16:37 - Division on Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A) - Ayes: 91 / Noes: 181 - Motion A1 disagreed.
Baroness Smith of Malvern
That this House do not insist on its Amendments 38V to 38X to Commons Amendment 38J, to which the Commons have insisted on their disagreement, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 38Z12 to 38Z21.
“(3) If the first regulations have not been laid before Parliament before the end of the period mentioned in subsection (1A)—
(a) the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a statement explaining why, and
(b) before the end of the period of six months beginning with the day on which the statement under paragraph (a) is laid, the Secretary of State must lay the first regulations before Parliament.
(4) References in this section to the laying before Parliament of the first regulations are to the laying before Parliament of a draft of a statutory instrument containing the first regulations.”
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, in moving Motion A, I will also speak to Motion A1. On this group, we will debate amendments made in this House and in the other place relating to restrictions on social media use for children. Once again, before getting into the detail of these Motions and amendments, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Lloyd of Effra and myself I thank all noble Lords who have engaged so constructively, not just throughout the Bill’s passage but on these issues in particular. I am pleased to say that, thanks to the collaborative engagement of noble Lords across the House, I believe we have now reached a landing point that reflects our shared aims and that should command support on all sides.
I begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Nash. His commitment to the cause of children’s safety and well-being is profound. He has spoken passionately in the interests of children, parents and carers across this country, and I am grateful for his willingness to engage constructively with the Government on this critical issue. I also acknowledge the many noble Lords across the House who have shared their expertise and passion throughout this debate. The sincerity with which noble Lords have advanced their argument has been evident throughout and it has materially shaped the Government’s approach as we look beyond the consultation.
Good legislation is very often the product of exactly this kind of dialogue. The Government’s power now reflects the commitments we have made repeatedly in this House: it is a question of how we act, not if we act. Following the consultation, the Secretary of State now must, rather than may, use this power. To reiterate what my honourable friend Minister Bailey said in the other place yesterday,
“the status quo cannot continue. We are consulting on the mechanism, which is the right thing to do, but we are clear that under any outcome we will impose some form of age or functionality”
restrictions
“for children under 16. I can also confirm that consideration of restrictions such as curfews will be in addition to that, not instead of it. As the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has said, we are focused on addictive features, harmful algorithmically-driven content and features such as stranger pairing, which we know can be most damaging to children’s safety and privacy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/4/26; col. 699.]
Recognising our shared determination for the quickest possible action, the Government have further tightened the timeframe for its delivery: a three-month progress report, followed by a 12-month timeline for making regulations, with the possibility of a single six-month extension, to be used only in exceptional circumstances. In recognition of the concerns about harmful and addictive design, we have further specified that the Secretary of State must have due regard to such features when making future regulations.
This is a serious and responsible approach. It preserves the integrity of the consultation, which has now received more than 55,000 responses from parents, children and those with direct experience of these harms. It also responds, rightly, to the concern that has animated much of the debate in this House: that children cannot wait, and that government must be held to a clear and demanding timetable.
I hope the House will recognise this for what it is: a collective effort from Parliament and government on one of the most important issues facing children today. The House has pressed, rightly, for urgency. The Government have maintained, rightly, that we must do this in a way that allows decisions to be informed by the consultation.
Motion A1, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, would amend the Government’s regulation-making power by requiring the Secretary of State to have further due regard to Ofcom’s codes of practice and the Information Commissioner’s children’s code, as well as specific risk factors such as “contact from strangers” and “loss of privacy”. It would also require due regard where representations from the general public are received in relation to a child facing
“imminent danger arising from their contact with an internet service”.
The Motion also proposes that the review of Ofcom’s enforcement powers is brought forward and tightens the timelines further, specifically that regulations must be made only six months after the three-month progress report, as well as shortening the potential extension period from six months to three months.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his continued commitment to child safety and rights. The Government share his determination to ensure the robust and urgent protection of children online. The noble Lord highlights many areas on which the Government have sought views through their consultation. While we recognise that these factors are important, prescribing an extensive list of specific “due regard” requirements, as the Motion does, is unnecessary and risks creating too much rigidity, reducing the flexibility the Secretary of State needs to respond to harms.
The consultation also makes it clear that the Online Safety Act will remain the foundation of our work on online safety; it forms a strong baseline from which this Government can build. I can reassure the noble Lord that the Online Safety Act’s statutory review will consider the effectiveness Ofcom’s enforcement powers, which are currently being manifested through 100 enforcement investigations that are currently under way. Introducing a review before all the duties have come into effect would risk being incomplete and ineffective.
On the timeline for action that we have discussed in this House over recent days, this Government have already gone a long way in ensuring that regulations are brought forward as quickly as possible, following the consultation. As I have said throughout, we will act as quickly as possible, and the DSIT Secretary of State has set out an ambition to make real progress on the regulations by the end of the year. Given all of this, I therefore urge the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, not to press his Motion.
This Government have made clear our intention to Act, and I know that many across both Houses will follow the outcomes of the consultation with great interest. It is in all of our interests to agree the Government’s Motion today, so we can start the important work of preparing to act on the consultation and keep children safe online.
Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I start where the Minister started, by acknowledging the work of my noble friend Lord Nash, who has led an incredibly effective campaign, which has been driven not by any political motives but by three things: first, wanting to do right by all children; secondly, having listened to the pain and the passion, as many of us have, of those parents who have lost their children, those who are worrying about their children and those whose children have been deeply harmed by social media; thirdly, by the weight of evidence from not just those parents but health professionals, police and law enforcement, and teachers.
Parents around the country are celebrating the Government’s decision to commit to act with the focus, as my noble friend said, on harmful and addictive features and algorithms and the ability to meet strangers online. It is my noble friend, his team and his co-signatories who are behind that change, and we are all really grateful to them for that.
But, as we have heard this afternoon, the work to get this right is only just beginning. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, wants to get things a bit more right this afternoon with his Motion A1, but these issues were debated yesterday, and now is not the time to revisit them. But the Government will benefit—whether they want to or not—from the expertise in this House, as we have heard; from my noble friend’s drive and focus; and from the experience and insight of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron; from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones; and, sadly for not much longer, from the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, who will be much missed on these issues.
I also acknowledge the courage of those Labour Peers who have supported my noble friend’s campaign, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, but also the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who have all spoken out. We all know in this House how difficult that is to do. When we think about the impact that this change, if well implemented, will have on our children in future, we are all reminded of the extraordinary privilege that we hold to sit here and be part of shaping that change.
This has been a long Bill. I think there were around 700 amendments in Committee stage and many more thereafter. I could not have played my part in that without the wonderful campaigners, including, of course, the bereaved parents—especially Ellen Roome, who has been extraordinarily generous with her time—the experts and all the charities who have supported me on everything, including children deprived of their liberty, children who are not in school, free school policies, and, of course, social media and smartphones. I cannot thank them all enough. They brought to life the reality of the policy choices that the Government are making.
I would like to pause a moment and remind the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that, when he talks about the Conservatives bailing out at the last minute, it was the Liberal Democrats who bailed out all of 24 hours ago at the very last minute on a situation that would have clarified today the position of smartphones in schools and those schools that have “not seen, not heard” policies. Ironically, we are going to have to wait roughly 21 months as a result of their decision to move from supporting and signing an amendment to, as the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, said yesterday, preparing to vote against us on it. I ask the noble Lord perhaps to reflect on that.
But the Government have made a commitment that children should have no access to smartphones. When I met the Minister in the other place yesterday, she reassured me that the head teacher who spoke on the radio just after our debate last week and said that putting this guidance on a statutory footing would make no difference in her school, because they had had a ban since 2023 and children had phones switched off in their pockets and in their bags, would think again and would understand that was no longer appropriate. Given the evidence from many people at the Education Select Committee this morning, I press the Minister to confirm that she agrees with her colleague in the other place that that school will no longer think that policy is acceptable. The Government have committed to addressing this no later than September 2027, for which I am genuinely grateful, but my guess is we will need to address it sooner than that.
In closing, I am grateful for the steadfast support of the co-signatories to my very many amendments across the Bill, including my noble friends Lady O’Neill, Lady Spielman, Lord Agnew and, of course, Lord Nash. I would particularly like to call out the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who has been the most stalwart of stalwarts and has supported our proceedings with his own charm, expertise and insight from start to finish, which is quite a marathon. I have had fantastic and skilled and long-suffering support from the Public Bill Office and from an amazing team of special advisers and researchers in Annabelle Eyre, Henry Mitson, Dan Cohen and, for part of the Bill, Beatrice Hughes.
I would like to wish the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, a well-earned rest at the end of the Bill. I have some sense of how many hours and how many plates they have been spinning respectively. For my part, I am going to be stepping down from the Front Bench now that the Bill is completing its passage—anyone would think I was sad to go—but I genuinely look forward to working across the House on the special educational needs and disabilities legislation when it comes and more. Our role is making sure that legislation works in practice; I have tried to do this in this Bill, and I will try to do it in the future.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate today and during the whole of the Bill’s passage. First, on the specifics, as I set out earlier, the Government hope that today we are able to reach an agreement on the Government’s Motion; it represents an effective compromise that recognises the shared desire across the Government and both Houses that we must act quickly to protect our children’s online well-being.
On that point, and perhaps taking up the challenge of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, as my honourable friend said yesterday in the Commons, and in fact as we have said throughout discussions on these issues, we have been clear that the status quo cannot continue. The Government were clear when they launched their consultation that this was not about whether we take action, but rather what we do. We are consulting on the mechanism and that is the right thing to do. But we are clear—and this is the result of some of the very important engagement that has gone on—that, under any outcome, we will impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16. As I said earlier, I can confirm that consideration of restrictions such as curfews will be in addition to these restrictions not instead of them. This is a reasonable approach for this House, and in fact for both Houses, to take—to recognise the importance of the consultation and to recognise the strength of feeling as represented in these two Houses about the need to take action.
I also hear some of the other comments around the need for enforcement. I am sure that some of the debate will continue, and that is probably for other days and possibly even other bits of legislation.