Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Monday 9th March 2026 Commons Chamber

Consideration of Lords amendments

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I can inform the House that Lords amendments 21, 37, 38, 39, 44, 101 and 105 engage Commons financial privilege. If any of these Lords amendments are agreed to, I will cause the customary entry waiving the Commons’ financial privilege to be entered in the Journal.

After Clause 1

Cessation of Child Protection Plans

19:41

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Olivia Bailey)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 2.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss:

Lords amendment 5, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 16, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 17, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 19, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 21, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendments 37 and 38, Government motions to disagree, amendments (a) to (c) to Lords amendment 38, and Government amendments (a) to (d) in lieu of Lords amendments 37 and 38.

Lords amendment 41, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 42, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 44, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 102, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 105, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 106, Government motion to disagree, and amendment (a).

Lords amendments 1, 3, 4, 6 to 15, 18, 20, 22 to 36, 39, 40, 43, 45 to 101, 103, 104

and 107 to 121.

[Olivia Bailey]

Children’s voices are heard rarely in this place and are too often ignored in our society, so I say at the outset that it is truly a special privilege to play my part in the passage of this landmark legislation. This Bill is about creating the conditions in which every child can achieve and thrive, to ensure safer and more secure childhoods, to tackle the scrouge of child poverty and to deliver high and rising school standards. Today I ask the House to renew its commitment to that ambition for our children and our country. I extend my thanks to my colleague and friend, Baroness Smith of Malvern, the Minister for Skills, for her skilful stewardship of the Bill. I ask hon. Members to back the Government amendments made in the other place that increase the ambition of the legislation.

In part 1 of the Bill, we have introduced a new duty on local housing authorities to, with consent, notify educational institutions, GP practices and health visiting services when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. We have also strengthened the Government’s work to put the voices of children at the heart of decisions about their futures, with amendments on family group decision making and the kinship local offer.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[Olivia Bailey]

Sorry, but I have to make progress as I have so much to get through.

Turning to part 2 of the Bill and schools, we are taking forward our historic strategy to lift children out of poverty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) set out last year, from September all children in households receiving universal credit will be eligible for free school meals. That will put £500 back in families’ pockets, support 500,000 more children with a nutritious meal and lift 100,000 children out of poverty. That is the difference that this Labour Government are making for children and families. We are supporting this by upgrading the eligibility checking system, making it much easier for local authorities, schools and parents to confirm free school meal eligibility.

Finally, the Government are also enabling the introduction of academy trust inspection and giving powers to the Secretary of State where academy trusts are not meeting acceptable standards.

I will now turn to the 13 non-Government amendments made in the other place, first the amendments relating to child protection. On Lords amendment 2, statutory guidance is already clear that a multi-agency conference should take place to review whether the child protection plan should be discharged. On Lords amendment 5, effective multi-agency child protection practices that prevent tragedies and save lives needs to happen now—further delay is unacceptable. In addition, evaluation is already under way, and regulations to give multi-agency child protection teams their functions will be subject consultation and parliamentary scrutiny.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

There is much positivity in what the Government are bringing forward. Back in Northern Ireland, Minister Paul Givan has brought forward a pilot scheme to take smartphones out of the classroom while children are in school. Has the Minister considered that positive strategy? If it is a positive in Northern Ireland, I think it would be a positive here as well.

[Olivia Bailey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that important intervention; I will turn to that matter in due course.

The Government cannot support Lords amendment 44 on principle. Extending the consent requirement would risk discouraging families from seeking or continuing to receive help or support. The amendment suggests that a child’s or a family’s circumstances can never change.

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[Olivia Bailey]

I am sorry but I am going to make some progress.

I will now turn to the amendments relating to looked-after children and deprivation of liberty. Lords amendment 16 concerns a proposed review of the level of funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund. We all know the importance of effective support for the success of adoptive families. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), announced £55 million for the fund in 2026-27 and confirmed that the fund will continue in 2027-28. He also announced a 12-week consultation on adoption support, including the ASGSF. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that it is important that we do not undermine the integrity of the consultation by undertaking a separate review.

Lords amendment 17 intends to strengthen relationships between looked-after children and their siblings. In practice, it would require local authorities to record in the care plan any contact arrangements made between looked-after children and any sibling they are not living with.

I am proud that this Government have set out the biggest reforms to the children’s social care system in a generation. In particular, we are implementing changes to expand fostering, creating 10,000 additional places for children, and resetting the system to back kinship care, so that more children can grow up safely with people who already know and love them. These changes will allow many more children who grow up in care to spend time with their brothers or sisters.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Government on making kinship care central to their policies. Many children in care experience significant disruption in their lives, through multiple home moves and school changes, and relationships with their brothers and sisters are so central to a child’s sense of identity, belonging and emotional security. Will the Minister look again at how regulations and guidance could better ensure that those relationships are protected?

[Olivia Bailey]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of sibling relationships. Lords amendment 17 would do little to advance that cause, but the reforms that we are driving forward on children’s social care will.

Lords amendment 19 seeks to include integrated care boards in regional co-operation arrangements. The Government agree that is important to include health partners in regional arrangements to improve looked-after children’s outcomes, but there are already legal requirements on local authorities to do this. These duties will continue to apply to local authorities that form regional care co-operatives, and the amendment is therefore unnecessary.

Lords amendment 21 concerns joint funding arrangements for children deprived of their liberty. Mechanisms for pooled funding already exist and work well in some areas, and legislating now would be premature ahead of pilots that will test effective models.

Lords amendments 41 and 42 seek a monetary cap rather than a numeric limit on branded school uniform. I welcome their lordships’ support of the Government’s aim to tackle the cost of uniform for parents. Our manifesto was clear that we will limit of branded items of uniform required, so uniforms make children look smarter but do not make families poorer. However, these amendments would undermine our shared aims. A cost cap would risk creating perverse incentives for schools by creating a financial target; many schools could require more branded items, reducing savings for parents.

A cost cap would require Government to regulate for wider, unworkable factors, including how many spares parents might buy, cost variations for clothing sizes and even promotional pricing. It would also impose new bureaucracy on schools to carry out regular retail price monitoring, often across multiple suppliers. We recognise concerns about high-cost individual items, which is why we will strengthen existing cost guidance to be clear that high-cost compulsory branded uniform items should be avoided.

Lords amendment 102 seeks to limit the circumstances in which the adjudicator can specify a lower published admissions number following an upheld objection. Every parent should be able to send their child to a good local school, and we want a choice of good schools for all families. That is why, when we bring forward the updated statutory school admissions code, it will make securing a high-quality education and high levels of parental choice central factors in any decision on PAN. However, at a time of declining pupil numbers, schools acting unilaterally in isolation can put that parental choice at risk. That is exactly why clause 56, unamended, is essential to help to ensure that all schools and local authorities work together to ensure that place-planning delivers a choice of high-quality schools for all families.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

I completely agree with the Minister’s position; parents should have the choice to send their child to whichever school they believe is best for them. In relation to admissions, one of my first cases after becoming an MP was an automatic off-rolling of a child after she had been absent for 20 days, despite the absence having been communicated to the school and extended due to a bereavement. She was off-rolled with no process and no review, and she was out of school for nine months. Will the Minister consider reviewing this punitive policy to ensure that there is a formal review before a child is removed from their preferred school?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. The Minister is being very generous with her time. However, she will be aware that many Members wish to speak in this debate. As it stands, that will be very difficult, given the time constraints.

[Olivia Bailey]

If the hon. Gentleman writes to me about that case, I am happy to look into it for him. Off-rolling absolutely should not be happening.

Let me turn to the crucial issue of allergies. Lords amendment 105 seeks to introduce mandatory allergy safety provisions for all schools. The Government agree with Members across the House who have been campaigning for improved allergy safety in schools, including my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) and the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns). Last week, we published draft statutory guidance, which will be in force in September. It sets out clearly that schools should have a dedicated allergy safety policy and stock spare adrenalin devices, as well as whole-staff allergy awareness training.

At the launch, I had the privilege of joining Helen and Peter Blythe, and their wonderful daughter Etta. Their campaigning in memory of their son, Benedict, has been both brave and instrumental. We recognise their argument about allergy safety requiring the strongest protections. That is why I am pleased to confirm—with Helen in the Gallery today—that we will put Benedict’s law on the statute book, with our own amendment to require schools to have and publish an allergy safety policy, to have regard to statutory guidance and to give powers to the Secretary of State to make regulations relating to allergy safety. This will protect children with allergies in schools and ensure that our guidance can evolve as clinical advice changes. I am sure the whole House will join me in thanking Helen once again for her bravery and brilliant campaigning.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for recognising that we need to legislate to protect children with allergies in schools. Can she reassure us that the Benedict Blythe Foundation, Helen and the MPs who have campaigned for this will see the amendment at the very earliest opportunity before it goes to the Lords, so we can ensure that Benedict’s law is delivered in full?

[Olivia Bailey]

Absolutely—I can give that assurance. I am afraid that I cannot take any further interventions, because I must get through the last section of my speech.

Let me turn to Lords amendments 37, 38 and 106, on social media, VPNs and phones in schools. I acknowledge the strength of feeling on these issues in both this House and the other place. The Online Safety Act 2023 brought in strong protections, but this Government have always been clear that we will build on its foundations. We know that parents across the country worry about what social media is doing to their children’s sleep, concentration and mental health. Many feel that they are fighting a losing battle against platforms designed to keep children scrolling.

Many parents and campaign groups have called for an outright ban on social media for under-16s. Others, including children’s charities, have warned that a blanket ban could drive children towards less regulated corners of the internet or leave teenagers unprepared when they do come online. That is why last week the Government launched a consultation to seek views to help to shape our next steps and ensure that children can grow up with a safer, healthier and more enriching relationship with the online world. The consultation will be open until 26 May, and we will respond in the summer.

The consultation already addresses the areas covered by the Lords amendments. Crucially, the consultation goes beyond the Lords amendments and seeks a view on a range of other issues, including children’s use of AI chatbot services, mandatory overnight curfews, whether platforms should be required to switch off addictive features, and whether the digital age of consent in the UK general data protection regulation should be raised from 13.

We are also ensuring that we can act swiftly and decisively on the outcomes of the consultation. That is why we are proposing an amendment in lieu to allow us to act via regulation-making powers. These powers will allow the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology to restrict or ban children of certain ages from accessing social media services and chatbots, limit access to specific features that are harmful or addictive on these services, age-restrict or limit children’s VPN use, and change the age of digital consent in the UK GDPR if the outcomes of the consultation show that that is necessary. The specific measures will be shaped by what parents, children and experts tell us, and any regulations brought forward will require a vote in both Houses of Parliament, ensuring proper scrutiny.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Olivia Bailey]

I cannot; I must make progress—I am so sorry.

We understand that we need to act swiftly, and rest assured that through these powers we will be able to do so. Let me be extremely clear that it is not a question of if we act, but how.

Finally, let me briefly turn to Lords amendment 106. We have always been clear that mobile phones have no place in schools, but because previous guidance was not sufficiently clear, we have published strengthened guidance so there can be no doubt that, from bell to bell, schools should be mobile phone free. We are also acting to ensure that bans are properly enforced. Our network of attendance and behaviour hubs will provide targeted support to schools that are struggling. From April, Ofsted will inspect schools’ mobile phones policies and enforcement. Our consultation is seeking views on whether we need to go further to support schools—for example, whether the guidance should be placed on a statutory footing.

Hon. Members have the chance tonight to vote to keep children safe online and offline, to tackle child poverty by putting money back into parents’ pockets, and to put in place a schools system that enables every child across all our schools to achieve and thrive. I urge the House to support this vision for our children and our country’s future, and to back the Government’s amendments in lieu. I look forward to the remainder of the debate.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

I am delighted to address the 13 amendments sent back to us by the other place this evening. The volume of Lords amendments reflects the strong feelings in both Houses about the deficiencies in the Bill, but there is a chance tonight to make change for the better. At the moment, the Government seem to do their utmost to oppose anything that they did not come up with—not on merit, but because they have retreated into a tribal bunker in which only ideas emanating from Labour special advisers or union bosses are deemed acceptable. May I suggest that this is not serving the Government very well?

Let us take the phone ban. The Education Secretary has turned into a contortionist. First, she told me that a statutory ban on phones in the classroom was a “gimmick”. Then, the Prime Minister slammed it as “unnecessary”. The Education Secretary later admitted that there is a problem, but she said that more guidance can fix it. Finally, she is now consulting on whether to do a statutory ban but refusing to back our amendment, in Lords amendment 106, which would actually deliver one. I am flattered by the energy that the Education Secretary is putting into avoiding agreeing with me, but this is getting ridiculous.

If the Government cannot properly argue the merits of their case, we get bad legislation. We had that problem with the Bill when it first came in. The Government still cannot justify the rationale for taking away academy freedoms—the very same freedoms that have delivered improved school standards in this country. Indeed, we now have the absurdity of the schools White Paper rightly saying that academies are the driving force behind school improvement, while in this Bill the Government are destroying academies in all but name. This is palpable nonsense. Do not try to make any sense of it—it is not possible.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Would my right hon. Friend allow me?

[Laura Trott]

With pleasure.

[Sir John Hayes]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on making the case for banning mobile phones in schools and for restricting access to social media. We do not need more discussion or consultation, and we do not need more research, because research already shows the harm that those things are doing. By delaying and prevaricating, we are robbing children of the chance of a healthy life, so let us just move on and do what so obviously needs to be done.

20:00

[Laura Trott]

As ever, my right hon. Friend is the voice of reason in this Chamber.

Turning to our amendment that deals with pupil admission numbers, Lords amendment 102, I hope the Government will try to explain why they think good and outstanding schools should be made smaller when they are oversubscribed. To be clear, that is exactly what the Government are asking Back Benchers to vote for this evening. Parental choice has been the great driver of school improvement in this country—it empowers parents to vote with their feet and encourages excellent schools—yet the Government want to turn that principle on its head. They want to cut good school places, which is bad for parents, bad for schools and, above all, bad for children. School standards are on the Order Paper this evening, and the Government want to vote against them.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady knows that the challenge at the moment is that, because of the way that the system works, local authorities can control the number of admissions to good and outstanding maintained schools, but have much less control when it comes to academies. When there are falling pupil numbers—as she knows there are across the country—and work needs to be done to ensure we have the right number of places in the right areas, the only lever that our local authorities have to pull is reducing admissions to good and outstanding maintained schools. Does the right hon. Lady not agree that it is right that this Government act to make sure we can make choices in the interests of children and parents, regardless of the type of school?

[Laura Trott]

I profoundly disagree with the hon. Gentleman. At a time of shrinking school places, it is important that it is the good school places that survive, and parents should make that choice, not bureaucrats.

The Government’s inability simply to admit that they got it wrong in the Bill, and that there is a better way of achieving the outcome they want, is ever present. Lords amendment 41, which would impose a cost cap on school uniform, is palpably better than having a cap on the number of items. It is the height of insanity to insist that it should be illegal for a school to use the football kit it received for free because that would be outside of the item limit. If anyone is thinking that this cannot actually be Government policy, I suggest that they read the guidance that sits alongside the legislation. It literally says that

“All loaned or gifted branded items will be captured within the limit if they are required to be worn”,

meaning that they come under the cap. That makes absolutely no sense.

[Olivia Bailey]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising that specific point, but it is clear in the guidance that an item can be loaned as long as it is not compulsory. That is a perfectly reasonable situation that enables school sports teams to loan uniform items.

[Laura Trott]

The whole point is whether it is compulsory or not—that is the whole point of uniform, and I was reading directly from the guidance. It makes absolutely no sense; how is a child wearing something that they have been given for free going to increase costs for parents? If the “not invented here” syndrome were not running so rampant in the Department for Education, the change made by Lords amendment 41 would already have been made.

The same is true of Lords amendment 44. We all know the horrific case of Sara Sharif, which was used as a rationale for bringing forward many of the positive child protection measures in the Bill. The serious case review published at the end of last year set out multiple failings that led to Sara falling out of the system. That review states that, while well intentioned, this legislation would not have helped Sara, so we have brought forward amendment 44 to fix that. It ensures that consent would need to be sought from the local authority to homeschool any child who has ever had a child protection plan. That would mean that the Bill would have helped Sara, which is the Government’s stated aim, but guess what, Madam Deputy Speaker? The Government are now opposing that amendment. We are diligently doing the work an Opposition should do to improve the legislation, but it is being shrugged off by the Government—not on its merits, but because they do not want to accept anything from this side of the House. It is not good enough.

[Mr Forster]

I thank the shadow Minister for raising the case of Sara Sharif from my constituency. The safeguarding review that she has referred to highlighted failings in Surrey county council and failings in the law. That review recommended three quite detailed things, which are not included in the Lords amendment—the amendment is separate. Would it not be better for Surrey to be put under special measures and for the Government to implement the safeguarding review in full, immediately?

[Laura Trott]

The hon. Gentleman is arguing for things that are outside the scope of the Bill. What we know is that the change made by Lords amendment 44 would have helped Sara in a way that the unamended Bill would not have done.

I am not going to push Lords amendments 2 and 21 to a vote this evening, but I reserve the right to come back to them if the Government do not engage constructively in the other place. I am grateful to the noble Lady Baroness Barran for her brilliant work on those amendments and on the wider Bill.

Turning to phones, I really want Members to understand how bad things have got with phones in schools, and why a statutory ban is necessary. I know that the Government have issued revised guidance and have asked Ofsted to enforce it, but Ofsted’s guidance on this topic still allows phones to be present in schools. I cannot overstate to Members how damaging and dangerous that is. I was thinking about how to communicate this most effectively, and given that the Government are not listening to me, to parents or to teachers, I thought that first-hand testimony from a young person might get through.

I warn you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the following account from a former pupil involves some graphic content that I sincerely wish I did not have to talk about. However, I refuse to shy away from it, because if we are exposing 13-year-olds to such content in schools, we need to be able to talk about it in this Chamber. This is testimony from a girl who was at an outstanding girls’ school that had a “not seen, not heard” phone policy. Such policies are common in many schools across the country and count as a phone ban under the Government’s definition. The Minister says that children’s voices are rarely heard—well, I hope she listens to this testimony today.

“When I was around 13 or 14 years old, one of my classmates would pull out her laptop at lunch times. She would connect her laptop through her phone’s hotspot, because the school wi-fi would block any social media, and launch up social media, because some thought it was funny to see how long it took to find an old man wanking—it was never long—or how long it took for somebody to ask them their age, and when they replied with ‘14’, they would send their Snapchat for you to add. The teachers never knew, because we were alone in our forms.

“Some of my friends had access to Snapchat from very young, some even primary school, but I did not. I got Snapchat when I was 12 or 13, but I remember before, my friends talking about dick pics in the changing rooms, and one said she got at least 10 in the morning. She’d put up her phone and show us by scrolling through them, just because it was funny that they would just send it. This happened after she added someone on Snapchat that she didn’t know. Others had them too.

“Looking back now, I remember pretending to find everything funny, just to fit in, but actually I felt really confused and grossed out at some of the content being shared. All of this happened at school, and we probably should have talked to a teacher, but as an 11 to 14-year-old girl, you’re not going to tell your male form tutor that people were being sent dick pics in school, or that your classmates were sending porn in the form group chat. I didn’t even tell my parents until recently, because I was embarrassed, or maybe because it just seemed normal, but my mum was already pretty strict with my phone usage and if I told her what was being sent around at school, I felt like I would be in trouble and she’d take the phone away. The phone was how everyone connected, so I needed to protect it. Over time, all the sexually explicit stuff just became normal.”

I remind Members that this is happening at school and, in this case, at an outstanding girls’ school. It is so far from being an isolated incident—in fact, it is the opposite. It is approaching a norm.

[Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)]

To enhance my right hon. Friend’s point, I have been running a survey in my constituency and the vast majority of respondents and parents have said that they support the concept of a simple age limit on social media, because of these particularly harmful algorithms. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the responsible thing for all of us in this House to do is to support our party’s policy of keeping our children safe by putting an age limit on social media?

[Laura Trott]

My hon. Friend is completely right. We need that age limit, and we need the phone ban in schools. Polling out today shows that 40% of children are shown explicit content during the school day. That is happening right now. This is an emergency. No more guidance; no more consultations—the Government should legislate, do something about it, and vote to ban phones in schools tonight.

The Lords amendments on social media received overwhelming cross-party backing in the other place. They were put forward by the noble Lords Nash, Berger, Cass and Benjamin. The amendments have been extensively debated and are backed by a number of expert groups and bereaved parents. In the place of those amendments, we have the farcical situation where the Government are asking the House to support their own amendment, which does not tell us what the Government will do or even when they will do it. No action is required by the provision being put forward this evening.

[Mr Perkins]

The shadow Secretary of State has been speaking a bit tonight about parental choice. That is, until this amendment, where she does not believe parents are able to decide what their children should do. In fact, she believes that she is far better placed, as are many Members in the House of Lords who do not know how to take a photo on their phone, to tell people how to parent their children. Does she acknowledge that many parents recognise that their children have positive experiences on social media? Is it not sensible to have a consultation, as the Government have already announced, to hear from experts, from children and from all the people who have opinions on this issue, rather than legislating at great haste and making a huge difference to many young people’s lives?

[Laura Trott]

This is a safeguarding issue, and we have always taken steps when it comes to safeguarding young people. Let me be clear to Labour Members: the Government can choose to do nothing based on this amendment. Ministers do not have a view on whether social media should be banned, and they have put forward an amendment that does not tell us what they will do. It is extraordinary.

[Alicia Kearns]

This is not about the ability of parents; it is about recognising that social media platforms are being weaponised by algorithms—let alone by hostile states—to make children addicted to them. It is impossible for parents to protect their children who do not have the critical thinking skills before 16. Having worked in counter-terrorism, I know that it is critical thinking that stops people from getting on planes to blow themselves up in foreign countries.

The No. 2 cause of stroke in women under 40 is being strangled during sex. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is because they have been told on the internet that they can be safely strangled? They cannot. We have to protect our children, because it is impossible for them to police things or have the critical thinking skills to protect themselves when they are on the internet.

[Laura Trott]

My hon. Friend eloquently sums up why this amendment is so important.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Laura Trott]

I am sorry, but I will make some progress, otherwise I will get in trouble with Madam Deputy Speaker.

We have an emergency, and it is hidden on children’s phones. A quarter of children in primary school have seen porn, and the vast majority access it via social media. Some 70% of teenagers have seen real-life violence online, while only 6% were looking for it. In other words, the social media algorithm deliberately serves it to them. Criminals are using Snapchat and Facebook to groom children. Child sexual abuse imagery crimes are up enormously. Snapchat is flagged in almost half of cases. Meta platforms make up a quarter.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Laura Trott]

I am sorry, but I really have to make some progress.

Sextortion is also a huge issue on social media. In 2022, there were 10,000 reports of sextortion by snap. That was not in a year, but in one month, and those are just the ones we know about. Most horrifyingly of all, social media is culpable in dozens of children’s deaths. To give just one example, Ellen Roome’s son Jools took part, she believes, in a TikTok blackout challenge. That is where young children and teenagers are encouraged to hold their breath until they pass out. Jools died as a result in April 2022, and that was two years after the challenge had supposedly been removed from the platform. When I met Ellen and other bereaved parents, they said that, tragically, their bereaved group just keeps on growing. In the face of that, do Members know what the Government’s consultation says? It says that children like using TikTok to post dance videos. This misguided view that social media is in some way good for children, or that its benefits outweigh the harms I have spoken about, is what has got us into this position.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

[Laura Trott]

I am sorry, but I must make some progress.

I have heard Ministers argue that vulnerable children or children who are isolated need to find their community online, and I want to put that argument to rest once and for all. All the evidence shows that these children are the most likely to be exploited, groomed and harmed by social media. If a child is scared or isolated, the last thing we should do is put them on social media. It is a terrible argument, and I hope it is not repeated today.

The other options that the Government present in their consultation simply do not meet the scale of the challenge. A curfew so that children can only get damaged by social media during the day does not help. Time limits so that children still see the content, but just for fewer hours, are not good enough. Getting rid of scrolling is fine, but how does that stop children being groomed?

So far, three senior Labour figures have managed to grasp the seriousness of the situation: the Mayor of Greater Manchester, the Health Secretary and the Labour leader in Scotland. They have judged this policy on its merits, and I hope the House manages to do the same tonight, because we are in a crisis. If Members across the House agree, they need to add their voices and vote for change.

20:15

A Government amendment that does not commit to any action, backed by a consultation that does not recognise the scale of the problem, is simply not good enough. If the amendments I have outlined today were included in the Bill, children would be safer, uniforms would be cheaper, and school standards would be protected. There is a chance this evening that we can make this Bill better. Instead of doing all we can to disagree, we can make changes that have cross-party backing. Parents are watching how we vote tonight. If Members support school choice, they should vote for it. If they want smartphones out of the classroom, they should vote for it. If they want children off social media, they should vote for it. We can make change. That is what parents want, and it is what we will be voting for this evening.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. With the exception of the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, there will be an immediate four-minute time limit.

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to the Lords amendments to the Bill that are of most interest to the Education Committee, following our scrutiny work on the Bill and in relation to a number of other subsequent and ongoing inquiries.

I welcome the decision to place the expansion of the entitlement to free school meals in the Bill. The Education Committee welcomes that expansion, which will increase the number of children who can benefit from a nutritious hot meal in the middle of the day. Combined with the roll-out of free breakfast clubs, it will substantially reduce the scourge of hunger, which harms children’s health and holds back their learning.

My Committee has recommended that the Government introduce auto-enrolment for free school meals. The use of universal credit data, which the Government already hold, would make auto-enrolment much easier to achieve. I urge the Minister to ensure, by implementing auto-enrolment, that no child misses out on the meal to which they are entitled.

I welcome the introduction of a requirement to notify health and education services when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. I have seen at first hand many times in my constituency the destabilising impact of temporary accommodation on children’s lives. It is usually the worst quality accommodation and is the most likely to be overcrowded, damp and mouldy. It is often far away from school and friends, with no space to do homework, and brings the constant underlying insecurity of not having a permanent home. It can have profound consequences for children’s health and education, and the new duty to notify is an important first step in ensuring that children can be supported.

[Chris Vince]

I declare an interest, as a member of the Education Committee and a former teacher. I thank the Chair of the Committee for her passionate speech. Does she agree that it is hugely important that teachers are aware when young people in their care are in temporary accommodation, because of the huge impact it can have on their education, as she has suggested?

[Helen Hayes]

I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. So often we hear from teachers that they recognise a drop in a student’s engagement or performance, but without understanding why.

I welcome the introduction of the new requirements on allergy safety in schools. As the parent of a child who had unexplained allergies in early childhood, I understand some of the fear and anxiety that parents experience when entrusting a child with allergies to a formal setting. There is anxiety about whether allergens will be properly managed, and anxiety about what will happen if their child experiences an allergic reaction. The new requirements will ensure that there is more consistency, improve knowledge and introduce better protocols for managing allergies in schools, so that parents and schools can have more confidence.

I turn to Lords amendment 17 on siblings and foster care. In the Education Committee’s inquiry into children’s social care last year, we heard directly from young people with recent experience of the care system. They told us about the profound impacts of sibling separation. Sibling relationships are very important for looked-after children, who often have experienced trauma and broken relationships with their parents and other family members. Yet far too often, siblings are separated by a care system that struggles, due to funding and lack of capacity, to deliver child-centred care. My Committee was shocked to discover that the Department for Education gathers no data on sibling separation. That is a first and necessary step in seeking to reduce it.

I appreciate that the Government are not yet content with the wording of the amendment on sibling contact, but I urge them to find a way to incorporate stronger requirements for sibling contact to be prioritised and maintained before the Bill reaches the statute book. It is a small change concerning something that should happen anyway, and has the potential to make a big difference to vulnerable children in the care system.

In the short time that remains to me, let me mention just two other matters. The first is the amendment relating to school uniform costs for families. I know what a strain those can be for families who are struggling with the cost of living, and I welcome the Government’s efforts to limit the costs, but I urge the Minister to give a further assurance about the risks of the high costs of specific items. I encountered an egregious case in my constituency, in which a child from an extremely low-income background had been given a place at a school but was told that she could not attend unless she had the appropriate blazer, the cost of which was £100. I hope the Minister can give an indication that the guidance for schools will be strengthened in this regard.

I support robust measures to protect children from social media harms, including raising the age of digital consent and a ban on some social media apps for under-16s, and I support a statutory ban in schools.

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

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Hayes]

I will not, because of the time limit.

However, there are important differences of opinion between stakeholders on the best ways in which to regulate young people’s access to smartphones and social media, so I consider it right for the Government to consult. I welcome the amendments that will allow legislation to be introduced without delay. It would be helpful if the Minister could give some assurances about the timescale for the introduction of legislation following the consultation, which I believe will be necessary.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to welcome the Bill back to the House of Commons, some 15 months after it started its passage at the beginning of last year. I am, however, extremely disappointed that the Government have provided such a small amount of time for us to discuss the numerous Lords amendments, and that they are throwing so many of them out. I am grateful to our colleagues in the other place for their diligence and their efforts to strengthen and improve the Bill.

Lords amendment 41 and 42, tabled by my noble Friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, seeks to introduce a price cap on the amount of branded uniform that a school can require parents to buy. We know that the price of uniform causes real hardship for families, particularly in the midst of a cost of living crisis. As we have just heard from the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), it often causes genuine anxiety. Children are sometimes sent home for wearing the wrong item of uniform, which disrupts their learning. While we strongly support the Government’s intention to introduce a branded uniform items cap, I implore the Minister to look again at the detail.

The Liberal Democrats have proposed a uniform price cap, which would keep the prices down for parents while giving schools the flexibility to choose their own uniform policy and decide how many branded items they wish to include. The Minister talked about perverse incentives and driving up prices for parents. In fact, a monetary cap would do precisely the opposite, because it would be using the market and incentivising suppliers to drive down their prices. Obviously, they would want to be able to sell more items of branded clothing within that cap. I appreciate that the Government point to their manifesto commitment, but there is nothing shameful about changing one’s mind—or, dare I say, U-turning—when the evidence demands it. That is something that the Government should feel pretty comfortable with by now.

Let me turn to the theme of supporting families. Lords amendment 16 would require the Government to review the per-child funding in the adoption and special guardianship support fund following the devastating cuts that they implemented last year. The fund provides therapeutic support for some of the most vulnerable children in society, allowing them to process their trauma and relearn how to trust. As a result of last year’s cuts, many adoptive parents and kinship carers can barely afford to pay for needs assessments, let alone the complex therapy that the children actually require. A number of them have written to me from across the country about their experiences since the Government cut their entitlements. Heartbreakingly, many mention the threat of adoption breakdown looming over their family.

The fund is a lifeline for families, but that lifeline is fraying. We are told that tough choices must be made, but the Department for Education’s advertising budget hit nearly £50 million last year. That is a £15 million increase in the last two years. Just halving that budget could restore crucial therapeutic support to thousands of children. Will the Minister support our amendment that seeks to review the funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund and commit herself to restoring individual grants, or are this Government more interested in glossy advertising campaigns than in supporting the most vulnerable children?

Speaking of vulnerable children, let me turn to Lords amendment 17, tabled by Baroness Tyler, who has done amazing work on the issue of sibling contact rights. The amendment seeks to close a loophole in the current regulations so that siblings, when one is in care and the other is not, are able to remain in contact. It would require a child’s care plan to include arrangements for promoting contact with all the child’s siblings, whether they are in care or not, as far as that is consistent with the child’s welfare.

The Government have said that there is no need to close the loophole because the duty already exists, but I ask Labour Members whether they can be content with such an answer when it is clear that the present system is not working. We have heard again, from the Chair of the Education Committee and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), about the importance of this issue.

I have been given permission to share Abby’s story. Abby grew up in a residential care home and lost contact with two of her sisters, which was subsequently restored. However, I do not have time to go into that now because the time for debate has been so limited this evening, but I hope that we will return to this subject again if the Government insist on doing the wrong thing and throwing out an important amendment that a number of their Back Benchers clearly support.

The Government motion on amendments in lieu of Lords amendments 37 and 38 further amends the UK GDPR legislation to tighten control over children’s personal data online. The Liberal Democrats have been calling for that change for over a year. While we welcome the Government’s copying of another of our proposals, simply granting themselves the power to do something at some point is no protection for children until they act, and action has not been forthcoming. The same is true of the second part of the motion. Again, we have a consultation that appears to be dithering over whether something should be done at all.

We Liberal Democrats have made it very clear to the Government that if they want our support, they must make a firm commitment to act, and to act quickly. We are calling for a specific implementation timeline and a change in the consultation’s terms of reference, so that it becomes a question of how, and not if, we regulate social media. We have a thought-out policy that is ready to go if the Government want to take another idea of ours. We have proposed a harms-based approach to online regulation: age-rating user-to-user services according to the addictiveness of their features, the harmfulness of their content and the impact on mental health.

The solution is practical and future-proofed, and would provide the incentive to make the online world safer for us all. Unlike the Government’s approach, our approach would ensure that these sweeping powers are not concentrated in the hands of a single Secretary of State. Are the Government truly comfortable with bypassing full parliamentary scrutiny through secondary legislation? They must consider the precedent that they are setting. We are handing a loaded gun to any future Administration, of any political complexion, to decide which websites are harmful and which are not. For the sake of our children’s safety and our democratic standards, I urge the Government to think again.

Finally, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches made a promise to the campaigners, the charities and the thousands of parents who have written to us that we would not play party politics on this issue. While we may differ in our approach, we will oppose the removal of Lords amendment 38, because we need the Government to hear the voices of the thousands of parents and children who are desperate for something to change. Every hour that this House spends debating whether we should do something, another algorithm is being developed to exploit a vulnerable child. By opposing the removal of the amendment, we are sending a clear message that the safety of our children is a non-negotiable right.

[Emma Lewell (South Shields) (Lab)]

I will speak briefly to Lords amendment 17. Since 2016, I have used every single parliamentary lever possible to improve sibling contact for children in care, by trying to create parity in the legislation. Although the Children Act 1989 requires local authorities to allow a looked-after child reasonable contact with their parents, there is no such requirement for a looked-after child’s contact with their siblings or half-siblings. If siblings cannot be placed together, they should have the same rights to contact defined in primary legislation as they do with their parents. Many siblings who come from neglectful or abusive backgrounds often state that their only constant, positive and reassuring relationship is with their siblings. After all, they have a shared experience. No matter how horrific it is, it is something that only they truly know about.

20:30

It cannot be acceptable that our legislation currently gives more weight to a child’s contact with those who may have caused them significant harm than it does to contact with their siblings, who are totally blameless. I know all too well from my former career that removing a child from a family home is deeply traumatic. Having to explain to a frightened and traumatised child that they will be living somewhere else with strangers, separate from their siblings, has been a part of some of the most painful conversations that I have ever had. Over the last decade, the response from Ministers has always been that sibling contact is catered for in the guidance, or that they would update the regulations to reflect what I was asking for. Guidance is never a substitute for a legal duty and, to date, the regulations have not changed, despite all the promises. Our care system separates siblings, then denies them contact with each other.

Lords amendment 17 seeks to address a gap in the care planning regulations—something that I was promised over a decade ago. However, by adopting my amendment from Report, the gap would be closed and contact arrangements for all children in care would be strengthened across the board. I thank the Minister for Children and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), for his engagement with me on this issue, but in common with my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), I sincerely hope that when this Bill returns to us from the other place, children in care will at long last be given the right to have the most precious of relationships preserved.

[Alicia Kearns]

Lords amendment 105 is named Benedict’s law for Benedict Blythe, who was just five years old when he suffered a fatal anaphylactic reaction at school after being exposed to allergens. No child should go to school in the morning feeling anxious that they will not be safe, and no parent should fear at drop-off that they may never pick up their child again, but that was the unfortunate reality for Helen and Peter Blythe. Since that day, they have fought to make sure that every child is safer in school. Benedict’s law would ensure that every school has a mandatory allergy policy and holds spare adrenalin medications on site, and that every member of staff is trained and knows how to protect children. One in three schools in our country currently has none of those things, but we would not have known that if it was not for Helen’s campaigning for the Benedict Blythe Foundation. That is why this law is needed.

I offer my thanks to the Government. The statutory guidance to which they have committed is a real step forward, and today’s announcement that the Government will accept our amendment by tabling it in the Government’s name is welcome. It finishes the job, and means that full protections will finally be in place. Every measure that protects a child with allergies is a good thing, and I am so relieved that we have reached this point. I drafted the Benedick Blythe amendment last September, and I pay tribute to Harry Warren and my team, with whom I have campaigned throughout this time. When the amendment was put to the Lords, the Government whipped their peers to vote against it. I thank every noble Lord who voted for it, because they brought us here today.

The Government had told me that legislation was not needed. When the guidance was announced, we welcomed it, but we said that it did not go far enough. That is why we pushed our amendment to a vote. We are glad the Government now recognise that the guidance does not go far enough, largely because we were determined to push the amendment to a vote. We will need to see the wording of the amendment as soon as possible, because in the Lords we learned that guidance can be given and guidance can be taken away. There was a view that a threat of losing what little had been offered would deter Helen Blythe, and that misjudged her entirely. I am willing to draw a line under this, but I put it on the record that I want the Government to maintain their resolve and make sure the amendment is laid, because on Tuesday last week we received a letter telling all of us in this place that the amendment would be voted down and was not needed. On Friday, that was still the Government’s position, which is why they missed the deadline to lay their own amendment.

I want to turn to the financing of this amendment. The Government do not plan to provide funding to schools for the medications needed to protect children having anaphylactic shock. That is not the right approach. It currently costs the taxpayer about £9 million to provide the additional adrenalin auto-injectors prescribed to children to take into school individually. By altering the distribution method, as the Benedict Blythe Foundation has recommended, the new measures in Benedict’s law could save the Treasury £1 million a year. Just as with defibrillators, which the Conservative Government funded for all schools, we are asking the Government to fund medications to save the taxpayer money. These savings are before we consider the estimated £1.5 million saved by reducing A&E and hospital admissions, improvements in school attendance and parental workforce participation. I ask the Government to look at that again as they draft the amendment for the Lords.

I want to close by paying tribute to Helen Blythe. Her asks have really been very simple:

“Benedict’s life mattered. His death must matter too”.

That is why we come to this place—to protect those who need us—and I am so proud to have been able to stand beside Helen in her fight. I ask colleagues today to hold Benedict in their hearts tonight. I know that today is a good day, but such a promise will only be worthy of him when it is kept and when children become safer in our schools.

[Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset) (Lab)]

As a father of two young boys, I want to be clear that I have approached these Lords amendments, particularly Lords amendment 38, not only as a legislator, but as a parent. I have seen at first hand the pressures that social media places on children, and I have considered this matter with the utmost care.

To date, I have received 1,309 emails from residents across North Somerset calling for immediate action to raise the age of social media access to 16. That makes this campaign one of the largest I have seen since my election. The consensus is clear: parents, teachers and almost everyone who works with young people want to see meaningful change, including the Gladiator Steel—I am sure no one wants to mess with him. Social media was sold to us as a tool for connection—a way to stay close to friends and family, to find community and to share in each other’s lives—but that promise has been broken.

[Freddie van Mierlo]

The Government already had an opportunity to raise the age of digital consent from 13 to 16 with the amendments put forward to the Data (Use and Access) Bill by the Liberal Democrats, but they are dithering yet again while children could have been benefiting from that change. Why does the hon. Member think the Government are continuing to dither on this issue?

[Sadik Al-Hassan]

I will talk about that in a second, but I appreciate the hon. Member’s patience.

Social media was sold to us in that way, but these platforms have been driven not by connection, but by engagement algorithms optimised purely for profit—something altogether more troubling. Parents such as me are locked in a daily battle, which they simply cannot win alone, of fighting platforms that have been specifically designed to keep children hooked. This is not just my experience. A 2024 report found that 78% of young people have experienced at least one form of online harm—body shaming, harassment, non-consensual sharing of sexualised images—or been publicly outed. As a pharmacist, I know that if a drug were causing such measurable harm for 78% of young people, it would be withdrawn, reformulated or placed behind the counter with strict controls on who could access it. We would act because that is what the evidence demanded, and the same logic must apply here. We have an identifiable source, we have overwhelming evidence of harm and we have the power to act.

Big tech companies are billion-dollar corporations that have built their business models on capturing the attention of young people for as long as possible. If we are serious about holding these companies to account, we should go further. I urge the Government to consider a windfall tax on social media companies, so that those who have profited from the exploitation of children begin to pay for the damage they have caused. Like the tobacco industry before them, these companies knew their product was harmful and took steps to make it more harmful and more addictive, but then denied responsibility for the consequences. We do not accept that argument from tobacco companies, and we should not accept it from big tech either.

The revenue raised could make a real difference. Youth centres have closed, and the pubs and community spaces that once gave young people somewhere to go and something to belong to have disappeared. Mental health services are overwhelmed. Education support is stretched. A generation has been harmed and the companies that profited from that harm should contribute to repairing it. That is why I welcome this debate today and any discussion on raising the digital age of consent, regulating social media and, crucially, holding big tech to account.

I understand the urgent call for action, to put our boot on the neck of big tech companies that have hurt an entire generation and put our children at risk—I share that desire completely—but I also understand that we need to get this right. It is relatively straightforward to identify what change is needed. The harder and more important question is how we make those changes in a way that is enforceable, durable and genuinely protective of children. A well-intentioned measure that cannot be properly implemented or enforced helps no one. We must learn from Australia’s model. The world is watching. Our teachers, parents and healthcare professionals are watching. Our children depend on what we decide in this Chamber today, tomorrow and in the future. Their opportunities, hopes, and dreams are in the balance, so we have to get this right—for them.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

There is now overwhelming evidence that addictive algorithms and harmful content are deeply damaging to our children’s wellbeing. We Liberal Democrats support Lords amendment 38, which would ban social media for under-16s, although our preference is for online regulation with film-style age rating of user-to-user services.

While the Government dither and delay, children across the country are being exposed to deeply harmful content every single day. I have spoken many times about the saturation of pro-eating disorder content that children view on social media, but the harms do not stop there. Social media is increasingly acting as a marketplace for the illicit drug trade. Researchers at the University of Bath have found that up to a quarter of vapes confiscated in secondary schools contained the deadly drug Spice. The Government’s own data reveals an eightfold increase in young people entering treatment for Spice in 2024-25.

How are young people getting their hands on these dangerous drugs? Through social media. Researchers have identified nearly 10,000 accounts involved in the supply and distribution of Spice, using TikTok as a means of communicating and advertising to children. Ofcom agreed that the content is “priority illegal content”. However, it declined to use its powers under the Online Safety Act 2023. We are facing a shocking reality. Children, right now, can buy the most dangerous prison drugs on mainstream social media: Snapchat, TikTok, Telegram. If Ofcom will not step up and the Government will not make it, what choice do we have but to prevent children accessing these platforms altogether?

The Government’s amendments in lieu of Lords amendments 38 and 39 completely miss the point, as my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) outlined. The Government must act now to stop children being exposed to illegal and harmful content online. We cannot allow endless inquiries, consultations and delays to stand in the way.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I will not; I am sorry.

More than 40 charities and experts support this approach. Our constituents have made their views clear too. I have been inundated with emails, the overwhelming majority of which support a ban. Now is the time for action. The Government could accept this cross-party amendment and give children an escape route from the dark corners of social media.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

I would like to talk to the social media element of the Lords amendments. The argument for stronger protections for children online has been won, not least because of the appalling harms that have come to so many children because of the lack of proper, functioning legislation. I will use my time, which is limited, on this subject to make clear what I would like the Government to do and why I will be voting down the amendments in front of us tonight.

I want to focus on my steadfast belief that we must age-gate functionalities instead of age-gating social media, because I think that phrase will immediately become outdated—it is already outdated in schools.

One of the big problems with the Online Safety Act and how long it took to come in is that so many technologies are now not covered by that legislation—it is not evergreen. I am determined to ensure that my time in this place is used to create evergreen legislation for the issue of our time, which is protecting children from the horrendous and exploitative harms that they are coming to.

20:45

I want to outline the three harms that I think we could protect children from, with a functionality approach. The first is strangers. There is no way that children under 16 should be able to contact or be contacted by strangers of any kind—end of. We would not allow it in the real world, and we should not allow it online.

The second is danger from themselves. I keep going back and forth on this, because I really wanted to use the opportunity of the online safety campaign to bring young people’s voices to the fore. Many young people in my online safety forum said that they really wanted a place online where they could speak to their friends, but with no weirdos. That spoke to me; I thought they were absolutely right. We have to get rid of stranger danger online. We must also acknowledge that children’s brains are developing before they are 16 or 17, and that some develop earlier and some later. We have an arbitrary age—17—at which people can drive a car as an acknowledgment that at 17, our risk appetite and ability to analyse risk will be more mature than at 13, 14, 15 or 16.

I appreciate that we do need to pick an age, but I feel very strongly that there are dangers that young people and children are coming to at their own hand, and that they make mistakes of which they would not want to leave a footprint—a permanent record—for the rest of their lives. It is inappropriate risk tolerance that I do not think we should have.

The final harm is the chronic use of devices and the way that individual device use has filtered into all our children’s everyday lives.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Would the hon. Lady agree that the film-style age rating system that the Liberal Democrats have come up with speaks to exactly what she is saying? An app that allows children access to strangers or is built with an addictive algorithm, for example, would have a different age rating than something that is absolutely safe and gated, like a game, which could be rated safe for younger children.

[Lola McEvoy]

I am interested in the idea of licensing functionalities and new developments before they come into children’s lives, which is not happening at the moment—at the moment it is happening after they have been used for a long time. We are age-analysing and risk-assessing them retrospectively, which seems very backwards to me.

I agree that we should have a licensing scheme for content that is designed for children, like CoComelon and some of the other content that we know is addictive for very young children. Such a scheme would obviously have to be fleshed out, with a proper consultation on publishing rights and with information on who is going to do the licensing. I feel very strongly that self-published is inappropriate for under-16s. I do not think that content that is not regulated, that has not gone through any supervision and that has no legislative or regulatory framework surrounding it should be allowed to be fed to our children in any way.

I will sum up by saying that one of the young people in my latest online safety forum said to me via an anonymous note—I told them all that they could send me an anonymous note if there was anything they did not want to say in front of their peers— “Don’t ban it, but if you do, make sure it works.” I thought that was brilliant. Young people are much savvier than we give them credit for.

I want to make it very clear that at the moment, Ofcom is yet to use its strongest powers. The Online Safety Act does not include AI. I am determined that whatever this Government decide to do, they must do it with the idea of effective implementation of the legislation. We owe it to the next generation and the generation currently using the digital world to get it right and to future-proof their right to a childhood. Because so many of them have been badly let down, we must make evergreen—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I call Kirsty Blackman.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Only one clause in this legislation applied to Scotland in advance of it returning from the Lords. Lords amendment 38 contains a reserved power that would apply across the whole UK the changes that are being suggested to the Online Safety Act. I want to focus specifically on those changes.

Comments have been made about social media, but it is not exclusively social media where there are dangers to children online. It is not exclusively user-to-user services where there are dangers to children online. There are some games that can be downloaded that do not have user-to-user services but are highly addictive, and those would not be covered by the Conservative or Liberal Dem proposals because they are games without user-to-user services.

There are massive risks online for young people, but I do not want us to absolve companies of the responsibility of dealing with that. There is this sudden feeling that dealing with this issue is dramatically urgent, but people have been sending unsolicited nude pics online for more than 30 years. It has been happening for a significant length of time. It is urgent that action is taken, but it does not have to be taken today; it has to be taken correctly and in a way that works, as the hon. Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) just said.

We need to ensure that, whatever we do, we have a clear aim in mind. What is the intention? Are we trying to protect children online, or are we trying to ban children from social media? Are we trying to ensure that young people are not exposed to people who are looking to groom them, to access them, or to convince them of something? Are we trying to protect them from that, or from obsessively looking at algorithms and videos on TikTok? Maybe we are trying to do both, but we need to be clear about what the aims are.

There is no point in banning social media if we do not know why we are banning it, and if we still allow access to Roblox and many other places where there is harm. If we ban YouTube, what happens if a kid wanders into a room and watches YouTube that is playing on the TV via the PlayStation? Who is responsible for that? How do we sort this—how do we ensure that it works?

I am clear that whatever happens, it needs to work. We must not just listen to the big tech companies. We need to do as the Minister has suggested: listen to parents and experts to understand exactly how children consume the internet. We need to know where and how these individuals who are accessing children for nefarious purposes are doing it, because it is not only through social media or the platforms that are being defined by some people as social media.

I am clear that this needs to work. Therefore, I am supportive of the Government undertaking a consultation. I have spoken to DSIT officials and as many people as I possibly can about this. I am very glad about some of the changes that the Government are bringing forward—for example, to ensure that livestreaming cannot be accessed by young people. I have been pushing for that for a significant number of years, and I am glad that we have got to that place, but there are far wider issues with certain functionalities online that need to be tackled and that will not be covered by a blanket ban on social media.

We cannot let the companies continue to get away with this. We cannot let them continue to have horrific and harmful illegal content, without cracking down on it and making sure that they are held accountable for the behaviour on their platforms. We cannot just say, “We’ll ban under-16s from social media and absolve ourselves and the companies of responsibility.” We need to take real action that will really protect our children. Please, everyone, respond to the consultation.

[Jodie Gosling (Nuneaton) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to Lords amendment 105. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on allergy, a lifelong allergy sufferer, a former teacher and the parent of a lifelong allergy sufferer, I am painfully aware of the inconsistencies of allergy care, and the anxiety and harm that it causes.

Baroness Morgan of Cotes’ amendment aimed to introduce new requirements based on learning, following the tragic deaths of Benedict Blythe and others. While I believe that there is much more that can be done to improve the lives of allergy sufferers, I am pleased that the creation of new statutory advice and the implementation of Benedict’s law will vastly improve the situation for children with allergies. All schools will now be required to stock allergy devices, have a dedicated allergy policy and ensure that teachers are trained, meaning that lifesaving treatments for allergies will no longer be hidden in tupperware boxes at the back of dusty cupboards. It means that no parents will ever receive a phone call like I did, when I was asked whether my child, in the school’s care, needed to use their auto-injector, knowing full well that if the answer was yes, it could have already been too late.

I am proud that the Government are putting allergies at the heart of proactive, preventive school planning. Recent approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency means that more adrenalin devices are available, including stable, long-lasting and less-traumatic adrenalin nasal sprays. I would appreciate it if the Minister can confirm that nasal sprays and other adrenalin devices will be available in schools following the new statutory advice. Children are more likely to have a reaction in school than anywhere else: 80% of food allergy reactions happen in schools, including a quarter for the first time. That is why it is essential that schools have devices available, even before diagnosis occurs.

I want to celebrate the campaigning of Baroness Morgan of Cotes and the incredible work of Helen Blythe. The implementation of Benedict’s law in full will reduce the risk to our children. It will ensure that every child starts the school day safe, and will reduce the fear that they will not leave it that way, even if they have allergies.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Rebecca Paul, who has just two minutes.

[Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)]

I am incredibly pleased to speak in support of Lords amendment 38, which seeks to raise the digital age of consent to 16. I only wish we had much more time for this debate, as it deserves.

For years, parents like me have worried about the harms of social media on our children, and the detrimental impact of excessive screentime. We have tried to manage it as best we can on our own. We have felt the sting when we have been told by others that responsibility fully sits with parents, and that good parents do not need the state to help them get this right, yet no one says that about alcohol, smoking or buying fireworks. In all those cases, it is acceptable for parents to be helped by sensible laws put in place to protect children from preventable harm, yet social media and excessive screentime are just as harmful as cigarettes, alcopops and messing around with fireworks in the street, so why would the state not step in on that too?

I have three children, and it is fair to say that they love screentime. If I try to talk to them when they are glued to a YouTube video of someone else playing a computer game, they ignore me, completely engrossed. They do not want to go out in the garden, play with their friends in the street or play with toys. Instead, if given a choice, they would always choose to stare zombie-like at their tablet. Thankfully, I have kept them away from social media, but there is only so long I can get away with that.

Staring at a screen for endless hours is not healthy. It prevents children from developing the social and cognitive skills they need in adulthood and is terrible for their mental health. It is no coincidence that we are seeing a mental health crisis, which started at the same time as the mass adoption of smartphones and access to social media. It really should be a wake-up call. What does the future look like if our children’s most important relationship is with their phone? Their brains are literally becoming hardwired to respond to likes and shares, rather than human interaction and connection.

Social media is doing exactly what it was designed to do: reeling our children in and feeding them content that often is not in their best interest but is highly addictive. We know this because we all experience it the same. Social media is not for children. We do not need any more time given over to consultation to confirm what we already know—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I call the Minister to wind up.

[Olivia Bailey]

I thank Members from across the House for their varied and valuable contributions. We have heard a number of powerful speeches that made really important points. I am very sorry that I do not have enough time to respond in detail, but I will endeavour to write to Members who asked specific questions.

This is a Bill with opportunity at its heart—opportunity for every child, no matter the circumstances they are born into. It will make children safer online and offline, with our ambitious, swift action on social media and phones; it will help to tackle the cost of living crisis with our action on free school meals and the cost of uniforms; and it will drive up standards in our schools and improve outcomes for children in care.

Tonight, the House has the opportunity to support free school meals for half a million more children, swift action to protect our children online, and the most significant safeguarding measures in a generation. This is a landmark Bill, but it is also a Labour Bill—because it is ambitious for every single child in this country. I urge the House to support Labour’s vision for our children and for our country’s future.

Lords amendment 3 disagreed to.

Lords amendment 5 disagreed to.

21:00

Debate interrupted (Programme Order, this day).

The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83F).

After Clause 9

Adoption and special guardianship support fund review

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 16.—(Olivia Bailey.)

21:00

Division 436

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ayes: 309

Noes: 181

Lords amendment 16 disagreed to.

Promoting contact between siblings who are not living together

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 17.—(Olivia Bailey.)

21:15

Division 437

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ayes: 306

Noes: 182

Lords amendment 17 disagreed to.

Lords amendment 19 disagreed to.

Lords amendment 21 disagreed to.

After Clause 26

Action to prohibit the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 37.—(Olivia Bailey.)

21:28

Division 438

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ayes: 321

Noes: 106

Lords amendment 37 disagreed to.

After Clause 26

Action to promote the wellbeing of children in relation to social media

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 38.—(Olivia Bailey.)

21:39

Division 439

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ayes: 307

Noes: 173

Lords amendment 38 disagreed to.

Government amendments (a) to (d) made in lieu of Lords amendments 37 and 38.

Clause 29

School uniforms: limits on branded items

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 41.—(Olivia Bailey.)

21:52

Division 440

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ayes: 316

Noes: 171

Lords amendment 41 disagreed to.

Lords amendment 42 disagreed to.

Clause 30

Local authority consent for withdrawal of certain children from school

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 44.—(Olivia Bailey.)

22:04

Division 441

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ayes: 315

Noes: 109

Lords amendment 44 disagreed to.

Clause 56

Functions of adjudicator in relation to admission numbers

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 102.—(Olivia Bailey.)

22:15

Division 442

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ayes: 315

Noes: 163

Lords amendment 102 disagreed to.

Lords amendment 105 disagreed to.

After Clause 62

Prohibition of smartphones during the school day

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 106.—(Olivia Bailey.)

22:27

Division 443

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ayes: 304

Noes: 177

Lords amendment 106 disagreed to.

Lords amendments 1, 3, 4, 6 to 15, 18, 20, 22 to 36, 39, 40, 43, 45 to 101, 103, 104 and 107 to 121 agreed to, with Commons financial privileges waived in respect of Lords amendments 39 and 101.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83H(2)), That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendments 2, 5, 16, 17, 19, 21, 41, 42, 44, 102, 105 and 106.

That Olivia Bailey, Jade Botterill, Emma Foody, Amanda Martin, Laura Trott, Alan Strickland and Tessa Munt be members of the Committee.

That Olivia Bailey be the Chair of the Committee.

That three be the quorum of the Committee.

That the Committee do withdraw immediately.

Question agreed to.

Committee to withdraw immediately; reasons to be reported and communicated

to the Lords.