven significantly by early exposure to pornography. This is something that I have long lobbied to prevent. Thank goodness we now have Ofcom-implemented protection due to the Online Safety Act.
Social media can be addictive and consume time and energy in a negative way, especially for young people. Research from the World Health Organization has found that 11% of adolescents globally show signs of problematic social media use: addiction-like symptoms, including the inability to control usage; withdrawal symptoms when offline; neglect of other activities; and signs of anxiety. In England, 20% of 11 year-old girls and 23% of 13 year-old girls have problematic usage. That is three to five times higher than adult alcohol dependency and 3.5 times higher than adult drug dependency. Let us release our children from this dependency and anxiety. Let us set them free from all this. We must do that.
Children need a world of positive role models, giving them a holistic understanding of the world around them, presented in a verified way, not an online environment that distorts their thinking, behaviour and perception of the world with misinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news—a world filled with influencers, a world making them feel inadequate. My daughter is a teacher and is having to deal with the outcome of all this on a daily basis, like so many other teachers across the country.
What is social media doing to our children today and exposing them to? What type of future is ahead of them? If we do nothing now to protect our children and grandchildren, we should be ashamed of ourselves, as the damage to young minds and heartaches of families will only increase. There is an argument for more parental control, but parents cannot look over their shoulder 24/7; they need our help.
I urge the Government to back the amendment and help to protect our children, because there is a strong case from teachers, health practitioners, parents and law enforcement that children under the age of 16 should not be able to access social media accounts. We have a huge responsibility to safeguard our precious children and their well-being. The amendment is vital. It would send a clear message to those who would harm our children and allow them to be scarred for life. As I always say and will say again, childhood lasts a lifetime. That is why I wholeheartedly support Amendment 94A, and I urge other Members to do the same.
Baroness Berger (Lab)
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 94A, along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin and Lady Cass, and the noble Lord, Lord Nash. In the interests of time I will not talk about the other amendments, but I commend the noble Baroness on her introduction of this group of amendments.
There are a handful of issues that consume me on a daily basis, and the negative impact of social media on millions of children and young people in this country is one of them. Despite the important introduction of the Online Safety Act to control illegal material and prevent children accessing harmful and inappropriate content, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, expertly articulated, not a week goes by in this place when we do not hear how Ofcom is struggling to enact and enforce this important legislation. That law does nothing to protect the next generation from social media, with its highly addictive algorithms, its constant notifications, its ability for unsolicited contact by people unknown to children and its barrage of content that young people are not even seeking or searching for. While it might not fall under the definitions of illegal or harmful, it is still misogynistic, divisive and shaming; diminishes our children’s self-worth; is racist, dangerous, and violent; and contains a disproportionate amount of misinformation and disinformation. We are going backwards because, if we do nothing, the situation will only get worse as the tech companies continue to fight for our children and young people’s attention and develop their social media products to get as many eyeballs on their platforms as they can in the pursuit of profit.
As one of the handful of parents in this place with primary-age children, I am deeply concerned by the constant stream of case studies that I hear from other parents about the effect that social media is having on their children, who have had to move school due to bullying on social media, who have had the police turn up on their doorstep due to their children being groomed or exploited on social media platforms, or whose child is in in-patient mental health care for eating disorders they are suffering from that have been amplified due to social media use.
I am deeply concerned having listened closely to our teachers, who, as we have heard, are having to grapple on a daily basis in the classroom with the consequences of the content that our children and young people are being bombarded with on social media and the impact it is having on their attainment. That is no surprise, given that Ofcom tells us that the average time our children are spending on these platforms is 21 hours a week.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, I have absolutely no desire to stifle debate, but I ask anyone who wishes still to speak to be very mindful of the number of votes we are expecting at the end of this group. We also have very important dinner break business scheduled for tonight. Please be brief and to the point so we can move on with this important debate.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I have two original points to make that have not been covered at all. We should bring ourselves back to the fact that there is an enormous amount of agreement around this Chamber. I think everyone will say we feel enormous sympathy for the families, some of whom are here today, who have lost family as a result of contact with social media. We all accept that we want 16 year-olds on the day of their birthday to be able to stride out into the world confident, capable, ready to step into adulthood. Most of us want to rein in the overwhelmingly powerful digital companies which have been allowed to run wild across the world by political decisions made by adults. I particularly commend the right reverend Prelate for naming the spectre in the room—Donald Trump and his tech bro friends. He is a spectre here and is now recorded in Hansard.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, that we have very broad agreement that the Online Safety Act has been a total failure and Ofcom is not delivering what it should be doing. Those are the points of agreement. Where my conclusions drive me is that I would back Amendment 91 from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, with some caveats, which I will get back to, but it is not my intention to vote for any of the ban amendments before us today. I have a great deal of sympathy with the Lib Dems’ brave effort to find a way through a middle road and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, almost swayed me that we should make a gesture. The case I put, argument one, is that your Lordships’ House is not the right place: we are not the right people to be making this decision. Many of us have joined since the depths of Covid, but those who were here then will remember when the House went largely remote and lots of people who had never used a computer before were suddenly on Zoom. We met their grandkids: “There you are, Granny. You are off mute now”.
I invite your Lordships to look at the people around you. We are extraordinarily unrepresentative of the country in many ways, but particularly in terms of age. This is where I draw on the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, but come to a different conclusion. I was also in the learning centre and spoke to some of the same pupils. They overwhelmingly said, “We do not want a ban”. My argument is that we must stop doing politics to young people. We must give young people agency and a sense of control. We have bequeathed to them a disastrous, damaging world; failing to give them a say in this is absolutely the wrong way forward.
On that point, I have a serious proposal for the Minister. In the consultation, are the Government prepared to include a people’s assembly that represents young people from around the country? Rather than just asking young people to tick a box in a survey—we all know what happens with “yes” or “no” votes—this would give them the chance to deliberate on how they think we can control the future and improve their situation.
My second point is important and has not been said before. In this debate we have heard a huge amount of scapegoating of social media. Social media is a mirror: it reflects the misogyny, violence, racism and fake news that runs across and through our society, it does not create it. If we could wave a magic wand and get young people off social media, they would still be affected by the dreadful levels of poverty and the schools that operate as exam factories, putting them under tremendous pressure and subjecting them to unbearable discipline. They would still have parents who are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. They would still encounter all the misogyny and racism in our society. When we are debating and voting on this, we must understand that social media is a mirror; it is not creating where we are now.
Lord Tarassenko (CB)
My Lords, I will speak briefly about the lack of scientific evidence for Amendment 94A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. No one disputes that rates of suicide, depression, anxiety and self-harm have increased among teenagers in the last decade. However, the question before us is whether a social media ban for under-16s would decrease those rates.
I know that this has been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, but I still believe that evidence from randomised controlled trials is important, even in this context. There have been no randomised controlled trials of social media bans or restrictions for healthy under-18s. The lack of experimental evidence in adolescent populations may be because it is difficult to experimentally manipulate social media use in such an age group. There was one RCT of 220 adolescents and young adults aged 17 to 25 with pre-existing emotional distress, who were asked to reduce their social media use to one hour a day for three weeks. However, the sample participants selected were all experiencing at least two of four symptoms of depression and anxiety, and should therefore be classified as a clinical sample, not a representative sample of the general population.
There is an RCT of adolescent participants from which we can learn, even though it has not started. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust and it will take place in Bradford and feature adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16. The intervention will not be a ban, but will involve a smartphone app that, importantly, limits the use of social media apps using a co-produced combination of a daily budget of one hour per day and a night-time curfew between 9 pm and 7 am.
The co-production of the trial is very important. We need to hear the voice of young people when designing these interventions. They themselves are very concerned by the negative impacts of social media. Perhaps not surprisingly, the feedback from the teenagers in Bradford schools was that they would be against a ban, but they would be willing to accept significant time limits on their use of social media.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, I will also endeavour to be brief. Like many who have spoken already, I spent a very large amount of time on the Online Safety Act. I agree entirely with the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. This is a cry of pain and anger from this House that I hope the Minister is hearing, but I do not think that banning social media for under-16s is the right thing to do. I will add two reasons that have not been discussed so far.
First, I worry that absolutely nothing will change by implementing a ban. We already have a minimum age of 13; go into any primary school and you will find how effective that is. I urge the Minister to tell us how she is going to implement the minimum age we already have. How is she going to stiffen Ofcom’s backbone to hold tech companies to account? Otherwise, we can legislate all we like, but it will not make any difference.
Secondly, I have huge respect for the eloquence with which my noble friend Lord Nash set out the horrors and harms that social media is undoubtedly doing, but there is one flaw in his argument. He quoted a lot of research that points to the harm that excessive use of social media does to children. A ban, however, is zero use. We must be very careful about that. Social media is part of the modern world; it brings good as well as ill, and to simply ban it is abdicating responsibility.
I worry hugely that we are letting the tech companies off the hook. We have to hold them to account to produce products that are age appropriate. We have done that with every other technology as it has grown up over the centuries, and we should not duck the issue now. That takes me to the right reverend Prelate’s point, which seems like quite a long time ago. I am in the same dilemma, because I am absolutely certain that change has to happen, that the Online Safety Act is not working as those of us who worked so hard on it envisaged, and that Ofcom is not delivering. I doubt that more consultation solves that problem. But I am worried about passing this baton back to our colleagues in the other place. I am worried because a ban on social media has a nice ring to it. I am worried when I hear Ian Russell say that we must not use our children as a political football. We must really work out what the right answer to this problem is.
I ask the Minister to listen to this emotional debate. Those of us who worked on the Online Safety Act can see that there are about hundredfold more people in this Chamber now than there were at any stage of the Online Safety Act. That shows how much we all care about it now—not just that everyone is waiting for a vote. I ask the Minister please to hear the concern, the fury and the need to act. But, my goodness, if we send this back to the other place, I hope it will not translate into a blanket ban on social media for under-16s but into proper action to make the internet a better place for our children.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
With respect, everyone else has had an opportunity to speak, but no one from my party has, and I want to make some remarks. The House should draw a level of unity from the fact that, although a variety of solutions are provided by these amendments, common threads run between them: a common acceptance of the level of crisis that our young people face, and a common desire, I think, to provide greater levels of protection for our young people.
On the competing and well-argued cases for the amendments, I am more persuaded by Amendment 94A from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, which I believe is cleaner, clearer and bolder. Nevertheless, whichever amendment we settle on, I agree with others that the one thing we cannot afford to do as a House tonight is to prevaricate. I cannot put myself in the mind of the Government. Therefore, I cannot determine whether the proposed consultation is a sincere attempt to engage seriously with this issue or, as was suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, a cynical device to get past the problems internally in the Commons.
There are clear problems with the consultation. First, it does not produce any guaranteed outcome. A lot of us are concerned that, over a prolonged period of time, the muscle of the big tech companies will adjust that to water down whatever comes forward. Secondly, it does not produce swift results. We do not know a timeframe that ultimately will lead to implementation. The longer we delay, the more harm is caused to children. Where possible, we should always be reluctant to ban and restrict but, when we look at the protection of children, we have to make an exception to that. The case for action now is overwhelming.
During the passage of the Online Safety Bill, one of the most moving and significant meetings that I attended was one hosted by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, where she brought in families of children who had died as a result of various online harms. There was a common thread for a lot of those families: they had become victims because of social media. Whether that was issues around self-harm, suicide, sexploitation, bullying or a range of other things, a major danger is out there.
I acknowledge that the gathering mental health tsunami among our young people did not start with social media, but it has been exacerbated by it, and we need to take action against it. Even below that level, we are faced with, as I have seen it put, a “zombification” of our young generation. No one is suggesting in this debate that any solution that we produce will entirely be a panacea or 100% watertight and effective in its nature. But, if we took that approach to its logical conclusion, as indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, we would simply have no restrictions on young people on any subject or harm. So we need to grasp the nettle.
In conclusion, there is a stark choice before us tonight. We can either embrace the clarion call of the overwhelming majority of parents on this issue and take bold and decisive action to protect our young people, or we can kick the can down the road and neglect our duty to those young people. I hope the House chooses the former tonight.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. I will speak to my Amendments 108 and 110A, and briefly to Amendment 91 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I start by thanking the hundreds of thousands of mums, dads, grandparents, single parents, teachers, et cetera, who have kick-started this campaign. While politicians have not been able to get action, they have swung into action.
If noble Lords talk to any MP of any party in this Parliament, they will tell you that they receive hundreds of thousands of emails and letters. I was talking to our digital lead MP, Victoria Collins, and she told me that, in the last three days alone, she has received 1,500 pieces of paper about this. Why? It is because parents do not trust us to do anything. Of course, with the Online Safety Act, they were promised that we would see a new world, but when they look around they see that nothing has changed. Frighteningly, when I asked the Minister a few weeks ago how many companies have been fined or prosecuted for what they have put online, he did not know the answer. That does not fill us with confidence.
Creating a safer future for our children and grandchildren is at a critical crossroads. Our parents, teachers, experts and even young people themselves are calling for action. I hear from real teenagers talking about their experiences online. One teenager said:
“I look at my younger brother and I’m so worried about how much he seems addicted to screens, we have to do something”.
Another said:
“Help, I just can’t stop”.
When doctors discovered that smoking kills, and when research showed that seatbelts saved lives, we acted. Today presents an opportunity to take a similar life-saving action.
It is clear that everyone here is strongly committed to this end goal—to safeguarding children and protecting them from the risks of the online world. Parents and children are both telling us that they feel powerless in the face of platforms designed to maximise engagement at any cost. We see the evidence mounting in our schools, with rising rates of anxiety and depression among young people. Consultations that kick the can down the road are not enough when we face a public health crisis.
So the question before us is not whether or not we must act but how effectively and how quickly we can act. One approach, that of the the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is a blanket ban on social media for under-16s, as well as on many other areas of the internet. I fully support the intent of this approach. Again, we are all here in the name of children’s well-being and the decisive action that is needed. But, as we have heard, we have heard from over 42 charities and experts, including the Molly Rose Foundation, the NSPCC, the Internet Watch Foundation, the Centre for Protecting Women Online, and 5rights, and they all have major concerns about this approach. These are the experts—I am not an expert, noble Lords are not the experts, but they are and they deal with this every day, and yet they have concerns about this approach.
We can look to Australia and see why. When Australia banned social media for young people, it took an approach similar to that of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, creating a specific list of prohibited platforms. What was the result? Within 24 hours of TikTok’s ban, the company launched a new platform under a different name, one not on the banned list. More fundamentally, this list-based approach ignores the broader digital landscape: the harms presented in online gaming, which the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, does nothing about; AI-generated content; and countless other platforms that fall outside these narrow definitions.
Lord Nash (Con)
I must take objection to that. We had a meeting on Monday. I made some proposals, and then the noble Lords went away and I heard nothing. They came back with their amendment. I think that is slightly glossing over the facts.
Lord Storey (LD)
We must ensure that children are protected online and send a message to the Government that now is the time for action, not consultation. As Liberal Democrats, we know that children come before politics. We must work together for their safety and future.
I turn briefly to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I praise and thank the noble Lord for taking this initiative. He deserves a lot of thanks from this House. He has worked tirelessly to get a solution. I was concerned when he said that we had rushed out a counter-amendment. We have not rushed out a counter-amendment at all. Children’s charities came to us and expressed their concerns, and we wanted to ensure that we listened to what they said. We have tried to incorporate that in the amendment. We tried to work with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to achieve an amendment that we could both support.
At the end of the day, as I said on my previous amendment, it is children who are important. We are not interested in playing yah-boo politics or trying to score points. We will support Lord Nash’s amendment because we understand, as the right reverend Prelate rightly noted, that something has to come back to this House on which we, as a House, can then work together.
I turn briefly to Amendment 110A.
Lord Storey (LD)
This amendment is in my name. We are on to Front-Bench speakers and I have spoken for only 10 minutes.
In Amendment 110A, we propose raising the age for processing personal data in the case of social networking services from 13 to 16. This amendment covers platforms where users create profiles, interact and share content. It would exclude educational platforms used in schools and universities for educational purposes, as well as health services such as NHS Digital platforms and crisis helplines that process data and provide care and support.
Raising the age is vital to the well-being of children in this country, who must navigate an increasingly digitalised world. Social networking services often use personal data for the purposes of delivering personalised content, such as targeted advertising and curated recommendations. Such things have been condemned by Ofsted, as they can have a substantial negative impact on children. Algorithm-driven content can keep children scrolling for hours, disrupting sleep patterns, physical activity and face-to-face social development. Targeted advertising can exploit children’s vulnerabilities, promoting an unrealistic body image and exposing them to age-inappropriate products, as highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass. Recommendation algorithms can create echo chambers that amplify harmful content. Children can be exposed to content such as extreme dieting advice and self-harm material at a developmental stage when they are particularly impressionable and cannot critically evaluate what they are being shown. This amendment is therefore key to children’s well-being.
The years between 13 and 16 represent a critical window of opportunity where children can be susceptible to the design features that social media platforms employ to maximise engagement. By allowing platforms to harvest and exploit the personal data of 13 year-olds, we are essentially permitting commercial entities to conduct behavioural manipulation on children at their most vulnerable. The mental health crisis among young people, with rising rates of anxiety, depression and eating disorders, cannot be divorced from the datafication of childhood and the attention economy that profits from it. My amendment is simple: the age for processing personal data in the case of social networking services should be raised, so as to provide children with three additional years of protection from commercial data exploitation during a critical period of their development.
Finally—
Lord Storey (LD)
I was going to speak to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, but certain Members are heckling me. I will just say how important this amendment is and that I hope the House will support it.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, a good speech is a short speech.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I have spent most of this debate rewriting my speech. I have tried hard to listen to what noble Lords have said. We have three options before us tonight: the Government option of a consultation; the Liberal Democrat option; and the option from my noble friend, Lord Nash, as it relates to social media.
Briefly, before I talk about the three options, I would like to say to my noble friend Lady Penn that, rather than being a warm-up act, she gave us a master class in how to present an amendment. She made a well-argued, practical case for her amendment, underlining the importance of shifting norms for very young children at the earliest possible stage and calling urgently for firm action, and timing on that action, from the Government. Like others, we look forward to the Minister’s reply.
To return to the group of amendments that deal with social media use, we have before us, as we have heard, an opportunity to end the harm that our children and grandchildren are experiencing as a result of the hours that they spend on there. I was going to talk about the merits of my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment, but I think others have done that extremely ably.
I will therefore turn to the key differences between my noble friend’s amendment and that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Between the fiercely critical comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about Ofcom struggling and critically undermining implementation and wider failures, and the comparison made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, of Ofcom being to the tech companies as “Dixon of Dock Green” is to “Crocodile Dundee”, I think those noble Lords have done my job for me. The key element in the Liberal Democrat amendment is that we would give powers to Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to decide which apps are safe or not safe. Whether it is my noble friend Lady Harding, who may be in a slightly different place in this debate than I am, or many other noble Lords around the House, they have noted that Ofcom is struggling with the powers that it was given in the Online Safety Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Berger, put it extremely well. Do your Lordships want to give to a struggling organisation one of the most complicated jobs before us? I would suggest that we do not. It should of course advise the Children’s Commissioner and the Government, but it should not be responsible.
The second reason it should not be responsible is one of democracy. We have too many recent examples, of which your Lordships will be aware, where we have delegated incredibly important powers to unelected and relatively unaccountable officials, however competent they might be, and we should not do that again. Our democracy depends on our colleagues at the other end being given the chance to decide, and Parliament deciding, what is or is not appropriate for our children, taking advice from every expert that they can draw on, many of whom we have heard from this evening.
Thirdly—I was finding it hard to wait to the end to get to this point—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, should be not mentioned anywhere near this endless reference to a “blunt, blanket ban”. I was so grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, as I was about to read out proposed new subsection (5) of Amendment 94A from my noble friend and the noble Baroness. This would not be a blanket ban, and it is, if I may say so, irresponsible of noble Lords who kept asserting that and referring to it as such, even once my noble friend had clarified that it was not the case. Crucially, proposed new subsection (2)(b) would also give our Government time to learn both from some of the scientific work that is going on and from the Australian approach. Amendment 94B would add neither in terms of flexibility or future-proofing but would dilute democratic accountability, which we do at our peril.
Turning to the Government, I would say that now is the time for leadership on this issue. The proposed consultation and approach set out in yesterday’s Statement, with a government amendment at Third Reading, does not feel like leadership. We have heard tonight that we do not need another national conversation. The nation has spoken very clearly about its level of concern, and parents and children will not thank us for further delay. The Government argue that views are divided, and we have heard tonight that the children’s charities are split and bereaved parents are split. If we wait for consensus on this issue, the one thing I am confident of is that not a single one of us will still be in your Lordships’ House. As Martin Luther King wisely said,
“a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus”.
The Government need to get moulding, and fast, because we owe it to our children to act now to protect their childhood.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, it is clear from the debate that we have had this evening that this is an issue about which there is considerable concern. This Government recognise those concerns about the impact of screen time and about children’s online safety, particularly given some immensely troubling cases. This is a topic of profound national interest and, understandably, as we have also heard today, there are a range of opinions. However, one thing that we are all aligned on is the importance of keeping children safe. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology set out just yesterday in the other place, we are determined to help parents, children and young people to navigate these issues. We know many in this House and the other place have concerns around children’s online safety, how much screen time they get and how this can impact well-being. Rest assured that the Government hear those concerns and are prepared to act to deal with them.
I will come to yesterday’s announcement of a new consultation looking at how to improve children’s relationship with social media, but we should first recognise the significant action that this Government have already taken. The Online Safety Act brought in one of the most robust systems globally, with ground-breaking steps to tackle illegal content and activity and to protect children from harmful and age-inappropriate content. Much discussion today has been, as some have called it, frustration at the extent to which that is being fully utilised, but Ofcom has been prioritising its initial enforcement action against the most egregious harms, such as child sexual abuse material, self-harm content and children accessing pornography.
We fully expect further enforcement action to come. We have been very clear to Ofcom that it has the Government’s full backing to take enforcement action. We have since built on the Act’s foundations. First, we made content that promotes self-harm and suicide a priority offence. This provides users the strongest protections in the Act against this awful content. Last week my noble friend Lady Lloyd of Effra stood in this Chamber and confirmed that we will expedite legislation to criminalise the creation of non-consensual intimate images, and that this will be designated a priority offence under the Online Safety Act. Following this we made intimate image abuse and cyber flashing priority offences, and following that we have introduced an offence in the Crime and Policing Bill to criminalise AI models used to create child sexual abuse material. But we know that there is more to be done.
Amendments 91 and 106 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, seek to update the early years foundation stage statutory framework and ensure a public information campaign on screen use by children aged nought to five. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, has prosecuted this case with considerable energy and by bringing evidence to the Government. She has engaged well and the Government have taken action. Last week my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education announced that we will publish new practical, evidence-informed guidance for parents on early years screen time. Following a review led by the Children’s Commissioner and Professor Russell Viner, the new guidance will be published this April and made available to parents through the Best Start in Life website, giving them the clarity and support they are asking for to navigate screen time with their youngest children. The first meeting of the advisory group is tomorrow.
As part of this, we are going further still on screen time by developing guidance for parents of children aged five to 16, building on the early years guidance already under way. This will help parents to navigate the issue and support healthy conversations with their children about screen time. We are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS to ensure that screen time guidance and messaging to parents and families are delivered through the most suitable and impactful channels to ensure that all professionals, including those in the health system, have simple and practical messages to offer parents. We will use multiple routes, extending beyond government channels, to raise awareness of it among parent audiences, including the Best Start in Life website, designed to provide trusted and supportive information for parents.
We think this new guidance should be available for early years practitioners. We will update the non-statutory guidance to provide further information and emphasis on screen time and outline the considerations around adult use of technology within settings and any implications this has on interactions with children. Where needed, the provider guidance will go beyond the early years screen time guidance for parents and we will take the next opportunity to incorporate the updated help for early years providers guidance in the early years foundation stage frameworks. In addition, the department is preparing to review our non-statutory curriculum guidance for early years settings, Development Matters. As part of this, we will include information on screen time and digital literacy to support early years practitioners and teachers to build and design an effective curriculum.
We are taking more action on appointing an expert panel to inform guidance for the sector on the effective and safe use of digital devices and CCTV. If findings from that review indicate that the requirements within the early years foundation stage need to be strengthened, we will of course do so. On the point about timing, we are able to commit that substantial changes will be made to the early years foundation stage after September 2026, but we will do this as soon as possible and no later than April 2027.
The provisions of the Online Safety Act have set the foundations and we are taking further immediate action, with new screen time guidance to support parents of early years children and practitioners. But we have always been clear that we will continue acting to protect children online and their wider well-being. Most debate on amendments today has been on those that seek to regulate children’s relationship with social media. Amendment 92 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is on VPN services. Amendment 94A was also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I accept the points made by noble Lords that the noble Lord has prompted considerable debate on this. Amendment 94B was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. Amendments 108 to 110A were all tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. It is clear that there is a range of different views on the action that we need to take, even as there is a consensus that action is needed.
As many will be aware, yesterday the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology announced that we are taking still further action, because keeping children safe online is a top priority for the Government. We will launch a short, sharp consultation on how to improve children’s relationship with social media. This will be a three-month consultation, with the Government reporting back in the summer. We are determined to help parents, children and young people deal with these issues, with a lasting solution that gives children the childhood they deserve, enhances their well-being and prepares them for the future. As we have seen play out in this debate today, while there is consensus that a problem remains, there is a difference of opinion on how children’s relationship with social media and screen time should be further tackled. This is shown, as several noble Lords have identified, by some of the most prominent voices in this field believing that a social media ban is not the right answer. This is exactly why we are consulting on this matter.
As the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology stated yesterday, this is not about whether we should act; it is about how we should act. The consultation will seek views on a range of measures on many issues that have been raised: determining the right minimum age for children to access social media, including exploring a ban for children under a certain age; exploring ways to improve the accuracy of age assurance; and reviewing whether the current age of digital consent is the right age. It will also include reviewing children’s use of VPNs and how these can circumvent online safety protections. It will be accompanied by a national conversation. It is centring the voices of parents, children, those with lived experiences and people who work closely with children across the public sector. We will be sure to capture voices from across society, including the most vulnerable.
Rest assured that we intend to move quickly on this. As I say, it will be a three-month consultation, with the Government reporting back in the summer. To reassure the House, as the Secretary of State set out clearly yesterday, we want to act on this. We have had constructive conversations with noble Lords about these issues and we are keen to continue those conversations ahead of Third Reading to find a way forward on the Bill that allows action to be taken following the consultation and, if necessary, to bring forward an amendment at Third Reading to enable the Secretary of State, through secondary legislation, to deliver the relevant, evidence-based outcomes of the consultation. As I have set out, the question is not whether the Government will take further action—we will act robustly. The question is how to do this most effectively. I hope that this will reassure noble Lords of the Government’s intention and that they will feel able not to press their amendments in this area.
Finally, I turn to Amendments 93 and 110B, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Nash and Lord Storey. Amendment 93 would require any device sold in the UK to be preloaded with technology to prevent the recording, sharing and viewing of child sexual abuse material. Amendment 110B would prevent the creation, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material. I acknowledge noble Lords’ intention to protect children through these amendments. I want to be clear that the Government share the ambition to protect children from nude imagery and to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material online. That is why, in the violence against women and girls strategy, we have made it clear that we want to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view nude images.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I will be brief. My only plea to noble Lords, as we take this issue forward beyond today’s debate in the Chamber—as I have no doubt that we will—is that we keep the interests of our very youngest children in mind. If we think that companies and the regulator take this seriously, how can it be that the proportion of three to five year-olds using social media has risen from one in four to nearly 40% in just two years, since the Online Safety Act was passed? If the fact that one in five two year-olds is spending five hours a day on average on a screen is not a call to arms then I do not know what is.
On my Amendment 91, I welcome the commitments from the Government. The gap is now small, indeed it narrowed by a further few months during the course of this long debate, and I will hold them to account for delivering on it. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 91.
“Action to prohibit the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom(1) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed the Secretary of State must, for the purpose of furthering the protection and wellbeing of children, make regulations which prohibit the provision to UK children of a relevant VPN service (the “child VPN prohibition”).(2) Regulations under subsection (1)—(a) may make provision for the provider of a relevant VPN service to apply to any person seeking to access its service in or from the UK age assurance which is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not that person is a child;(b) must apply the child VPN prohibition to the provider of any relevant VPN service which is, or is likely to be—(i) offered or marketed to persons in the United Kingdom;(ii) provided to a significant number of persons;(c) must make provision for the monitoring and effective enforcement of the child VPN prohibition.(3) OFCOM may produce guidance for providers of relevant VPN services to assist them in complying with the child VPN prohibition.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.(5) For the purposes of this section—“child” means a person under the age of 18;“consumer” means a person acting otherwise than in the course of a business;“relevant VPN service” means a service of providing, in the course of a business, to a consumer, a virtual private network for accessing the internet;“UK child” means any child who is in the United Kingdom.” Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to take action to promote and protect children’s wellbeing, and to further support child protective measures in the Online Safety Act, by prohibiting the provision to children in the United Kingdom of VPN services which can facilitate evasion of OSA age-gating processes.
“Action to promote the wellbeing of children in relation to social media(1) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must, for the purposes of promoting the wellbeing of children— (a) direct the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom (“the UK CMOs”) to prepare and publish advice for parents and carers on the use of social media by children at different ages and developmental stages, and(b) by regulations made by statutory instrument require all regulated user-to-user services to use highly- effective age assurance measures to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users.(2) Any advice published under subsection (1)(a) must have regard to—(a) the paper published on 7 February 2019 entitled “United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ commentary on 'Screen-based activities and children and young people’s mental health and psychosocial wellbeing: a systematic map of reviews'”, and(b) any scientific or other developments since the publication of that paper which appear to the UK CMOs to be relevant.(3) Any regulations under subsection (1)(b) must be treated as an enforceable requirement within the meaning of section 131 (and for the purposes of Part 7) of the Online Safety Act 2023.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1)(b) or subsection (5) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.(5) For the purposes of this section—“the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom” means the Chief Medical Officers for—(a) England,(b) Wales,(c) Scotland, and(d) Northern Ireland;“regulated user-to-user services” shall have the meaning given to it in the Online Safety Act 2023, subject to any modification, addition or exclusion as the Secretary of State may specify in regulations made by statutory instrument under this subsection.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to take action to promote children’s wellbeing in relation to their use of social media by commissioning advice from the Chief Medical Officers and introducing regulations to prevent under 16s from accessing social media.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley
“subject to any exemptions under subsection (1A).
(1A) Any exemptions to regulations made under subsection (1)(b)—(a) must be specified only by Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner acting jointly, and(b) can only apply where—(i) the primary purpose of the exemption is to address or mitigate harms arising from social media use by children,(ii) the exemption specifies an alternative minimum age to that provided under subsection (1)(b), and(iii) the provider of the service has demonstrated to the satisfaction of Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner that it—(A) meets Ofcom’s guidance concerning appropriate, risk-based minimum ages,(B) has due regard to relevant standards and principles of the UK General Data Protection Regulation, (C) has particular regard to the importance of protecting the rights and best interests of children, as recognised by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,(D) has considered the potential impact of the service on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of children,(E) has investigated the extent to which the service’s design, functionalities or features may encourage addictive or compulsive use, and(F) has considered and reviewed the use of algorithms for content recommendation, amplification or targeted advertising.(1B) Regulations made under subsection (1)(b) must also provide for—(a) periodic review of any exemption to ensure the continuing adequacy of protection for children, and(b) amendment or revocation of an exemption where Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner are no longer satisfied as to the matters set out in subsection (1A)(b)(iii).”
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
I thank all noble Lords for the debate that we have had, but I would still like to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, this is a convenient time to break for dinner break business. We will return to the Bill not before 8.36 pm—
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I meant 9.36 pm —wishful thinking; I was just checking that your Lordships are all with me—to allow time for ping-pong on the Holocaust Memorial Bill.
Holocaust Memorial Bill
Wednesday 21st January 2026
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
Lords ChamberHolocaust Memorial Bill 2022-23 View all Holocaust Memorial Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 162-I Marshalled list for Consideration of Commons Reason - (21 Jan 2026)
Lord Collins of Highbury
That this House do not insist on its Amendment 1, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason 1A.
The Deputy Leader of the House of Lords (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, in moving Motion A I will also speak to Motion A1. It is a pleasure to bring back this important Bill to your Lordships’ House. The ambition to create a new national memorial to the Holocaust has been pursued by successive Governments, with support across all parties, for a number of years. The need for such a memorial and for a learning centre, which will remind people of the terrible facts of the Holocaust, seems only to have increased during this time.
Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to noble Lords who participated in the early stages of this Bill, in particular my noble friend Lord Khan of Burnley, who worked so diligently to promote the Bill through its earlier stages in the House. I also acknowledge and thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for his commitment over many decades, commemorating and learning from the Holocaust. I was delighted to hear today that he has been invited to attend a special session of the Council of Europe on Monday to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
I recognise that there are many different opinions and strong views about the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre, especially regarding the proposed location. Earlier debates on the Bill addressed those matters in depth. Today’s debate will focus on a much narrower question, though a question of considerable importance. On Report, the House supported the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, which aimed to ensure that the sole purpose of the learning centre should be education about the Holocaust and antisemitism. I recognise that the intent and the sentiment behind the amendment is to ensure that there is no mission creep and that, in the focus of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre, there should be no attempt to divert attention from the unique nature of the Holocaust.
I appreciate that Motion A1 has the same sincere objective of ensuring that the learning centre remains focused on education about the Holocaust and anti- semitism. That is what the Government want to ensure and intend to do. I am personally committed to that. I was very pleased to meet the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, and other noble Lords who supported the amendment on Report. We had a very fruitful and frank exchange, and I think we were at one. I am grateful to them for engaging in constructive discussions about the amendment, including the Government’s view of why the Bill is not the appropriate instrument for creating the safeguards that noble Lords intend to put in place.
As with the well-intentioned amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, we do not consider that the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, is appropriate for the Bill. I remind noble Lords that the purpose of the Bill is to do two things. First, it authorises expenditure on the construction, operation, maintenance or improvement of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. Secondly, it seeks to remove a statutory obstacle to its being built next door, in Victoria Tower Gardens, should it receive planning consent.
Given the narrow function of the Bill, adding a statutory provision along the lines envisaged in the amendment would create a good deal of uncertainty as to its enforceability. In the absence of wider provisions around governance, it would be unclear who would be held accountable for any breach of the requirement and what the consequences would be. Operation of the learning centre in these circumstances would carry risks. It would be difficult for the governing body to be sure what types of activity could fall outside the permitted range, and it would be open to the opponents of the learning centre to challenge any activities and create obstacles through litigation.
Through the discussions with those supporting the amendments, we agreed that a more effective approach would be to focus on the governance arrangements for the body which will, in due course, have responsibility for the operation of the learning centre. The noble Lords have, I hope, agreed to support the removal of the amendment from the Bill in return for certain assurances. My honourable friend the Minister for Devolution, Faith and Communities gave those assurances in another place yesterday, and I am delighted to repeat them tonight.
“Learning Centre purpose
The main purpose of any Learning Centre must be the provision of education about the Holocaust and antisemitism.””
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, my purpose in speaking is to try to rescue the central plank of what remains of this memorial. The Lords amendment stated that the sole purpose of the learning centre must be the Holocaust and antisemitism. I have retained pretty much the same wording. No alternative was put forward in the Commons and no reason given for the rejection other than that it is inappropriate. But having listened to Ministers, I can see that a vision of the purpose of the learning centre is emerging that is much more valuable than what has been suggested in the past.
In the past, the promoters have been asked repeatedly what their intent is for the planned learning centre, and they have prevaricated, sometimes suggesting that it will be all about Nazi genocides and at other times that it would include many genocides and wars, including in Rwanda, Serbia, Cambodia, Darfur and Bosnia. Of course, originally, the learning centre was planned to be about the British perspective on the Holocaust, which is a rather niche subject and would not be very educational for those who know nothing about it.
“Holocaust” and “genocide” have become general words of disapproval without definition. Throwing them around robs the Holocaust of its specificity, relativises it and diminishes its lessons for the future. It was quite different in origin and execution. The Nazis systematically set about eliminating 6 million children, men and women. That history is a warning to future generations, as we see increasing antisemitism orchestrated today. If a purpose of the memorial and learning centre is not defined as we suggest, there is a risk that it could be put to other, less effective ends.
It seems the Government agree. The point of difference between us is this: if the Government are happy to give assurances about the learning centre, why not enshrine them in the Bill? Ten or 20 years down the line, any assurances given today will be forgotten and the interested parties today will no longer be in their positions or even alive. Without this amendment, reference to the learning centre’s key purpose, the Holocaust and antisemitism, is excluded from the Holocaust Memorial Bill.
All Governments recently have insisted that their funding of Holocaust remembrance in this country may not be limited to Jews; it always has to include other tragic situations. But the Roma have their own memorial in Newcastle, and there is a memorial dedicated to LGBT victims at the National Memorial Arboretum. Only the Jewish memorial has to be diffused and hence deprived of the power that it should have.
Focusing on the Nazi victims makes the centre about the Nazis, Germany and the Second World War—an historical event in the past, not something enduring today—but the Holocaust’s origins go back more than 2,000 years and its roots are still alive today. It is a continuum, not a past event. Including other genocides reduces whatever lesson might be learned to just platitudes about hatred and tolerance, which was rightly and forcefully condemned by the cellist and survivor, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, at the Select Committee.
It is imperative that antisemitism be addressed, not fudged, because it is today that antisemitism is flourishing. A learning centre has to be about Jewish lives today, not just deaths. It is so relatively easy to mourn the dead, but so much harder to understand the living.
We objectors want a proper-sized museum setting the Holocaust in context, as the late Lord Sacks called for. There has been no consultation on any of that.
The Chief Rabbi has rightly called for Holocaust memorialisation not to be politicised, but that is exactly what is happening now. On the part of the Opposition, it has been an attempt to put some substance into the campaign for British values. On this Government’s watch, sadly, Jews are constantly threatened. We know the details —the police’s uneven treatment; welcoming an Egyptian dissident who wants to kill Jews; failing to prosecute people who spout foul hate speech; teachers, doctors, pop stars, lecturers and students getting away with calls for violence against Jews; treating their ally, Israel, as an enemy; and the one-sided recognition of Palestine.
I suspect the Government think that by announcing a Holocaust memorial something will be achieved, but there is not a shred of evidence from the half-dozen existing British memorials and the hundreds around the world that they have any effect on antisemitism. No one has ever done an impact assessment. It is a case of easy sympathy for dead Jews and an excuse for not protecting the living.
All the benefits of a learning centre, as recommended in the Prime Minister’s 2015 commission report, have now been lost. They are all gone. There will be no lecture hall, no learning hub, no professorship, no endowment, no teacher training, no overhaul of Holocaust education. Its location is within a gunman’s range from the bridge, the river and the Millbank windows. To lose even the fundamental essence of the project is unacceptable.
The current assurances about the learning centre are vague, unsustainable and unenforceable. Assurances were requested, and some were rejected, at the conclusion of the Select Committee on the Bill. They are all now forgotten. Unless there is a proper planning application, there will be no chance of consideration of what was agreed. I am asking the Government for more than assurances—something much more concrete that will last down the years. I am asking for legislative support for the aims of the 2015 report to ensure that the core purpose of the learning centre is agreed and maintained. This simple amendment would show the public that the Government have the right aim and the courage of their convictions. I beg to move.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, for his patient and constructive engagement on this matter, and the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, who before him was dealing with this Bill and tried to work things through with equal dedication. As the Minister knows, my preference would have been to have the purpose set in law, for the reasons that my noble friend Lady Deech so eloquently set out just now, but it became clear that I was not going to persuade the Government of that case, and it was also clear that there was a strong desire, which I shared, to move forward with cross-party consensus.
I welcome the Minister’s assurances and, in particular, the fact that the Government are committed to ensuring that the learning centre will be focused exclusively on the Holocaust and antisemitism, and that there will be no deviation from this purpose. Having gone through this exercise, at least now, as my noble friend Lady Deech said, we have some clarity about what the purpose of this learning centre should be. No deviation is a key commitment. The reason for insisting on it is not because some of us do not understand that people will and should draw broader lessons from the Holocaust and antisemitism, but what we have seen in recent years is that too often the broader lessons take centre stage, while the distinctively unsettling features of the Holocaust and antisemitism end up being diluted or lost behind feel-good bromides. Avoiding this was the main driving concern for this amendment.
The other concern is that the memorial and the learning centre might become the focal point for political gesturing about the Middle East and anti-Israel protest. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, agrees with us on these concerns and is very keen to address them. I think the commitment to have the purpose clearly and specifically enshrined in the governing documents, while not as good as having it in law, is important, and we need to follow that through. I also welcome his commitment just now to consult on those governing documents. It might perhaps help if he can tell us a bit more about the process that might be envisaged about the contents of the documents and about how Parliament will be kept informed. In particular, it would be useful to have drafts published in advance so that people who have an interest in these matters, and perhaps the House, will have an opportunity for debate and scrutiny. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I hope that it will provide further reassurance to those who, like my noble friend Lady Deech, continue to have reservations.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, in supporting my noble friend Lady Deech’s amendment, I of course recognise the very considerable and determined efforts of my noble friend Lord Verdirame, who sought to persuade the Government to accept the amendment made by your Lordships’ House when the Bill was before us previously.
I have some questions for the Minister, but before I ask them, I want to thank him for his very heartfelt and obviously extremely genuine and clear statement of what he sees as the purpose of the learning centre. I totally accept what he said as being his view. My questions relate to the use of the word “inappropriate”. I take it that the use of that word reveals that the words that my noble friend Lady Deech seeks to insert in the Bill—or, indeed, the words originally inserted by your Lordships’ House—are not in any way out of scope of the Bill. It is a matter of choice, of taste even; it is not a matter of law or legislative practice.
Secondly, I invite the Minister to answer the question: does what he has said in any way bind a future Government or even bind the trustees? I suspect that it might be possible to bind the trustees, but not a future Government, but only by expensive litigation, which would be extremely distasteful on this subject, if in the future they chose to change the approach of which the Minister has spoken.
Of course the Bill is about changing planning arrangements for Victoria Tower Gardens—that is necessarily part of it—but it is slightly absurd to suggest that the Bill is just about property, given the basic purpose of having a memorial learning centre in the gardens. The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that there is a memorial and a learning centre, which has the one aim that people will go there—in my view, it is too small and in the wrong place, but I cannot debate that now—to learn about the Holocaust, the Shoah, what happened to Jews in the Second World War, what built up to that Holocaust and to learn the lesson. That is the only purpose of spending many millions on this project.
What is wrong with stating in the Bill the purpose of the project? Those of us who have a personal, a family, background which makes us very close to this proposal, as I have, do not want to see that limited desire for the purpose to be stated in the Bill to be rejected by the use of a vague adjective like “inappropriate”.
I have huge misgivings about why this is being put in Victoria Tower Gardens, what is being put there and whether it will be secure. I absolutely reject the notion that one should be concerned about the current Middle East situation in deciding the words that should be put in the Bill. That, in my view, is unprincipled and should not be allowed to endure.
I earnestly say to the Minister, who is much admired in this House—and I share in that admiration—that he should listen very carefully to this debate before pitching into something that is unacceptable to a very large number of people who have close contact and concerns about this proposal.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I commend the very wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and support the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, in this important amendment.
I should say first that I respect 150% the honesty and integrity of the Minister; I trust him 100%, but I do not entirely trust the Government to deliver on this. I thank not just the two Labour Peers who were on the Committee but all those Peers from all sides—the other Labour Members, Cross-Benchers, Lib Dems and Conservatives—who raised many concerns about all aspects of this memorial.
The one thing we were united on was that it had to commemorate the Holocaust—the Shoah—and antisemitism. What concerned us during the Committee was that on many occasions when we pushed the question, “Will this be purely about the Shoah?”, we did not get a categorical answer that it would be. We had many reports from other organisations suggesting that it could include Rwanda, Pol Pot, Darfur and others. Those were horrible genocides, I know that, and we have seen some horrible genocides around the world since the end of the Second World War, but they are not the Shoah, and the memorial should be purely about that.
The noble Lord was right: it would be perfectly in scope of the Bill to insert the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. To reject that on the grounds that it would be inappropriate is rather flimsy. When I was chair of the Delegated Powers Committee and we saw the Government taking extraordinary powers to pass regulations, the Government always said, “Ah yes, but we don’t intend to use them”. The intention is irrelevant; it is what is in statute law that counts. Putting this into statute law would guarantee that it was enforced.
The Minister said, if I remember correctly, “Oh, people could challenge any requirement in a statute”. If people can challenge, with difficulty and judicial review, words in a primary Act of Parliament, then how much easier would it be to challenge a letter from the Government to the administrators or the trustees? That seems ripe for judicial review, whereas a statutory requirement would not be.
That is all I wanted to say. As I say, I entirely trust the Minister and his noble intentions, but I do not trust the Government to be able to deliver on this, either through negligence or a deliberate act on their part. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, is absolutely right in seeking to put this in the Bill.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I draw attention to the fact that I am, along with Mr Ed Balls, the joint chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation.
I do not want to make the Minister blush, but I add my tribute to the way he has conducted the negotiations—I think we have arrived at a situation where we can see some progress—but I also associate myself with his words about the noble Lord, Lord Khan, who took this through its various stages with charm and considerable good temper, and we arrived at a better Bill because he was there. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Scott on my Front Bench for the way this has come about.
I have always been of the view that this memorial should also celebrate Jewish life and Jewish people, because—and I say this as a non-Jew—Jewish culture is a fundamental part of British identity. Without Jews, this country would be a lesser place. You only have visit a place like Poland to see that the very heart of that country has been ripped out by the removal of the Jews.
I supported the original amendment because this is not an academic exercise or a discussion over particular words. There is a real war going on—I do not think it is wrong to say that—which seeks to undermine and subvert the Holocaust and turn it on its head. We have seen two attempts in recent years to do this. First, there was an attempt within the academic board to extend the museum to cover slavery, which the board fought against solidly, leading to one member resigning. Secondly, we saw last year an attempt to equate the Holocaust with the false accusation of a genocide in Gaza. That awful attempt to invert the Holocaust is one of the reasons why fewer schools are commemorating the Holocaust this year than before. The reason for that is that the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust was not prepared to do “Holocaust-lite”. We are not prepared to dilute it.
But this continues. There is some criticism of Holocaust education. We see from Canada that the former attorney-general, Irwin Cotler, someone known to many Members of the House, regarded Holocaust education in this country as the gold standard. But it is only the gold standard if people attend the courses. Some evaluations from UCL and Visions Schools Scotland show that if people go through the course, things change for the good. But if you are a child of a parent who refuses to allow you to go, if you are on a school governing body that refuses co-operation, if teachers pressurise other teachers to prevent it, then those pupils lose out. That is why we see such bad scores on understanding of the Holocaust.
This is not just about the simple teaching of the past; it is about operating some support for our own liberal democracy. I am delighted to report that we are in advanced negotiations with the Shoah Foundation of the United States, which would like us to be one of the main centres for its database of Holocaust testimony. We already have its testimony for British survivors, but this means that we will be a main player on the scene. There is enthusiasm for this because we will get people to that learning centre—I am about to finish—who would normally not go to any other museum.
I welcome the unity. We should put the past behind us and now put our hands out firmly to opponents and those who are in favour, and work together to ensure that we build something we can be proud of.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, while the tributes are flowing, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, who gave one of the best speeches the first time this amendment was discussed, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.
It is truly important to have this discussion and debate, and not just to say that it does not matter. I also do not doubt the sincerity of the noble Lords, Lord Collins of Highbury and Lord Khan of Burnley, who have both been absolutely reassuring. My problem is that I am not reassured by reassurances. I still cannot understand why it is only reassurances, and not firmly fixed. It is not reassuring that this cannot be written down, so that we all know it is not going to be sold out. No disrespect, but a lot of sell-outs happen in politics; however, I do not doubt the integrity of the noble Lords I have mentioned.
I just wanted quickly to just note why this matters. The noble Lord, Lord Pickles, made the point when he referred to the fight. I had written down, “The context of this is a fight”. I do a range of education work, although not this issue, but when I go to universities and schools I get into arguments—obviously enough—about all sorts of things. In a debate about whether there is a genocide in Gaza, because I said there is not, and tried to explain it rationally, I was accused of being a Holocaust denier. When I then tried to untangle why that was not the case and why you would use that term, one of the students said, “The problem is that Jews jealously guard the Holocaust. It is part of their colonial entitlement attitude”. That was quite a normal thing to say. I was shocked; nobody else was.
This is a learning centre. Look at the revelations that have come forth in relation to the MP from Labour Friends of Israel who was stopped from going into a school to teach, as well as the subsequent revelations—exposed by Nicole Lampert—about the goings-on in the National Education Union, a teaching union that is almost institutionally hostile to Israel and that has very strong and openly antisemitic elements to it. People who are worried about the Shoah being relativised or diffused are not being paranoid; this is happening.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, can the speakers in this debate concentrate on the issue? The issue is whether this amendment should remain in the Bill. We have had two long speeches that have not addressed that.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly, and I will try to address that. I will speak briefly not because the subject is not important—it is such an important subject that there could be no end of words said about it—but because we are focusing on the Commons reason and our response to it. For reasons that I gave at the time, I supported the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame. As the Minister pointed out, the purpose of that amendment was to ensure no mission creep—if I can pick up his phrase.
I am one of the Members of this House who have had sustained, constructive and helpful engagement from the Minister, his staff and his team of civil servants. I was pleased to hear the clear and constructive statements that he made, and those made from the Dispatch Box in another place. When we are talking about governance provisions in a trust document, those are legally binding and effective. The nice legal and constitutional question of whether a Government can bind their successor is one thing, but a board of trustees is bound by its constitutional documents.
The important thing to me tonight is that we simply have to get on with this project. I am concerned that there is a risk that further delay will lead not just to further cost but to question marks over the project. We have had a good debate about it, and I think we all share the concern behind the amendment. Indeed, as I say, I supported it. But now we have to get on and not so much complete the job but complete the legislative job and begin the real action on the ground.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, knows the high regard I have for her. She explained her opposition to parts of this project very clearly. We agree on some points and we do not agree on others. Disagreement is part of what this place is all about. I respectfully say, on the proposed amendment to say that the “main purpose” must be the provision of education—as opposed to the original amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, which had the “sole purpose”—that saying “main purpose” is worse than saying nothing. If you say that the main purpose is X, you are almost admitting, accepting and implying that you can also do Y and Z. It is not just nearly like “sole”. In law, there is a clear distinction between “main purpose” and “sole purpose”. In any event, that is not the real focus of my remarks, which is that we need to get on with it, for the reasons I have given.
I put on record my personal thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, who started the work on the Bill in this House. Both in the Chamber and out of it, he and I had many conversations about it, all of which were constructive and conducted in the best traditions of this House. We all owe the noble Lord a huge debt of gratitude. Perhaps he might think about this: his name will always be linked to this Bill because he made the rather prosaic statement, noble Lords might think, set out in Section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act, to the effect that the provisions of the Bill are compatible with convention rights. We can have arguments about Strasbourg jurisprudence—that is not for now—but it struck me, reading those words in the Bill, that it is not just that the provisions of the Holocaust Memorial Bill are compatible with convention rights but that the Holocaust is a reminder of what may happen if fundamental rights are not protected.
Baroness Debbonaire (Lab)
My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate but, for the avoidance of doubt, I was in the Chamber when it started—I rushed in—because I wish to hear every word. That is partly because I was first alerted to the provisions of the memorial by Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, my cello teacher Raphael’s mother, and subsequently by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, many years ago. This was before 7 October.
The reason I mention this is that, when I was a Member in the other place, I represented a constituency that had extreme views and, as a non-Jew, I felt it was bad enough that I had to hear some of them. It was unbearable. I represented two synagogues, one Orthodox and one progressive, with a very diverse Jewish constituency with a range of political views. Before 7 October the feeling was—I consulted my constituents, and I wanted to put this on record, particularly for the noble Baroness, Lady Deech—that they wanted a memorial, as they all said. There were some variations but, overall, people said they wanted the memorial as proposed.
I put to them the arguments that the noble Baroness and I share. Yes, that is partly because I am so aware of Anita’s experience, longevity and wonderful personality, and the fact that, whenever she sees me, she checks my fingers before she says hello to make sure I am still practising the cello—despite everything. I really wanted to hear from my constituents that they also held some of those ambiguities, and they did not. But they were utterly clear about the issue of the purpose of the memorial and the learning centre.
This has been my concern since 7 October, since when, frankly, I have heard many things that reinforce the need for the purpose of the learning centre to be utterly clear, without doubt and without any diminution or dilution. People have been capable of saying the most dreadful things, which implied to me that they had little or no knowledge of the Shoah and why it matters, and why a focus on the Shoah and on antisemitism matters. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, is quite right to say that it is about not just the dead but the living. The risk of further such atrocities right now, specifically to Jews, is so great. I feel that, as a non-Jew, it is even more my duty to say that and to put on record that which many people have been frightened to say—they have been frightened to say the truth. That is why it mattered to me to see this amendment. However, I am afraid I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that seeking to put something in has made it weaker than the original thing that the other place has now rejected. I regret that, but this is the place we are at now.
I share other noble Lords’ determination that we should get this right, and I share the admiration for my noble friends Lord Collins and Lord Khan, who have worked so hard to get us to where we are. It feels like a tremendously long time since we began. However, the need for clarity of purpose has not diminished. It has only grown in the intervening years. I wish to put on record, in my name—as a non-Jew, but with former Jewish constituents who I did my best to represent—the doubling, tripling, quadrupling need that there seems to be, not just over the last four years since the atrocities of 7 October but even in the last four weeks, in Australia and in Manchester, given the sort of antisemitism that we hear about every day. We all know, having read the history of the Shoah, that this is how it starts. I share noble Lords’ determination that we should not hold back.
I share the disagreement of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, about where the memorial should be, but we are now past that. I encourage other noble Lords, if they have not already, to go to the Imperial War Museum and hear the beautiful cello playing of my cello teacher, Raphael, and see some of the things that Anita wore and was able to keep with her, which in themselves tell their story. I hope that this memorial and learning centre will tell the story as we need them to, now possibly more than ever.
Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)
My Lords, I too am puzzled why it is not possible to include this wording in the Bill. Given that the Bill makes provision for the construction of a Holocaust memorial and learning centre, why on earth can we not define what the learning centre is for? However, I accept the Minister’s assurances about the purposes.
I have one specific question that I would like to ask the Minister. When we debated this matter in June, I raised with the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, the issue of the definition of the word “Holocaust”, pointing out that the Holocaust included groups other than Jewish people. Of course, it was primarily an atrocity committed against Jewish people, and that will be the primary purpose of a memorial centre, but other groups were affected too, including LGBT people and disabled people, who were killed in concentration camps. The noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, assured me that his understanding was that the Holocaust did include such groups. Some of the contributions from noble Lords today make me wonder whether that is a shared assumption.
Since this debate is about clarity and definition, I would be grateful for the Minister’s assurance, on the back of the assurances he has given about the purpose of the learning centre, that his and the Government’s understanding is that the Holocaust included the murder of other groups at the same time, as part of the activities of the Nazi regime, and that that should not be excluded or considered to be mission creep, to use the words that some noble Lords have used in concern about the absence of a definition from the Bill. I would be grateful if the Minister could give me that same reassurance that the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, gave me in June.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, was right to admonish us and to remind your Lordships of the need to stay focused on the matter in hand at this stage of the Bill’s progress. However, it is seven months since the Division which saw noble Lords backing the sensible amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame. I am heartened to hear about the fruitful discussions that he has had with Ministers and officials about that matter in the intervening months. If noble Lords have had other remarks to make, it is because those extra months have, as we have heard, sadly added further examples of the importance of looking at this and getting it right. I agree with so many of the remarks I have heard.
My purpose in rising is to ask the Deputy Leader of the House about an issue that was not before us when the Bill was last debated in your Lordships’ House. He will know that the Crime and Policing Bill, which is also before your Lordships’ House, proposes to make it a criminal offence to climb on certain specified monuments and memorials. Schedule 12 to that Bill sets out 24 memorials that are listed at grade 1 and one further memorial that is not listed at grade 1, which is the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, time is passing, so I hope noble Lords will not mind if we move to the winding speeches now.
Noble Lords will know, because I said it many times during previous stages of the Bill, that this is a free vote for my colleagues, so my comments reflect my own views, although I know that the vast majority of my colleagues share them.
I have always thought that the words on the front of the Bill should reflect the policies inside it. I therefore find it difficult to understand, in one respect, why the Government will not accept this purpose clause. If you go to the Public Bill Office with the intention of inserting a purpose clause into a Bill, they usually draw in their breath and say, “Governments don’t like a purpose clause”—and that is Governments of all colours, by the way. However, that is very hard to understand in this particular case, because we all know which Holocaust we are talking about. The Minister and the Government cannot be surprised that people have lost a little confidence in that focus because of all the other things that were raised at the earlier stages of this Bill—other tragic events in the history of mankind.
The Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were slaughtered, is the biggest blot in the history of mankind and we must never forget it. That is why, across all Benches, we supported the first purpose of the Bill, which was to enable the Government to promote and fund a Holocaust memorial and learning centre. What we disagreed about was the second part, which was the removal of the legislative barrier to putting that learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, mainly because we did not think that the gardens would do it justice, as it needs to be a high-quality memorial. I think we all hope that, in the fullness of time, that is what it turns out to be.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on her leadership in this Bill, and agree with her that you can commemorate the dead by celebrating the lives of the living and the people who survived. There were millions who suffered and, even if they did not lose their lives, they lost their livelihoods and the ability to have children. Many of them did have children, however, and their descendants contribute an enormous amount to the life of this country, the other countries in Europe and other parts of the world.
I will just touch on what the Minister has said. He has given us a very clear reassurance that the purpose of this legislation will remain commemorating the Holocaust and learning the lessons to tackle antisemitism. It has been said that that is not good enough: it should be on the face of the legislation. I have a little more confidence than some Members of the House do in clear statements from the Dispatch Box by a Government Minister, and I know that if Governments deviate from what they have said, they can be challenged. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, mentioned, to make that challenge often requires considerable legal costs, so it is far better, if you want to be absolutely clear, to put it in the Bill. I ask the Minister: why not?
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I contributed to earlier Holocaust Memorial Bill debates, and I shall speak briefly in this one. I was moved to do so mainly by the remarks of my noble friend Lord Wolfson, who made the excellent point that the amendment talks about
“The main purpose of any Learning Centre”,
which dilutes the original amendments and raises the possibility that there might be other purposes. As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, knows, although we have disagreed on a number of things, I am an enormous admirer of all the hard work she has done to support the concept of Holocaust education, and I put on record my particular thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Khan. It has been heartwarming to listen to him and I admire him for the work he did in his position.
The point I want to make to both the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the Minister is to ask for clarification. In the Bill and in the amendments, there is reference to “a Holocaust”, but the particular paragraph that bites, Clause 1(1)(a), talks about
“the construction on, over or under any land of … a memorial commemorating the victims of the Holocaust”,
and that is crystal clear. The centre for learning has to be relating to the memorial. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Deech: why is there any uncertainty about this? Is it not clear in the Bill that it has to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust? As my noble friend Lord Wolfson said, now is the time to move on.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Khan and Lord Collins. Back in 2014, I supported this Bill in the House of Commons. It had cross-party support—it is Parliament at its best when we all agree—and I am slightly surprised that, 12 years later, we are still having these debates. As my noble friend Lord Wolfson says, we really need to get on with it. I believe it is the right development in the right place, it is the right plan and it is at the right time.
However, I have a question for the Minister. We are talking about a visitor centre and noble Lords will see the number of schoolchildren that attend this place on a daily basis, so it is important that we get the content of that visitor centre right. What sort of content will it have? What relevance will it have and how will it come across to people of a younger generation? It will attract a broad spectrum of the population, but it is very important that we educate future citizens about the Holocaust, so I am interested specifically in school visits—how will the visitor centre cater for those?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, we have had extensive debates on the Bill and I know there are strong views across the House on a whole range of issues relating to the delivery of the Holocaust memorial and learning centre. We were right to debate this important Bill in full and scrutinise its every aspect, but now we have just one issue before us. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, on his success on Report and we were delighted to give him our support in that Division. We have worked closely with him and in discussions with the Government to secure the concession that the Government have made in response to his amendment.
It is very welcome that Ministers have confirmed that the learning centre will be focused exclusively on the Holocaust and antisemitism and that there will be no question of it drifting from that purpose. That commitment is an important step towards the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame. I am pleased that he and the Government have come to an agreement on this, and we will continue to support him.
I conclude by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, for the constructive way in which he has engaged with me and other noble Lords to get to this point. Like many other noble Lords, I give very big thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley. He was a joy to work with as we went through what was, in the early stages, a difficult—probably the most difficult —Bill I have ever been involved in, and I thank him for that.
Next week, on Tuesday, it is Holocaust Memorial Day. I believe it is fitting that tonight we take what I hope is one very big step forward in the delivery of this memorial to the 6 million men, women and children who perished in the Shoah.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I thank everyone for their contributions to this evening’s debate. I do not want to delay us too much, but I want to reflect on a number of comments, not least from the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who has been doing excellent work on Holocaust education, and I have followed him in many places, trying to make sure that his message was repeated. I spoke to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, earlier today and I mentioned that I went to Bratislava to attend a memorial event in a square, but it was not limited to that. We then went to the concentration camp, the transportation centre, and I saw at first hand where people, including children and babies, were kept. The impact of that will always live with me. A memorial is not enough, which is why the learning centre is so vital.
I also want to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson. To answer the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, we cannot bind a future Government. We wanted to look at how we could ensure that the purpose was fully maintained. The Bill does not have all the governing structure or all the stuff that we need. I do not want to embarrass the noble Lord, but his advice about how we can enshrine the purpose in those trust agreements was essential.
The most important thing—and we have heard this today—is that we leave tonight united in one purpose: that we do not forget the 6 million who were murdered or the consequences of the Nazi crimes. To reassure the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, he knows where I stand on the crimes of the Nazis. Of course, the very first people they imprisoned and murdered were trade unionists who were standing up for workers’ rights, and we need to understand that. I was also struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said to me this morning: that antisemitism did not start with the Nazi crimes. It has been with us for 2,000 years. We need to ensure that we understand the impact, not only of the past but on the living, and I think she is right.
Why have we not put it in the Bill? The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said it all. In the narrow function of the Bill, adding a statutory provision along the lines envisaged could create difficulties and uncertainty in its enforceability, and I want to see us united on the way to do that. The noble Lords, Lord Verdirame and Lord Wolfson, have helped me in how we can deal with that.
I also reassure noble Lords that further consideration will be given to the different forms of governance which might be right for the memorial. As the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, has asked me to do, we will give an assurance that those proposals will be published, including the governance documents that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, referred to.
I understand the points the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, has made. He has made them fully in the Bill. My noble friend Lord Hanson is here, who can actually take these points up on how memorials are protected.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I yield to no one in my admiration for the Minister, whose eloquence and understanding is very touching and altogether praiseworthy.
I have just two small points to make. There need not have been any delay. There need not even have been a delay if the Government had accepted the amendment. Much has been spoken about delay. This memorial is not for the survivors; it is for future generations. We are not going to rush something through so that people who are now 90 or 100 will live to see it. They already have other memorials.
I have heard the noble Lords, Lord Leigh and Lord Wolfson, on the definitional problems. Whatever you express, there are going to be definitional problems, which have been exacerbated in the past few years—because despite what the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, said, there has been all this talk about Darfur, Bosnia, and other genocides and so on, and it is only now, under the leadership of the Minister, that we have some clarity.
I felt I had to drive this forward for the sake of my parents, my grandparents and all the others who are looking down, who would never forgive me if I did not push this as far as I can to get a memorial that honours them—which I have doubts about, frankly. But I have done everything I can within my power for their sakes, because I know very well—as a child, they told me—what they went through. I have done every last thing I can.
I can see no point in calling a vote now, and I will withdraw the Motion, but I insist on continuing for their sakes and for all the other families, some of whom are in this Chamber. We must get something that honours them and protects today’s Jews. I will not give up on that, but I withdraw the Motion, and I thank the Minister.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
22:27 - Division on Amendment 99 - Ayes: 53 / Noes: 116 - Amendment 99 disagreed.
Baroness Barran
“Free milk entitlement: child minder agencies(1) The Secretary of State must, using powers under section 175 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (regulations, orders and schemes), amend regulation 18 of the Welfare Food Regulations 1996 (milk or dried milk for children in day care) to ensure that children provided with daycare by childminders registered with child minder agencies are entitled to free milk.(2) The Secretary of State must make regulations under subsection (1) within six months of the day on which this Act is passed.”
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, this is a very different topic from what we were discussing before the dinner break—we move to nursery milk. Only in your Lordships’ House could one say those words.
My Amendment 98 would bring childminders who are registered with a childminding agency into the scope of the free nursery milk scheme. As your Lordships know, the nursery milk scheme provides a free portion of milk every day to any child under the age of five attending a registered childcare setting; it is a long-standing initiative dating back to the 1940s. The legislation underpinning the scheme was written before childminder agencies—CMAs—came into existence, and a later drafting oversight meant that milk subsidies were not mentioned in the legislation that created CMAs in 2014. For a decade, childminders registered through CMAs have been unable to claim milk subsidies, while those registered directly with Ofsted can; that is despite the fact that all childminders are Ofsted regulated and operate under the same regulations.
The loophole has been widely acknowledged as a clear legislative oversight. Two successive Governments, including my own, have pledged to fix it, but sadly no action has been taken. As a result, more than 10,000 children are currently missing out on free milk. As CMA-registered childminders make up a growing share of the workforce, the number of children affected increases every year. A simple legislative update would close this loophole and restore parity across the early years sector. I hope that the Minister can do better and go further than previous Governments—including my own—and commit not only to addressing this but to giving the House a “no later than” date for doing so. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. The purpose of Amendment 104 is to ensure that no eligible family misses out on the Healthy Start payments, as there is evidence that many families have not been aware of this important extra support and have therefore not applied for it. I have tabled this amendment again because I was not content with the Minister’s response in Committee, but I thank her for her subsequent letter.
During that debate, the Minister said that she could not accept my amendment because the Healthy Start programme requires an eligibility check as the funds come in the form of a prepaid card. This, she said, is a financial product and therefore requires the recipient to accept the terms. Will the Minister please note that my amendment, in proposed new subsection (3), takes note of that fact and requires that the eligible person must be able to opt out of the scheme if they wish. That, of course, implies that they also opt in.
This could be done by rejecting the terms of the card offered, rather than accepting them. However, the Minister went on to say that to increase uptake, which she agreed is important, the NHS Business Services Authority will write to those eligible to encourage them to apply to the scheme.
Three questions arise from that answer. First, if the NHS Business Services Authority is going to write to those who are eligible, it must have already found out who is eligible. If that is the case, why can those people not be enrolled, informed that they have been enrolled and, finally, given the chance to opt out if they wish? I cannot imagine that many will.
Secondly, now that the Minister has laid Amendments 111 and 112, which I am sure she will explain in a few minutes, it is clear that government departments will now be able to share information for the purpose of ascertaining eligibility for free school meals. I hope we can assume, therefore, that the NHSBSA will also be able to get information from other departments to ascertain whether the families are eligible for Healthy Start. If the NHSBSA is going to write to eligible people, will it at least enclose an application form and prepaid envelope to make it very easy to apply and accept the terms? There should be no need for the recipient to have to supply any further evidence of their eligibility, because the NHSBSA will already have established that, or it would not have written to them in the first place. What possible further checks are needed?
Thirdly, can the Minister say how long this programme will take to get up and running? Will she undertake to report to Parliament about to what extent this activity has improved uptake over the first year of its operation? I look forward to the Minister’s reply on that matter.
The purpose of my Amendment 113 is to ensure that schools and caterers are supported to provide adequate, affordable and nutritious food at breakfast and lunch to all the children at the school, whether they are on free school meals or they pay. I have laid the amendment again because there are several questions to ask about the Minister’s Committee stage reply and there have been developments since Committee.
The amendment requires the current school standards review to be completed within 12 months of Royal Assent and that a supportive scheme be set up to ensure compliance with those standards. This timescale is not a lot to ask, given that the then relevant Minister in the Department for Education promised me almost a year ago, when I discussed with him the recommendations of your Lordships’ House’s report Recipe for Health: A Plan to Fix Our Broken Food System, that the review would happen. It took until 5 June 2025 for an announcement that consultations would take place. Oh, how slowly the wheels of government turn. However, the Minister promised in Committee to share the details of this consultation in due course. Can she say now when “due course” will be? She said that it will include how to ensure whether schools comply with the updated standards. Currently, there is very little inspection and enforcement, the responsibility having been given to school governors. It must be said that some schools provide a very good standard of food but others do not. It is not always their fault.
Research carried out by Professor Greta Defeyter of Northumbria University has shown that larger schools, especially those in areas where not too many pupils are eligible for free school meals, sometimes manage to benefit from economies of scale, and some actually make a profit from the allowance they get for free school meals. However, this is not always spent on improving the general quality of food in the school.
However, there are others, particularly small schools in areas of high deprivation, in which the free school meal budget has to be supplemented from the education budget. There is certainly nothing left over to improve the food overall. This is crazy, given the importance of good food to child health and development. There are certainly questions to be asked about how the allocation of funds works—not just in theory but taking into account the facts on the ground. However, I am talking about the quality and affordability of all food served in schools, not just the free school meals. This amendment is not about free school meal entitlement. It is more important that free school meal children get a nutritious meal at lunchtime because their parents may not be able to give them one in the evening—or sometimes any meal at all.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Barran and to associate myself with Amendment 104 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, whom it is a pleasure to follow.
The Welfare Food Regulations 1996 lay out in astonishing detail the importance of milk to those who were entitled to it for the early years. While there are different regulatory regimes in Scotland and the rest of Great Britain, it is clear that certain children in certain circumstances are entitled to dried milk or fresh milk in prescribed portions per week, be it according to age; to those whose families are on financial assistance for low income; to the Healthy Start, which would include expectant mothers and those with children otherwise under four—and, of course, some people of any age, including children, but not necessarily children, with certain physical and mental difficulties.
I think it is common ground on all sides of this House that the provision of milk as part of a healthy diet is a good thing. But the regulations provide for this milk to be dispensed, if I can use that word, in maternity and healthcare centres, as part of the National Health Service, but also in other welfare and food distribution centres. But the world has changed, and these settings are no longer the only places where people access help.
The NHS, which may work from nine to five, or a food distribution centre, which may open for only a few mornings a week, are not necessarily the only places nowadays where people can access the help they need. Those settings are just not as thick on the ground as they used to be at times that are convenient to families.
I do not deny the good work of those settings, but others are available under the same regulations, and some of them are even paid for by the state. My noble friend Lady Barran laid out the importance of childminders and childminder agencies as a part of the mix that helps provide time and space for families to get into work so they can earn and improve their family circumstances, with the flexibility to take different jobs, which may be available on a part-time, out-of-hours or seasonal basis.
These settings—the childminder agencies—are relevant. They are local, flexible and professional, and we have heard that they are regulated. But for some reason, they are not trusted by these regulations to dispense milk in liquid form or in dried powder. It just serves no purpose to exclude them. This is why these amendments are so important: to exclude the most accessible settings from the ability to provide milk and other healthy foods is not just bad for them, it is bad for the children.
I cannot understand for the life of me why one setting is good and the other is bad. But there is another string to this argument: that it is bad not only for the children and the settings themselves, but for the economy. There are 1.8 million dairy cows in this country, with a herd size average of 225, and that number has doubled in the last 50 years since 1975.
Significant parts of the West Country are devoted to dairying—milk production, cheese production and so forth. I see my noble friend Lady Williams sitting in front of me on the Front Bench. She is from the Cheshire plains and will know better than anybody the importance of the work dairy farmers do, rising early to milk and care for their cow herds, come rain or shine, suffering as they have in the last two months a 30% reduction in the price of liquid milk from the dairies.
It is not just the children who need all the help they can get; it is our dairy farmers too. While this is, of course, a subsidiary point to the main thrust of Amendment 98 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran, it is a consideration. The main thrust is that we must stop this arbitrary division that forms gaps between different sorts of settings, saying that only the NHS can be trusted to dispense milk, and that childminders and the CMAs are not to be trusted.
If we really have the interests of the child at heart, we need to have as many settings as possible that can dispense good food and milk and associated products, at times that are convenient for the busy lives families lead, rather than just straitjacketing them into the nine to five and thinking that is good enough.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I support both amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in particular Amendment 113 on the school food improvement scheme. I am incredibly glad to see how many steps the Government are taking, but there are still things we need to work on. The noble Baroness referred to Professor Defeyter’s work on the finances and how, with big schools versus small schools, a lot of the money gets lost. It also happens with councils that are so cash-strapped that they sometimes take some of the money.
We are still living in a country where we have a postcode lottery on food. Some schools do amazing jobs with limited resources and some schools really do not. Nobody can now dispute the fact that the free school lunch, or any school lunch, is incredibly important to children. Yet we hear too often about schools that allow only 20 minutes for lunch, in which time you are meant to play, make a call, go to the toilet and have lunch, which is clearly going to be seen as a secondary part of a school.
It is also secondary in that the school catering departments at the moment get very little training. I wonder whether the Minister is aware of a scheme in the department being run by Chefs in Schools and a lot of philanthropic organisations to actively train chefs to go into schools and work with them to improve the quality. For the same amount of money, you can have really good quality and transform children’s lives.
Finally, nursery is equally important in getting kids eating the right stuff right from the beginning. I absolutely support that we need milk, but children also get fed there and those meals tend to fall outside of anything right now, as far as I can see. I would be interested to know what the Government will do.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, the amendments in the third group cover free school meals, the nursery milk scheme, the Healthy Start scheme and school food. Ensuring that every child has access to nutritious food and support is fundamental to their health, development and ability to learn. We know that good nutrition starts early and that simple measures, whether access to milk or balanced school meals, can make a lasting difference.
I turn to government Amendments 111 and 112. Last year the Government announced that from September 2026, every child in a household receiving universal credit will be entitled to free school meals. This decisive action will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and save families around £500 per child each year. The amendments will enshrine this crucial commitment in law and ensure its successful delivery.
A child is currently eligible for free school meals if they attend a state-funded school in England, their household is in receipt of universal credit and the household’s income is less than £7,400. Government Amendment 112 creates a new category of free school meals, to be known as expanded free school meals, which will apply to that cohort of children in receipt of universal credit but with a household income greater than £7,400. This will ensure that free school lunches are provided on request to all pupils from households in receipt of universal credit and that state-funded schools in England will be under a duty to provide meals to those eligible children.
We will support over half a million more children in this way. Providing the most disadvantaged children with a healthy lunch each school day will help secure their education and improve their future prospects.
Government Amendment 111 will deliver the practical implementation of the free school meals expansion. The Department for Education relies on the provisions of the Education Act 2005 to process income and benefits data from other government departments so that it can check and confirm a child’s eligibility for free school meals. The scope of this power is, however, limited. This amendment will amend the 2005 Act to enable the department to identify whether a child is eligible under the current free school meals criteria or the expanded free school meals criteria and then communicate this to local authorities, parents and schools so that they in turn may determine whether a child is also eligible for other education benefits and funding.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, before the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, responds, I would like a small point of clarification from the Minister. I very much welcome the government amendments and congratulate the Government on what they are doing on free school meals. This is all very welcome, but in introducing it, the Minister said that the additional cohort would get a free school meal on request. She mentioned how the Government will make it easier for families to find out whether they are eligible, but can she say a little more about how they have to apply? Will it be as easy as possible?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Absolutely, it will be. First, by virtue of the fact that it is now open to all those on universal credit without the £7,400 cut-off, it is much clearer to families, to those supporting them and to schools who is eligible. Secondly, as I said, the provisions that enable the sharing of information, and therefore eligibility checks, will now also be open to parents themselves, not just through local authorities.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the Minister for her encouragement. I am not sure whether I wanted the accolade of being the anti-Thatcher milk donor, but I will take whatever she gives me.
I am encouraged by the Minister’s commitment. I managed to write down only “within six months” before the next thing she said—unfortunately, the ink in my pen ran out—so clearly parliamentary time will be available. I thought the Minister made encouraging remarks about the comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, but I feel that the noble Baroness might appreciate a few lines to expand on her final question. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Barran
“Post-removal support for parents to prevent further removals(1) Where a child—(a) is removed from the care of a parent further to any order made pursuant to—(i) section 31 of the Children Act 1989 (care and supervision orders),(ii) section 22 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (placement orders),(iii) section 46 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (adoption orders),(iv) section 14A of the Children Act 1989 (special guardianship orders), or(b) becomes a looked after child further to an arrangement or order made pursuant to—(i) section 20 of the Children Act 1989 (provision of accommodation for children: voluntary arrangements), or(ii) section 25 of the Children Act 1989 (secure accommodation orders),the local authority must provide support to the parent, where the parent is identified as being at risk of experiencing further child removals.(2) In discharging their duty under subsection (1), the local authority must ensure that the support provided—(a) follows an evidence-informed approach and aims to reduce the risk of further child removals, and(b) is in accordance with any guidance issued by the Secretary of State for the purposes of this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This clause aims to make sure that local authorities offer evidence-informed support to reduce the risk of parents who have one child removed having future children removed.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am not sure whether anyone can remember the first group at this late hour, but I will be testing the opinion of the House. The Minister said that legislators always turn to legislation as the answer. There are quite a few things in the Bill that do not need to be there, but I think this does need to be in legislation. She also said she felt that it would create a rigid model that could not evolve, but we worked hard on the language of the amendment to refer to an “evidence-informed approach” as opposed to “evidence-based”, which I am told means that it can evolve with the evidence. For those two reasons, and thinking about the desperate situation of women who have multiple children removed from their care, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley
“Establishment of Child Protection Authority(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, establish a Child Protection Authority for England.(2) The purpose of the Authority is to—(a) improve practice in child protection,(b) provide advice and make recommendations to the Government on child protection policy and reforms to improve child protection,(c) inspect institutions and settings at some times and in such ways as it considers necessary and appropriate to ensure compliance with child protection standards, and(d) monitor the implementation of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and other inquiries relating to the protection of children.(3) The Authority must act with a view to—(a) safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children;(b) ensuring that institutions and settings fulfil their responsibilities in relation to child protection.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment establishes the Child Protection Authority for England.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, it is very late, so I will not go through the five pages of my speech. However, I will speak to Amendments 102 and 103 in my name.
The arguments have been well rehearsed previously. I thank the Minister in the other place, Josh MacAlister, for meeting some of us to go through the issues. He is very clear on the so-called postcode lottery of child in need reports that are often produced for children. In some areas it is as high as 70%, and the research I did found that in other areas it is 20%. The Children’s Commissioner found that the lowest percentage of young people known to social care in some local authority areas was 3%.
As we have heard earlier and in previous debates in your Lordships’ House, that number cannot just be demographics. My suggestion and the Children’s Commissioner’s suggestion has been, and we continue to maintain this, that we need some national thresholds so that we do not have a big gap in the care that young people get, depending on where they live. A child in need report is quite crucial.
I understand that the Minister in the other place is very sympathetic to the issue but does not see this as a way forward. Late into this evening and night, I hope I can use my power of persuasion to convince the Minister in front of me to be willing to at least continue to talk and see whether we can find a way forward.
Amendment 102 is about establishing a child protection body that would work to improve child protection practice, advise government and the sector, and conduct inspections. This is an important issue, in addition to the one I raised earlier. I do not intend to speak any further, but I would welcome a response from the Minister. Given that we agree that there is a problem, would she now be willing at least to look at whether we can reinvestigate the national thresholds? I beg to move.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I too will be brief. I was slightly surprised at the need for Amendment 102. If I have understood correctly, the Government have committed to establishing a child protection agency and are currently consulting on it. I absolutely understand that the noble Lord wants to raise this because, clearly, implementation will be crucial if we are to avoid blurring lines of accountability and creating a bureaucracy. But it will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say on that.
We covered standards for children in need thresholds in Committee. On these Benches, we retain the view that we need flexibility in the system so that practitioners can use their professional judgment to look at the overall situation of a child and keep it under review. But I absolutely accept that there are real problems at what one might call the top end of Section 17, with an extraordinary number of children who are suffering child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation still being classified as “children in need” rather than “child protection”.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, each of these amendments would introduce a new clause, referring to the establishment of the child protection authority and consistent support for children in need, as we have heard. This group raises important issues about child safety, well-being and support. I assure the noble Lord that the Government are, as he outlined, completely committed to working in this area.
Amendment 102, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, seeks to impose a binding timetable for the establishment of the child protection agency. Just by way of background, establishing a child protection authority was one of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. In a Statement to the House of Commons on 8 April 2025, the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence against Women and Girls announced that the Government will establish a child protection authority in England, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, alluded to.
On 11 December 2025, we published a consultation on the child protection authority, which sets out its proposed roles, responsibilities and powers. This will help to make the child protection system clearer and more unified and ensure that there is ongoing improvement through effective support for practitioners. The design and delivery of this authority require consultation, including with child protection experts and Victim Support, to ensure that it has the right constitution and powers. Given this, we do not think it is prudent to agree an arbitrary timeline, but we will work to publish the government response this summer, following which we will move to legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
I thank the Minister for her response. I do not intend to prolong proceedings any further, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.