Lords Chamber

Wednesday 21st January 2026

(began 2 weeks, 4 days ago)

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None Portrait Oral questions: Implementing the violence against women and girls strategy
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Oral Question Baroness Hazarika. question. Standing in my name on the Order Paper.
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Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Portrait Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, Minister of State (Department for Transport) (Labour)
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If that was a question, I all I can say is that he's he's given his own answer, and I will. >> My Lords. The the. The Highways

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My Lords. The the. The Highways Agency and the police forces have acted responsibly in this case by acted responsibly in this case by paying compensation. But in London, responsibility for enforcing moving

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traffic offences is almost. Entirely devolved to the boroughs. And I believe those boroughs. And I believe those powers have been enacted and been made available in the rest of the made available in the rest of the country as well. In such cases, where cameras are used for the where cameras are used for the enforcement of of moving traffic offences. And although I appreciate they don't have very many variable they don't have very many variable speed limits, what audit is the government undertaking of the systems being used by them to ensure that they haven't got bugs and problems as well? Yeah.



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I think it's important to note that this is an issue because of that this is an issue because of the interaction of two systems, the the interaction of two systems, the the technology used for camera enforcement is, is, is obviously checked and and there is an audit process. I can't describe it to the noble Lord in detail. But the matter we're discussing about, about the enforcement of variable speed limits has come about because of the interaction of two systems.

And the circumstances he's describing are only about are only about cameras either used for speed

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enforcement or more often, yellow box and such and such, like. My Lords were.

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My Lords were. Being concludes oral questions for today. Business of the House.

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The Lord Privy Seal. My Lords, I beg to move the motion. Standing in my name on the
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None Portrait Urgent Question Repeat: Cancellation of scheduled local elections in May 2026
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elections in May 2026.
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Lord Timpson Portrait Lord Timpson, The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Labour)
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My Lords, I beg to move motion a that this House do not insist on that this House do not insist on its amendment seven, but do agree with the Commons in their amendment with the Commons in their amendment seven A and seven B in lieu. My Lords, it is a pleasure to see the Sentencing Bill return to your Lordships House, hopefully for a final time. Subject to your Lordships Agreement, the Bill will have completed all its stages and will shortly become law.

That moment will be hugely significant for our prison and probation services. It will put them on a sustainable footing and deliver punishment that works. I am very proud of having played my part in taking the bill through Parliament. Apart from a brief bill on the Sentencing Council, this is my first experience of getting a bill through, and I've been struck by the fantastic teamwork from everyone involved. I will briefly set out the government's rationale for disagreeing with amendment seven and tabling our own amendment in lieu.

Before I do so, I must again thank the noble and learned Lord Lord Keen and the noble Lord Lord Marks. In keeping with their approach throughout the passage of this bill. They have engaged constructively and openly. Once again, their interventions have made this a better bill. My Lords, the government fully supported the intention of amendment seven to promote transparency in the courts and improve the experience of victims as they navigate the justice system. We could not accept it as drafted due to the risk that it was significantly increased judicial workload.

At a time when courts are working intensively to drive down the court backlog. However, I am delighted that we tabled an amendment in lieu which expands the provision of Crown Court sentencing transcripts to all victims who request them free of charge. This new clause represents an important step forward for victims, ensuring that they are able to request and receive relevant sentencing remarks for free. Sentencing remarks set out the judge's reasoning, helping victims understand how the sentence was reached without having to visit the courtroom.

This experience can be retraumatising for many. This change will embolden victims to look back on their bravery and process their experience at their own pace. This clause also delivers a major step forward for transparency more broadly, enabling victims to digest sentencing remarks outside the pressure, the pressures of a courtroom setting and free of charge. This is consistent with Sir Brian Leveson independent review of the criminal courts and the 2017 Lammy Review, which sought to shape a more open justice system fit to serve every victim.

My Lords, the detail on timeframes and processes for providing transcripts will be set out in regulations, but I can confirm to the House that our intention is that the regulations will specify that transcripts will be provided within 14 days of a request being made. This timeframe will support requests under the Unduly Lenient Sentence Scheme, which currently allows referrals up to 28 days after sentence. I can also assure the noble and learned Lord Keen that we are considering his amendment to the Victims and Courts Bill, which would extend this deadline to 56 days, extremely carefully.

I thank the noble Lord Lord Marks and the hon. Member for Chichester and the other place, for raising important questions about the definition of victims and why it is necessary to allow for exceptions. We are carefully considering the scope of the definition of victim for these purposes, but I can assure noble Lords that this clause does not restrict us to a narrow definition. We will ensure that there is as much consistency as possible with the definition of the victim for the purpose of the code, and we will specifically consider the circumstances that the hon.

Members for Chichester and Bexhill and Battle raised in the other place yesterday, where a victim is personally unable to request sentencing remarks. We have no intention of restricting access in these circumstances. Further details will be set out in regulations, including any necessary safeguards and any limited exceptions. We will ensure that any exceptions are limited, and our intention is that all victims will be able to request and receive their Crown Court sentencing remarks free of charge. But there may be circumstances where exceptions and omissions are necessary, for example, to protect the identity of another victim.

And I can reassure noble Lords that these regulations are subject to the affirmative procedure. So your Lordships House will have the opportunity to scrutinise the regulations brought forward carefully. I can also confirm that any assessment of the previous pilot for free sentencing, remarks for rape and serious sexual offence victims is underway. The results will be published shortly. This explores application volumes, costs of provision and any feedback from the courts on the process. It also includes applicant survey feedback shared by victims or by those applying on their behalf.

This change represents a profound step forward for victims and for transparency in our justice system. For the first time, every victim whose case is heard in the Crown Court will have the right to access, free of charge, a clear explanation of how the sentence was reached. This is a landmark moment for transparency and open justice, and a meaningful improvement for victims across the country. I urge

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all noble Lords to support the government's motion, and I beg to move. The question is that motion A be

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agreed to? My Lords, I thank the noble Lord,

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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, the Minister, for his remarks and his explanation for the government amendment in lieu of our own amendment in lieu of our own amendment. I also thank the Minister for his sustained engagement with peers across the
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Lord Keen of Elie Portrait Lord Keen of Elie (Conservative)
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engagement with peers across the House, both in and out of the chamber. My Lords, the government had now committed to publishing sentencing remarks for all Crown Court trials, and we thank the Minister for this step. It was only in response to our successful conservative amendment that the government finally acted. It was regrettable that they opposed our original amendment in both houses, but we do welcome their amendment as a step forward in the right direction. Sentencing remarks explain the judge's reasoning in determining the sentence imposed.

And this is important not only for the victims whose lives are disrupted and the most profound way by crime, but also for the transparency required in the justice system. The provision of sentence remarks upon request will mean that victims who are unable to visit the courtroom, whether for practical reasons or because of the experience the experience is simply too traumatising, will be able to understand the reasoning behind sentences handed out to offenders. This amendment builds on the work of the last conservative government, which successfully piloted free access to sentencing, remarks for victims of murder, rape and other sexual offences, and this amendment now rightly widens that scope to all victims.

It is wrong that a victim of, for example, aggravated burglary should have to pay to read the reasoning behind the sentence of the criminal who robbed their shop. And this was a clear gap in the law that will now be filled. The government amendment contains provisions for the timeline and processes for providing transcripts to be set out in regulations. And I thank the noble Lord, the Minister, for his assurance that regulations will specify that transcripts will be provided within 14 days of a request being made.

Under our current system, victims have just 28 days to submit an application for the unduly lenient sentence scheme, and this can be a complex legal process to contend with in less than a month. It is our intention, as indicated by the noble Lord Minister, to double the time victims have available to 56 days. But I am grateful that the Minister shares my commitment to ensuring victims receive their transcripts before that point. Without timely access to these remarks, victims would risk being shut out of the scheme and denied access to justice.

Finally, my Lords, I turn to the matter of publication. Open justice is an essential foundation of our democracy, and sentencing will no doubt become more complex and discretionary under this bill. We therefore believe that in principle, sentencing remarks should be made available to the wider public to maintain transparency and accountability. Although the government are unable to commit to public release of sentencing remarks at this point, we note the progress made on this issue and we will raise the matter again during the passage of the Victims and Courts Bill.

My Lords, this amendment represents a significant step forward for victims and for transparency in our justice system. It ensures that those affected by crime can access the reasoning behind sentences, and it builds on a clear conservative record of reform. While there is more to do, we have now made real progress and we will continue to press for full public access to sentencing remarks in future legislation.
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Baroness Hamwee Portrait Baroness Hamwee (Liberal Democrat)
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My noble. repeat some of the niceties, but I too, am glad to see this step forward. I wonder if I can ask the forward. I wonder if I can ask the Minister some questions on the government amendment. Firstly, the phrase that sentencing remarks that are relevant to the victim will be supplied from what the Minister has said is that distinguishing one particular victim from another victim in the same case, or what is meant by sentencing remarks relevant to the victim.

I have to say that I would think that if I were a victim, I would think that everything that was said in the sentencing would be relevant. It also occurs to me that if the court is required to edit the remarks before supplying them, that's actually more work for the court, which is something that obviously the government is aware of. I take it that remarks relevant to the victim are different from circumstances. This is in paragraph 11, circumstances in which, for the purposes of this section, sentencing remarks are relevant to the victim.

So can the Minister clarify what is meant by circumstances in this context? The there's also provision for the omission of information and making provision about the supply of a transcript, which I take it covers not supplying it though I'm obviously not pushing that that point. Like the noble and learned Lord, I'm concerned to know about publication. A number of us have heard from the lady Chief Justice of the progress that's been made, and the success of using new technology in this context.

Can I also ask what consultation is planned on circumstances, on exceptions, and so on the various points that will be covered by the regulations? The Minister has said, and we're grateful for this, that our answers will be given to questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for for Chichester. But briefly, there are whether the term victim is be the same as the definition used by the victims code, including whether victim is unable personally to request sentencing.

Remarks. Whether the. Amendment to provide exceptions. What sort of exceptions are these? Which goes back to my point about consultation and what sort of information may be omitted. And possibly overarching all of this? Will the government be publishing a review of the pilot that's been carried out recently, which we've heard about? We gather it's been successful, if limited. Can we hear more about it?
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Portrait Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)
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which we agree is a better bill for its passage through this House, has benefited enormously from the work that he and the noble Lord Lord that he and the noble Lord Lord Lemos and the whole of the Bill team have put in to providing an team have put in to providing an expert and collaborative approach to the Bill, my Lords. That said, the amendments in lieu do not go as the amendments in lieu do not go as far as we would have liked, although they represent a significant step towards achieving transparency and help for victims in the courts.

The provision for the transcripts to be provided within 14 days, as mentioned by the noble and learned Lord Lord Keen, will also allow time for applications to be made under the unduly lenient Sentencing scheme, and that's helpful. We do have a few questions, some of which have been adumbrated by my noble friend, Lady Hamwee. I'd be interested to hear the noble Lords answer to her question and to the question asked by the hon. Member for Chichester in the other place, as to what exceptions the government has in mind under Subclause three C of amendment seven, that would permit the government to provide exceptions to the requirement to supply a transcript.

I note the point he made about the identity of other victims or other defendants, but further detail would be very helpful. My Lords, we would have also liked the amendments to cover the immediate family of victims parents, siblings and adult children. They should be entitled to receive transcripts, and that's very important. Where a victim is either sick or disabled or traumatised, possibly by the offence or otherwise. Those family members should also be entitled to be supplied with a transcript.

I note that the noble Lord referred obliquely to the position of others, so that victims would be sure of receiving the transcripts. But, my Lords, these are, of course, transcripts of public hearings. But many victims may not themselves have attended those hearings, or, given the trauma of the hearings, may have been unable to concentrate themselves while the sentencing remarks were made. Their families should be able to receive transcripts, and I'd be interested to hear what the government's final position on this this issue will be.

We would also have wished the amendments to cover transcripts provided to defendants and their immediate families. My understanding is that defendants are entitled to receive transcripts of sentencing remarks to help them with deciding on, or preparing an appeal against sentence, but if that's right, and if it's limited in that way, the entitlement is far too narrow. As part of the process of rehabilitation, it is really important for defendants to understand the reasoning behind the sentences, the passed on them that are passed on them.

My experience of the Criminal Court, stale as it now is, is that most defendants are far too worked up during their sentencing to listen to the detail of sentencing remarks when they're made. What they want to know is whether or not they're going to prison and if so, for how long. So the detail of the justification for their sentences and of steps they need to take themselves is generally lost on them. And that applies to community sentences as well as to prison sentences.

And the same considerations apply to defendants families as apply to the families of victims, which I mentioned, whom I mentioned earlier. The noble Lord knows that we're pressing for a wider category of transcripts to be provided than just sentencing remarks, and we will continue to press for that during the passage of the Victims and Courts Bill in due course. Meanwhile, along with the noble and learned Lord Lord Keen and the Official Opposition, we on these benches are very pleased to have made a progress in the way we have on a difficult and important issue, and we're pleased to support the amendments.
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Lord Timpson Portrait Lord Timpson (Labour)
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Well, I thank all noble Lords, especially the noble Baroness Jones, for their insightful contributions to today's debate, and I'd like to think that my years of doing think that my years of doing business deals has helped in trying to get this through. I've learned doing business deals is that the doing business deals is that the way to get a good deal is to listen to everybody, and where good ideas come from, all, all places take them on board and that's how you get a good deal.

And I hope that this sentencing bill is a good bill, because we have listened and I have listened and my colleagues have listened, and it has been a very constructive process also to know the noble Lord Marks and the noble Baroness Hamwee questions. I think I answered a number of those points in my opening speech, but I'll carefully go through Hansard and where I didn't refer directly to your questions, I will write to you with the exact details. I'm very happy to meet up to go through those points.

I think for me, victims come first and it is our intention to provide full remarks and what we wanted to focus on the victims of the case, not the not the victims of different crimes. And so far as the definition of, you know, the involvement of family in this, that will be dealt with through regulations. And, you know, we've got a broad definition of victim and the exceptions will be very limited. But I want to make sure we get this right. And we need to make sure that victims are not retraumatised by the process.

And we need to make sure that some very vulnerable victims and a small number of cases, some victims, may not be capable of asking for these. We need to make sure that that is dealt with. But I'm very happy to. Right. And meet up and get this right. And it wouldn't. It would be remiss of me to conclude my remarks without thanking those who made a vital contribution. I again thank all noble Lords for their careful and constructive engagement through this Bill's passage.

That expertise has strengthened it in many important respects, and I must pay particular tribute to the noble Lord Lord Lemos for his expert guidance. And I must also thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his support, and to the Minister for sentencing, for guiding it so skilfully through the other place. And finally, I thank all the officials across government for their skill and devotion to

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delivering this bill. There are really, really great team. I beg to move. OK.

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OK. The question is that motion A be agreed to as many of that opinion agreed to as many of that opinion will say content not content. The contents have it report of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill Baroness Smith of Malvern.

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Bill Baroness Smith of Malvern. My Lords, I. Beg my Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now further considered on report.

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The question is that this bill be now further considered on report, as many of that opinion will say, as many of that opinion will say, content contrary, not content, if the contents have it after clause

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the contents have it after clause 27, amendment 90 Baroness Grey-Thompson. My Lords, I rise to speak to

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My Lords, I rise to speak to amendment 90 in my name and that of the noble Lady Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle. This amendment seeks Manor Castle. This amendment seeks to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the barriers preventing parents of critically ill children being by their bedside. I have been working with Kerry and Francis Davis for around a year after their son, Hugh, passed away. They could have stepped back, but instead they made
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Baroness Grey-Thompson Portrait Baroness Grey-Thompson (Crossbench)
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a conscious decision to stand up and try and change lives of other families there in the Southwest Gallery today, as they have been for previous debates. What they've for previous debates. What they've done is turn the most devastating personal loss into a determination to make sure other parents are not to make sure other parents are not left to face the same failures that they experienced when Hugh died in they experienced when Hugh died in 2021. Kerry and Frances left the hospital at 1130 at night when the doors closed behind them.

Hugh was still in there and suddenly they were out of the system. They stood outside with their bags, trying to work out how they could carry on. They had a three year old child at home that they had not seen for three weeks. There was no transport, which they didn't expect, but they took an hour and a half taxi home in silence while the driver chatted about football and the weather, unaware that their world had just collapsed. When they walked through their front door, everything was still there.

The toys, unfinished drawings, the remains of Hugh's birthday cake still in the kitchen. The pain was unbearable. They woke the next morning and sat in silence. And then Hugh's younger brother, Rafe woke up, who they hadn't seen in three weeks and said, Where's Hughie? There was no guidance, no support. And they did what no other parent should ever have to do. They had to look online. Kerry tried to access mental health support, but no one could help. The GP was unaware of their situation and just offered sleeping pills.

Charities said there was a 12 week wait. Kerry has been very clear with me that he just would simply not have survived 12 weeks without immediate support. By chance, he was introduced to a trauma clinic and it literally saved his life. The GP never called the community team, never called the family were quite literally on their own. And my Lords, this experience is not rare. Research consistently shows that between 30 and 50% of parents of critically ill children meet the diagnostic threshold for PTSD, with symptoms beginning at or shortly after diagnosis, not years later.

Studies show that mothers of seriously ill children face around a 50% increased risk of early death, driven by prolonged stress, cardiovascular strain, and mental health deterioration. Fathers face significantly elevated risks, including higher rates of depression, substance misuse and suicide, and yet are even less likely to be able to access support and siblings. The forgotten children the children not in the hospital bed are often the most overlooked of all. Research indicates that up to three times more likely to experience long term emotional or behavioural difficulties, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Yet despite these known risks, the NHS does not wrap its arms around these families. Instead, families are signposted to charities charities that are themselves underfunded, overstretched and increasingly unable to fill the gaps left by statutory services. There is no consistent, proactive pathway where a family is treated as a unit, where a child receives. When a child receives a serious or terminal diagnosis. And this stands in stark contrast to support that's available for families with babies with a terminal diagnosis. My Lords, this amendment does not seek to assign blame to what's happened in the past.

It does not mandate immediate spending or prescribe a single solution. What it asks for is something far more basic and far more overdue. It asks the government to undertake a systematic review of how parents, siblings and families are supported when a child is critically ill or dies from diagnosis, through treatment, and where it happens into bereavement. The amendment says preventing from being by the bedside quote prevents him from being bedside. But it doesn't have to be solely a physical presence. All too often, this means mentally and emotionally available and present for their child.

And it seeks to ask why support is reactive rather than proactive. Why mental health screening is not routine. Moved into the community, with GPS and community nurses providing a unified effort to support these parents and why siblings remain invisible. And my family so often fall into the gaps between services. This is about understanding what works, where best practice already exists, and how we can ensure families are not abandoned at the point they need the support the most. Just over two months ago, Kerry walked from the hospital where he passed away to Downing Street, where he placed huge shoes on the steps of number ten over 105km in two days.

He carried a 20 kilogram rucksack on his back to signify the weight he was when he died. He did this to signify the weight which parents carry when their child is diagnosed with a serious illness, a weight which most of us will never know or thankfully, experience. My Lords, this amendment is about recognising that child's well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of their family. It is about making sure that no parent ever again has to walk out of hospital into the darkest moments of their lives, and find that the system they relied upon has simply disappeared.

My Lords, I beg to move.
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party)
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Amendment proposed after clause 27, insert the news clause as printed on the Marshalled List. >> Oh! I will rise extremely

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Oh! I will rise extremely briefly to having signed the amendment, just so powerfully introduced and presented by the introduced and presented by the noble Lady Baroness Grey-Thompson. I did that simply because, having met Kerry and Francis and I saw this amendment on the paper and saw there wasn't a second, wasn't even a second name on, and I thought they just needed to be a demonstration that there is broader support there. I have no doubt that many people in your Lordships' House will have been moved by what we've just heard, and would absolutely agree that action is urgently needed.

We need to assess the situation and come up with a plan to deal with it so further. Families are not put in this situation. We this is happily relatively rare, but there are some 3000 families a year that are placed in this situation and they must be supported. I'm hoping that we're going to hear some positive words from the noble Lady. The Minister and I also do just want a very briefly speak. We haven't yet heard amendment 99 introduced, but also another tragic situation where we see situations where children are born and taken away and again and again from usually the same mother.

I spoke extensively on that at committee, so I won't repeat that then. But I think this is a really important group of amendments, and I hope we can really see some positive directions forward. And a further demonstration your Lordships' House that campaigning, often by people who suffered so much, can make a difference and make improvements in our society.
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Lord Jamieson Portrait Lord Jamieson (Conservative)
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My Lords. I wish to speak in strong support of amendments 99 and strong support of amendments 99 and 101, in the name of the noble Lady Baroness Barran. These are designed to tackle the sad and difficult problem of successive removals of children and babies from their parents, in particular from their mothers. When a child is removed permanently under a court order, typically a number of things can happen and indeed not happen. The court at which made the care, order and consequent order for placement for adoption will have no further involvement.

The local authority which brought the case may well have little or no further engagement with the birth family, who receive no more attention and support, at least until there is another pregnancy, by which time it can be too late to address the underlying problems. The mother probably traumatised. May well react to the first removal of the child with a bad decision to have another child in the hope, rather than the expectation that things will turn out better next time round, which is unlikely to occur.

The mother and the father, if identified, will have become mistrustful of the local authority social workers and feel stigmatised. And I'm willing to seek or accept help. The mother may become hard to reach and not reveal the next pregnancy until the last minute. Her underlying problems by then will not have been addressed. Indeed, they may have become compounded unless there has been some significant and unexpected change. The local authority will have no alternative but to start new care proceedings for the new child, usually with the same bad outcome as before.

Those representing the mother and indeed the court. And I speak as someone who has had to deal with these cases will struggle, will struggle to find any real improvement or anything else to distinguish the case from that of the previous child. These are truly the most wretched cases for any court to deal with. The charitable organisation Pause has considerable expertise in this area and has evolved a model of preventative support to break the cycle of repeated pregnancies and recurrent removals.

The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and others have had valuable input into this problem and highlighted the the statistics. 1 in 5 care proceedings are. Repeat proceedings. The repeat proceedings are more likely to involve babies and almost half of newborn babies subject to care proceedings are born to mothers who have had a previous child removed. Indeed, it is quite likely that the mother herself will have been in the care system not so long before the additional financial cost to local authorities for care proceedings and consequential adoption proceedings, and the support required to pay for foster care and adopters is enormous.

The human cost, obviously, is unresolved. Misery and grief. Amendment 99 would require local authorities to provide post-removal support where there is a risk of further removal based on the pause model of special specialist focussed and intensive support. Some local authorities do this work, but it should be universal. It has been suggested that for every £1 spent, £4.50 would be saved in the next four years. But some local authorities, understandably given their constraints, are reluctant to look beyond this year's budget.

The pause model does make a difference, and primary legislation can now make a real difference. That is the basis for clause for amendment 99. Amendment 101 would provide for data collection, which would be a valuable aid both to local and central government. Ironically, it occurs to me that if amendment 101 was passed, that amendment 99 did not succeed, it would simply serve to highlight in the data which would be collected the support that should have been provided for amendment 99.

And clearly, that opportunity should not be missed. Committee stage. The Minister was indeed sympathetic and did suggest one way forward might be by way of the family group conferencing, which is part of the structure of the bill. But quite frankly, that would not be of any particular value in this particular set of circumstances. First of all, the first set of proceedings probably wouldn't have got where they were if there had been a supportive family in the background, but also, it really would by then be too late
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Baroness Tyler of Enfield Portrait Baroness Tyler of Enfield (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, I rise briefly to lend >> My Lords, I rise briefly to lend my support to all three of these amendments. I was very pleased to add my name to amendments 99 and 101. In the name of the noble Lady Baroness Barran. My Lords, just listening to the debate today, this group is, I think, dealing with some of the most heartbreaking events that children and families ever face. It's really been very harrowing just to listen to the circumstances that some of these families have found themselves in.

I was profoundly moved by the way the noble Lady Baroness Grey-Thompson introduced her amendment. I think it's a really important amendment, and I very much hope that the government will be able to look sympathetically at it. I would just like to say a few words in addition to what the noble Lord Lord Meston has said, particularly about amendment 99. It's, as we've already heard from from the noble Lord. Almost half of newborns in care proceedings are born to mothers who've already been through proceedings with another child.

So far, too many children are entering care from parents who've already had at least one child removed from their care. And as as we've heard, without the support. And that's what this amendment is all about, the support that we want to see local authorities offering after a child is removed. Parents, particularly mothers, are often they're struggling to cope with all the existing difficulties that led to the child removal in the first place, whilst actually facing the additional trauma, grief and stigma of losing a previous child.

And this, this just just leads to further child removals. Too many times it is just a simply a heartbreaking, vicious, vicious cycle. But with the right support, parents can stabilise and overcome that, that trauma and make lasting change. And the reason I feel so passionately about this is in my time as chair of Kafkas, I was privileged to visit various projects, but they were pause projects and actually talk to the people who were providing the support and talk to the mothers about the difference.

Having had that support had made and why they've now felt they could turn their lives around so they wouldn't find themselves in a position where and I think I said this at Committee stage, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself. I was talking to a mother who'd who'd had eight children removed, and now it was about the ninth children. We just can't allow these situations to perpetuate. I just it's just not something I think that a decent and humane society can actually do so.

And we also know at the moment that only about half, I think it is of local authority areas are providing any support at all. So I just think that this, this amendment is so critical to ensure that that that support is available and this incalculable sort of human suffering that we've heard about, I think, can be alleviated. So I'm very much looking forward to hearing both from the noble Lady Baroness Barran and from the

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Minister, and really hope we can make progress here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. My Lords, I'd like to echo other of your Lordships, thanks to the of your Lordships, thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-thompson, for her very powerful and moving for her very powerful and moving speech. And sadly, like other noble Lords, I know families who've been Lords, I know families who've been touched in similar ways. So both personally and I guess
16:43
Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Conservative)
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professionally, I hope that the government listens to the noble government listens to the noble Lady's advice. Moving to my amendments 99 and 101, they have support from over 20 children's charities and also support from the charities and also support from the Children's Commissioner. And I'm very grateful to my co-signatories to my amendment at committee. The response from the noble Baroness, the Minister focussed on early help and family support that the government will require local areas to deliver as a way of meeting the needs of these women.

But as the noble and learned Lord Lord Meston said, although the funding is obviously very warmly welcomed, it doesn't address the issues for families who do have children removed into care because once a child is removed from a parent's care, services and support follow the child, there is no requirement or expectation that the support needs formally identified for the woman during the care proceedings process will be provided after the removal of a child, and without support to change their circumstances.

Parents who are vulnerable to repeat the same traumatic are vulnerable to repeat that same traumatic cycle which led to their first child or second child, or as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler said, their eighth child, I think. The late Nick Crichton actually removed a 14th child from the same woman, which led to the work that's been referred to this afternoon. And we know that almost half of newborns in care proceedings are born to families who've been through proceedings at least once.

So my amendment 99 would provide for stopping this cycle of recurrent removals through the provision of specialist support for parents. And. This would be right from a human point of view, as we've heard very powerfully this afternoon, but also from a financial point of view, there's clear evidence, including from the research commissioned by the Department for education, that investment in these services leads to very significant returns. As the noble Lord Lord Meston referred to for pounds 50 for every £1 invested over four years, and greater gains over the longer term.

But my amendment 101 is also important because most local authorities don't know how many families are affected or the costs involved. And so if we can collect and publish that information, it will allow for better planning, accountability and targeted support. In his letter to peers of the 17th of December, the Minister for Children and Families touched on the issues of post removal support and wrote that the government is offering to publish a post-separation good practice resource, that they're talking to pathfinder areas and that they will update statutory guidance and share good practice examples.

They're all very helpful, but very far from enough. My Lords. Of course I will listen to the response of the Minister, but if I don't hear a much more positive response to my amendments than at committee, I am

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House. My noble Lords. I wasn't intending to speak, but I too was intending to speak, but I too was moved greatly by the noble Lady Baroness Grey-Thompson words, and I Baroness Grey-Thompson words, and I have had the experience of trying to care for a child in intensive care while worrying about another care while worrying about another child at home. It's not an experience I would wish on anyone.
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Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson Portrait Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Conservative)
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experience I would wish on anyone. It led me to support. Become a trustee of the charity cosmic, which tries to help families going through these types of experiences at Imperial Trust. And as the noble Lady Baroness Cass said, these charities do incredible work supporting families in the most difficult of circumstances, and I think it would be I really would urge the government to think about what work they could do to look at this amendment, to see what more could be done to support parents and children in this situation.

Switching lanes to a Treasury mindset. I'd also like to support my noble friend Baroness Baron's Amendment 99 and 101. I know the government is very sincere in its efforts to give every child the best start in life possible. I also know that the Treasury and across Whitehall there is a huge push on government efficiency. This strikes me as an area where our failure to invest properly, our failure to consider how we can prevent these tragedies from occurring has a huge fiscal cost, as well as the enormous emotional cost that we've heard about today.



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My Lords, as others have said, this has been an important debate this has been an important debate on two issues which go to the heart of how we need to care for those in the most vulnerable and difficult the most vulnerable and difficult circumstances. And I think we share the objective of ensuring that we do better in both of those situations, starting with amendments 99 and 101, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Baron,
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Baroness Smith of Malvern Portrait Baroness Smith of Malvern, Minister of State (Education) (Labour)
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concerning support for birth parents who have had a child removed from their care, and the removed from their care, and the collection of national data on removals respectively. This government does recognise that supporting birth parents can have a significant impact on keeping children safely at home, and that children safely at home, and that there is more that can and should be done. But I think it will be a theme of several of the groups this afternoon and in fact has been previously that in some ways it is inevitable that as legislators, we turn to legislation to deal with examples of not good enough practice and where we want to achieve change, that is understandable.

And in many cases it's the right thing to do. But equally, in my experience, strong practice, good evidence and innovation, often based on local needs are a more effective way to achieve change because we do need to be aware that mandating removes flexibility from local authorities to respond to local needs and priorities, increases local authority burdens and risks diverting funding from other preventive services which are not mandated by the legislation. And also, we do not currently have a robust enough evidence base to mandate specific interventions nationally.

And as I say, this would also restrict innovation and deter locally developed interventions. For example, as in Lincolnshire, whose time programme works with mothers who have experienced or at risk of repeat removals of children from their care in Wolverhampton, who have a dedicated team supporting parents who have had a previous removal, and Warwickshire's return home team. We are already supporting the expansion of these services through the Families First Partnership programme, which is embedding that whole family focus that noble Lords have rightly called for across children's social care, a programme that is backed by £2.4 billion of ring fenced funding for prevention.

This spending review period it has, for example, already supported Redbridge Redbridge to expand their pre and post birth service to promote earlier intervention, with parents at risk of removals, and through the Families First programme and wider reforms, we want to ensure that children's social care support does not automatically drop away from a parent if they have a child removed from their care. The aim has to be to embed whole family working throughout the children's social care system, to prevent future removals, and to support children to safely return home from care.

We have previously committed to updating our statutory guidance, working together to safeguard children, to explicitly set out our expectations that birth parents are offered. Support. The updated FFP programme guide will also explicitly reference how the programme's funding can be used to provide this support, and will give examples of best practice on data collection in amendment 101. Whilst equally I support the sentiment of this. Once again, I don't agree that a mandated collection is the right course of action, nor that it would have the desired impact.

A mandatory collection will significantly increase the burden on local authorities taking resources away from service delivery and necessitating a significant change from existing practice, which would require detailed work to assess feasibility and proportionality. Our wider reform programme is improving data collection and local information sharing. This will have a more positive impact on targeting support at a local level than a national collection. I turn now to amendment 90, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey Thompson, concerning a report into the barriers faced by parents of critically ill children.

And I doing. In doing that, I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Katz. When a related amendment was tabled for the Employment Rights Bill Report stage and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey Thompson, for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. And importantly, I acknowledge the resilience and courage shown by Kerry and Frances Davis in founding the charity It's Never You and supporting other parents who find themselves facing similar, unimaginably challenging personal circumstances.

Parents and children in such a situation deserve and need support, and I know that that is the call that noble Lords are making today. My hon. Friend. In the other place, the Minister for Children and Families, Josh McAllister, met with Kerry and Frances on the 7th of January with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey Thompson and the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire, Chris Hinchliffe, to discuss the charity's work and this amendment. Caring for a critically ill child can affect parents mental health in different ways.

As we've heard, the government is committed to delivering the ten year health plan, which sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country. We will transform the mental health system so that people can access the right support at the right time. Other changes in the plan, which will support parents of critically ill children, include actively involving carers in this case, parents in the care planning of those they care for, as well as improved identification and support of people in such a situation to better understand their responsibilities and to provide more targeted support.

In addition to mental health impacts and support. The amendment raises financial and employment pressures. The government can provide financial support through Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit to those providing unpaid care to a severely disabled child, and is spending record amounts due to be around £4.5 billion this year on Carer's Allowance, and we recognise the considerable sacrifice that parents in this situation must make and the impacts this can have on their employment. Parents who are employees are currently entitled to emergency time off for dependants, unpaid parental leave and unpaid carers leave, all of which may help them to manage situations of serious childhood illness.

We know that there are many employers who will go beyond the statutory minimum to support their staff in such distressing situations too, and it was good to hear an example of that today. And as announced by my noble friend Lord Katz at Report stage of the Employment Rights Bill, the Department for Business and Trade is working to launch a consultation on employment rights for parents and caregivers of seriously ill children. This will be the first government consultation specifically on the employment rights of these parents.

This will consider whether a new leave entitlement in the workplace should be introduced, such as the proposal for Hughes Law, campaigned for passionately and tirelessly by the charity It's Never You. On the 11th of December last year, my hon. Friend in the other place, the Minister for Employment Rights and Consumer Protection, Kate Dearden, announced that Hughes Law would have its own chapter in the consultation. This consultation will make sure that the voices of charities, healthcare professionals and families with a seriously ill child are heard in order to ensure that any proposals put forward for consultation will reflect the needs of children and their parents.

This recognises that more work needs to be done to understand the employment impacts on parents of seriously ill children, and the precise support that may be needed. Lastly, in addition to this consultation, I am pleased to be able to tell the House that on the specific amendment before us today calling for a report into barriers facing parents of critically ill children, the government will take further action and commission a report on the mental health impacts of a terminal diagnosis of children on their families.

This will include a review of the available evidence and cost effectiveness. Ministers from the Department of Health and Social Care will meet with stakeholders, including Kerry and Francis, to discuss the scope of the report. We do not require a legislative duty to conduct this report, which in fact could slow down its progress. So we do not believe that the amendment before us today is necessary. However, I hope that this commitment and other action being taken by this government underscores the importance we are giving to this issue and to better supporting families in such difficult and tragic circumstances, and that noble Lords and the noble Baroness are reassured, and that she feels able to withdraw her amendment at this point.



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My Lords, I thank everybody who has taken part in the debate this afternoon and I won't seek to sum up, I know we have a heavy schedule of business this afternoon, but I of business this afternoon, but I think I'm right in saying there's been universal support for this amendment and what is a small group, amendment and what is a small group, but shows the absolute devastating impact situations like this can have on families. I'd also like to place on record the immense bravery and resilience of Kerry and Frances for keeping going, and also thank the noble Lady Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson for sharing her experience.

I'd also like to thank the Minister in another place, Jocelyn McAllister, for the letter that I received coming into the chamber this afternoon, which did confirm there will be a report on this issue. I have a few things. I'm very welcome of the fact that the wording and the scope of the report, as mentioned by Minister McAllister in his letter, is up for some discussion because I think we do need to look at the point of diagnosis as well as when we're talking about families making sure that we properly include siblings in that.

And I also welcome the letter from Minister McAllister, the commitment to keep working with myself, with Frances and Kerry and other experts. I hope that the report that has agreed that will be commissioned can be called Whose Report, and it will be one step closer to making Hughes law actually happen. But with the commitment received at the despatch commitment received at the despatch box and in writing today, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
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Baroness Penn Portrait Baroness Penn (Conservative)
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Baroness Cass, and speak to my amendment 106, also supported by the noble Lady Baroness Kidron. My Lords, I'm conscious that I am the warm up act to the debate on amendment 94. A in the name of my noble friend Lord Nash, also in this group. But I do think it's right and appropriate that before we discuss the issue of teenagers and social media, we think first about the early years, not least because Ofcom data shows that the proportion of 3 to 5 year olds using social media has risen from 25% in 2022 to 37% in 2024, with 1 in 5 of those using it independently of their parents.

My Lords, this data is reported by Ofcom, but without any comment or action associated with it, and I would be very interested to hear the Minister's response as to whether high quality age verification that may accompany the amendment 94 A in my noble friend's name would be welcome in restricting youth amongst our very youngest children also. But my Lords, it's not just social media. 85% of 3 to 5 year olds go online, with 1 in 6 owning their own mobile phone.

98% of two year olds watch television, videos or other digital content on a screen on a typical day, averaging around two hours each day, double the recommendation. And amongst the top 20% of two year olds, that figure averaged five hours per day. Such levels of usage go against everything we know about what is needed for good development. In the early years, where adult child interaction is paramount, it goes against everything that we know about how much physical and active play our youngest children need.

It goes against everything we know about the importance of outdoors activities and the development of healthy eyesight. And the reason this is so important is that we know that early years are such an important time for a child's development, and impact them much later on in life, and that is why this government has rightly placed so much emphasis on its early years strategy. And in that context, the government's announcement last week that it will produce guidance for parents and carers on screen time of preschoolers was incredibly welcome, if overdue, but that guidance will only have a positive impact if its high quality reaches parents and helps change their behaviour.

So can I ask the noble Lady, the Minister, if she can provide any more detail on the Early Years Screen Time Advisory Group that the government is forming to develop this advice? My Lords, we have the chairs and the terms of reference, but group membership and planned meetings remain to be updated in due course on the government website. Given the guidance as being published in just three months, it would be useful to know more detail on this. Can I also ask the noble Lady, the Minister, what plans the government has to publicise this advice once it is drawn up to reach parents where they get their information and enjoying ensure join up across government, particularly with the Department for Health and Social Care, so that it is integrated into the Healthy Child programme and available through health visitors and GPS, not just through Best Start in Life family hubs.

And given the importance of joint working in this area, would she be happy to commit to a joint meeting between the departments and experts to develop this further? My Lords, turning to amendment 91, the welcome action on guidance for parents makes the lack of any proper guidance and policy within early years settings an even greater outlier. There is policy around the use of technology in schools, but in nurseries, often the most tech rich environments, as practitioners use tablets to log so much of a day's activity, there is currently nothing.

This is deeply problematic. It's problematic from a child development point of view, where the use of YouTube in early years settings has been described as one expert as ubiquitous, not just replacing the all important adult child interaction, but also using content that is too fast paced for children to learn from and actually stimulates the fight or flight response, capturing their attention, but in a way that is associated with hyper alertness, hyper wakefulness, and later life affective disorders. And it's problematic from a safeguarding point of view, most starkly illustrated by the tragic case of Operation Lanark, where 18 nursery issued devices were amongst the almost 70 seized from the home of a nursery worker charged with the most horrendous cases of abuse.

So I'm incredibly grateful that the Minister and her colleagues Lord Bailey the Early Years Minister, both met me to discuss this and the parental guidance issue discussed earlier, and I'm really pleased that the government's intention is not only to update the voluntary guidance for setting and as part of their review into the non-statutory curriculum guidance. Development matters include information on screen time and digital literacy, but that they will also include it in the next update to the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage framework.

And I would be grateful if the Minister could not only repeat this commitment today, but also give a clear timeline for when the amendment to the E F's will be made, and in undertaking this work, will the Department consider not only the impact of screen time, but wider use of technology and devices in early years settings both by children and practitioners, and considering child development and safeguarding issues. Screen time is important, but based on research published about current levels and based on research published around current levels of screen time use less is better is an important message.

But the evidence also shows context and content matters too, and I hope the government can commit to incorporating this in their approach. And I should also be absolutely clear that those settings who choose not to use screens or tech in their setting should be free to do so. Tech is not needed for good child development in the early years, but if it is being used, it should be informed by our understanding of early years development and accompanied by robust safeguarding practices and clear policy within the setting.

My Lords, it's essential we get this right and I know there are a host of education, health and research professionals who stand ready to support the government in their work. And can I thank Katy Potts at the Digital Standards for Early Years action Group professors Rachael Bedford, Tim Smith and Sam Wass birth to five matters and health professionals for safer screens. Amongst the many, many dedicated people who have been generous with their time to me and worked so hard in this area.

My Lords, finally, I should probably explain why it's so important to get clear reassurances from the Minister on this. Now. I first tabled amendments on this in May last year, but there was no mention of digital technology or screen time in the government's Early Years strategy, published in July, guidance for parents of preschoolers was only announced in January, with no accompanying detail of a campaign to reach parents and on the incorporation of guidance into the early years. Statutory framework. The Digital Standards for Early Years Action Group wrote to the previous Early Years Minister over a year ago, calling for this to be incorporated into the update to the Eyfs that went live last September.

That call was rejected, although I've never been able to find out why. So I really welcome the government's commitment now to action and believe it is genuine, but also need reassurance that once the spotlight has moved on, work will not stop and delivery will happen at pace. In particular, on making a substantive change to the early years foundation stage statutory framework this year. Otherwise, a two year old that started nursery when we first debated this issue will have left for school before any change is made.

My Lords, I beg to move.

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Amendment proposed after clause 27. Insert the new clause as

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printed on the Marshalled List. Lord John. Thank you. My Lords.

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My Lords. I rise to speak on two amendments in my name, both tabled as amendments to amendment 94, in Lord Nash name. These are necessary if this House is to respond to
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Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Portrait Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (Liberal Democrat)
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if this House is to respond to online harms facing children in a way that is effective, proportionate and grounded in evidence. Let me be clear from the outset. I share the concerns across this House about the real harms facing children online. These range from exposure to age, inappropriate and damaging content, to disturbing prevalence of grooming exploitation. Parents are right to be worried and Parliament is right to intervene. However, as the NSPCC have made clear, it is in its briefing to us all.

My Lords, a complex safeguarding problem demands a risk based response, not a blunt one age ban. So my First Amendment introduces a mechanism limiting limited and tightly controlled exemptions to a blanket minimum age requirement requirement. Crucially, such exemptions could only exist where there is demonstration in improved child safety, not where they are weakened it. Any exemptions would be specific only jointly by Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner. That joint responsibility, my Lords, is deliberate and important to ensure decisions are made independently of commercial interests and are rooted firmly in regulatory expertise and statutory duties to act in the best interests of children.

The amendment sets out a high evidential bar for platforms. Providers have to show compliance with Ofcom's risk age guidance on minimum age, have full regard for UK GDPR principles. Explicit consideration of children's rights as recognised by the UN convention on the rights of a child. There would also be required to assess impacts on children's mental health, examine whether their design or features encourage. Being addictive or compulsive users, and scrutinise the role of algorithms in content recommendations and target advertising for any products or services, including, for example, gambling content marketing.

Importantly, any exemptions would be subject to periodic reviews. My Lords, with powers for amendment or revocation. If Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner are no longer satisfied that adequate protection or protections are in place, this place is a burden squarely on the platforms. My Lords, to prove safety on an ongoing basis rather than leaving children exposed to unimagined risk, the NSPCC, Five Rights Foundation, Molly Rose Foundation and 39 children's rights and online safety organisations have warned us this week, my Lords, and I quote in substance, a blanket ban on social media would fail to deliver improvements in children's safety and wellbeing that they are so urgently need.

We already know that age limits are not meaningfully enforced and these organisations, my Lords, are well respected throughout up and down this country. And, as the NSPCC estimate, more than 2.5 million children under the age of 13 are currently accessing social media. And in the UK, raising the minimum age to 16 does not solve that problem. Indeed, it risks pushing children into less regulated and high risk spaces, including encrypted platforms, anonymous forums and unsafe gaming environments. Children who bypass age checks are likely to register as adults, placing them in an environment with weaker safeguards and higher exposure to harm.

There is also a real risk of unintended consequences. Safe, age appropriate use of social media such as family group chats, peer support networks and access to services like Childline could be lost, particularly for vulnerable children. Bans may also deter children from reporting harm for fear of being punished for being online at all. My Lords, I briefly speak on the Second Amendment that ensures that the definition of regulated user to user services, in line with the Online Safety Act 2023, this House invested significant efforts in establishing a risk based regulatory framework under the act, and it is essential that this bill operates coherently within it.

In conclusion, My Lords, these amendments do not dilute child protection. They strengthen it. They move us away from a blunt, one size fits all band towards the proportionate, evidence based approach that respects children's rights, holds platforms accountable and generally reduces harm. My Lords, the public out there have sent a clear message that they want us to act. It's now up to us in this your Lordships' House, but also down the corridor in the other place to act it and act on it.

I think what we need to do is to heed the warnings of these respected organisations that have written to us all to actually say, we hear you, that there is a need for a ban, but we think we can look at a much more sophisticated model than just a simple one age limit ban. So, my Lords, I beg to move.

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My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendments in this group 92, 93 and 94 a in my name and in the names of 94 a in my name and in the names of the noble Ladies Baroness Cass, Baroness Benjamin, and Baroness Baroness Benjamin, and Baroness Berger. As this is the first time I've spoken in support of this bill, I should draw attention to my interests on the register, interests on the register, particularly the fact that I'm chair of a multi-academy trust and an investor in a number of companies, including tech and software companies.

I have three amendments in this group. 94 A is to raise the age limit for access to social media to 16. In fact, this amendment does rather more than this. First, because it does five things. In fact. Firstly, it raises the age limit. Secondly, it requires social media companies to put in place highly effective age assurance. Currently, many, if not most, social media companies have no really effective age assurance at 13. Thirdly, the amendment would direct the chief Medical officer to prepare and publish advice to parents and carers on the use of social media by children.

So if you like the start of a public awareness campaign. Fourthly, the amendment sends a message that draws a line in the sand for parents, carers and others to use when discussing social media with children which they are crying out for. And fifthly, it allows 12 months for implementation. My Lords, we have reached an inflection point. We are facing nothing short of a societal catastrophe caused by the fact that so many of our children are addicted to social media.

Many teenagers are spending long hours five, six, seven or more a day on social media. The evidence is now overwhelming as to the damage that this is causing. We have long passed the point of correlation or causation. There is now so much evidence from across the world that it is clear that by every metric health, cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, economic productivity, children are being harmed. I have sent noble Lords an evidence document prepared by health professionals, which sets out over 50 studies from around the world, showing a clear link between excessive use of social media and
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Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash (Conservative)
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children. Since 2016, there has been a 477% increase in children's contact with mental health services and eating disorders amongst 17 to and eating disorders amongst 17 to 19 year olds have risen 16 fold. There's been a sevenfold rise in There's been a sevenfold rise in young girls admitted to hospital with eating disorders, and the evidence is clear that there is a strong link between this and the substantial increase in rates of ADHD, suicide, depression, anxiety and self-harm among teenagers with overexposure to social media, our teacher said, is the number one cause of disruptive behaviour and in their view, will be the biggest source of pressure for students in the future.

Our children are turning up at school sleep deprived. It's clear that many are going to sleep on many nights of the week. In the small hours, the new and Nageswara are in favour of raising the age limit to 16. The Chief Inspector, Sir Martin Oliver, and social media is at the centre of county lines and radicalisation. So much so that in 2025 the heads of MI5, counter-terrorism, policing and National Crime Agency issued a summer holiday warning urging parents to keep their children safe online.

More young people than ever have been arrested in recent years for terrorist offences. Children are increasingly seeing real life violent content, which only 6% of them initially looked for, look for, and the evidence is clear that that people who watch or discuss violent images are, unsurprisingly, much more likely to commit crime, including knife crime. I know that some are concerned that a 16 age limit would be to the detriment of particular groups of often vulnerable children, but it is the most vulnerable children who are the most susceptible to influence by social media.

The police, who specialise in child sexual abuse, material and radicalisation, say that it is just the health forms for groups such as LGBTQ, plus those with eating disorders, ADHD etc. where the worst abusers hang out and target children. Social media is being used extensively for sextortion, and there are now even widespread cases of children hosting live sex shows for payment from their bedrooms. On social media, so-called con groups are using social media to track vulnerable children in games, such as cutting games, where the person who cuts the deepest wins, choking games which have proved fatal, or even games which encourage rape or suicide.

One survivor attested to having seen multiple suicides. Polling demonstrates overwhelming support. The vast majority of parents, 75% of adults, including 75% of Labour voters, support raising the minimum age to 16. And most strikingly, young people themselves recognise the harm. 78% of Gen Z say they would try to delay their child using social media for as long as possible, and polling published today shows that 60% of 16 to 24 year olds, ie those who have most recently had the experience of social media as teenagers, support a 16 year old age limit and also over half, 13 to 24 year olds say social media is fairly or completely responsible for increasing misogyny or violence against women and girls.

And there is global momentum for this. Australia has raised the age limit to 16 and Malaysia are doing so. Many other countries, including Denmark, France, Norway and New Zealand are considering restrictions and the European Parliament voted in November overwhelmingly for 16 y 16 because the 13, 14, 15 teenage years are when teenagers are the most vulnerable to influence and have a very high risk profile. Some people call this a cliff edge. I don't see that the amendment merely seeks to give teenage agers a few more years to mature, so that they can deal more effectively with social media, to distinguish fact from fiction and exercise better judgement.

I know that some charities, including those involving bereaved parents, would like to see an approach which favours using the Online Safety Act and Ofcom more effectively. Whilst we must try to improve Ofcom's approach, the OSA only catches harmful content once it has been seen often by children with 70 million child sexual abuse images out there and more being created every minute, beheading videos, etc. there is no way, even with the best will in the world, that all this product can be taken down and taken down fast enough.

Our children will see it. We just want them to see it at a later age. And nine nine bereaved families, many of whom are here today, wrote to the Prime Minister on Monday in support of my amendment. And of course, this approach would not deal with the grooming of children on social media channels others have proposed. We wait to see what happens in Australia, but what are we waiting for? We know our children are being harmed. We know that tech companies can put in place highly effective age assurance.

That is what they're doing in Australia with a high degree of accuracy, well into the 90% at the initial age gate, and then by tracking the traffic, the activity on social media, which they do for all of us, they can tell when a child has slipped through the net net. This is a there is a myth that children will get round age assurance, but that has grown up because hitherto there has been no generally effective age assurance at 13. There is also a concern that children will move to other sites, and my amendment 94 allows for these to be brought into scope.

And my amendment also allows for 12 months for implementation, plenty of time for learn from Australia. My Lords, this is going to happen. The only question is when we have the opportunity to do it now in this bill and every day which passes, more damage is being done to children. We must act now. Turning to the Liberal Democrats amendments 194 B and C, well intentioned that they may be there, have been rushed out at the last minute and surprisingly in what in view of what the noble Lord Lord Mohammed has just said, they bring into scope Wikipedia, WhatsApp, TripAdvisor, all gaming acts, many special interest and health forms with no ability to exclude them.

Whereas my amendment 94 A has that facility which would almost certainly be used. Also, 108 has no enforcement mechanism if social media companies do not comply with the 16 year old age limit, their amendments 108 94 B and C seek to avoid scrutiny by your Lordships House and the other place on what apps are in or out, and seek to delegate this function to Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner, apparently sometimes acting jointly. I don't quite know how that would work, and acting on the basis of vague criteria, creating a huge amount of work for an already overworked body and massive scope for litigation.

My amendment 94 leaves that scrutiny firmly with Parliament. My Lords, well intentioned as these amendments might be, there are fundamentally flawed. And therefore, if you send them back to the other place, as opposed to my amendment 94 A, it will be easy for the government to knock them out on those grounds. My amendment 94 has been well thought through and subject to scrutiny in committee. Turning to the government's proposal consultation, which they tell me will last for three months or so.

Firstly, the announcement of it on the eve of the vote is unfortunate. When will the actions arising from this consultation be published? We are still waiting for those in relation to the consultation on gender identity in schools. Nearly two years after the consultation closed and that issue, complicated though it is, does not involve technology or multi-billion pound tech companies with all the lobbying at their disposal. The consultancy talks about exploring ways to improve a assessing age assurance. Well, as I've already said, highly effective age assurance already exist.

The government is well behind the eight ball. They want to assess the current age of digital consent. This is in fact only one means, and not the most useful means by which social media companies lawfully collect personal data. Again, the government is behind the able. They want to explore further intervention to support parents. Parents are arguing with their children daily about screen and social media time. They want a line in the sand now. So the government's consultation is, in my view, unnecessary, misconceived and clearly a last minute attempt to kick the can down the road.

My Second Amendment 92 is to raise the age of access to VPNs to 18, as it is clear that some children are using VPNs to get around age restrictions for gambling pornography and might well use them for social media. So it is closely linked to 94 A on amendment 93. I've had a constructive discussion with Ministers on this, and more discussions are in progress and I won't push ask be asked to be voting on this today. I urge noble Lords to vote today for my social media amendment 94 A and

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VPA amendment 92. My Lords, I rise to support the amendments to which I've added my amendments to which I've added my name in the names of Baroness Penn name in the names of Baroness Penn and Lord Nash. When I was president of the Paediatric College, an important part of my job was urging government Ministers that protecting and investing in
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Baroness Cass Portrait Baroness Cass (Crossbench)
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children is the only way to protect the future of our country. Because, as I believe I've said before, in this house, children are 25% of our population and 100% of our future. So if we fail to protect them, it's not just a moral issue, it's a financial disaster. So there are two questions we need to ask ourselves when we think about how social media is impacting our youth first, are they at risk? And secondly, how do we eliminate or at least minimise that risk? Now, with regard to younger children, I fully support Baroness Penn's amendment and I too welcome the planned guidance.

And just a couple of points I would particularly ask the government to give careful thought to that guidance in relation to vulnerable and disabled children who may be able to who may be more limited in their abilities for alternative physical activities, so that screen time is understandably an easier default. So advice for those families is particularly important. And it is also important to think about how they're going to reach those harder to reach families or marginalised families who may not easily access the guidance.

And the final thing I would say on this, following up from Baroness Penn's question about who will be on the group, the input of speech and language therapists is going to be particularly important given their obvious involvement in early language development. Turning to older children, last year, my noble friend Baroness Kidron and I hosted a meeting at the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. The meeting brought together representatives from across the medical specialities to discuss what they're seeing in outpatients, on wards, in GP surgeries and in emergency departments.

And we heard about cases of sextortion, cyber bullying and gaming addiction. We were told about children who couldn't leave their bedrooms, let alone go to school, and about the impacts of that inactivity, including obesity and musculoskeletal issues. Psychiatrist talked to us about young people who'd been radicalised online, and those who had learned self-harming behaviours online, and we heard about children suffering PTSD after seeing beheadings or videos of animals being tortured, clinicians working in emergency departments talked about young people coming in following strangulation, either as part of challenges or during sexual activity, or with injuries after being drawn into organised crime or county lines.

The age range of the children presenting with injuries linked to harmful sexual practices is falling. We were told about fatal and near-fatal injuries in children as young as 13. Doctors in that room described this as a public health emergency. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has since sent a letter signed by every medical college president of the Secretaries of State for DSIT and DHSC, and about what they described as an extraordinarily moving meeting with clinicians, giving personal testimony about the horrific cases they had treated.

Now, my medical colleagues here, if there are any, would know that college presidents are like cats. You can't herd them. So when 20 or 3 of them all 23 agree, there is a risk, you need to be very afraid. Now, mental health problems are complicated and multifactorial, and it's very easy for academics to look at population data and say that social media is just one of a number of factors causing the dramatic rise in mental health problems. But these clinicians in the room weren't describing data points, and they weren't describing research subjects.

They were describing real young people who'd suffered direct, incontrovertible harm. They knew their names, they knew their families, and they borne witness to the trauma and the distress. And as in so many other situations, disadvantaged children and those who are neurodiverse were felt to be at the greatest risk. So I asked the government, how will a consultation weigh the testimony of a clinician, or indeed a parent who has sat by a dying child as a result of one of these horrific incidents against the testimony of a parent from another part of the country who has not gone through that experience or any other consultees.

I don't understand what extra information this consultation is going to give. I find it extraordinary to think that a meaningful consultation can be conducted in three months, and I cannot see how the two sides of the

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debate can be weighed up any more effectively through that mechanism. Yeah.

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Yeah. On Monday evening, I spent 25 minutes online using an incognito minutes online using an incognito browser page. I learnt that I could end my life by inhaling helium. I watched two videos of girls being choked, and I accessed a video with ten tips about how to enhance my ten tips about how to enhance my sex life with strangulation. Not, I hasten to add, because I wanted to do any of those things. I just wanted to see how easy it was.

And it was easy and no age verification was needed. My Lords, if we think children may be in danger, we act first and we ask questions later on the wards. If we had concerns about the competence of a clinician, we suspended them from service first and investigated later. It was a neutral, not a punitive act to the clinician because we were protecting children. And that was paramount when small numbers of children died tragically as a result of nut allergies. We didn't wait for RCTs.

We transformed catering in schools and set up emergency protocols. And yet far more children are being harmed by social media. And still we delay. You don't need an RCT to tell you that punching someone on the nose every day hurts, and removing the aggressor provides dramatic relief, and that word evidence based is used very loosely in this chamber. I think it means hearing from somebody else, not the person whose views you didn't like. The amendment before us, proposed by Lord Nash, gives the Secretary of State discretion to determine which social media apps should be unavailable to under 16 seconds, but equally to opt in apps which she deems safe.

So in the coming year, it would be possible for UK tech to have the opportunity to develop such apps. We're not talking about necessarily leaving children and young people in a black hole. It's but this is just a beginning. It's not a panacea and there's much more that we can do. And if I was on an NHS computer, organisational protocols would block me from accessing YouTube or other social media apps. So there's no technological reason stopping the development of under sixteens devices with national protocols, which allow age appropriate content.

And I, with regard to the Lib Dem amendment and the risk of potentially more young people going on to the dark web. Again, if we talk about evidence, where is the evidence that more dark, more children and young people will go on to the dark web than those who are doing so already, or that it will outweigh the numbers of children who are saved from seeing the sorts of content that we are so worried about. My Lords, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.

The first step was the Online Safety Act that maybe this is the second step. And I really do welcome the fact that the government has moved from questioning the evidence to actually recognising the national concern about this issue. But our Prime Minister has said on numerous occasions that the first duty of a government is to protect its citizens. And he is right here and now. We have a clear and present danger to children. The first duty of government is not to consult.

It is to.
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Lord Knight of Weymouth Portrait Lord Knight of Weymouth (Labour)
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Act here. Safety Act, first as a member of the Joint Committee and then on the opposition frontbench, and now on your Lordships Communications and your Lordships Communications and Digital Committee. I added my name to amendment 91, proposed by the noble Baroness Penn, and I'm noble Baroness Penn, and I'm delighted that the government is listening, and I hope that Ministers can give the noble Baroness the reassurances that she seeks, turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord Nash, I first thank him for raising these important issues and detailing the harms so compellingly.

The harms caused by social media are clear, both in terms of the harmful content and that they are addictive by design. The algorithms operate in a moral vacuum. Platforms. Algorithms do whatever it takes to keep us on screen. I'm attracted to the government's proposal in the consultation around banning addictive design, rather than a blanket ban that could see a huge reduction in harm for all of us, as today's University of Sussex research about Doomscrolling demonstrates. But it is our children who we most want to protect.

My 14 year old at home is time limited on her phone. She is not allowed her phone in her room overnight and is limited to two social media accounts. This is difficult to parent, but it is our responsibility as parents to navigate it with our children. Incidentally, the two social media accounts she chooses are WhatsApp and Pinterest. Both are allowed under the Australian social media ban. One keeps her connected to family and friends, and the other she needs for her GCSE art.

Under amendment 94. On my reading of it, it seems pretty categorical. It is all social media platforms and she would be banned from both. Pinterest was implicated.

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And I'm interested from the Labour politician who I greatly respect that there are parents who respect that there are parents who can control their kids, but it is the most vulnerable kids and the least advantaged kids who live in least advantaged kids who live in households where there is no discipline. Who are the most exposed here?

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exposed here? The number one I debate with great respect and friendship. My great respect and friendship. My reading of by regulations made by Statutory Instruments require all regulated user to user services to use highly effective age assurance measures to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users. That feels categorical

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to me and. That is the point. That is the point the noble Lady Baroness Cass point the noble Lady Baroness Cass made. That is the point that it would be up to the government approved by this House and the other place as to which apps are in and out. And clearly it will be possible for those apps which are suitable for children to be excluded, as would WhatsApp, Wikipedia and under the Lib Dems Wikipedia and under the Lib Dems amendment, they have drafted it in such a way.

I have to say, where it would include everybody and it would be up to this very complicated procedure with Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner to work out which one, which would

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frankly be a nightmare. I will.

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I will. Move on. I'll try harder to read further, to try and get to the same place as the noble Lord Nash, but I doubt it. Pinterest was implicated doubt it. Pinterest was implicated in the suicide completed by Molly Russell, Molly's father. Ian is Russell, Molly's father. Ian is thoughtful, brave and inspiring. I listened to him talk on the BBC this week about why he and countless other expert children's charities are against a blanket ban on social media for under 16.

They worry about the unintended consequences for children's safety. A blanket ban is likely to lead to, under sixteens finding less regulated platforms to connect online, such as gaming platforms or on the dark web. It's worth noting, according to internet, recent Internet Matters research, that boys spend significantly more time on gaming platforms than on social media platforms. They may also turn to VPNs, which would then undermine the child safety gains of the Online Safety Act. Lord Nash VPN amendment tries to address this, but age gating VPNs may be extremely problematic.

My phone uses a VPN following a personal device cyber consultation offered by this Parliament. VPNs can make us more secure, and we should not rush to deprive children of that safety and a blunt blanket ban to struggle not to call it a blanket ban will also. Will will also deny young people the positives of some of the less addictive social media. Young people will continue to want to connect with each other. They will want to share music, their photos, their videos, their creative content.

I was of the mixtape generation, now replaced by the shareable playlist. Young entrepreneurs will want to market their products. Will they have to use an adult's account on an adult's phone and be exposed to the risks of adult content? As a result, when I speak to young people in my capacity as president of Young Citizens, I've been struck by how well informed they are. They find out what's going on in the world through social media. Is it right that we lower the voting age to 16 and simultaneously prevent access to news for 15 year olds, when we want them to become well informed? My Lords, the arguments for doing something, something urgent and something meaningful about the dangers of social media for children are compelling.

But so are the arguments to do it in a more sophisticated way. For that reason, we should back the government's consultation. I note it's a three month consultation. Can the Minister please reassure us that action will follow within the 12 month timeline suggested by the Lord Nash's amendment, and we should at the same time urgently review how the Online Safety Act is working. We need to retain the risk based approach to regulation in the act. But Ofcom's current stance of treating all children all the way to 18 as the same is flawed.

We need age appropriate design, and we should give Ofcom the unambiguous requirement to ensure that age restrictions and guidance about social media access are rigorously enforced, and this in turn requires mandated, robust age assurance. We must develop this sensitive to the digital rights of children and mindful that we don't want to unwittingly require Big Tech to hold sensitive data about our children. And so I would also echo Ian Russell's call for us to listen to children and young people as we make these changes.

That's one of the really good reasons why we should go ahead with a consultation. I conclude by urging Ministers to act swiftly to listen to parliamentarians, but also to experts and young people, and then to act robustly, platform by platform, to deliver the ambition of the Online Safety Act, to make this country the safest place in

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the world for children to grow up. Yeah.

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It's a pleasure to follow the noble Lord Knight like him. I'd been involved in debating issues on been involved in debating issues on online safety through from the internet, green internet safety, internet, green internet safety, green paper, through the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill, and then through to Safety Bill, and then through to seeing through the Online Safety Bill through to an act. My Lords, I declare at the same time, an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation.

I rise to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley amendments 94 and 94 to amendment 94 a tabled by the noble Lord Nash. And in doing so, I do urge this House to strengthen his proposal by transforming it from a blanket ban into an effective, harmed based approach to social media regulation, which can actually be implemented and enforced within the same timetable. Now, the government has announced, as we've heard, a three month consultation on children's social media use, and this is a welcome demonstration that the government recognises the importance of this issue and is willing to consider further action beyond the Online Safety Act.

However, our amendments make it clear that we should not wait until summer or even beyond to act when we have a workable, legally operable solution before us today. Far from weakening Lord Nash proposals, Lord Nash's proposal, our amendments are designed to make raising the age to 16 deliverable in practice not just attractive in a headline. Now, my Lords, I share the noble Lord, Lord Nash's diagnosis. We are facing a catastrophe regarding children's mental health, with young people exposed to misogyny, violence and addictive algorithms.

And I welcome his leadership in bringing this critical issue before the House. And I strongly support his proposal for a default minimum age of 16 after 16 up to 20 years of profiteering from our children's attention, we need a reset. The voices of young people themselves are impossible to ignore. At the same time, tens of thousands of parents have reached out to us all in just the last week, calling to raise the age we cannot let them down.

And the government has announced that Ministers will visit Australia from learn to learn from their approach. But I do urge them to learn the right lessons.
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Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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Australia has taken the stance of banning social media for under 16 seconds, with a current list of ten platforms. However, their approach demonstrates three critical flaws demonstrates three critical flaws that amendment 94, as currently drafted, would replicate and that drafted, would replicate and that we must avoid. First of all, the definition problem. The Australian legislation has had to draw legislation has had to draw explicit lines that keep services such as WhatsApp, Google Classroom and many gaming platforms out of scope in order to make the ban effective.

Lord Nash has rightly recognised these difficulties by giving the Secretary of State power to exclude platforms. But, my Lords, that simply moves the arbitrariness from a list in legislation to ministerial discretion. What criteria would the Secretary of State use? Our approach instead puts those decisions on a transparent, risk based footing with Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner, rather than in one pair of hands. Secondly, my Lords, the cliff edge problem the unamended approach of 94 risks protecting children in a sterile digital environment until their 16th birthday, then suddenly flooding them with harmful content without having developed the digital literacy to cope.

As the joint statement from 42 children's charities warns, children aged 16 would face a dangerous cliff edge when they start to use high risk platforms. My Lords, our amendment addresses this. Third, this risks being the dangerous dogs approach to regulation. Just as breed specific legislation failed because it focussed on the type of dog rather than dangerous behaviour. The Australian ban focuses on categories rather than risk, because it is tied to the significant purpose of social interaction.

The Australian ban currently excludes high risk environments such as roadblocks, discord and many AI chat bots. Even though children spend a larger time amounts of time, there an arbitrary list based on what platforms do will not deal with the core issue of harm. The Molly Rose Foundation has rightly warned that this simply risks migrating bad actors, groomers, violent groups from banned platforms to these permitted ones, and we end up playing whack a mole with children's safety. Our amendment is designed precisely to address that.

My Lords, our concerns are shared by the very organisations at the forefront of child safety. This weekend, 42 charities and experts, including the Molly Rose Foundation, NSPCC, Internet Watch Foundation, Childline, The Brick Foundation and the centre for Protecting Women Online issued a joint statement warning that social media bans are the wrong solution. They warn that blanket bans risk creating a false sense of safety and call instead for risk based minimum ages and design duties that reflect the different levels of risk on different platforms.

When the family of Molly Russell, whose tragic death galvanised this entire debate, warns against blanket bans and calls for targeted regulation, we must listen. Those are the organisations who every day pick up the pieces when things go wrong online, and they are clear that a simple ban may feel satisfying. But it is the wrong tool and its risks. A dangerous false sense of safety. Our amendments build on Lord Mance foundation. While addressing these critical flaws, they provide a ready made answer to many of the questions the government's promised consultation will raise about minimum ages, age verification, addictive design features and how to ensure platforms take responsibility for child safety.

We retain the default minimum age of 16. Crucially, that would remain the law for every platform unless and until it proves against rigorous criteria that it is safe enough to merit a lower age rating. However, and this is the crucial improvement, platforms could be granted exemptions if and only if they can demonstrate to Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner that they do not present a risk of harm. Our amendments would create film style age ratings for platforms. Safe educational platforms could be granted exemptions with appropriate minimum ages, and the criteria are rigorous.

Platforms would have to demonstrate that they meet Ofcom's guidance on risk based minimum ages. Protect children's rights under the UN convention on the rights of the child have considered their impact on children's mental health, have investigated whether their design encourages addictive use, and have reviewed their algorithms for content, recommendation and targeted advertising. So this is not a get out clause for tech companies. This is tied directly to whether the actual design and algorithms on their platforms are safe for children.

Crucially, exemptions are subject to periodic review and if standards slip, the exemption can be revoked first. This prevents mitigating harms if discord or a gaming lobby presents high risk, it would not qualify for exemption. If a platform proves it safe, it becomes accessible and we regulate risk to the child, not the type of technology. Secondly, it incentivises safety by design. The Australian model tells platforms build a wall to block children. This concern is shared by the Online Safety Act network, representing 23 organisations spanning child protection, suicide prevention and violence against women and girls.

And they warn that current implementation focuses on quote ex post measures to reduce the harm that has already occurred, rather than upstream content neutral by design interventions to seek to prevent it occurring in the first place. And they call explicitly for requiring platforms to address harms to children caused by addictive or compulsive design. Precisely what our amendment mandates, my Lords. Third, it is proof, future proof. We must prepare for a future that has already arrived. AI, chatbots and tomorrow's technologies.

Our risk based approach allows Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner to regulate emerging harms effectively, rather than playing catch up with exemptions. We should not adopt a blunt instrument that bans Wikipedia or education and helpline services by accident, drives children into high risk gaming sites by omission, or creates a dangerous cliff edge at 16. By design, we should not fall into the trap of regulating categories rather than harms, and we should not put the power to choose in one person's hands, namely the Secretary of State.

My Lords, instead, let us build on Lord Nash's foundation by empowering Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner Commissioner to implement a sophisticated world leading system, one that protects children based on actual risk while allowing them to learn, communicate and develop digital resistance. So I do urge the House to support our amendments to amendment 94, a.

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Great I rise, Bishop. My Lords. Perhaps I'm a simple minded, naive bishop, but it seems that we're getting into the kind of debate that we should probably have had a Committee stage between different ways of approaching quite, different ways of approaching quite, quite a specific issue. And I really rather we didn't spend all night doing that. But yet we are night doing that. But yet we are where we are. The very fact that these amendments are 95 a, 95 be the one to mention discussing is a
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Lord Bishop of Manchester Portrait The Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops)
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the one to mention discussing is a symptom. The fact that these issues have really come to the fore of the public's concern in relatively recent times. And I've got to the point where I'm thinking, I don't care which amendment we pass tonight, we pass something that then allows some time for things to go back to the commons, for them to give consideration to, to come back to here and let's have that process. Even though it's relatively late in the stage of a bill, I think we can have a a good process beyond today rather than trying to resolve the matter once and for all on the floor of the House this evening.

That's my main point. My second point is why I think we're perhaps in a better place now than we were a few months ago, and it has worried me how we we haven't taken action against the some of the big tech companies in the USA in recent times. We know that the US government puts this government as our nation under extreme pressure. Nobody's mentioned that today. It feels a bit like the elephant in the room, but perhaps we do need to now show our courage.

And particularly given all that's happening in and around Greenland, perhaps now is the time that we say we're not we're not pusillanimous anymore. We're standing up for Britain, for what Britain needs. Whatever the tech bros think is in their interests.

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My Lords, it's an absolute pleasure to follow the Bishop, because I'm going to mirror his because I'm going to mirror his words in many ways. The Right Reverend prelate, the bishop. Beg your pardon? And before I start, I your pardon? And before I start, I just want to thank our warm up act, the noble Lady Penn. That's a the noble Lady Penn. That's a fantastic result. I hope that the Minister gives you all that you want. And. And I think you should be proud of yourself, that you've done it in just a couple of years.

Because I think since I raised it, the that the child born when I first raised it is probably in tertiary by now. So two years is a very good time frame. My Lords, I actually had a quite different speech that I had written before. I saw the government's consultation announcement, but that made me rather angry because it doesn't
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Baroness Kidron Portrait Baroness Kidron (Crossbench)
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concern itself with the gaps in provision or enforcement of the Online Safety Act, nor the emerging Online Safety Act, nor the emerging or future threats that we repeatedly raise. It does not seek to speed up enforcement or to speed up enforcement or establish why non-compliant companies are not named in Ofcom companies are not named in Ofcom research, nor are named while they're being investigated. It is a consultation entirely focussed on two amendments that this House might send to the other House, that their backbenchers might agree to.

So, my Lords, it is consultation whose purpose is to stave off a backbench rebellion, if not child safety. It's not governance, it's party management and I believe the UK children deserve better than that. So we have two amendments before us. Neither enjoy the support of all those who care about child safety and what a gift. As the right reverend Prelate said, what a gift that has been to the government because it allows them to kick the issue down the road.

The United Kingdom, once at the forefront of tech safety, commended for its AI Safety Institute, the age appropriate design code, the Online Safety Act, the provisions for bereaved parents all first and best in class, has squandered its advantage. Instead, we are becoming a case study for those who would like to prove that the tech sector is beyond national laws, that it is a law unto itself and regulation has failed not because it can't work, but because the regime envisaged by Parliament was weakened by lobbying and critically undermined in its implementation.

It's not regulation failing in principle, it's political will failing in practice. My Lords, there are very good reasons that all the child safety experts and organisations have urged the government not to settle for a social media ban. Their collective view is clear that a ban is blunt, partial fails to tackle root harms, shift the burden from tech to parents and children abandoned 16 and 17 year olds. And actually, for me, possibly the biggest thing that they're saying that we must here is that it sends a dangerous message to a demographic that already experiences widespread disaffection, that while the future is all digital and AI, they are not invited.

And I agree with every single one of those points. However, the government has over the last 15 months, ignored the howl of pain from parents and children, preferring to sup with big tech, and many have come to the view that they can't if they can't have the digital world they were promised for their children. After a decade of work on the Online Safety Bill act, they would rather have nothing at all. And my Lords, I say this reluctantly, but all of the social media companies caught by Australia's ban are already in scope of the USA.

So today marks a very low day for Ofcom because we are rehearsing between these two groups exactly what we rehearsed, exactly what it is that Ofcom was supposed to solve. And my Lords, I will finally say in public I have resisted this for some time. Believe me, what others have been saying, including Ian Russell for months. Ofcom are too timid. They're too close to tech, they're too secretive. They've narrowed the scope, they've tackled the act in the most bureaucratic fashion possible.

They and they have held Parliament in contempt by failing to enact all parts of the act, including the different ages, as the noble Lord. Knight. I know him very well. We are friends. The noble Lord Knight stand, my Lords, nothing will change until Ofcom changes. What parents and children really need is an online act to work as it was intended, and to reset the incentives taking outcomes, not process overarching duty of care, not safe harbour that allows companies to keep unsafe features with no penalty.

It means mitigating all harms identified in risk risk assessments and speeding up enforcement. Now, the previous Secretary of State failed to take the opportunity to strengthen the bill under section 44 on the draft codes, but the current Secretary of State has the power to act under section 47 of the OSR on public safety grounds. We have police talking about tsunami of AI child sexual abuse. We've heard that the Royal Medical Colleges have announced a public health emergency. Similarly, the Secretary of State can send guidance about Ofcom about its functions under section 176 so far unused.

What about safety on design, on addictive and compulsive loops, violence against women and girls and on minimum standards in terms and conditions? And my Lords, she could accept the amendments laid to the Crime and Policing Bill that protect children from carelessly designed AI chatbots, women from sexual humiliation and pornography. Answer the calls for bereaved parents for rapid and automatic access to data. They were promised action and have been badly let down. My Lord, it is not my intention to rehearse all that we can do, but please let us vote in the full knowledge that everything that could be done is not being done as we speak.

My Lords, desperate parents and teachers are losing faith at the institutions of government can act. And I believe that is dangerous not only for child safety, but dangerous for society as a whole. Which begs the question, how am I going to vote? Yeah, my Lords, when I first entered the House, a debate raged just like this one today between those who wanted to reform sex and relationship education in schools and those who wanted wider settlement.

Both sides had compelling arguments, but because we failed to come together, neither succeeded and children waited for another ten years before anything happened. Yesterday, the Secretary of State cited our differences as the reason for the government consultation. But, my Lords, that is false accounting. The desire for a ban is a direct result of the failure to do the better thing to implement the Online Safety Bill in its full scope. And if children were protected by the OSR, then there would be no outcry, no campaign, no need to get them offline.

The government has shown it will only act under pressure, not principle. That leaves me no good option on the table, and I am not prepared to wait for another ten years. So my Lords, I will vote first with the Lib Dems. Then I will vote with Lord Nash. We must send something to the other end. So they have to account for the needs of parents and children in the UK. And I really do hope that the government will have a better answer than a ban.

But if we do not send them something then they have nothing to answer. And my Lords, a consultation is the playground of the tech lobbyist, and inaction is the most powerful tool in politics. And I want to make one last final point. Law does not sit in a vacuum. The Australian Prime Minister, Albanese, is resolute. He has a determined position on child safety. He has no compromises with the tech industry. Australia also has an experienced and fierce Esafety commissioner who is responsible to individual complainants.

Her powers are robust and she can issue injunctions neither of ban nor nor the OSA will work unless we equip the regime with a route for individual complaints. Vastly speeded up business disruption measures and put in robust leadership. Ministers are suggesting that the consultation is about practical decisions about getting more information. I like the noble Lords green paper, white paper, pre ledge, ledge, you know, consultation on illegal consultation on kids code. I mean we have been consulted.

I have listed what we could do today and the government is not doing it. What Australia did was a political decision. They made a choice and they are sticking to it. And we could make a choice to make the OSA what it was supposed to be. And that is what I would like to see. But my Lords, I think everybody in this House should suck it up and vote, because we have to make clear that this is not what we were promised and this is not good enough.
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Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell (Conservative)
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going to send an amendment to the Commons to put pressure on the government to act, or whether we're going to flunk this opportunity. going to flunk this opportunity. And I absolutely support her conclusion that this is a moment when the House of Lords does need when the House of Lords does need to act. My Lords, I'd like to start by paying tribute to my noble friend, the Baroness Penn, for her friend, the Baroness Penn, for her amendment 91, which is thoughtful, patiently put, and an important amendment.

I hope very much indeed that the government will pay attention to her notes on timetable, and, if necessary, I hope very much indeed. The Baroness Penn will press this point until she gets what she needs. But, my Lords, I really want to address my comments to amendment 94, the Lord Nash amendment, and pay tribute to the Baroness Cash, Baroness Berger and Baroness Benjamin, all of whom have made an enormous impact on this. Guardrails for our children are where we have landed.

I say this with some regret, but it is important that we recognise this point. The noble Baroness Baroness Cass mentioned a meeting with the Royal Colleges, and I say this as a former health Minister who has had many dealings with the herd of cats that are the Royal colleges, my Lords, if they unify and say that there is a public health emergency, we should pay attention to that moment. We should not be brushed off by attempts to knock this into the long grass by public consultations, and we should listen to our clinicians.

And the clinicians against smartphones have done conclusive research on the harms done by screen time, by predators, by fraudsters, by the filth on the internet, and by the sheer quantity of screen time that our children are subjected to. And it is an utterly persuasive argument. And further research is not needed. In fact, a consultation is exactly the tobacco industry playbook applied to smartphones for adolescents. Delay consult, lobby weaken. We know this playbook very, very well. We don't need a get out of jail clause for the tech companies.

We need implementation. And my Lords, this is our opportunity for for doing it. My Lords, like many others in this chamber, I worked really hard on the Online Safety Act to make it a success. And it is a landmark piece of legislation, bits of it. I am extremely proud, but my Lords, it assumed that we could work with the platforms to moderate their algorithms, to remove the filth, to prevent the predators, to limit the screen time. It assumed that we were working in some kind of collaborative partnership with Facebook, Google, TikTok, meta, Snapchat, Twitter and all the other social media companies into protecting children and working towards some kind of better world.

My Lords, that was a catastrophic misjudgement about the nature of these companies and the nature of their leadership and the outcomes for our children, which have gone significantly backwards in the last two years, is a testimony to that, to that point, and that damage done to our children is accelerating with the tsunami of AI that is heading their way. The platforms have not reformed. They have not taken the bait. Instead they've taken the mic. They're introducing artificial intelligence at a rate and totally inappropriate chat bots to our children.

The risk assessments that are an absolutely essential building block of the Ofcom regime and the Online Safety Act are an absolute insult to the intelligence of the regulators and of parents. How on earth did a risk assessment ever assess Grox new AI tools as being safe for children? My Lord, it's a complete joke. Lord Knight Lord Clement-Jones say that these platforms can be moderated, that they can be brought to heel, that they will abide with the regulators will.

But my Lords, we've got to remember that they won't change because around 25% of their clicks of the page views come from the children that they're targeting, and they are far too reliant on mis selling those children's eyeballs as adult eyeballs to advertisers. So you can't regulate far off tech titans who are reliant on that income. You can only create perimeters for which they can hunt their profits. And that's exactly what this amendment does. Now, my Lord, I recognise that there are sensible, respected voices who take a completely different view.

Noble Lords have rightly paid tribute to the Molly Rose Foundation, Ian Russell and the NSPCC and other charities have, I know, argued that instead of guardrails we should strengthen the Online Safety Act. They say that we should mandate wellbeing by design requirements. And Ian Russell has said, and I quote, we should require platforms to prioritise child wellbeing in algorithmic design and that age verification creates, and I quote, a false sense of security. My Lords, I just don't think that's right.

This argument rests on a false premise that we can somehow design our way out of the problem whilst keeping children on platforms whose entire business model depends on their exploitation. That cannot happen. You cannot algorithmically mitigate something that is not a design problem, but a business model problem. The algorithm isn't broken. The algorithm is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It is to maximise engagement, to keep eyes on the screen, to amplify provocative content, because provocative content keeps people clicking, including our children.

This is not a market failure. This is a market working as designed by the companies that have monetised our children's childhood as a commodity. My Lords, there are other laws. There are noble peers such as the noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones, who are flying a kite on the possibility of some kind of film style certification system. And my Lords, I also share that dream. What a wonderful world it would be to live in that world. And I did for many years live in that world.

Previous to being here, I was the strategy director of Capital Radio in a much loved local radio, which in the 1990s was a warm and loving place to work and operate. And the government had, for every single local radio station, a licence which dictated exactly who they could broadcast to and what content they had on their radio station. And if you breached that licence, they pulled it and gave it to someone else. And it meant that local radio was extremely compliant to the licence details.

And our broadcasting was a warm and lovely thing that was safe for children. But, my Lords, it is completely unrealistic that we're going to appoint something like a modern radio authority that's going to issue licences for every single website in the world that's going to, in some way oversee what our children access on those websites. How many bureaucrats would need it be needed to look at all those licences? How many armies of enforcement agents would be needed to issue the fines? How could we possibly read all that content? My Lord, our children's safety is far too important to be distracted by this.

My Lords, the noble Baroness Baroness Kidron is absolutely right. This consultation suggestion by the government makes me very, very angry. It isn't about evidence gathering. It's a mechanism for industry delay. It gives meta, TikTok, Google and Snapchat 6 to 9 months to lobby to propose alternatives, to suggest that amendment needs refinement to fund research suggesting age verification may or may not work, even though we know it does work to commission the same experts who said that the Online Safety Act would solve this problem.

My Lord, the tobacco industry, which I know all about as a public health fanatic, played exactly the same game for 60 years. We banned smoking for children in 1908, and today 13% of the country still smoke. That is what we're looking at. If we do not take the opportunity today to protect our children, we need to acknowledge the problem. We need to. Create clear guardrails that protect our children. And for that reason, I would urge noble Lords to send a clear message to the government by sending this amendment, the First

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Amendment, to the Commons, with a clear vote this evening. My Lord.

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My Lord. I rise to support many of the amendments in this group, but I also want to express my concerns about amendment 94. In the name of about amendment 94. In the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I've listened carefully, carefully to his arguments and those of other noble Lords who support this amendment, and I, too, am appalled by the many stories that we've
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Viscount Colville of Culross Portrait Viscount Colville of Culross (Crossbench)
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by the many stories that we've heard tonight. I, too, want to stop children being exposed to harms online. I hope my record in the debates on the Online Safety Act and other digital legislation show my support for measures to increase safety for children in the digital space. I, like all noble Lords, recognise that there are many harms online. However, I do not think that an outright ban on social media for under 16 seconds will be effective in protecting children. I hesitate to disagree with my noble friend Baroness Kidron, who I normally always agree with, but I think we should be putting all the pressure we possibly can directly on Ofcom in order to make sure that we realise the hopes and dreams of the Online Safety Act.

Early this morning I had an interesting conversation with Jason Trethowan, who runs Australia's national youth mental health charity headspace, which was accessed last year by 170,000 young people aged between 12 and 25, in 170 locations across the country. His organisation is on the sharp end of the social media brand in Australia. His main message was we all want to stop online harms to children. But he called on the government and on legislators to listen to children as well as parents.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, is quite rightly highlighted the harms that exist for young people on social media. However, noble Lords also need to be aware of the crucial role that social media plays for young people in both communicating with each other, for getting information about the world, and very importantly, for getting help and advice from like minded people. Jason said that we all need to understand that in the young, that young people see the online world as their world, it is a central part of their existence and no amount of bans will move them from online space for their heads.

Headspace told me that the Ban Australia, which started in December the 10th, 2025, was a massive shock for many young people in the country. They have been warned of its arrival for months, but still weren't prepared for the severing of their contacts on social media. Most did not have the phone numbers to continue communicating with their contacts, and suddenly found themselves isolated from their peer groups. Many noble Lords will dismiss these severances as youthful folly, but the charity told me of 3000 young people who have been seen during the ban since the ban was introduced, 10% came because they were.

They included social media bans amongst the reasons for their mental health deteriorating. One young person on an in rural Australia had used the LGBT group on social to find like minded young people. He lived in a household which he regarded as homophobic, and was geographically far away from many of his online contacts. Suddenly he found his support network taken away from him. The schools in Australia were on their summer break until the end of this month, so the full extent of the disruption in the lives of young people is not known.

The young LGBT person will not be able to renew his social media contacts, but my Lords rest assured he will find advice somewhere else on the internet. Young people who are banned from social media will find other ways online to assuage their appetites for communicating information and problem solving. In Australia, headspace has already seen this happening. Young people who can no longer use the ten major sites, which include Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Kik are now migrating to AI sites. Noble Lords have already had debates over concerns about AI as a form of gathering information.

Many will be aware that what the West Coast techies call hallucination, the rest of us called lies appearing in AI research, and young people are using AI to resolve their problems. On November the 27th, last year, this House had a debate about banning AI companions, which many young people use for advice. These can be dangerous. My noble friend Baroness Kidron told of how this led to one young man committing suicide on the advice of an AI companion. Surely noble Lords don't want to encourage young people to use these AI replacements for social media.

The tech companies will feed that appetite. I know that there's a flexibility for which apps are going to be used, which is built into this amendment 94. However, the they found an Australia that knew that new platforms opening all the time. The Australian government's original act banned ten social media platforms for already it had to come up with another list of platforms to ban. This is a game of whack a mole, just as the noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones said. It will not be solved by a ban on social media platforms.

The media will always outpace the legislation. There are so many harms online, on social media and other platforms. We all agree on that. I've spoken to the charities that have been mentioned many times by noble Lords and Molly Russell Foundation, Internet Matters, NSPCC and Online Safety Act Network, all of whom, as noble Lords have already mentioned, have championed the development of online safety for children and all of whom are but want a blanket ban on social, all against a blanket ban on social media for under 16 in this country.

They suggest that instead of banning social media, the social the Online Safety Act should be amended. I know that my noble friend Baroness Kidron has said that that it isn't possible to

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do. We've tried and we've that we. I'm sorry, but you are

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I'm sorry, but you are misreading what I said, OK? You are misreading. I was saying exactly

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that. I apologise that there should

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I apologise that there should need to be amended. That said, safety by design for all users and particularly young users. This is particularly young users. This is there is a need to strengthen Ofcom's response to tech platforms who breach this their risk assessments. It needs to put an onus on the platforms to mitigate the risks instead of defining the mitigation measures, and only when there is evidence that these measures actually work, take action. This needs to be combined with the definition of safety by design.

I partially support amendment 108. In the name of the noble Lord. Lord Storey. Children's safety charities have long been calling for age appropriate content requirements to be introduced for content on social media and across the internet. However, I think that age appropriate design should be introduced not just for 18 year olds, but also for 16 year olds and even for 13 year olds. I completely support amendment 109. I am glad that the government is having a consultation on this. I hope sincerely that my my noble friends and noble Lords are wrong, that this isn't an attempt to kick this down the down the road addiction is a real problem.

This is about the engagement and economy and it does need to be dealt with. I, I support the call for Ofcom to revisit its interpretation of the Online Safety Act, so that it includes addictive design as one of the harms it needs platforms to mitigate against. I understand the powerful instinct by noble Lords and many parents to ban social media for under 16 seconds, but I ask them to consider that young people are not going to be torn away from life online. It will not be possible to force them to leave the digital world, however much a majority of adults want that to happen.



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Jay Report of Lord Nash amendment and I thank all others signatories as well for this. I'm quite nervous about making.

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I'm quite nervous about making. This speech today. Because I'm praying that my daughter.

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praying that my daughter. speak. As a member. Of of this House, of course, but
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Baroness Bertin Portrait Baroness Bertin (Conservative)
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like me, have watched, frankly, in disbelief as our children's childhoods have been steadily childhoods have been steadily hollowed out in varying degrees. By the way, you know, obviously lots of us are doing everything we can of us are doing everything we can to sort of, you know, keep our children safe. I am the devil incarnate at home because I have incarnate at home because I have not allowed my daughter on Snap, but we have gone into a sort of plea bargaining state. Frankly, if plea bargaining state.

Frankly, if I could put it that way, where I've not allowed Snap, but I have allowed Pinterest now, I thought Pinterest was perfectly harmless. I thought that was a nice place where I sort of picked wallpapers and, you know, had a had a jolly nice time sort of going through it. What could possibly be the problem? I was delighted to say, yes, of course you can have Pinterest. Like Lord Knight said, this is quite an artistic way to operate. But of course what's going on is in fact, Pinterest is now just pushing my daughter a whole load of consumer enormous amounts of advertising.

So she's popped in, you know, that she wants a, a t shirt of some make or whatever. And of course now. Bang bang bang. The notifications are coming in non stop. There is a big reason now that we have teenage girls, not even teenage girls, 11 year old girls, ten year old girls slathering their faces with hydrochloric acid and anti-aging creams products they should not ever even know about, let alone be buying, not least because they're blooming expensive.

It is ridiculous. And I would say that, you know, adolescence is a period of profound emotional and neurological change hormones, friendships, identity, insecurity, playing out in a young developing brains and to then introduce the relentless comparison, exposure, validation and amplification of what social media does is to add a weapon to those brains who are simply too young to cope. And, crucially, they just shouldn't be expected to cope. And I completely accept that the arguments against a full ban, you know, I hardly ever disagree with Baroness Kidron and I and I, I met with Molly Russell's father two days ago, and I had huge, huge respect and huge respect for the other side of the argument that that perhaps it is just too black and white.

But I'm afraid these companies, they absolutely thrive in the complication, the sophistication, the difficulty. So as a parent there, I am already trying to get the parental locks on, trying to work out the mind boggling, you know, how do I turn the push notifications off? How do I stop the device going into the bedroom with, you know, with, with with degrees of, of of of success? And I think five years ago, a partial ban or platform led safeguards might have been defensible had we been dealing with companies worthy of trust.

That trust has now completely disintegrated. You know, the work I've done in the pornography review, a boy. Well, we know that boys age 11, children 11 probably under but from 11 onwards have seen pornography. A boy before his first kiss, age 13, will have seen rape porn. He will have seen strangulation porn. He will have seen incest porn. Where did he see that porn? Mainly on X, but eight out of ten sites? It's social media sites. It's not pornography sites. It is an outrage.

And that was something they knew about. That was something they were actually actively pushing. It wasn't that the kids were necessarily looking for it. They were actually pushing those algorithms onto them. So how can we possibly trust having a kind of dialogue with these firms when we know that that is their business model? As Lord Bethell made very clear at the other end of the scale, research shows that 70% of offenders attempt to contact children. They do so online. I mean, my Lord, this is a business model that is sort of borderline criminal, but it is certainly very toxic.

And it is so sophisticated how the amendments that allow this sort of, you know, we're going to have a conversation with Ofcom, we're going to do X, Y and Z. I just think they they are going to they have already made off with that like bandits with our children's innocence. And I just think they will carry on doing so. To be perfectly honest, if we take that approach, do I think an overall ban is essential? Then afterwards we look at which apps and which sites are are going to be suitable.

I do also want to say that children, sorry, my point about meeting Molly Russell's father. This week we had one of the most thoughtful, constructive meetings I've had in a long time. And whatever the outcome of today, we have agreed to work together going forward. His campaigning has been principled and tireless and rooted in love for his daughter. However, I believe, respectfully that some of the arguments that have been put forward against a ban don't withstand scrutiny. Children, I don't believe, do do not need a social media platform to find protection, belonging or community.

Childhood social networks insisted a long time before algorithmic driven platforms were optimised for engagement and profit. And I do accept my great friend Earl Howe comments about children who are vulnerable. They lose their networks. But I'm afraid in difficult issues like this, with difficult laws, you have to govern for the majority while being very mindful that some minorities will suffer. But what is causing more harm? And I'm afraid, I'm afraid wholesale, I believe that social media, operating in the way that they are for under 16 is causing huge, huge harm.

Finally, I would like to say that like with Baroness Kidron, I do not accept that announcing yet another consultation is a serious response to a problem of this scale. A review at this stage, as she said, is just cynical, you know, managing of politics. And I really hope that my esteemed and, and many of my great friends in the other place will see it for what it is. And we definitely we have got to send this back to the Commons, regardless of whether we agree on full bans, partial bans, we have a job to do and we must not lose this shot at changing and helping our children, protecting our children's in this way.

We are not short of evidence. We are short of action.

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My Lords, my Lords, once upon a time, in a previous moral panic time, in a previous moral panic about children's safety, parents reacted to media and politicians catastrophizing by stopping their offspring playing outside offspring playing outside unsupervised. The unintended consequences were the creation of what became known as cottonwool what became known as cottonwool kids prone to risk aversion, anxiety, a lack of resilience and social isolation. Ironically, of course, to compensate, many of those children were forced to cultivate their activities online.

Their social interactions became virtual. And here we are. I worry that we risk a similar unintended consequences. Now, if we rush to pass this social media ban for under 16. So I will be opposing amendment 94. I know it's become normalised that whatever the social, cultural or moral panics we encounter, we believe we can legislate to make them go away. But I fear this sort of lawmaking can lead to evading, tackling difficult problems and attempting quick fix solution that can too often create a whole new raft of difficulties down the line.

I also noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, blamed social media for eating disorders, radicalisation, terrorism, mental health, epidemic, ADHD, poor behaviour in the classroom, misogyny, violence against women and girls, and on and on. I mean, at this rate, all that Parliament would have to do is to just ban the internet for everyone and all problems would be solved. In fact, I think there is a danger of looking for easy answers and scapegoating social media for all society's ills.

I worry about attempts as well to push this through too quickly or to fast track it. I it's quite interesting that the three week fast track consultation put forward in the other place has been discussed as though it's holding things back, even though in fact, and the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, who calls it more dithering, dither and delay. Yet this is this proposal is new. It's only just arrived here at Report stage, an amendment that will fundamentally change every citizen's relationship with social media, not just children's.

And I worry about attempts at steamrollering it through with an assumption that everyone agrees that it is so obvious and inevitable that there's just no point opposing. I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats and the noble Lord Mohammed of Tinsley for an attempt at proportionality, though I don't think it goes far enough. But we're hectored that this is what parents want. There hasn't been a referendum of parents, there are polls, and of course, many parents are pulling their hair out and will be tempted by it.

It's so much easier to say you can't because it's against the law than it is to assert adult authority. Teenagers and children's pester power can be the bane of all our lives. If only the law could be extended to ban other things. No, you can't wear that hoodie. No, you can't spend hours gaming. It's against the law. No, you can't go on that sleepover. No, you can't gorge on junk food or go to that party. It's illegal. But in truth, this approach encourages parents to outsource their authority and shift responsibility from parents to the state.

All families ultimately are being told that they are incapable of managing their own children's habits, and that is a dangerous precedent. It can disarm parents in the name of empowerment. Is there really a consensus of parents on this? Because many of my friends are split down the middle, so I don't think we can claim the evidence is in? What about the incontrovertible evidence that backs a ban from science? Actually, the jury is out. It's much more contested than has been implied in relation to the causal relationship between social media and mental wellbeing and teens and young people.

Recent extensive research by academics at Manchester University found no evidence that social media has increased teenagers symptoms of anxiety or depression under the the. The chair of the Suicide prevention Workforce, Professor Louis Appleby, points out that the evidence is at best circumstantial, noting that self-harming in the young began well before social media took hold in that age group, and that reflects my own work in relation to mental ill health and young people that I do not think can totally be blamed on social media.

An Oxford University study of nearly 12,000 children showed no correlation between screen time, including social media and mental health. Instead, the way in which children engage with social media is what determines its impact and shock horror. In many instances, the evidence shows the positive impact of social media use. And the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, might say, as he did, that no more research is needed. I think that's anti-scientific and complacent and I just don't think it's true. Let's be clear about what this amendment as drafted will do in relation to user to user services.

And the noble Lord Lord Knight pointed out the dangers to, for example, WhatsApp websites such as Wikipedia
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Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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and so on. I think that needs clarifying at the very least. But despite histrionic headlines, social media itself directly can be used for self educational ends. used for self educational ends. There is a new generation of autodidacts who are teaching themselves coding, video producing, themselves coding, video producing, editing, even musical instruments, languages, chess. And I know that languages, chess. And I know that sounds rose tinted and a bit glib, but mainly it can and often is a social tool for connections.

Finding your tribe, new friends, a place in which you can cultivate solidarity and autonomy as a young person. A counter to the social trends towards fragmentation. And what about allowing the young to explore diverse political perspectives on the eve of 16 year olds being given the vote? Surely it is important, essential we do not narrowly restrict soon to vote teens to state sanctioned media channels. We want them to broaden their horizons, to explore and develop a democratic curiosity about the world.

And they're going to do that online. Talking to school pupils when I do often, I recommend they find out about their peers around the world. I think it's part of them learning about international relations. What civic lessons might British children learn by looking at those brave protesters in Iran, whose commitment to freedom has given them the courage to take on a theocratic Islamic regime, and whose stories we know because they use social media to organise, connect with each other and the rest of the world.

That was, of course, before the ayatollah shut down the internet. Oh, the irony also in terms of safety and whether this ban will throw children off a cliff edge, I do think it risks not engaging equipping youth with the skills to safely and responsibly navigate the online world of knowing how to identify problems, spot dodgy red flags and apply strategies to deal with them. And of course, as the noble Lord Lord Mohammed of Tinsley pointed out, in all likelihood, many 16 year olds will find ways of migrating onto even riskier, unregulated platforms or the dark web without guardrails and zero moderation.

Our teenagers, our children are clever, dare I say, devious. They'll find a way. They'll use VPNs, but it's OK because the noble Lords are going to ban those too. But there is already a roaring trade in fake IDs amongst pre-teens, I hear. Finally, how will over 16 year old adults be affected by this ban? Whereas the Online Safety Act age gated only certain types of harmful content by 94 would do so. Age gate entire platforms even when the content is child friendly or harmless, according to Big Brother.

Watch a 70 year old accessing the neighbourhood news a 50 year old looking up the history of golf on Wikipedia, a 30 year old small business owner responding to customers on Instagram. A 17 year old wanting to message parents on the way home from school would all require age verification measures. This is a threat, potentially at least, to adult civil liberties and the right to privacy, and effectively means we will have have to digitally verify to participate in the public square.

I don't necessarily think that young people are going to gain from this,

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despite the hyperbole. We are.

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We are. And I. Do think that some of the. Contributions are in danger of Contributions are in danger of erring on the side, the wrong side of self regulation. I really do think we should we should stick to think we should we should stick to the point, and I will be very brief, and I will simply try and explain, for the benefit of the government for the benefit of the government frontbench, because in various bills going through in the last month or so, this subject has raised itself in various forms.

And I sometimes notice the frontbench being slightly amazed at what is coming at them from all sides and can't necessarily understand why. And that is to a large extent because the frontbench was not in your Lordships House at the time that we went through the lengthy discussions about the Online Safety Act, and what you are hearing today is a collective sort of howl of rage and frustration across the house at what we thought we were being very clear was meant to happen has not happened.

So I will just give 1 or 2 facts which I think back up my noble friend Baroness Kidron view that whatever we do, we have to gather together. And the noble prelate made a very good point and collectively send a message back to the other place that the the situation we are in is simply not good enough. Now, my Lords, today, within the last ten hours in California, there is a court case going on against snap, against meta, and against TikTok by a group of of parents who are accusing these organisations of, you know, creating products which are addictive.

And it just so happens that in the last 24 hours, snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has settled with the complainants. And the reason they
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Lord Russell of Liverpool Portrait Lord Russell of Liverpool (Crossbench)
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have settled, I suspect, is because very shortly, if they had not settled, the chief executive of Snapchat, somebody called Evan Spiegel, would actually have to have appeared in person in the have appeared in person in the court to answer the case against his company, and he chose not to. his company, and he chose not to. Mr. Zuckerberg, apparently, is also in the the queue to perhaps give evidence at this trial, and it evidence at this trial, and it would be interesting to see if his company takes the same route.

My daughters. Yesterday I was part of a session with learn with the Lords in the Education Centre, with many other colleagues, and I took the opportunity to talk to the young people, most of whom were 14 and 15, what they thought about the idea of a social media ban, which all of them were aware of, probably through social media, almost without exception. When I asked the children what they thought about it, they said they were against it and they gave the sort of reasons you would expect.

You know, that's where we get our news from, etc. the teachers were completely and utterly in favour of a ban. So you can take from that what you will. But I suspect the fact that those teachers are seeing day in, day out in the schoolroom, the effects on the pupils that they are trying to help, they're trying to develop, they're trying to manage, they're trying to mitigate, in some cases some difficult behaviours. They are completely united that this is this is unsustainable.

The noble Lady Baroness Kidron mentioned in Australia, they have a different version. They have a different regulator, they have an Esafety commissioner. And my Lords, the best way of comparing the Esafety commissioner in Australia to what we have in Ofcom is it's a bit like comparing Crocodile Dundee with Dixon of Dock Green, and it is that stark the difference between them. I met in the lobby last week, one of the bereaved parents, whose child has died as a result of exposure to social media, and I told that bereaved parent that a group of us were going to meet with the chief executive of Ofcom within the next couple of weeks.

So he looked at me straight in the eyes and he said, Simon, would you would you give the chief executive a message from me? So I said, yes, of course. And he said, you will excuse my Anglo-Saxon. Would you kick her up the arse? So, my Lords, what you are also hearing from the noble Baroness Brady Kidron, who is occasionally, I have heard, accused of being somewhat angry and irate when we got on to these subjects. My Lords, that is entirely understandable.

She has. She founded Five Rights in 2013. We are now 13 years later. She is repeating some of the same arguments, the same warnings, the same evidence, which she has she been doing again and again and again. I would also remind your Lordships that for many of those years, the noble Baroness was the person who all of the bereaved parents would go to, to to have somebody who understood what they were going through, who would work to coalesce and bring the bereaved parents together.

So they actually had a community because they had nowhere else to go to. So she has lived directly with the the shame, the fear, the anger, the sorrow that these bereaved parents have had. And she has helped them deal with that and in so doing has worked with them and all. Everybody has thought and hoped that delivering the Online Safety Act would provide, at least in part, an answer. The fact that those bereaved parents are as disappointed as they are with where we are, is a cry of shame, which Parliament has to listen to.

So I would entirely agree with the noble Baroness Baroness Kidron. I don't mind which way you vote. That's what I actually tell the kids. Whatever you do vote, please vote. Whichever way you vote, let's send a message back and let's get this

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dealt with. My Lord. My Lords. Why are we.

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Going to. My Lords. I agree. With my noble friend Baroness

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With my noble friend Baroness Kidron and the right reverend Prelate. We have a choice to make today, and I hope we're going to today, and I hope we're going to make the right choice. My Lords, I rise to support Baroness Pens amendment, which is a really amendment, which is a really important amendment. Early years are matters. It matters so much that we must, must, must do everything we can to protect those early years. But, my Lords, I rise
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Baroness Benjamin Portrait Baroness Benjamin (Liberal Democrat)
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also to support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, which I have put my name to, and I wish to speak on amendment 94, and I wish to speak on amendment 94, in support of this really important amendment, as I strongly believe amendment, as I strongly believe children under the age of 16 should not be able to access social media not be able to access social media and have social media accounts. My Lords, I feel this is a necessary measure until the online platforms accept their responsibility and implement stringent safety controls and perform their duties to our children, we have given them the opportunities to do so.

Now is the time for us to act decisively, because each minute we wait, more damage is done to our children's well-being. My Lords, it's great that the government has moved on this issue, but I believe in the wrong direction. There is no need for a consultation which causes even further delay. We have all the evidence we need. We have to stop this catastrophe now because the world is watching us and I believe many countries will follow suit because this is a global crisis.

My Lords, there are those who believe this amendment is a blunt instrument and will prevent children accessing the outside world. I don't agree. Consider the options. What would you rather have? A choice between children becoming addicted, showing signs of anxiety, even taking their own lives and being exposed to the terrible age, inappropriate dangers allowed by social media providers who don't have our children's interests at heart, or protecting them. Until those social media providers get their acts together, I know which one I would choose.

My Lords, this amendment sends a clear message to those who want to harm our children and fail to protect them. They have failed their duty to do so. Now is the time for us to act. As I've said, my Lords, it's important to make it clear that children don't need a social media account to access the internet. And I'm not proposing to ban children from the internet, which is a great source of information for their educational studies on platforms like Wikipedia or BBC bitesize.

This amendment is a preventative one. It will prevent them from having social media accounts where they can be contacted, revealed personal and private details which expose them to potential abuse, harm or cohesive behaviour. My Lords, the word banned is an emotive word. This amendment is a preventative measure. In the same way children cannot buy alcohol or buy a lottery ticket. You won't allow your children to freely play on the motorway. So why do we allow them to easily open social media accounts which can cause harm, trauma and in some cases endanger their lives? My Lords, for the last 20 years or more, I have been speaking out and begging children to resist temptation and to be aware of what the online world was seducing them into.

I have begged them to switch off and say no to these temptations, which are leading them down to a path of potential harm. Unfortunately, my message and warnings didn't spread far enough, and we're now facing a crisis an epidemic of children suffering from mental health issues, depression, isolation, bullying, blackmail and intimidation. My Lords, the frightening list goes on and on and on. Because of their exposure to the dark side of social media. My Lords, what have we done to our children? Many of them have had their innocent childhoods snatched away from them, sliding down into a cesspit of uncontrolled harm, danger and disturbing behaviour.

My Lord, the scary reality of the depression and mental health issues children are experiencing is frightening. In 2024, according to the Office of Health Improvement Disparities, there has been a 22.7 increase in suicide rates of ages between 10 and 24 between 2012 and 2022. It's been well documented that adolescents are showing rising addiction to social media and face a doubled risk of suicidal behaviour. My Lords, there's been a five fold increase amongst 11 to 16 year olds of eating disorder, according to the NHS Digital Mental Health of Children and Young People in England.

The Nuffield Foundation predicts GCSE results will worsen steadily over the years to come, when fewer than 40% of pupils will achieve good grades in maths and English. My Lords, the decline of children being exposed to books and reading skills are now becoming evident and many organisations, such as the Book Trust, are striving to encourage reading and to persuade children to pick up books and become lovers of the written word. My Lords, another worrying concern for us all, as highlighted last year by the Children's Commissioner, is that 59% of children first saw pornography by accident and 27% had seen pornography by the age of 11.

One mother told me her four year old was abused by a ten year old who said to her, I'm going to rape you and you're going to like it. Where did he get that kind of language from? My Lords, in one focus group, every single girl had received unsolicited sexual images. There's also evidence children are now using mainstream social media to host live sexual content for payment. My Lords, how did we get to this? Why have we allowed this to happen? My Lords, the proportion of children reported as perpetrators of sexual offences is rising, driven significantly by early exposure to pornography.

This is something I have long longed lobbied to prevent and thank goodness we now have Ofcom implementing protection due to the Online Safety Act. My Lords, social media can be addictive and consume time and energy in a negative way, especially for young people. Research from the home, health research from the World Health Organisation has found that 11% of adolescents globally show signs of problematic social media use. Addiction like symptoms, including inability to control usage, withdrawal symptoms when offline, neglect of other activities, and showing signs of anxiety.

My Lords, in England, 20% of 11 year old girls and 23% of 13 year old girls have problematic usage. This is 3 to 5 times higher than adult alcohol dependency and 3.5 times higher than adult drug dependency. My Lords, let us release our children from this dependency and anxiety. Let us set them free from all of this. We must do this, my Lords. Children need a world of positive role models, giving them a holistic understanding of the world around them, presented in a verified way, not an online environment that distorts their thinking, behaviour and perception of the world.

With misinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news. A world filled with influencers, a world making them feel inadequate. My daughter is a teacher and is having to deal with this. The outcome of all of this on a daily basis. Like so many other teachers across the country. My Lords, what is social media doing to our children today and exposing them to what type of future is ahead of them? If we do nothing now to protect our children and grandchildren, we should be ashamed of ourselves as the damage to young minds and heartaches of families will only increase.

There is an argument for more parental control, but parents can only look over their shoulder. They can't look over their shoulder 24 over seven. They need our help. So I urge the government to back this amendment, help protect our children, because there's a strong case from teachers, health practitioners, parents and law enforcement that children under the age of 16 should not be able to access social media accounts. We have a huge responsibility to safeguard our precious children and their well-being.

This amendment is vital. It sends a clear message to those who would harm our children and allow them to be scarred for life because, as I always say, and I'll say it again, childhood last a lifetime. That's why I wholeheartedly support amendment 94, same.

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My Lord, my Lord. My Lords, my Lords, my Lords, my Lords, I, my Lords, I rise to speak to amendment 94 A which I have added my name to, 94 A which I have added my name to, along with Baroness Benjamin, Baroness Cass and Lord Nash. In the interest of time, I won't talk interest of time, I won't talk about the other amendments, but commend noble Baroness for her introduction of this group of amendments. My Lords, there are a amendments.

My Lords, there are a handful of issues that concern me on a daily basis, and it's the negative impact of social media on millions of children and young people in this country. That is one of them. And it's the fact that despite the important introduction of the Online Safety Act to control illegal material and prevent
18:57
Baroness Berger Portrait Baroness Berger (Labour)
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children from accessing harmful and inappropriate content, as Baroness Kidron expertly articulated, there Kidron expertly articulated, there isn't a week, I don't think that goes by in this place, or we don't hear how Ofcom is struggling to enact and enforce this important legislation, and that law doesn't do anything to protect, protect the do anything to protect, protect the next generation from social media. With its highly addictive algorithms, its constant notifications, its ability for unsolicited contact by people unknown to children and its barrage of content which young people aren't even seeking or searching for.

That whilst they might not fall under the definitions of illegal or harmful, it is still misogynistic. It's divisive, it's shaming. It diminishes our children's self-worth. It's racist, racist. It's dangerous, it's violent. It's disproportionately misinformation and disinformation. And my Lords, we are going backwards because if we do nothing, the situation is only going to get worse as the tech companies continue to fight for our children and young people's attention and develop their social media products to get as many eyeballs on their platforms as they can in the pursuit of profit.

I am deeply concerned, as one of the handful of parents in this place with primary aged children and the constant stream of case studies, I hear from other parents about the effect social media is having on their children who have had to leave school due to bullying on social media, who have had the police turn up on their doorstep due to their children being groomed or exploited on social media platforms, or whose child is in inpatient mental health care for the eating disorders they are suffering from.

That has been amplified due to social media use. I am deeply concerned, having listened closely to our teachers who, as we've heard on a daily basis, are having to grapple in the classroom with the consequences of the content our children and young people are being bombarded with on social media, and the impact that this is having on their attainment. And it's no surprise giving Ofcom tells us that the average time our children are spending on these platforms is 21 hours a week. I'm deeply concerned about the adverse impact of social media on mental health.

Reflecting on the wealth of stories I've heard over many years from clinicians, including from our accident and emergency departments. There are too many tragic cases where children and young people are experiencing trauma or have died by suicide or injury, following what they've seen or been subjected to on social media. The list of harms is so long, it would take more time than I'm allowed to set them all out with real life case studies, but this is about more than the stories that have been shared.

Now, there may not have been a referendum, but staggeringly, nearly a quarter of a million parents, grandparents and carers in the past six days alone have taken time out of their busy days to write to every MP in the country calling for a ban via the smartphone free childhood campaign. There are 75% of the British public that want this, according to polling from more in common that we had just before Christmas and the polling out today, which shows us a majority of 13 to 24 year olds, say that government should remove access to social media for those under 16 or, significantly, 78% of Gen Z would delay giving their own child access to social media for as long as possible.

Having experienced social media themselves as a child. But of course, it is also about the evidence. And last year I participated in the Mental Health Advisory Group for the Youth Futures Foundation, which published published first of its kind findings from research carried out by the University of Manchester and UCL. The research explored the population level explosion in youth mental health problems that we are all well aware of, and the most robust evidence indicates that following the steep increase in young people's social media and smartphone use, that there has been a negative impact on our young people's mental health, particularly symptoms of low mood and anxiety and the consistency of inference across research designs provides us with some confidence that a causal relationship exists.

Surveys tell us about teachers daily experiences in the classroom, and members of the teaching union have identified social media specifically as the primary factor in the deterioration of behaviour in our schools, including in primary schools, as well as the primary factor in the decline in empathy, respect and the normalisation of abusive conduct, along with the reduction in attention span. Similarly, the National Education Union also tells us that this is having a damaging impact on schools. It's having a response is having an additional responsibility, is that it's adding to the workload and stress of our teachers, diverting time away from teaching and learning.

We already have the evidence we need that social media is causing irrefutable damage. Now, I know that there are some colleagues that question increasing the age of access to social media to 16, and I have looked very closely at the work of Labour colleagues in Australia who brought forward a world first and introduced a ban. Australia took 12 months to implement the legislation, which has now been in place for a month, and reflecting on the Australian E-safety Commissioner's words after that first month, Australia are heartened and pleased that in the first week of a ban, 4.7 million social accounts, social media accounts were deactivated in Australia.

It is clear that the E-safety regulators guidance and engagement with platforms is already delivering significant outcomes, and there is an evidence from Australia that young people currently are migrating to the dark web or other unregulated spaces. But the law in Australia enables their regulator to track the migratory patterns of young people, to see where they go next, to identify any unintended consequences and respond, which this amendment enables. This includes responding to any new technology that may crop up. They have done work in Australia with their youth mental health organisations to ensure that young people can access mental health referrals and support via alternative channels to social media, including hotlines, and in response to the noble Lord Clement-Jones, Australia have looked at how to provide young people to help them engage with friends in other ways.

All the while, they will be able to build digital literacy and resilience for more years before they are 16 and have access to social media. And as the communication Minister has said, in Australia, they are giving children three more years to build their community and identity offline. My Lords, this is just one measure that will make a difference. The Australians have been clear that this is a first step, certainly not a cure all. And while there may be some workarounds that emerge just because some young people access alcohol or tobacco underage, that doesn't mean we don't ban alcohol or tobacco.

It's not a reason to rule out a ban. It's about setting a cultural standard, and it's about applying a precautionary principle that we have already applied in this country to so many other harms affecting our children. There are so many people across this country that want a ban. Parents identified the security services and the police are set up by Lord Nash. Our teachers together with their unions. Our medical professionals are set up by Baroness Cass, our doctors who tell us this is a public health emergency.

Adults who are recently adolescents, bereaved parents including Esther Gay and many of whom I know are here today with us and have written to us so powerfully and significantly. The majority of children and young people today say that they want a ban. It's too important not to adopt a minimum age when so many are calling for it. And I welcome the government's review, which acknowledges the harm of social media to take place over three months and to report by the summer.

I see it as complementary to this amendment, which allows the Secretary of State 12 months to bring forward secondary legislation, and for the Secretary of State to determine which platforms should be included. I think the Australian list of ten platforms is a very helpful starter for ten. But to be clear and to respond to my noble friend Lord Knight, this amendment in subsection five allows the Secretary of State to modify, add, or exclude regulated user to user services. In conclusion, I have had so many parents stop me to say we need to get this through.

One young person approached me on my computer the other day to say, please keep going, we need this change. Another one from Manchester. As parents, we are desperate. Please do whatever you can to protect our youth who are drowning in mental health crises due to the impact of social media, another mum implored it's too late for my kids, but we need a ban for the younger ones. We have to do something to ensure that no other child goes through what mine has. Sometimes, my Lords, we have to say enough is enough and that we can't wait any longer.

The alternative is that in the quest for perfection, we lose the good, and in doing so, we condemn thousands more children to harms, ignoring the change that we

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desperately need to see. Lord Maude. My Lords.

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My Lords. I have absolutely no desire to stifle debate, but can I ask anyone who wishes to speak to be very mindful of the number of votes that we are expecting at the end of this group, and we have very important dinner break business scheduled on dinner break business scheduled on on for tonight. Can we please be brief to the point so we can move on with this important debate?
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party)
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Hello, hello, hello. >> Hello. >> I have two original points to make to contribute to this debate that I have not been covered at all, but very briefly, I first want to. I think we should bring ourselves back to the fact that there's an enormous amount of agreement around this chamber. I think everyone will say we feel the most enormous sympathy for the families, some of whom who are here today, who've lost families as a result of a contact with social media.

I think we all accept that we want 16 year olds on the day of their birthday to be able to stride out into the world confident, capable, ready to step into adulthood. Most of us want to rein in the overwhelmingly powerful digital companies, which have been allowed to run wild across the world by political decisions made by adults. And I particularly want to commend the right reverend Prelate for naming the spectre in the room of Donald Trump and his tech bro friends, who is a Spectre here and is now recorded in Hansard.

And I think the noble Lady Baroness Kidron. I think we've got very broad agreement that the Online Safety Act has been a total failure and Ofcom is not delivering what it should be doing. Those are the points of agreement. Where my conclusions drive me are that I would back Baroness Penn amendment 91, with some caveats, which I'll get back to, but it's not my intention to vote for any of the ban amendments that we have before us today. I've got a great deal of sympathy with the Lib Dems.

Really brave effort to find a way through a middle road, and Baroness Kidron almost swayed me that we should make a gesture, but the case I put to you argument one is that your Lordships House is not the right place. We are not the right people to be making this decision. Many of us have joined us since the depths of Covid, but those who were here during Covid will remember when the house went largely remote and lots of people who had never used a computer before were suddenly on zoom and we met their grandkids.

There you are, granny. You're off mute now. I invite your Lordships House to look around, to look at the people around you. And say, we are extraordinarily unrepresentative of the country in many ways, but we are particularly terms of age. And this is where I draw on the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell. But come to a different conclusion. I was also in the Learning centre. I also spoke to some of those same pupils, and they overwhelmingly said, we do not want a ban.

Now, what my argument is, is that we must stop doing politics to young people. We have to give young people agency. We have to give them a sense of control. We have bequeathed to them a disastrous, damaging world, and failing to give them a say in this is absolutely the wrong way forward. And on that point, I have a serious proposal to put to the noble Lady, the Minister, the the consultation. Will this include is the government prepared to include a People's Assembly, a representative of around the country group of young people, to not just tick a box in a survey? We all know what happens with yes or no votes, but to actually have the chance to deliberate about how they think we could control the future, could improve their situation.

Now, my second point, and I think this is something that second point, it's not been said before. It's really important. We've heard a huge amount of scapegoating of social media in this debate. Social media is a mirror. Social media reflects the misogyny, the violence, the racism, the fake news that's right across and through our society. It's not created. If we could just wave a magic wand and get rid of all of this social media, get young people off social media, they'll still young people will still be affected by the dreadful levels of poverty, the schools that are exam factories that put them under tremendous pressure and subject them to unbearable discipline.

They'll still have parents who are struggling to put food on the table, keep a roof over their head. They will still encounter all of that misogyny and racism in our society. So when we're debating this and thinking about voting this, we have to understand that social media is a mirror. It's not creating where we are now.

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My Lords, my Lords.

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I wish to speak briefly. About the issue of.

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Scientific evidence or the lack of it for amendment 94. A in the name of the noble Lord. Lord Nash. name of the noble Lord. Lord Nash. No one disputes that the rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, suicide, depression, anxiety, self-harm have increased amongst teenagers in the last decade. But the question before us is whether social media ban for under 16 seconds would decrease those rates. I know this has been raised by a noble Lady, Baroness Cass, but I still believe that randomised controlled trials evidence is important even in this context.

My Lords, there have been no randomised controlled trials, no
19:13
Lord Tarassenko Portrait Lord Tarassenko (Crossbench)
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RCTs of social media bans or restrictions for healthy under 18. Now, of course, the lack of experimental evidence in adolescent populations may be because it's populations may be because it's difficult to manipulate experimentally. Social media use in experimentally. Social media use in such an age group. There is one RCT of 20 adolescents and young adults of 20 adolescents and young adults aged 17 to 25 years with pre-existing emotional distress, who were asked to reduce their social media use to one hour a day for three weeks.

However, the sample participants were selected to all be experiencing at least two of four symptoms of depression and anxiety, and they should therefore be classified as a clinical sample, not a representative sample of the general population. There is an RCT with adolescent participants from which we can learn, even those not started between, which will take place in Bradford. Funded by the Wellcome Trust for adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16, the intervention will not be a ban, but will involve a smartphone app that limits the use of social media apps using, and this is important, a co produced combination of a daily budget, one hour per day and a night time curfew between 9 p.m.

and 7 a.m. The co-production of the trial is very important. We need to hear the voice of young people when designing these interventions. They themselves are very concerned by the negative impacts of social media. The feedback from the teenagers in Bradford schools was that, perhaps not surprisingly, they would be against a ban, but they would be willing to accept significant time limits on their use of social media. And so from April onwards, 4000 students in years eight, nine and ten will be recruited from ten Bradford secondary schools by a team led by Doctor Dan Lieu from the local NHS trust and Professor Amy Orben from the University of Cambridge, who is recognised as an international expert on the links between mental health and digital technology use in adolescents.

The trial will explore the effects of the intervention on all participants, but there will be a subgroup focusing on those with pre-existing symptoms of anxiety. Full analysis of the outcome data will unfortunately not be available until early summer 2027, when results briefings will be available to policy makers. However, through serendipity, we have the largest before and event study taking place in Australia as a result of the ban that the Australian Government introduced in December. Before and after studies provide the lowest level of evidence for the effectiveness of healthcare interventions.

But if the ban blunt and imperfect instrument as it is, does lead to a reduction in suicides and all major mental health issues for children between the ages of 11 and 16, then it will be morally not to introduce such a ban in this country. Esafety commissioner has appointed an advisory group of 11 distinguished experts, led by Stanford University Social Media Lab and including from this country, Professor Auburn from Cambridge and Professor Etchells from Bath Spa University to provide a robust and transparent evaluation of the outcomes of the social media ban in Australia for under 16.

Will the noble Lady, the Minister, in her reply, give an undertaking that she will report back within 12 months of the Children's Wellbeing in Schools Act being passed with an expert analysis of the impact of the Australian ban on key mental health statistics. I do not believe that we should introduce a ban in this country without some impartial analysis, even preliminary analysis of the data being collected in Australia. Amendment 94 makes no provision for the analysis of the most relevant evidence we will have within 12 months, and I therefore cannot support it.



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My Lord, my Lord. My Lord.

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My Lords, my Lords, I, I will to endeavour to be brief, like many of those of us who have spoken already, those of us who have spoken already, I spent a very large amount of time on the Online Safety Act, and I agree entirely with the comments of the noble Lord Knight, the noble the noble Lord Knight, the noble Lady Baroness Kidron, and the noble Lord Russell. This is a cry of pain, of anger, that I really hope that the noble Lady the Minister is hearing in this House.

But I do not think that banning social media for under 16 is the right thing to do. There are two reasons I'd just like to add that have not been discussed so far. The first one is that I actually worry that by implementing a ban, absolutely nothing will change. We do already have a minimum age. It's called 13. Go into any primary school and you will find how effective that is. So I would urge the noble Lady, the Minister, to tell us, what are we going to do to actually implement the minimum age that we already have? How is she going to stiffen the backbone of Ofcom to actually hold tech companies to account? Otherwise we can legislate all we like and it won't make any difference at all.

Secondly, I have huge respect for the eloquence with which my noble friend Lord Nash sets out the the horrors and harms that social media is undoubtedly doing. But I would just like to point out one flaw in his argument. He quotes a lot of of of research that points to the harm that excessive use of social media has on children. A ban is zero use, and I do think we have to be very, very careful about that, that that it is part of the modern world.

It does bring good as well as ill and and it's abdicating responsibility simply to ban it. And that takes me finally, I, I worry hugely that we are letting the tech companies off the hook. We have to hold them to account to produce products that are age appropriate. We've done that in every other technology as it's grown up over the centuries, and we shouldn't duck the issue now. Which then takes me to the right reverend Prelate point of what does seem like quite a long time ago.

I am in the same dilemma, because I'm absolutely certain that change has to happen, that the Online Safety Act is not working in the way that those of us who worked so hard on it envisaged that Ofcom is not delivering, and I really doubt that more consultation solves that problem. But I am really worried about passing this baton back to our colleagues at the. In the other place, I am worried because the ban on social media has a really nice ring to it.

I am worried when I hear Ian Russell say we must not use our children as a political football. We must really work out what the right answer to this problem is. So I would ask the noble Lady, the Minister, not only to listen to this really quite emotional debate tonight. For those of us that worked on the Online Safety Act, I tell you there were about 100 fold more people in this chamber now than there were at any
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19:21
Lord Weir of Ballyholme Portrait Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party)
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I think the house should. >> No, sorry. >> With respect. Respect, I everyone else has had the opportunity to speak for my parties, opportunity to speak for my parties, had the opportunity to speak. I want to make just some remarks. Look, I think the House should draw a level of unity from the fact that despite the fact that there are a variation of solutions that are being provided by these amendments, there are common threads that run between them, which is, I think, a common acceptance of the level of crisis that we're facing for our young people.

And I think a common desire to provide greater levels of protections for our young people. Now, on the competing, I think, in well-argued cases for the competing amendments, I am more persuaded towards Lord Nash amendment at 94, which I believe is cleaner, clearer and bolder. But nevertheless, whatever amendment that we do settle upon, I would agree with others that the one thing we cannot afford to do as a house tonight is to prevaricate. I cannot put myself in the minds of the the government.

And so therefore, in terms of the consultation, I cannot determine whether this is a very sincere attempt to engage very seriously with this issue or has been suggested by Baroness Kidron some sort of cynical device, to get past the the problems internally within the Commons. But there are clear problems with the consultation. First of all, that it doesn't produce any guaranteed outcome. And I think there's a concern of a lot of us that over a prolonged period of time, the muscle of the the big tech companies will adjust up to watered down whatever is coming forward.

And it does not produce swift results. We do not know what time frame that ultimately will lead to implementation. And the longer we delay, the more harm that is caused to children. We should always be reluctant to ban, to restrict where possible. But I think when we are looking at the protection of children, we have to make a level of exception to that. And I think the case for action now is overwhelming. During the online CFD act, one of the most moving and significant meetings that I attended was one hosted by Baroness Benjamin, where she brought in families of children who had died as a result of of various online harms.

And there was a common thread that for a lot of those families, they had become victims because of social media, and whether that was issues around self-harm, suicide, exploitation, bullying or a range of other things, there is a very major danger that is out there. The tsunami that we are facing, the gathering tsunami in terms of mental health amongst our young people, I perfectly acknowledge, did not start with social media, but it's been exacerbated by it and we need to take action against it.

And even below that, that level, we are faced with the generation, which I read. Someone put it as a zombification of our young people. Now, no one, I think, is suggesting in this debate that any solution that we produce is going to be entirely a panacea or will be 100% watertight in being effective in its nature. But if we take that approach to its logical conclusion, as indicated by Baroness Berger, we would simply have no restrictions on young people, on any subject or any harm.

And I think we do need to grasp the nettle. So I think I would say in conclusion, I think there is a stark choice before us tonight. We can either embrace, I think, what is the clarion call of the overwhelming majority of parents on this issue and take bold, decisive action to protect our young people. Or we can take the can down the road and neglect the duty that we have to those young people. I hope the House chooses the former tonight.

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From French. My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. I wish to amendments in this group. I wish to speak to 108 110 a briefly on Baroness Penn amendment 91, and briefly on Lord Nash's amendment. I briefly on Lord Nash's amendment. I want to start by thanking the thousands, hundreds of thousands of thousands, hundreds of thousands of parents, mums and dads, grandparents, single parents, teachers, etcetera, etcetera who have kick started this campaign.

While politicians have not been able to get action, they have swung into action. And you talk to any MP
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Lord Storey Portrait Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat)
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of any party in this Parliament and they will tell you that they they will tell you that they received hundreds of thousands of emails and letters. I was talking emails and letters. I was talking to our digital lead MP, Tory Collins, and she told me in the last three days alone, she's had 1500 pieces of paper about this. 1500 pieces of paper about this. And why? Because parents do not trust us to do anything they were promised. Of course, with the online safety bill that we would see a new world, and they look around and they actually see nothing has changed.

And frighteningly, when I asked the Minister a few a few weeks ago, tell me, Minister, how many companies have have been fined or prosecuted for what they have put online? He did not know the answer. Now, that does not fill us with with confidence, creating a safer future for our children and our grandchildren. Children is at a critical crossroads. Our parents, teachers, experts, and even young people themselves are calling for action. Hearing from real teenagers, talking about their experiences online, one teenage teenager said, I look at my younger brother and I'm so worried about how much he seems addicted to screens.

We have to do something about it. Another help I just can't stop. When doctors discovered that smoking kills when research showed that seat belts saved lives, we acted and today presents an opportunity to take a similar life saving action. It is clear that everyone here today is strongly committed to this end goal, to safeguarding children and protecting them from the risks of the online world. Parents and children are both telling us they feel powerless in the face of platforms designed to maximise engagement at any cost.

We see the evidence mounting in our schools with rising rates of anxiety and depression amongst young people, consultations that kick the can down the road aren't enough. When we face what when we face a public health crisis. And so the question before us is not whether we must act, but how effectively and how quickly we can act. Our approach, tabled under amendment 94 by the noble Lord Nash, is a blanket ban. Sorry. One approach, not our approach. One approach, tabled by Lord Nash, is a blanket ban on social media for under 16, as well as many other areas of the internet.

I fully support the intent of this approach. Again, we are all here in the same name of children's wellbeing and decisive action that is needed, but we have heard from over 42 charities and experts as we've heard, including the Molly Rose Foundation, the NSPCC, Internet Watch Foundation, the centre for Protecting Women Online five rights. They all have major concerns about this approach. These are the experts. I'm not an expert. You're not an expert. They are the experts. They deal with this every day.

And yet they have concerns about this approach. And we can look to Australia and see why. When Australia banned social media for young people, they took an approach similar to Lord Nash's, creating a specific list of prohibited platforms. The result? Within 24 hours of TikTok's ban, the company launched a new platform under a different name one not on the banned list. More fundamentally, this list based approach ignores the broader digital landscape. The harms presented in online gaming, which Lord Nash's amendment does nothing about.

AI generated content and countless other platforms that fall outside these narrow definitions, the need for decisive action is beyond doubt. But action alone is not enough. We also have a responsibility to ensure that what we put in place is effective and future proof. That is why we've we've tabled amendment 108 rather than a blanket ban. We proposed a risk based model that considers the risk of platforms according to the actual harm they pose. Think of how we approach film classification or toy safety.

We do not ban all films for children. We rate them. We do not ban all toys. We accept the risks. This amendment applies the same principle to online platforms. Under our proposals, providers must submit a proposed minimum age of access as part of the children's risk assessment, with a default expectation of 16 years for social media services, a ban in another name. Because enough is enough. We must take action and put a line in the sand. But importantly, non-social media platforms can propose a different age, higher or lower if they can provide robust evidence based on clear criteria.

The impact on mental health, psychological wellbeing, the presence of addictive design features like infinite scrolling. Ofcom would assess these proposals against clear standards, and we could require a higher minimum age where there is evidence of greater risk. Not only does this create a powerful incentive for platforms to redesign their services, making them genuinely safer for young people, but it crucially future proofs our regulatory approach, providing clear standards of harm and therefore age of access. In today's society, new harmful platforms will continue to emerge.

Chat box and AI generated content will continue to grow more prevalent each and every day, and it is therefore vital that a framework adapts based on harm, not through a game of whack a mole, as we've heard, but by trying to define what counts as social media, or by leaving these decisions to a single person. My Lord, I recognise there are different views in this House on the best path forward, and I welcome that debate. What unites us all is our determination to protect children from harm.

Amendment 108 offers a framework that commands broad support from numerous child safety experts. Because it is evidence based and built to last to keep our children safe online, the technology will continue to evolve. New platforms will emerge, but the principle of the heart of this amendment will ensure that we assess risk based on evidence of harm, that we hold platforms to account, and we protect our children while preserving their access to the beneficial aspects of the digital world.

And this is why amendment 108 is a solution that I believe is more effective. A blanket ban may be the simple option, an understandable phrase, a call to action. I understand that, but the evidence is clear it can be improved. That is why the Liberal Democrats have been trying to work with the noble Lord Nash. We've tried to reach consensus to highlight the flaws in amendment 94 and work together to ensure that our children are protected by the

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best possible legislation. I must. Just take objection. To that. We

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Just take objection. To that. We had a meeting on Monday. I proposed some proposals. The noble Lords went away, I heard nothing, they went away, I heard nothing, they came back with their amendment. I think that's slightly glossing over

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the facts. We must ensure that children are protected online and send a message protected online and send a message to the government that now is the time for action, not consultation. As Liberal Democrats we know children become before politics. We must work together for their safety and future. And I now want to turn to Lord Nash's amendment briefly. I first of all want to I want to praise and thank Lord Nash for taking this initiative. He deserves a lot of a lot of thanks from this house.

And he's worked tirelessly to get a solution. I was concerned, Lord Nash when you said that we'd sort of rushed out a counter amendment. We hadn't rushed out a counter amendment at all when children's charities came to us and expressed their concerns, we wanted to ensure that actually we listen to what they said, and we tried to incorporate that in the amendment. And actually we tried to work with Lord Shamash to achieve an amendment that we could both support.

But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, as I've said in my previous amendment, it is the it is children that are important. And we are more interested not in playing politics, not trying to score, not trying to not trying to score points. We will support Lord Nash amendment because we understand, as the Bishop rightly said, rightly noticed, something has to come back to this house where as a house we can work together.

I briefly want to turn to the amendments in my name. It's frontbench and I've only spoken. Oh, ten minutes, right? I'm going to speak to amendment 110. A and speaking of that, we propose that we raise the age for processing personal data in the case of social networking services from 13 to 16. This amendment covers platforms where users create profiles, interact, and share content content. This amendment would exclude educational platforms used in schools and universities for educational purposes, as well as health services like the NHS, digital platforms and crisis helplines that process data to provide care and support.

I believe that raising the age is of vital importance to the well-being of children in this country, who must navigate an increasingly digitalised world. Social. Social networking services often use personal data for the purposes of delivering personalised content, such as targeting, advertising, curating recommendations. Such things have been condemned by Ofsted as it can have substantial negative impact on children. The algorithms driven content can keep children scrolling for hours, disrupting sleep patterns, physical activity, face to face social development targeting advertising can also exploit children's vulnerabilities, promoting unrealistic body images, as well as exposing them to age inappropriate products.

As highlighted by Baroness Cass, the recommendation algorithms can also create echo chambers that amplify harm harmful content. Children can be exposed to content such as extreme dieting, advice to self-harm material at a developmental stage when young people are particularly impressionable and not critically evaluate what they are being shown. This amendment is therefore key to children's well-being. The years between 13 and 16 represent a critical window of opportunity, where children can be susceptible to the design features that social media platforms employ to maximise engagement by allowing platforms to harvest and exploit the personal data of 13 year olds, we're essentially permitting commercial entities to conduct behavioural manipulation on children at their most vulnerable.

The mental health crisis amongst young people with rising rates of anxiety, depression, eating disorders can be divorced from the date of creation of childhood and the attention economy that profits from it. My amendment is simple that the age for processing personal data. In the case of social networking services, be raised so as to provide children with three additional years of protection from commercial data exploitation during a critical period of their development, and finally to Lord to finally to Baroness Penn's amendment.

Thank you. Baroness Penn amendment. This is an important amendment I was going to be I was going to speak to but certain members of heckling. So

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I'll just say how important this amendment is and I hope the House will support it. Yeah.

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Well done. My Lords. A good speech is a

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My Lords. A good speech is a short speech. I will I will endeavour, I will endeavour, and like the noble Lady Baroness Kidron, I've spent most of this debate rewriting my speech because I've tried very hard to listen to what tried very hard to listen to what noble Lords have said. We have three options before us tonight. We have the government option of a consultation. We have the Liberal Democrat option, and we have my noble friend Lord Nash's option as it relates to social media.

But just very briefly, before I talk about those three options, I would just like to say to my noble friend Baroness Penn, rather than being a warm up act, I think she gave us a masterclass in how to present an amendment. Again, she made a very well-argued practical case for her amendment, underlining the importance of shifting norms for very young children at the earliest possible stage and calling urgently for firm action and timing on that action from the government.

And like others, we look forward to the noble Baroness reply. Returning to the group of amendments that deal with social media use, we have, as we heard, an opportunity before us to end the harm that our children and grandchildren are experiencing as a result of the hours that they spend there. I was going to talk about the merits of my noble friend Lord Nash's amendment, but I think others have done that extremely ably. So I would like to turn to the key differences between my noble friend's amendment and that tabled by the noble Lord Lord Mohammed of Tinsley on behalf of the Liberal Democrats.

I think that between Baroness Kidron's. Fiercely critical comments about Ofcom struggling about critically undermining implementation and wider failures, combined with the noble Lord, Lord Russell's comparison of Ofcom to the tech companies as Dixon of Dock Green to Crocodile Dundee, I think those noble Lords have done my job. For me. The key element in the Liberal Democrat amendment is that we will give powers to Ofcom and the Children's Commissioner to decide which apps are safe or not safe, and whether it's my noble friend Baroness Harding, who may be on slightly different place in this debate than I am, or many other noble Lords around the House.

Ofcom
19:41
Baroness Merron Portrait Baroness Merron (Labour)
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is struggling with the powers they were given in the Online Safety Act. The noble Lady Baroness Berger put The noble Lady Baroness Berger put it extremely well. So do do your it extremely well. So do do your Lordships want to give to a struggling organisation one of the most complicated jobs before us? I would suggest we do not. They, of course, should advise. The course, should advise. The Children's Commissioner should advise the government, but they should not be responsible. And I think the second reason they shouldn't be responsible is one of democracy.

We have too many recent examples which your Lordships will be aware of, where we have delegated incredibly important powers to unelected and relatively unaccountable officials, however competent they might be. And we should not do that again, our democracy depends on our colleagues at the other end being given the chance to decide and Parliament deciding what is appropriate or not for our children. Taking advice from every expert that they can draw on, many of whom we have heard from this evening.

And thirdly, and I was finding it hard to wait till the end to get to this point. Whether it's a noble Lord, Lord Blunkett should be not mentioned anywhere near this endless reference to a blunt blanket ban. I was so grateful to the noble Lady Baroness Berger I was about to read out subsection five of my noble friend and the noble Ladies Amendment. This is not a blanket ban, and I think it is, if I may, irresponsible of those noble Lords who kept asserting that once my noble friend had clarified that that was not the case, to keep referring to it as such.

And crucially, subsection two B also allows gives our government time to learn both from some of the scientific work that is going on and from the Australian approach. So this amendment will add neither in terms of flexibility or future proofing, but it will dilute democratic accountability. And I think we do that at our peril. Turning to the government, I would say that now is the time for leadership on this issue. The proposed consultation and the reproach set out in yesterday's statement with the government amendment at Third Reading doesn't feel like leadership.

We heard tonight we don't need another national conversation. The nation has spoken very clearly about its level of concern, and parents and children will not thank us for further delay. The government argues that views are divided, and we heard tonight the children's charities are split, bereaved parents are split. If we wait for a consensus on this issue, the one thing I am confident of is not a single one of us will still be in your Lordships House. And as Martin Luther King wisely said, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a moulder of consensus.

And the government needs to get moulding and get moulding fast. Because, my Lords, we owe it to our children to act now and protect their childhood. I could cover many other things. There's just one thing I would like to talk about extremely briefly, and that is this point that we're putting pressure that my noble friend's amendment puts pressure on parents and children. I really think it finally aligns commercial incentive with the law. If you lose 25% of your clients, you work out what you're going to do differently to keep them.

And the one thing they could do tomorrow is to improve age verification. Change the algorithms and make these places safe. And then we can benefit from. The apparent. Opportunities for children that exist online. So I think that that argument too. Which was less explored, can be rebutted. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, talked about the actions the government could be taking today to stop some of the harms that children experience online. I don't know why the government's announcement yesterday wasn't the one to announce that they were going to take some of those actions.

Maybe we'll get that next week. We live in hope. When you're in opposition, but we need to take this step tonight. And we I appreciate that the Liberal Democrats argue they've worked on their amendment. I know that my noble friend raised this in Second Reading. He brought these amendments at committee. The House has had a chance to think about them. He and other colleagues across the House have worked tirelessly on this, and the evidence is absolutely clear of the need to act.

There are parents behind me. I can feel them behind me in the chamber tonight, but also all around the country who've watched their children suffer terrible pain and have suffered unimaginably themselves. There are parents who've spoken out, but there are parents and children who carry their pain in suffering. This is the time to do the right thing. To support my noble friend's

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amendment. Yes. My Lords, it is clear from the

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My Lords, it is clear from the debate that we have had this evening that this is an issue about which there is considerable concern, which there is considerable concern, and this government recognises those concerns about the impacts of those concerns about the impacts of screen time and of children's online safety, particularly given online safety, particularly given some immensely troubling cases. So this is a topic of profound national interest, and understandably also, as we've heard today, there are a range of opinions.

However, one thing that we are all aligned on is the importance of keeping children safe. And as my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for science, Innovation and Technology set out just yesterday. In the other place, we are determined to help parents, children and young people to navigate these issues. We know many in this house and the other place have concerns around children's online safety, how much screen time they get and how this can impact wellbeing. Rest assured, government hears those concerns and we are prepared to act to deal with them.

I will come to yesterday's announcement of a new consultation looking at how to improve children's relationship with social media. But first we should recognise the significant action that this government has already taken. The Online Safety Act brought in one of the most robust systems globally, with groundbreaking steps to tackle illegal content and activity and to protect children from harmful and age inappropriate content. Much discussion today has been, as some have called it, frustration at the extent to which that is being fully utilised.

But Ofcom has been prioritising its initial enforcement action against the most egregious harms, like child sexual abuse material, self-harm content
19:49
Baroness Smith of Malvern Portrait Baroness Smith of Malvern (Labour)
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and children accessing pornography. We do fully expect further enforcement action to come. We have enforcement action to come. We have been very clear to Ofcom that they have the government's full backing have the government's full backing to take enforcement action, and we have since built on the Act's foundations. First, we made content that promotes self-harm and suicide a priority offence. This provides the strongest protections in the the strongest protections in the act to users from this awful content. Last week, my noble friend Baroness Lloyd of EFRA stood in this chamber and confirmed that we would expedite legislation to criminalise the creation of non-consensual intimate images and that this will be designated a priority offence under the Online Safety Act.

Following this, we made intimate image abuse and cyberflashing priority offences and following that, we have introduced an offence in the Crime and Policing Bill, which will criminalise AI models used to create child sexual abuse material. But we know that there is more to be done. Turning to amendments 91 and 106 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, which seek to update the Early Years Foundation stage statutory framework and ensure a public information campaign on screen use by children aged 0 to 5.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Baron, that Lady Penn has prosecuted this case with considerable energy and by bringing evidence to the government she has engaged well and the government has taken action. Last week, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for education, announced that we will publish new practical, evidence informed guidance for parents on early years screen time following a review led by the Children's Commissioner and Professor Russell Viner. The new guidance will be published this April and made available to parents through the Best Start in Life website, giving them the clarity and support they're asking for to navigate screen time with their youngest children.

The first meeting of their advisory group is tomorrow. As part of this, we're going further still on screen time by developing guidance for parents of children aged 5 to 16, building the early years guidance building on the early years guidance already under way, and this will help parents to navigate the issue and support healthy conversations with their children about screen time. We are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS to ensure that that screen time, guidance and messaging to parents and families is delivered through the most suitable and impactful channels to ensure that all professionals, including those in the health system, have simple, practical messages to offer parents.

We will take. We will use multiple routes extending beyond government channels to raise awareness of it amongst parent audiences, including, as I say, the Best Start in Life website designed to provide trusted and supportive information for parents. And of course, we think this new guidance should be available for early years practitioners. We will update the non-statutory guidance to provide further information and emphasis on screen time, and outline the considerations around adult use of technology within settings and any implications this has on interactions with children.

Where needed. The provider guidance will go beyond the early years screen time guidance for parents, and we will take the next opportunity to incorporate the updated help for early years providers guidance in the early years frameworks, Early Years Foundation stage frameworks. In addition, the department is also preparing to review our non-statutory curriculum guidance for early years settings development matters. And as part of this, we will include information on screen time and digital literacy to support early years practitioners and teachers to build and design an effective curriculum.

And we are taking more action on appointing an expert panel to inform guidance for the sector on the effective and safe use of digital devices and CRC. If findings from that review indicate that the requirements within the Early Years foundation stage need to be strengthened, we will, of course do so. And on the point about timing, we are able to commit that substantial changes will be made to the early Years Foundation stage after September 26th, but we will do this as soon as possible and no later than April 2027.

So the provisions of the Online Safety Act have set the foundations, and we're taking further immediate action with new screen time guidance to support parents and practitioners of early years children. But we've always been clear that we will continue acting to protect children online and their wider wellbeing. Most debate on amendments today has been on those that seek to regulate children's relationship with social media. Amendment 92, tabled by the noble Lord Lord Nash on VPN services. Amendment 94 A also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash and I do accept the the points made by noble Lords that the noble Lord has prompted considerable debate on this.

The amendment 94 be tabled by the noble Lord Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. Amendments 108, 109, 110 and 110 a all tabled by the noble Lord, Lord. Story and amendment. Lord, Lord. Story and amendment. And Amendment 108 two. It is clear that there are there is a range of different views on the action that we need to take, even as there is a consensus that action is needed. As many of you will be aware, yesterday the Secretary of State for Science and Technology announced that we are taking further action still, because keeping children safe online is a top priority for the government.

We will launch a short, sharp consultation on how to improve children's relationship with social media. This will be a three month consultation with the government. Reporting back in the summer. We are determined to help parents, children and young people deal with these issues with a lasting solution that gives children the childhood they deserve, enhances their wellbeing and prepares them for the future. As we've seen play out in this debate today. While there is consensus that a problem remains, there is a difference of opinion in how children's relationship with social media and screen time should be further tackled.

This is shown as several noble Lords have identified by some of the most prominent voices in this field, believing that a social media ban is not the right answer. This is exactly why we are consulting on this matter. As the Secretary of State for science, Innovation and Technology stated yesterday, this is not about if we should act, it is about how we should act. The consultation will seek views on a range of measures on many issues that have been raised. Determining the right minimum age for children to access social media, including exploring a ban for children under a certain age, exploring ways to improve the accuracy of age assurance, and reviewing if the current age of digital consent is the right age.

It will also include reviewing children's use of VPNs and how these can circumvent online safety protections. It will be accompanied by a national conversation about centring the voices of parents, children, those with lived experiences and people who work closely with children across the public sector. We will ensure to capture voices from across society, including the most vulnerable, and rest assured, we intend to move quickly on this. As I say, it will be a three month consultation with government reporting back in the summer and to reassure the House, as the Secretary of State set out clearly yesterday, we want to act on this.

We have had constructive conversations with noble Lords about these issues, and we are keen to continue those conversations ahead of Third Reading in order to find a way forward in this bill that allows action to be taken following the consultation and, if necessary, to bring forward an amendment at Third Reading to enable the Secretary of State through secondary legislation, to deliver the relevant evidence based outcomes of the consultation. So, as I have set out, the question is not whether the government will take further action.

We will act robustly. The question is how to do this most effectively. And I hope that this will reassure noble Lords of the government's intention, and that noble Lords will feel able to withdraw their amendments in this area. But finally, I will turn to amendments 93 and 101 ten be tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash and the noble Lord. Lord Storey amendment 93 would require any device sold in the UK to be preloaded with technology to prevent the recording, sharing and viewing of child sexual abuse material and One Tenby to prevent the creation, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material.

I acknowledge noble Lords intention to protect children through these amendments, and I want to be clear that the government shares the ambition to protect children from nude imagery and to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material online. That is why, in the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, we have made clear that we want to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view nude images. But we must get this right. And that's why last week my colleagues and I were pleased to meet with the noble Lord, Lord Nash and his colleagues and representatives from British safety tech company Safetonet to discuss to discuss the practicalities of those measures and Ministers and officials from the Home Office and DSIT are continuing this dialogue with tech companies over the coming weeks.

As a government, we are committed to this objective and implementing effective solutions that stop the spread of child sexual abuse material. Regarding One Tenby specifically, this amendment duplicates provisions in the Online Safety Act, which already requires service providers to risk, assess, mitigate and proactively prevent users from encountering child sexual abuse material on their service. And the act will also require services to report child sexual abuse material they find are on their service to the National Crime Agency. My Lords, the government has shown the willingness, the desire and importantly, action in going further on issues relating to child's online safety and wider wellbeing.

With Screen Time, the Online Safety Act, its enforcement, early years and older children's screen time guidance, the consultation, national conversation and the Vawg strategy demonstrate this. Rest assured, we will continue to act as noble Lords have asked for today to keep protecting our children. There is nothing more important and this government is determined to deliver on that.
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Is it your Lordships that the >> Is it your Lordships that the amendment be withdrawn? Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 92, is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 92, already debated. Moved. The question is that amendment 92 be agreed to, as many of that opinion will say content. Content to the contrary, not content question will be decided by division, and I will remain standing until voting is My My Lords. My Lords. The My Lords. The question My Lords.

The question is My Lords. The question is that amendment 92 be agreed, as many of our opinion will say. Content, content, content, content contents will go to the right by the throne. The The question The question is The question is that The question is that amendment

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My My Lord My Lord Stern My Lord Stern of My Lord Stern of Brentford

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My Lord Stern of Brentford content 207. Not content 159. My Lords, amendment 93 already debated. Not moved. Amendment 94 has been withdrawn. Amendment 94 a already debated. The I beg your pardon? The

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amendment to 94 A, 94 B Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. I thank all noble Lords for the debate we have had, but I would

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debate we have had, but I would still like to test the opinion of the House on 94 B. The question is that amendment

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The question is that amendment 94 b be agreed, as many of that opinion will say content the contrary, not content, not question will be decided by division, and I will notify the House when voting will notify the House when voting is open. And until then I will stand on my feet. Voting is now My My Lords. My Lords. The question is that amendment 94 B be agreed to. As many that opinion say

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content. Not content. The contents will go to the right by the throne, the not right by the throne, the not My Lords. The question is that By Lord Sahota voted content 65, not contents 162 The not contents have My Lords amendment My Lords amendment 92 My Lords amendment 92 C My Lords amendment 92 C already debated, not moved.

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Not moved. Not moved. We then returned to amendment 94

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We then returned to amendment 94 A. Move formerly question is that amendment 94 a be agreed to as content contrary not content. No question will be decided by question will be decided by division, and I will tell the House division, and I will tell the House when voting is open. Voting is now

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Yes.

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Fans, Fans, you Fans, you said.

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Fans, you said. The question is that amendment 94 A be agreed to as many of that

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94 A be agreed to as many of that content content, content, content. Content. Content shall go to the right by

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Content shall go to the right by the throne, the not content to the Thank Thank you.

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Member Member 94 Member 94 A

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Member 94 A be Member 94 A be agreed Member 94 A be agreed to.

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90.

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90. My Lords have voted content 261

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My Lords have voted content 261 not content 150. The contents have not content 150. The contents have it. My Lords, the dinner break business is almost with us. Amendment 95 already debated, not moved. Amendment 96 already debated. Not moved. Amendment 97 Lord Hampton already debated. Not moved.

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My Lords, this is a convenient time to break for dinner break business. I will think we will not business. I will think we will not return to the bill before 2036 to return to the bill before 2036 to allow time for ping pong pong. The allow time for ping pong pong. The oh 2136 is wishful thinking. Just checking. You're all with me. 2136 to allow time for ping pong on the Holocaust Memorial bill. I

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therefore beg to move that report. Be adjourned. The question is that

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The question is that consideration on report be now adjourned. As many of that opinion adjourned. As many of that opinion will say, content contrary, not content. The contents have it, and we will now have a short pause to

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Well.

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Well. Consideration of. Commons reason on the Holocaust

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Commons reason on the Holocaust Memorial bill Lord Collins of Highbury. My Lords, I beg to move that the

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Commons reasons be now considered. The question is that the Commons reasons be now considered, as many reasons be now considered, as many hours of that opinion will say content the contrary not contents.
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Lord Collins of Highbury Portrait Lord Collins of Highbury (Labour)
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course, that there are indeed many different opinions about the proposed Holocaust Memorial and proposed Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, with strong views, especially related to the proposed location. Earlier debates on this bill address those matters in depth, bill address those matters in depth, and today's debate will be focussed and today's debate will be focussed on a much narrower question, though a question of considerable importance at Report stage. The House supported the amendment proposed by the noble Lord Lord Verdirame, which aimed to ensure that the sole purpose of the learning centre should be education about the Holocaust and about anti-Semitism.

I recognise the intent and the sentiment behind the Lords amendment is to ensure that there is no mission creep, and that the focus of the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, there should be no attempt to divert attention from the unique nature of the Holocaust. I appreciate that motion A1 also has the same sincere objective of ensuring that the Learning Centre remains focussed on education, about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. My Lords, that is what the government wants to ensure and intends to do.

I am personally committed to that. I was very pleased to meet with the noble Lord Lord Verdirame and the Lady Baroness Scott of Bybrook and other noble Lords who supported the amendment at report. We had a very fruitful and frank exchange, and I think we were at one. I'm grateful for them to engage in constructive discussions about the amendment, including the government's view about why this bill is not the appropriate instrument for creating the safeguards which noble Lords intend to put in place.

As with the noble Lord Lord Verdirame well-intentioned amendment, we do not consider that the amendment proposed by the noble Lady Baroness Deech is appropriate for the bill. May I just remind noble Lords that the purpose of this bill is to do two things. Firstly, it authorises expenditure on the construction, operation, maintenance or improvement of the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, and secondly, it seeks to remove a statutory obstacle for its being built next door in Victoria Tower Gardens should it receive planning consent.

Given the narrow function of this bill, adding a statutory provision along the lines envisaged in the amendment would create a good deal of uncertainty as to its enforceability. In the absence of wider provisions around governance, it would be unclear who would be held accountable for any breach of the requirement, and what the consequences would be. Operation of the learning centre in these circumstances would carry risks. It would be difficult for the governing body to be sure what types of activity could fall outside the permitted range, and it would be open to the opponents of the learning centre to seek challenge to to challenge any activities that and create obstacles through litigation.

My Lords, through the discussions with those supporting the amendment, we agreed that a more effective approach would be to focus on the governance arrangements for the body, which will, in due course, have responsibility for the operation of the Learning Centre. The noble Lords have hopefully have agreed to support the removal of the amendment from the face of the Bill in return for certain assurances, and my right hon. Friend, the Minister for devolution, Faith and communities, gave those assurances in another place yesterday and I'm delighted to repeat them tonight.

So let me be absolutely clear. The government's aim in establishing a national Holocaust memorial and learning centre, in line with the cross-party consensus since 2015, is to increase understanding of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. There must be no question of the Learning Centre deviating from this purpose. We value the work of the United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial Foundation, which has been steadfast, steadfast in its determination to build the memorial and to create a learning centre in which the story of the Holocaust is told powerfully, unflinchingly and honestly.

We aim to make sure that the body responsible for the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre has the independence and permanence which the Commission sought. We will provide the operating body with governing documents that are clear and specific, leaving absolutely no doubt that the Learning Centre has been established to provide education about the Holocaust and about anti-Semitism. I have spoken to the noble Lord Lord Verdirame and I have been I've told him I'm extremely happy to put on record now that when the time comes, we will seek the views of the from the opposition parties and key stakeholders in the sector on the proposed long term governance arrangements for the Learning Centre.

We will have that proper consultation. We will also ensure appropriate processes for the appointment of the governing body members and provide support that they have a clear and absolutely clear understanding of their role. The governing Body will be permitted to hold fundraising and commemorative events and public lectures as long as appropriate to the HMLC. It will be for the trustees to determine what activities are consistent with the aims of the Memorial and Learning Centre. I hope that the discussions that we've had, and I particularly appreciate the discussions I had with the noble Lady Baroness Deech this morning, because I think it's really, really important that we are seen to be at one in our determination to ensure that we actually acknowledge the horrors of the Holocaust and the impact on the Jewish community.

So I'm determined to do that, and I hope that Baroness Deech and other noble Lords will appreciate the government's determination to put in place guardrails that protect the learning centres focus. I beg to move.

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The question, is that motion A be agreed to? Motion A1 Baroness

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Deech. My Lords, I beg to move motion

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My Lords, I beg to move motion A1 as an amendment to motion A at the end insert and do propose the end insert and do propose amendment one B in MMU. My Lords, amendment one B in MMU. My Lords, my purpose in speaking is to try to rescue the central plank of what remains of this memorial. The Lords amendment stated that the sole purpose of the Learning Centre must
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Baroness Deech Portrait Baroness Deech (Crossbench)
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be the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. I've retained pretty much the same I've retained pretty much the same wording. No alternative was put forward in the Commons, and no forward in the Commons, and no reason given for the rejection other than it is inappropriate. But having listened to government having listened to government Ministers, I can see that a vision of the purpose of the learning centre is emerging that is much centre is emerging that is much more valuable than what has been suggested in the past.

The promoters in the past have been asked repeatedly what their intent is for the planned learning centre, and they prevaricated, sometimes suggesting that it will be all about Nazi genocides and at other times that it would include many genocides and wars, including Rwanda, Serbia, Cambodia, Darfur and Bosnia. And of course, originally the Learning centre was planned to be about the British perspective on the Holocaust, which is a rather niche subject and wouldn't be very educational for those who knew nothing about it.

Holocaust and genocide have become general words of disapproval without definition, throwing them around robs the Holocaust of its specificity, relativises it, and diminishes its lessons for the future. It was quite different in origin and execution. The Nazis systematically set about eliminating 6 million children, men and women, and the history of this is a warning to future generations as we see increasing anti-Semitism orchestrated today. If the purpose of the memorial and learning centre is not defined as we suggest, there's a risk that it could be put to other, less effective ends.

It seems the government agrees. The point of difference between us is this if the government is happy to give assurances about the learning centre, then why not enshrine them in the bill 10 or 20 years down the line? Any assurances given today will be forgotten and the interested parties today will no longer be in their positions or even alive without this amendment. Reference is excluded to the Learning Centres key purpose the Holocaust and anti-Semitism from the Holocaust Memorial Bill.

All governments recently have insisted that their funding of Holocaust remembrance in this country may not be limited to Jews. It always has to include other tragic situations, but the Roma have their own memorial. In Newcastle, there's a memorial dedicated to LGBT victims of the National Memorial Arboretum. Only the Jewish memorial has to be diffused and hence deprived of the power that it should have. Focusing on the Nazi victims makes the centre about the Nazis, Germany and the Second World War an historical event in the past, not something enduring today, but the Holocaust origins go back more than 2000 years and its roots are still alive today.

It is a continuum, not a past event, including other genocides reduces whatever lesson might be learned, just platitudes about hatred and tolerance, rightly and forcefully condemned by Anita Lasker-wallfisch, the cellist and survivor at the Select Committee. It is imperative that anti-Semitism be addressed, not fudged, because it is today that anti-Semitism is flourishing. A learning centre has to be about Jewish lives today, not just deaths. It is so relatively easy to mourn the dead, so much harder to understand the living.

What we objectors want is a proper size museum setting the Holocaust in context. As the late Lord sacks called for. There has been no consultation on any of this. The Chief Rabbi has rightly called for Holocaust memorialisation not to be politicised, but that is exactly what is happening now on the part of the opposition. It has been an attempt to put some substance into the campaign for British values on this government's watch. Sadly, Jews are constantly threatened. We know the details.

The police's uneven treatment welcoming an Egyptian dissident who wants to kill Jews, failing to prosecute people who spout foul hate speech, teachers, doctors, pop stars, lecturers, students getting away with calls for violence against Jews, treating its ally Israel as an enemy. The one sided recognition of Palestine. I suspect the government thinks that by announcing a Holocaust memorial, something will be achieved. But there is not a shred of evidence from the half dozen existing British memorials and the hundreds around the world that they have any effect on anti-Semitism.

No one's ever done an impact assessment. It is a case of easy sympathy for dead Jews, an excuse for not protecting living. All the benefits of a learning centre has recommended. In the Prime Minister's 2015 Commission report have now been lost. All gone. No lecture hall, no learning hub, no professorship, no endowment, no teacher training, no overhaul of Holocaust education. Its location is within a gunman's range from the bridge, the river, the Millbank windows to risk.

Even the fundamental essence of the project is unacceptable. The current assurances about the learning centre are vague, unsustainable and unenforceable. Assurances were requested and some were rejected. At the conclusion of the Select Committee on the bill. They are all now forgotten. Unless there is a proper planning application, there will be no chance of consideration of what was agreed. I am asking the government for more than assurances, something much more concrete that will last down the years. I'm asking for legislative support for the aims of the 2015 report, to ensure that the core purpose of the Learning Centre is agreed and maintained.

The simple amendment would show the public that the government has the right aim and has the courage of its convictions. I beg to move.

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General question, was that motion A be agreed to? Since when motion A be agreed to? Since when the motion A1 has been moved as an amendment to motion A at end insert, amendment to motion A at end insert, and do propose amendment one B in lieu. The question, therefore, is lieu. The question, therefore, is that motion A1 be agreed to.

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that motion A1 be agreed to. I would like to thank the. noble Lord. Lord Collins of Highbury for his patient and constructive engagement on this matter, and I would like to thank Lord Khan of Burnley, who before him was dealing with this bill and tried to work things through with with equal dedication. As the Minister knows, my preference would have been to have the purpose set in law for the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has so eloquently set out just now.

But it became clear that I was not going to persuade the government of that case. And it was also clear that there was a strong desire, which I shared, to move forward with cross-party consensus. I do welcome the Minister's assurances, and in particular, the fact that the government is committed to ensuring that the Learning Centre will be focussed exclusively on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and that there will be no deviation from this purpose. Having gone through this exercise, at least now, as Baroness Deech said before, we have some clarity about what the purpose of this learning centre should be.

No deviation is a key commitment. The reason for insisting on it is not because some of us don't understand that people will and should draw broader lessons from the Holocaust and from anti-Semitism. But what we've seen in recent years is that too often the broader lessons take centre stage, while the unsettling and and distinctly unsettling features of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism end up being diluted or lost behind feel good bromides avoiding this was the main driving concern for this amendment.

The other concern is that the memorial and the Learning Centre might become the focal point for political gesturing about the Middle East and for anti-Israel protest. I know that Lord Collins agrees with us on these concerns and is very keen to address them. I think the commitment to have the purpose clearly and specifically enshrined in the governing documents, while not as good as having it in law, is important and we do need to follow that through. I also welcome his commitment just now to consult on those governing documents, and it
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Lord Carlile of Berriew Portrait Lord Carlile of Berriew (Crossbench)
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My Lords. >> In supporting my noble friend Baroness Deech amendment. I, of course, recognised the very considerable and determined efforts considerable and determined efforts of my noble friend Lord Verdirame, who sought to persuade the government to accept the amendment made by your Lordships House when this bill was before this House previously. I have some questions for the noble Lord, the Minister. But before I ask them, I want to thank him for his very heartfelt and obviously extremely genuine and clear statement of what he sees as the purpose of the Learning Centre in particular.

And I totally accept what he said as being his view. But my questions relate to the use of the word inappropriate. I take it that the use of the use of the word inappropriate reveals that the words that my noble friend Baroness Deech seeks to insert in the bill, or indeed the words originally inserted by your Lordships' House House, are not in any way out of scope of the bill. So it's a matter of choice. It's a matter of taste even.

It's not a matter of law or legislative practice. And secondly, I'd like to invite the noble Lord to answer the question does what he has said in any way bind a future government, or even bind the trustees? I suspect it might be possible to bind the trustees, but not a future government, but only by expensive litigation, which would be extremely distasteful on this subject. If in the future they chose to change the approach of which the Minister has spoken.

This bill, of course, it's about changing planning arrangements for Victoria Tower Gardens that is necessarily part of it, but it is slightly absurd to suggest that this bill is just about property and therefore putting the basic purpose of having a memorial. A learning centre in the gardens. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that there is a memorial and a learning centre, which has one aim that people will go there. In my view, it's too small in the wrong place, but I can't debate that now.

We've been through those debates. People will go there to learn about the Holocaust that is the Shoah, to what happened to Jews in the Second World War and what built up to that Holocaust, and to learn the lesson. That is the only purpose of spending many millions on this project. And I asked the Minister, so what's wrong with stating in the bill the purpose of the project? Those of us who have a personal or family background, which makes us very close to this proposal as I do, we do not want to see that limited desire for the purpose to be stated in the bill, to be rejected by the use of a vague adjective like inappropriate.

I have huge misgivings about why it is being put in Victoria Guard Tower Gardens. What is being put there, whether it is going to be secure. I absolutely reject the notion that one should be concerned about the current Middle East situation in deciding the words that should be put in the bill that, in my view, is unprincipled and should and should not be allowed to endure. So I would earnestly say to the noble Lord, the Minister who is much admired in this House, and I share it, that admiration, that he should listen very carefully to this debate before pitching into something that is unacceptable to a very large number of people who have close contact and concerns about this particular proposal.



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I rise to commend the very wise words, the noble and learned Lord Carlile and support the noble Lady Carlile and support the noble Lady Baroness Deech in this important amendment. First of all, let me say I respect 150% the honesty and I respect 150% the honesty and integrity of the Minister. I trust him 100%, but I don't entirely him 100%, but I don't entirely trust the government to deliver on this. And I wish to thank not just two noble Lords, Labour peers who two noble Lords, Labour peers who are on the committee, but all those peers from all sides, the other Labour members, the crossbenchers, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives who raise many, many concerns about all aspects of this memorial.

But the one thing we were united on was that it had to be to commemorate the Holocaust, the Shoah and anti-Semitism. And what concerned us during the committee was on many occasions when we pushed the question, Will this purely about the Shoah? We did not get a categorical answer. It would be. And we had many reports from other organisations suggesting that it could include Rwanda and Pol Pot under four and others. And my Lords, those were horrible genocides. I know that, and we are seeing some horrible genocides around the world since 19, since the end of the Second World War.

But it's not the Shoah, and this memorial should be purely about that. Now, I would I agree that noble and learned Lord Watts absolutely right. It would be perfectly in scope of this bill to insert the noble Lady Baroness Deech words and and to and to rejected on the grounds that it would be inappropriate, I think is rather flimsy. You know, when I was chairing the delegated powers Committee and we'd see the government taking extraordinary powers to pass regulations, the government always said, yes, but we don't intend to use them.

My Lords, the intention is irrelevant. It's what's in the statute law that counts. And putting this into statute law would guarantee it would be enforced. Now, the noble Lord, the Minister, said, if I remember correctly, oh, people could challenge any, any
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Lord Pickles Portrait Lord Pickles (Conservative)
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like to associate myself with his words about Lord Khan, who took words about Lord Khan, who took this through the various stages with considerable charm. We, with with considerable charm. We, with considerable good temper, and I think we arrived with a better bill because he was there. And I'm also because he was there. And I'm also grateful to my frontbench. Baroness Boycott for the way this has gone Boycott for the way this has gone about. I've certainly been of the view.

I've always been of the view that this memorial should also celebrate Jewish life, Jewish people, because the very nature and I say this as a non-Jew, that Jewish culture is a fundamental part of the British identity. Without the without Jews, this country would be a lesser place. And you only have to say, visit to a place like Poland to see the very heart of that country's been ripped out by the removal of the Jews. I supported the original amendment, and I did so because I actually think that is not a kind of a an academic exercise or a discussion of a particular particular words.

There is a real I don't think it's wrong to say, a war going on there that seeks to undermine the Holocaust, that keeps, that seeks to subvert the Holocaust, that seeks to turn the Holocaust on its head. We have seen him recently as two attempts to do this. First of all, there was an attempt within the academic board to extend this, the museum to that of slavery, which the academic board fought against for a, for a for a solidly leaving to one member resigning.

But secondly, and we saw this last year, there was an attempt to equate the Holocaust with the false accusation of a genocide in Gaza. And it was a this awful attempt to invert the Holocaust was one of the reasons why there are less schools commemorating the Holocaust this year than they were. And the reason for that is the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust were not prepared to do Holocaust lite and were not prepared to to dilute, but this continues.

There is some criticism of Holocaust education. I mean, we see from from Canada, the former attorney general, some well known to many members of the House, Irving Cutler, regarded Holocaust education in this country as a gold standard. But it's only the gold standard if people attend the courses. There are some evaluations from the London School, the from the ICL of London and also of Schools Scotland, which show if people go through the course, it changes for the good.

But if you are a child of a parent refuses to allow you to go. If you are on a school governing body that refuses cooperation, if school teachers pressurise other school teachers to prevent it, then those pupils lose out and that's why they receive such bad scores. In terms of understanding of Holocaust. And this is not just about the simple teaching of the past. It's about operating some support for our own liberal democracy. I am delighted to report that we are in advanced negotiations with the sure foundation of the United States, who would like us to be one of the main centres for their database of Holocaust testimony.

We already have their testimony for British survivors free, but this will mean that we will be a main player on the scene. And the reason why people are enthusiastic about this is because we will get people to that learning centre that I'm about to finish that would normally not go to any other, any other museum. So I welcome the unity that I think we should put the past behind us, and I think we should now put our hands out firmly to opponents and to those that are in favour, and

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work together to ensure we build something that we can be proud of. My Lords. Well, the tributes are

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My Lords. Well, the tributes are flowing. I think that I'd like to pay tribute to the noble Lord Lord Verdirame, who gave one of the best speeches when this was passed in the first the first time this the first the first time this amendment was passed, and also to the noble Baroness, Baroness, Lady the noble Baroness, Baroness, Lady Deech, it's truly important to have this discussion and this debate out and not to have kind of just said, oh, it doesn't matter.

So I just wanted to note that I also don't doubt the sincerity whatsoever of the noble Lord Lord Collins of Highbury or and the noble Lord Lord Khan of Burnley, who in in both instances have been absolutely reassuring. But the problem I've got is that I've sort of not
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Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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reassured by reassurances, because I'd rather I can't still understand I'd rather I can't still understand why it's only reassurances and not firmly fixed. I know we can't. I'm not attempting to do much about it, but it is. It's not reassuring that but it is. It's not reassuring that this can't be fixed, written down so that we all know it is not going so that we all know it is not going to be sold out. And no disrespect, but there's a lot of sell outs that happen in politics, even if not by.

And I don't doubt the integrity of the noble Lords I've mentioned. I just wanted to quickly just note why this matters at the moment. I think actually the noble Lord Lord Pickles just made the point when he said about the fight, because I I'd written down the context of this as a fight, and I do a range of education work not in relation to this issue, but when you actually go to universities and to schools. I get into arguments, obviously, enough about all sorts of things.

And in a debate about whether there is a genocide in Gaza, in an argument about that, I was told because I said there wasn't and tried to explain it rationally. And of course, I was accused of being a Holocaust denier when I then tried to untangle what why that was not the case and why that was, you know, why would you use that term? And one of the students said, the problem is, is that Jews jealously guard. The Holocaust is part of their colonial entitlement attitude.

And in you know, that's quite and that was kind of quite a normal thing to say. You know, I was shocked nobody else was. And it's also the case that if you actually look at what this is, a learning centre, when you look at the revelations that have come forth in relation to the teacher, sorry, the MP from Labour, Friends of Israel, who was actually stopped going into teach in a school, the subsequent revelations exposed by Nicole Lambert as it happens about the goings on in the National Education Union Teaching Union, which is almost institutionally hostile to Israel, has very strong and open anti-Semitic elements to it.

And so it is the case that people being worried about the show being relativised or diffused are not just being paranoid. This is happening. It's also just so that I'm not just looking at the kind of progressive side. If you've been following what's going on in the United States, on the fringes of the far right, with the likes of Nick Fuentes and the Groypers, I'm a bit awkward having said that, that it goes in Hansard now. But anyway, there we go.

But the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, actually became embroiled in this early two recently, when he was the target of some of these people. Their attitude is explicit. Holocaust denial, completely dismissive of what happened during that period. Lot. Many, many young people follow them, and many young people in this country know all about that debate and so on and so forth. In other words, one thing that has happened is, is that Holocaust denial and Holocaust relativism have become normalised in society, particularly amongst young people.

And in that sense, I feel as though there's an obligation to use the learning centre to take that on and not to pretend it's not happening. So I would have preferred to have not just had to put up with an assurance, but a guarantee. But regardless, what we have to do is to ourselves ensure that we use that learning centre to counter what is actually a battle of ideas in relation to this. And it's not one we're necessarily winning, if

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I'm honest. Could the. Speakers in.

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Speakers in. This debate actually concentrate? What is the issue? And the issue is whether this amendment should whether this amendment should remain in the bill. We've had two long speeches and they haven't
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Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Portrait Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative)
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addressed that. >> I was going to speak very briefly, so I'll try to address that. I speak briefly, not because the subject is not important. Indeed, it's such an important subject that there could be no end of words said about it. But we are now focussed on a particular point, which is the particular Commons reason and our response to it. I supported for reasons which I gave at the time, the amendment from the noble Lord Lord Verdirame, and as noble Lord, the Minister pointed out, the reasoning and the purpose behind that amendment was indeed to ensure no mission creep by can pick up his phrase.

I have been one of the members of this House who've had sustained, constructive and helpful engagement from the noble Lord and, if I may say, his staff and his team of civil servants. And I was pleased to hear the clear and constructive statements he made, and that were made in from the Dispatch Box in another place as well. And I would point out that when we're talking about governance provisions in a trust document, those are legally binding and effective.

So the question of the nice legal and constitutional question of whether a government can bind its successor is one thing, but a trustee and a board of trustees are bound by their constitutional documents. The important thing to me tonight is this we simply have to get on with this project. I am very concerned that there is a risk that further delay will lead not just to further cost, but to question marks over the project. And we've had a good debate about it.

I, I think we all share the concern which lay behind the amendment. Indeed, as I say, I supported it, but now we have to get on and not so much complete the job, complete the legislative job, and begin the real action on the ground. Now, the noble Lady Baroness Deech knows the high regard I have for her. She's explained her opposition to parts of this project very clearly. We agree on some points. We don't agree on others. Disagreement is part of what this place is all about.

I would say, respectfully, that the proposed amendment to say that the main purpose must be the provision of education, as opposed to the original amendment from Lord Verdirame, which was the sole purpose. I have to say. The main purpose, I think, is actually worse than saying nothing, because if you say the main purpose is X, you almost admitting and accepting and implying that you can also do y and Z. So I think main is actually worse than nothing. It's not just nearly like soul.

I think in Lords, a very clear distinction between main purpose and sole purpose. But in any event that that's not the real focus of my remarks. The real focus of my remarks is that we need to get on with it for the reasons I've given. I would like to finish, if I may, quickly, with this point. Can I also put on record my personal thanks to the noble Lord Lord Khan of Burnley, who started the work on this bill in this House, and again both in the chamber and out of it.

He and I had many conversations about it, all of which were constructive, all of which were conducted in the best traditions of this House. And we all actually owe the noble Lords a huge debt of gratitude. Perhaps he might think about this. His name will always be linked to this bill, because he made the rather prosaic statement you might think set out in section 19, one A of the Human Rights Act, to the effect that the provisions of the bill are compatible with convention rights.

It did strike me reading those words on the face of the bill. We can have arguments about Strasbourg jurisprudence. That's not for now. It's not just that the provisions of the Holocaust Memorial bill are compatible with convention rights. The Holocaust is a reminder of what may happen if fundamental rights

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are not protected. Forgive me if you'll allow. I have not intended to speak in this debate, but I the avoidance of doubt. I was in the chamber as it doubt. I was in the chamber as it started. I rushed in here, so I wished to hear every word, partly because I was first alerted to the because I was first alerted to the provisions of the memorial by indeed Anita Lasker-wallfisch, my teacher, Rafael's mother, and
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Baroness Debbonaire Portrait Baroness Debbonaire (Labour)
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teacher, Rafael's mother, and subsequently by the noble Lady Baroness Deech many years ago. In fact, this was before October the 7th. And the reason I mention this is because when I was a member in the other place I represented, which had extreme views, extreme views, which as a non-Jew, I felt that it was bad enough that I had to hear some of them, and it was unbearable that representing two synagogues, one Orthodox and one progressive, with a very diverse Jewish constituency, very diverse population with a range of political views that before October the 7th, the feeling was and I did consult my constituents and I wanted to put this on record, particularly for the noble Baroness Baroness Deech.

I consulted them and they all said that what they wanted was a memorial. There were some variations, but overall people said what they wanted was the memorial as proposed. And I put to them the arguments which she and I in fact share. And and that's. Yes, partly because I'm so very aware of Anita's experience and longevity and wonderful personality and the fact that whenever she sees me before she says hello, she checks my fingers to make sure I'm still practising the cello, despite everything.

And I really wanted to hear from my constituents that they also had some of those ambiguities. And they didn't. But what they were utterly clear on was the issue of the purpose of the memorial and the learning centre. And my concern since October 7th, when I had to hear many things that frankly reinforced the need for the purpose to be utterly clear of the Learning Centre, utterly, without doubt, without any diminution or any dilution, because people were capable of saying the most dreadful things, which implied to me that they had little or no knowledge of the Shoah, and why it matters, and why that focus on the shower and on anti-Semitism.

Because I think the noble Lady is quite right to say it's not just about the dead, it is also about the living, because the risk of further such atrocities, specifically to Jews right now is so great. I feel that as a non-Jew, it's even more my duty to say that and to put on record things which many people have been frightened to say. They have been frightened to say the truth. And that's why it mattered to me to see this amendment.

I'm afraid I also share the concerns of Lord Wolfson, that by seeking to put something, it's actually weaker than the original thing, which the other place has now rejected, which I regret, but this is the place we are at now. I share other noble Lords determination that we should get this right, and I also share the admiration for my noble friends, Lord Collins and Lord Khan, who've worked so hard to get us to where we are. It feels like a tremendously long time from where we began, but the need for that clarity of purpose has not diminished.

It has only grown in the intervening years. And so I just wish to put on my on record in my name as a non-Jew, but with former Jewish constituents who I did my best to represent, but also the doubling, the tripling, the quadrupling need that there seems to be, not just over the last four years since the atrocities of October the 7th, but even in the last four weeks in Australia, in Manchester, in the sort of anti-Semitism that we hear about every day, which we all know when we've read the history of the Shoah, is how this starts.

So I share the noble Lords determination that we should not hold back, although I also share the Baroness Deech disagreement about where the memorial should be. We are now past that. I would also like to encourage other noble Lords, if they haven't already, to go to the Imperial War Museum and hear the beautiful cello playing of my cello teacher, Raphael, and to see some of the some of the things that Anita wore and was able to keep with her, which tell in themselves their story.

I hope that this memorial and this learning centre will tell that story as we need it

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to, now, possibly more than ever. Thank you. My Lords.

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I too am puzzled why it's not possible to include this wording on the face of a bill, given that the bill makes provision for the construction of a Holocaust memorial and learning centre, why on earth can we not define what the on earth can we not define what the learning centre is for? But I accept the Minister's assurances about purposes. I have one specific question that I would like to ask the Minister. When we debated this matter in June, I raised the issue with the noble Lord Lord Verdirame about the definition of Holocaust, pointing out that the Holocaust did include other groups than Jewish people.

Of course, it was primarily an atrocity committed against Jewish people, and that will be the primary purpose of a memorial centre. But there were other groups that were affected too, including LGBT people, but also disabled people who were killed in concentration camps. Lord Verdirame assured me that his understanding was that the Holocaust did include such groups. Some of the contributions from noble Lords today make me wonder whether that is a shared assumption. And since this debate is about clarity and definition, I would be grateful for the Minister's assurance on the back of the assurances he's given about the purpose of the Learning Centre.

That his and the government's understanding, too, is that Holocaust does include the murder of other groups at the same
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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Portrait Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Conservative)
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focussed on the matter at hand at this stage of the Bill's progress. But it is seven months since the But it is seven months since the division which saw noble Lords backing the noble Lord. Lord Verdirame sensible amendment to Verdirame sensible amendment to this bill. I'm heartened to hear about the fruitful discussions that he's had with Ministers and he's had with Ministers and officials about that matter in the intervening months. But if noble Lords have had other remarks to make, it is because those extra months have added.

Sadly, as we've heard, further examples of the importance of getting this right and looking at this, and I agree with so many of the remarks I've heard, my purpose in rising is to ask the noble Lord, the deputy Leader of the House, about an issue which wasn't before us when the this bill was last debated in your Lordships' House. He'll know that the Crime and Policing Bill, which is also before you Lordships house, proposes to make it a criminal offence to climb on certain specified monuments and memorials, and schedule 12 to that bill sets out 24 memorials which are listed at grade one, and one further memorial, which is not listed at grade one.

That is the statue to Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. When we debated that bill last Tuesday, his noble friend Lord Katz told us that the Home Secretary was minded to add in due course this memorial, the Holocaust memorial and the memorial to Muslims who fought in the world wars when those are both constructed. And I was glad to hear that. I think that is a sensible thing. But as the noble Baroness lady has said, there are other existing memorials to the Holocaust, including, for instance, the memorial in Hyde Park that was unveiled in June 1983.

If the noble Lord is able either now or later in writing, I'd be grateful to know whether he thinks it would be appropriate to add that memorial which is not listed, but which sadly was targeted as recently as in April last year by protestors campaigning about current events in the Middle East. If we want to make sure that memorials such as this one are not targets for protestors, will he speak to his right hon. Friend, the Home Secretary, to make sure that other memorials to the Holocaust are not targeted, and let us know whether he thinks that, too, should be listed in schedule 12 to the Crime and Policing Bill.
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Baroness Walmsley Portrait Baroness Walmsley (Liberal Democrat)
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And I wonder if noble Lords would mind if we moved to the winding speeches now. Yes. Thank you, my Lords. Noble Lords will know because I said it many times during the previous stages of this bill that this is a free vote for my colleagues. So my comments reflect my own views. Although I know that the vast majority of my colleagues share them. My Lords, I've always thought that the words on the front of the bill should reflect the policies inside it.

So I really find it difficult to understand in one respect why the government will not accept this purpose clause. Now, I know that if you go to the public bill office with the intention of inserting a purpose clause into a bill, they usually sort of draw in their breath and say, governments don't like a purpose clause, and that governments of all colours, by the way, however, it really is very hard to understand in this particular case because we all know which Holocaust we're talking about.

But the noble Lord, the Minister and the government can't be surprised that people have lost a little bit of confidence in that focus because of all the other things that were raised during the course of the earlier stages of this bill. Other tragic events in the history of mankind. But, my Lords, the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were slaughtered, is the biggest blot in the history of mankind. And we must never forget. And that is why across all benches, we supported the first purpose of the bill, which was to enable the government to promote and fund a Holocaust memorial and learning centre.

What we disagreed about was the second part, which was the removal of the legislative barrier to put that learning centre in Victoria Gardens, mainly because we didn't think that the gardens would do it justice because it needs to be a high quality memorial. And I think we all hope that in the fullness of time, that's what it turns out to be. And I do congratulate the noble Lady Baroness Deech on her leadership in this bill, and agree with her that you can commemorate the dead by celebrating the lives of the living, the people who survived, the the millions who suffered even if they didn't lose their lives and lost their their lives and their livelihoods and the ability to have children.

But many of them did. And their descendants contribute an enormous amount to the life of this country and all the other countries in Europe and other parts of the world. So I wonder if I could just touch on what the noble Lord, the Minister, has said. He's he's given us a very clear reassurance that the purpose of this legislation will remain commemorating the Holocaust and learning the lessons to tackle anti-Semitism. And it has been said that that's not good enough.

It should be on the face of the legislation. Now, I have a little more confidence in clear statements from the Dispatch Box by a government Minister than some members of the House, and I know that they can be challenged in future if governments then deviate from what they have said. But as the noble Lord Lord Carlile mentioned, it often requires considerable legal costs in order to make that challenge. So it's far better if you want to be absolutely clear, to put it on the face of the bill.

So I really say to the noble Lord, the Minister, why not.
21:35
Lord Leigh of Hurley Portrait Lord Leigh of Hurley (Conservative)
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Here? >> And I wanted to briefly. >> Briefly speak on this one, and I was mainly moved to do so by the remarks of my noble friend Lord Wolfson, who made the excellent point that the amendment talks about the main purpose of any learning centre, diluting the original amendment and raising the possibility that other purposes would be would be used. And as Baroness Deech knows, although we disagreed on a number of things, I'm an enormous admirer of all the hard work she's done to get to to support the concept of Holocaust education, and I do want to put on my record my particular thanks to Lord Kahn.

It's been heartwarming to listen to him, and I admire him for the work he did in his position. The point I want to make to both Baroness Deech and the noble Lord, the Minister, is to ask them for a clarification in the bill and in the amendments. There's lots of reference to a Holocaust, but in the particular cause that bites one, a Roman numeral one, it talks about the construction of, on, over or under any land of a memorial commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

And that is crystal clear. The centre for learning has to be relating to the memorial. So I would ask Baroness Deech why there is any uncertainty about this. Is it not clear in the bill that it has to be commemorating the victims of the Holocaust? And in, as Lord Wilson said, now's the time to move on, to make a.

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Brief contribution. And may I pay tribute to to Lord

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And may I pay tribute to to Lord Lord Carlile and Lord Collins? Back in 2014, I supported this bill in in 2014, I supported this bill in the House of Commons and I as cross-party support. It's it's Parliament at its best when we all Parliament at its best when we all agree. And I'm slightly surprised 12 years later, we're still having these debates. And as Lord Wolfson these debates. And as Lord Wolfson says, we really do need to get on with it.

I believe it is the right development in the right place. It's the right plan and it's at the right time. However, I've got a
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Lord Evans of Rainow Portrait Lord Evans of Rainow (Conservative)
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question for the Minister. We're talking about a visitor centre. Now. Noble Lords will see the number of schoolchildren that attend this place on a regular daily basis. So therefore it's important we get the therefore it's important we get the content of that visitor's place. Right. What sort of content will it Right. What sort of content will it be? What relevance and how will it come across to younger generation people? So it's going to be a broad spectrum of the population, but it's very important we get the future citizens educated in the Holocaust.

So I'm interested in specifically for for school visits and how will the visitor centre cater for that?

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My Lords, my Lords. Over the months we've had extensive debates on this bill, and extensive debates on this bill, and I know there are strong views across the House on a whole range of issues relating to the delivery of the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre. We were right to Learning Centre. We were right to debate it in full and scrutinise every aspect of this important Bill. But now, my Lords, we've just one But now, my Lords, we've just one issue before us and I do congratulate the noble Lords Lord Verdirame, on his success at Report stage, and we were delighted to give him our support in that division.

We've worked closely with him and in discussions with government to secure the concession the government has made in response to his amendment. It is very welcome that Ministers have confirmed that the Learning Centre will be focussed exclusively on the Holocaust and on anti-Semitism, and
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook Portrait Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Conservative)
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that there will be no question of it drifting from that purpose. That commitment is an important step towards the noble Lord Lord Verdirame amendment, and I'm Verdirame amendment, and I'm pleased that he and the government have come to an agreement on this, and we will continue to support him. But I'd like to conclude very briefly by thanking noble, the briefly by thanking noble, the noble Lord Lord Collins of Highbury, for the really constructive way in which he's engaged with me and with other noble Lords to get to this point.

And like many other noble Lords, I'd like to give my very big thanks to the to the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley. He was a joy to work with as we went through what was a difficult, probably the most difficult bill I've ever been involved in. In the early stages, and I thank him for that. My Lords, next week on Tuesday it is Holocaust Memorial Day, and I believe it's fitting that tonight that we take that one, what I hope is very big step forward to the delivery of this memorial to the 6

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million men, women and children who perished in the show. Thank you.

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Thank you. My Lords. I thank everyone for their contributions in this evening's debate. And I don't want evening's debate. And I don't want to delay us too much on this, but I do want to reflect on a number of the comments. And not least, I mean the noble Lord. Lord Pickles has been doing excellent work in terms been doing excellent work in terms of Holocaust education. And, you know, I have followed him in many
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Lord Collins of Highbury Portrait Lord Collins of Highbury (Labour)
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places trying to make sure that his message was also repeated. And in message was also repeated. And in fact, you know, I spoke to the Baroness Deech earlier this today, and I mentioned the fact that I went to Bratislava to attend a went to Bratislava to attend a memorial event. But that memorial event in the square in Bratislava was not limited to that. We then was not limited to that. We then went to the concentration camp, the transportation centre, where I saw first hand where people were kept children, babies.

And actually the impact of that will always live with me. But I also know the impact, you know, a memorial is not enough. That's why the learning centre is so vital. And I think, and I also want to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, because just to answer the point, both by Baroness Deech and the noble Lord Lord Carlile, we can't bind a future government. We wanted to look at how we could ensure that the purpose was fully maintained.

We're not in the bill hasn't got all the governance structure, we haven't got all that stuff that we need. And it was I don't want to embarrass the noble Lord, but his advice about how we can enshrine the purpose in those trust agreements that govern absolutely essential and the most important thing I want, you know, I urge Baroness Deech what I want, and we've heard it today, is that we leave tonight United, United in that one purpose that we do not forget the 6 million that were murdered.

We do not forget the consequences of those Nazi crimes. And just to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, he knows where I stand on the crimes of the Nazis. And of course, the very first people that they imprisoned and murdered were also trade unionists who were standing up for workers rights. And I think we need to sort of understand that. But I was also struck by what noble Lady Baroness Deech said to me this morning, anti-Semitism didn't start with the Nazi crimes.

Anti-Semitism has been with us for 2000 years, and what we need to do is ensure that we understand the impact, not just of the impact of the past, but the impact of people now living people. And I think she's absolutely right. So I just want to, you know, why haven't we put it in the on the face of the bill? Well, I think the noble Lord Wolfson said it all. We have to, you know, the now function of the bill, you know, adding a statutory provision along the lines envisaged could create difficulties and uncertainty in its enforceability.

And I want to see the way to do that, where we can be united. And the noble Lord Lord Verdirame and the noble Lord Wolfson have helped me in terms of how we can deal with that. I just want to say that I also want to reassure that further consideration will be given to the different forms of governance which might be right for the memorial, and we will, as the noble Lord Lord Verdirame has asked me to give an assurance that those proposals will be published, including the governance documents that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, referred to.

And can I just say that in relation to Lord Parkinson, I understand the points he's made and he's very fully in the the Bill, and certainly my noble friend Lord Hanson is here and he can actually take these points up. You know, how memorials are protected. And I also just want to say that, you know, of course, we are living now in an environment where, you know, security is a consideration. But let me reassure you. You know, I think we have to stand up and stand up for what's right.

We should not give way to the threat of violence. We should not give way and understand that, you know, we're not going to do this. And I think what happened in Birmingham were very clear was wrong. And what happened in that school was wrong. We're absolutely determined. And I think actually this debate has been really productive. It's been really important because we now can really focus on what the purpose of this memorial is, because it is really important not only to the that we encourage children to come and visit it and learn from it, but we also need to take the message out from it and actually encourage people to fully understand those real consequences of the Holocaust and the real consequences of anti-Semitism.

I, I urge the noble Lady Baroness Deech to withdraw her amendment and let us go forward, united, and ensure that this memorial is delivered.
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Baroness Deech Portrait Baroness Deech (Crossbench)
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Well, said. admiration for the Minister, whose eloquence and understanding is really very touching and altogether praiseworthy, just two small points. There need not have been any delay. There need not even be no delay. If the government accepted the amendment and much has been spoken about delay. This memorial is not for the survivors. It's for future generations. We're not going to rush something through so that people who are now 90 or 100 will live to see it.

They've already got other memorials. I've heard the noble Lord, Lord Lee and Lord Wolfson on the definitional problems. Whatever you express, there are going to be definitional problems which have been exacerbated in the past few years because despite what Lord Lee said, the noble Lord, Lord Lee, there has been all this talk about Darfur and Bosnia and other genocides and so on. And it's only now under the leadership of the Minister, that we have some clarity. I felt I had to drive this forward for the sake of my parents and my grandparents and all the others who are looking down, who would never forgive me if I did not push this as far as I can to get a memorial that honours them, which I have doubts about, frankly.

But I have done everything I can within my power for their sakes, because I know very well as a child. They told me what they went through, and I've done every last thing I can so I can see no point in calling a vote now, and I will withdraw the motion. But I do insist that I will continue for their sakes, and all the other families of some people who are in this chamber, we must get something that honours them and protects today's Jews.

And I will not give up on that. But I withdraw the

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motion, and I thank the Minister. Is it your Lordship's.

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Is it your Lordship's. Pleasure that motion A1. Be withdrawn? The motion is by leave withdrawn. The question is that motion A be agreed to? As many that motion A be agreed to? As many as that opinion will say content. Content the contrary not contents. Content the contrary not contents. The contents have it. Right. We have. We'll have a minute to changeover. I'll sit down so you My My Lords, My Lords, I My Lords, I beg My Lords, I beg to move that this bill be now further considered.

On report.

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The question is that this bill be now further considered on report as may that opinion will say content contrary, not content. content contrary, not content. Bless you. The contents have it. Amendment 98 Baroness Barran.

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Amendment 98 Baroness Barran. My Lords. This is a very different topic from where we were before the dinner break. We moved to nursery Milk. Only in your Lordships House could one be saying those words. So my amendment 98 would bring childminders who are registered with a childminding agency into the scope of the free nursery milk scheme. And as your Lordships know, the nursery milk scheme provides a free portion of milk every day to any child under
21:51
Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Conservative)
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five attending a registered childcare setting. And it's a very long standing initiative dating long standing initiative dating back to the 1940s. The legislation back to the 1940s. The legislation which underpins the regime, the scheme Forgive Me, was written scheme Forgive Me, was written before childminder agencies, otherwise known as CMA, came into otherwise known as CMA, came into existence, and a later drafting oversight meant that milk subsidies were not mentioned in the legislation, which created CMA in 2014.

So for a decade, childminders who are registered through CMA have been unable to claim milk subsidies, while those registered directly with Ofsted can. And this is despite the fact that all childminders are Ofsted regulated and all operate under the same regulations, and the loophole has been widely acknowledged as a clear legislative oversight to successive governments, including my own, have pledged to fix it, but sadly no action has been taken and as a result, more than 10,000 children are currently missing out on free milk.

And as CMA's registered childminders make up a growing share of the workforce, that means the number of children affected increases every year. A simple legislative update would close this loophole and restore parity across the early years sector. I hope that the noble Baroness, the Minister, can do better than previous governments and go further, including my own, and commit not only to addressing this, but give the house a no later than date for doing so.
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Baroness Walmsley Portrait Baroness Walmsley (Liberal Democrat)
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not been aware of this important extra support in the past and have therefore not applied. I've laid this amendment again because I was this amendment again because I was not content with the Minister's response when we discussed it at Committee stage, but I thank the Committee stage, but I thank the noble Baroness, the Minister, for her subsequent letter. During that her subsequent letter. During that debate, the Minister said that she could not accept my amendment because the Healthy Start program requires an eligibility check, since the funds come in the form of a prepaid card.

And this, she said, is a financial product and therefore requires the recipient to accept the terms, so will the Minister. Please note that my amendment in section three takes note of that fact, and requires that the eligible person must be able to opt out of the scheme if they wish. And that, of course, implies that they also opt in. This could be done by rejecting the terms of the card offered rather than accepting them. However, the Minister went on to say that in order to increase uptake, uptake, uptake, which she agreed is important that the NHS Business Services Authority will write to those who are eligible to encourage them to apply to the scheme.

Three questions arise out of that answer. Firstly, if the NHS Business Services Authority is going to write to those who are eligible, they must already have found out who is eligible. If that is the case, why could those people not be enrolled and then informed that they had been enrolled and finally given the chance to opt out if they wish? I can't imagine that many will. Secondly, now that the Minister has laid amendments G 111 and G 112, which I'm sure she will explain in a few minutes, it is clear that government departments will now be able to share information for the purpose of ascertaining eligibility for free school meals.

I hope we can assume, therefore, that the NHS BSA will also be able to get information from other departments to ascertain whether families are eligible for Healthy Start. If the NHS BSA is going to write to eligible people, will they at least enclose an application form and pre-paid envelope to make it very easy to apply and accept the terms? There should be no need for the recipient to have to supply any further evidence of their eligibility, because the NHS, BSA will already have established that or they wouldn't have written to them in the first place.

So what possible further checks are needed? Thirdly, can the Minister say how long this programme will take to get up and running, and will she undertake to report to Parliament about to what extent this activity has improved uptake over the first year of its operation? I look forward to the Minister's reply on that matter. I turn now to my amendment 113. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that schools and caterers are supported to provide adequate, affordable and nutritious food at breakfast and lunch to all the children at the school, whether they're on free school meals or whether they pay.

I've laid this amendment again because there are several questions to ask about the minister's Committee stage reply, and there have been developments since Committee stage. The amendment requires that current school standards review to be completed within 12 months of Royal Assent of this bill, and a supportive scheme set up to ensure compliance with those standards. My Lords, this timescale is not a lot to ask, given that the then relevant Minister in the Department of Education promised me almost a year ago when I discussed with him the recommendations of your Lordships House report, recipe for health, the plan to fix our broken food system, that the review would happen.

It then took until June the 5th last, for an announcement that consultations would take place. Oh, how slowly the wheels of government turn. My Lords. However, the Minister promised at Committee stage to share the details of this consultation in due course. So can she say now when due course will be? She said, that it will include how to ensure whether schools comply with the updated standards. Currently, there is very little inspection and enforcement, the responsibility having been given to school governors.

It must be said that some schools provide a very good standard of food, but others do not. It is not always their fault. Research carried out by Professor Greta de Feyter of Northumbria University has shown that larger schools, especially those in areas where there are not too many pupils eligible for free school meals, sometimes managed to benefit from economies of scale, and some actually make a profit from the allowance they get for free school meals. However, this is not always spent on improving the general quality of food in the school.

However, there are others, particularly small schools, in areas of high deprivation where the free school meal budget has to be supplemented from the education budget. There certainly nothing left over to improve the food overall. This is crazy, my Lords, given the importance of good food to child health and development, there are certainly questions to be asked about how the allocation of funds works, not just in theory, but taking into account the facts on the ground. However, I'm talking about the quality and affordability of all food served in schools, not just the free school meals.

This amendment is not about free school meal entitlement, however. It is of course more important that free school meal children get a nutritious meal at lunchtime because their parents may not be able to give them one in the evening or any meal at all. Sometimes the Minister mentioned building on the compliance pilot. Now, this took place with the Food Standards Agency in 20 2223 and focussed on the ability of local authority food safety officers to ask questions about the standards of the food and not just inspect food hygiene school kitchens.

It was found that yes, they could carry out this role given clear guidance, but the more work needed to be done to respond to the findings of schools that were failing. However, since then we now have consultations about reviewing the school food standards and bringing it up to date, but no plan to inspect or enforce the new standards, nor in helping schools to comply. And neither am I aware of any plan to review whether some schools are being disadvantaged by the way in which FSM allowance is calculated, particularly small schools in disadvantaged areas.

As I've just mentioned, it seems to me that a wider review will be required as soon as we have the new standards. Indeed, it is also relevant to note that we're awaiting the updated nutrient profiling scheme. I would have thought that this would also affect the new school food standards. There are several interacting policies here. While we're waiting for the government to act, the very effective all party parliamentary group on school food, led by the minister's very determined colleague Sharon Hodgson MP, has outlined a plan for an in-depth inquiry into school food.

It will have the benefit of an expert advisory board and will call witnesses including headteachers, caterers, both local authority and private, other experts, NGOs, academics, pupils and industry representatives to ensure it benefits from a clear picture of the situation and, most importantly, how to fix it. And by the way, we're not just talking about money here, though there may be recommendations about allocated. Now, Sharon Hodgson and I are hoping to meet Minister Bailey from the Department for education, who is now responsible for school food, to discuss our plan for the inquiry.

If the Minister can assure us that the government is going to do a similar root and branch overhaul of school food, there may be no need for the all party group to go ahead with this inquiry. However, if she prefers to wait for the recommendations of the all party group inquiry, I hope she and the noble Baroness, the Minister today, will be able to assure us that the government will take whatever action is necessary to implement the inquiry's recommendations in the interests of our children's future health.

She will know that all party parliamentary group inquiries are cross-party and can be enormously helpful to governments. Since they're close to the grass roots of the problem they're looking at. You only have to look at how helpful the all party group on smoking and health has been to the government in devising the Tobacco and Vaping Bill, which is currently before Parliament. The Minister will note that amendment 113 says in the very first paragraph that the scheme I propose should be supportive of schools and caterers to help them feed our children more nourishing food.

However, we do need to know where we are now so that we can focus more help on those who need it most. So monitoring and compliance are vital parts of the amendment. So I wonder, therefore, if the Minister can shed more light on all the factors that are at play here and assure me that she and her ministerial colleague in another place, will work with the all party parliamentary group led by Sharon Hodgson MP, as we share a common aim to improve school food.



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My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Baroness Barran and also to associate myself with also to associate myself with amendment 104, in the name of Baroness Walmsley who whom is a Baroness Walmsley who whom is a pleasure to follow now. The Welfare Food Regulations 1996 lay out an Food Regulations 1996 lay out an astonishing detail the importance of milk to those who are entitled to it for the early years, and whilst there are different regulatory regimes in Scotland and the rest of Great Britain, it is clear that certain children in certain circumstances are entitled to dried milk or fresh milk in prescribed portions per week, either by age, by those who whose families are on financial assistance for low income, for the healthy start, which would include expectant mothers or those who have children otherwise under four.

And of course, for some people, children, but not necessarily children, but with certain physical and mental difficulties of any age, I think you'll find, my Lords, it's common ground on all sides of this House that the provision of milk as part of a healthy diet is a good thing. But the regulations provide that this milk to be dispensed. If I can use that word in maternity or healthcare centres, part of the National Health Service, but also in other welfare or food distribution centres.

But, my Lords, the world has changed and these settings are no longer the only places where people access health. The NHS, which may work from 9 to 5, or a food distribution centre which may open, which may only open for a few mornings a week, are not necessarily the only places nowadays where people can access the help they need, and those settings are just not as thick on the ground at times that are convenient to families as things used to be.

I don't deny the good work of those settings, but others are available under the same regulations, and some of them are even paid for by the state as well. My noble friend Baroness Barran laid out the importance of childminders and childminder agencies as a part of the mix that helps provide time and space for families to get into work so they can earn and improve their family circumstances. With the flexibility to take different jobs which may be available on a part time, out of hours or seasonal basis.

So these settings, the childminder agencies are relevant, they're local, they're flexible, they're professional, and we've heard they are regulated, but for some reason they're not trusted by these regulations to dispense milk, either in the liquid form or the dried powders. And it just serves no purpose to exclude them. This is why these amendments are so important, because to exclude the most accessible settings from the ability to provide milk and other healthy foods isn't just bad for them, it's bad for the children.

And I just can't understand for a word why one setting is good and the others bad. But there's another string to this argument also. And that's not only is it bad for the children and the settings themselves, but it's bad for the economy because there are 1.8 million dairy cows in this country with a herd size average 225. And that's a number that's doubled in the last 50 years, since 1975, significant parts of the West Country are devoted to dairying, milk production, cheese production and so forth.

I see my noble friend, the Baroness Williams, sitting just before me on the front bench, and she's from the Cheshire Plains, and she will know more than anybody how important the piece of work that dairy farmers do, rising early to milk and care for their cows and herds in rain or shine, suffering as they have done in the last two months, a 30% reduction in the price of liquid milk from dairies. So it's not just the children that need all the help they can get.

It's our dairy farmers too. And I see, and whilst this, of course, is a subsidiary point to the main thrust of amendment 98, in the name of my noble friend Baroness Barran, it is a it is a consideration, but the main thrust is that we must stop this arbitrary division which forms gaps between different sorts of settings, one that says only the NHS can be trusted to dispense milk, and those where the childminders or the CMAs aren't trusted either.

If we really have the interests of the child at heart, then we need to have as many settings that can have as many settings that can dispense good food and and milk and associated products at times of the convenient for the busy lives that convenient for the busy lives that families lead, rather than a straitjacket them in to the 9 to 5 and think, well, that is good enough.
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Baroness Boycott Portrait Baroness Boycott (Crossbench)
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Both of them. Improvement Scheme, which I'm incredibly glad to see how many steps the government is taking, but I think there are still things we I think there are still things we need to work on. Baroness Walmsley referred to Professor DeFreitas work on the finances and how with big schools versus small schools, a lot of the money gets lost. It also happens with councils who are so cash strapped that they sometimes take some of the money. I think we're still living in a country where we have a postcode lottery on food, and that some schools do amazing jobs with limited resources and some schools really, really don't.

And I honestly think nobody can dispute the fact that the free school lunch or any school lunch is incredibly important to children. And yet we hear too often about schools that allow only 20 minutes for lunch, in which time you're meant to play, make a call, go to the toilet, have the lunch, whatever. So it's clearly going to be seen as a very secondary part of a school. And it's also secondary in that the the school catering departments at the moment, they get very little training.

And I wondered if the Minister was aware of a scheme in the department at the moment, which is being run by chefs in schools, plus a lot of philanthropic organisations to important to get kids eating the right stuff right from the beginning. So I absolutely support that. We need milk, but also children get fed there and these meals tend to fall outside of anything right now, as far as I can see. And I'd be very interested to know what the government is going to do.

to do.
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Baroness Smith of Malvern Portrait Baroness Smith of Malvern (Labour)
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My Lords, we turn to the amendments in Group three, which includes free school meals, the nursery milk scheme, the Healthy Start scheme and school food. My Lords, ensuring that every child has access to nutritious food and support is fundamental to their health, development and ability to learn. We know that good nutrition starts early and that simple measures, whether access to milk or balanced school meals, can make a lasting difference. So turning to government amendments 111 and 112.

Last year, the government announced that from September 2026, every child in a household receiving Universal Credit will be entitled to free school meals. This decisive action will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and save families around £500 per child each year. The two amendments that we're introducing today will enshrine this crucial commitment in law and ensure its successful delivery. A child is currently eligible for free school meals if they attend a state funded school in England.

Their household is in receipt of Universal Credit and the household's income is less than 7400. Government. Amendment 112 creates a new category of free school meals to be known as expanded free school meals, which would apply to that cohort of children in receipt of Universal Credit. But with a household income that is greater than 7400. This will ensure that free school lunches are provided on request to all pupils from households in receipt of Universal Credit, and that state funded schools in England will be under a duty to provide meals to those eligible children.

We will support over half a million more children in this way, providing the most disadvantaged children with a healthy lunch each school day will help secure their education and improve their future prospects. Turning now to Government Amendment 111, which will deliver the practical implementation of the free school meals expansion. The Department for education relies on the provisions of the Education Act, 2005 to process income and benefits data from other government departments, so it can check and confirm a child's eligibility for free school meals.

The scope of this power is, however, limited. This amendment will amend the 2005 act to enable the Department to identify whether a child is eligible under the current free school meals criteria, or under the expanded free school meals criteria, and then communicate this to local authorities, parents and schools so that they in turn may determine whether a child is also eligible for other education benefits and funding. This amendment would, for the first time, also allow parents and schools to check a child's eligibility for free school meals by giving them access to the eligibility checking system.

This is the digital portal currently used only by local authorities to verify if a child meets the eligibility criteria for free lunches, giving parents and schools access to it will simplify and accelerate eligibility checks. A further change would allow the Department for education to check eligibility for pupils who are granted free school meals, through government guidance or grant. By this I mean children with no recourse to public funds and children receiving education otherwise than at school, who do not meet free school meal eligibility criteria that is set out in legislation.

There is instead an expectation, set out in guidance, that local authorities should provide them with free school meals. This measure would simplify free school meal eligibility checks for these children, and remove administrative burdens on local authorities and schools. And finally, children whose parents are in receipt of asylum support under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 are eligible for free school meals. This amendment would make it clear that asylum support data is considered a function of Social Security, and may be shared by the Home Office with the Department for education and other public bodies to verify eligibility for free school meals and other education benefits and funding.

This is a minor technical change being made to remove potential ambiguity in the law. Access to healthy school meals can enhance behaviour, support concentration and raise attendance, all of which help provide children with the foundation they need to succeed. And I hope noble Lords are in support of these amendments, which will deliver free school meals to our most disadvantaged children. Turning now to amendment 113, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. Amendment 113 seeks to establish a school food improvement scheme.

I recognise the importance of these reforms and the work that the noble Baroness has done to elevate the profile of childhood nutrition. We agree that it is vital that the food children receive throughout the school day is tasty and nutritious. We are committed to raising the healthiest generation ever and are continuing our work to revise the school food standards. We are engaging experts across the sector and are developing our plans to consult on the changes later in the year and depending on the timing.

As the noble Lady says, I feel sure that my hon. Friend, the Minister Lord Bailey, would be more than keen to work with the all party parliamentary group as well. As the noble Lady says, it's also important that we ensure compliance with the both current and future standards. School governors and trustees do have a statutory duty to ensure compliance, holding school leaders to account for meeting the school food standards. Through our review, we will engage with the sector on a range of matters, including compliance, because we want to support governors to confidently work with school leaders to ensure the standards are met.

We did publish in November 2024, along with the National Governors Association, an online training programme on school food for governors. And through this we want through this training as it is rolled out, we want to improve understanding of the standards and give governing boards confidence to hold their school leaders to account on their whole school approach to food and we it. But, but, but if we need to go further on the compliance regime to ensure that standards are met, we will engage with the sector on that.

As part of our review. Speaking now to amendment 98, tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Baron, which seeks to extend the nursery milk scheme to include children provided with day-care by childminders registered with childminder agencies. I am and I have. I have slightly chided the noble Lady on this previously. I am very aware that, of course, significant female politicians in the noble Ladies Party previously have been responsible for exactly the opposite of providing additional milk to to our children.

The noble Lady is the anti-thatcher of the Conservative Party, and she deserves credit for turning around the record of her party and focusing on getting more milk for children rather than snatching it. So I do appreciate her concern about ensuring that children looked after by childminders are entitled to free milk through the nursery milk scheme, as she says. Currently only children looked after by a childminders registered with Ofsted are eligible, which excludes a small cohort. The government does agree with the noble Lady that this group should not be excluded, and intends to extend eligibility so that children receiving care from childminders registered with childminder agencies are also entitled to free nursery milk.

However, the amendment cites inaccurate powers, meaning it would not achieve its objective. It is a fair challenge that we make progress with doing this. I can tell noble Lords that the Department of Health and Social Care is committed to making this change as soon as practicable, and we will aim to make the change within six months. If parliamentary time allows. But she heard the the figure there, and I'm sure we'll and I'm sure we'll hold us to account for that.

Turning to the amendment 104, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, amendment 104 seeks to enshrine in law a scheme whereby those eligible for healthy start are automatically enrolled. The Government's Healthy Start scheme was introduced in 2006 to encourage a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies and young children under four from very low income households in December 2025. Because I do understand the concern to ensure that uptake is maximised here in December 2025, Healthy Start supported over 345,000 vulnerable people and the introduction of the prepaid card has actually helped to increase the numbers who are able to benefit from it.

Because, as the noble Lady says, beneficiaries receive a prepaid card for their Healthy Start payments. But as I say, I agree that we should do everything possible to ensure that as many eligible people as possible are accessing the scheme. The NHS Business Services Authority operates the Healthy Start Scheme on behalf of the Department of Health and the government. But, and it does make efforts to promote Healthy Start through its digital channels, and has also created free tools that can be used to help tools that can be used to help promote the scheme locally.

But it is the case that the application to Healthy Start requires an eligibility check, and more specifically in relation to the proposed amendment, the prepaid card is a financial product and other and under other legislation, it cannot be issued without the applicant accepting its terms and conditions. This means auto enrolment is not possible. The government has no current plans to amend related legislation about financial products, which is outside the scope of this bill. However, the scheme is kept under review and we remain open to considering viable routes to improving uptake.

With those remarks, I hope that I have addressed the concerns of the noble Lady and that she feels able to withdraw her amendment.

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noble Lady Baroness Fraser, may I just ask one small point of clarification from the Minister? I clarification from the Minister? I very much welcome the government amendments and congratulate the government on what it's doing on government on what it's doing on free school meals. This is all very welcome. But in introducing it, the Minister said that the additional cohort would get a free school meal cohort would get a free school meal on request. Now, does she mentioned how the government is going to make it easier for families to find out if they are eligible? That is clear.

But then can she say a little bit more about how they have to apply? Is it going to be as easy as

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possible? Can she say just a little more about that? Well. Absolutely it will be. And of course, by virtue of the fact that course, by virtue of the fact that it is now open to all those on Universal Credit, without the 7400 cut off, it is much clearer both to families and to those supporting families and to those supporting them and to schools who is eligible? Number one. And secondly, as I said, Number one. And secondly, as I said, with respect to the provisions that enable sharing of information and therefore eligibility checks, those will now also be open to parents themselves, not just through local authorities.
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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Conservative)
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I'd like to thank the Baroness, the Minister, for her encouragement. I'm not sure whether I wanted the accolade of being the Anti-thatcher accolade of being the Anti-thatcher milk donor, but anyway, I'll take whatever the noble Lady gives me. But I'm very encouraged by her commitment. I only managed to write down within six months. The next thing she said. Unfortunately, ink in my pen ran out so clearly. Parliamentary time will be available. I thought that the noble Lady made encouraging remarks in relation to both the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, as comments I feel like the noble Baroness might appreciate a few lines to expand on her final question, but with that I

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beg leave to withdraw my amendment. Is it your Lordship's pleasure? The amendment be withdrawn?

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The amendment be withdrawn? Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 99 Baroness Barran. I'm not sure if anybody can

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I'm not sure if anybody can remember Group one at this late remember Group one at this late hour, but I would like to test the opinion of the House. The the noble opinion of the House. The the noble Lady said legislators always turn to legislation as the answer. Well, there are quite a few things in this bill which don't need to be there, but I think this does need to be in legislation. She also said she felt that it would create a rigid model that couldn't evolve, and we worked very hard on the language of the amendment to, say, an evidence informed approach as opposed to evidence based, which I'm told means that it can evolve with the evidence.

So for those two reasons, and thinking about the desperate situation of women who have multiple children removed from

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their care, I'd like to test the opinion of the House. The question is that amendment

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The question is that amendment 99 be agreed, as many that opinion will say, content, content, content, will say, content, content, content, content. Content shall be decided by division. And in a moment I will tell you when voting is open, tell you when voting is open,

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OK. OK. All OK. All right. OK. All right. That's Go

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The The amendment The amendment 99 The amendment 99 be The amendment 99 be agreed The amendment 99 be agreed to The amendment 99 be agreed to as part of the opinion will say part of the opinion will say content, not content. The contents will go to the right by the throne. will go to the right by the throne. The not contents to the left by the bar.

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bar. That someone's going to break a

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That someone's going to break a HMCTS. HMCTS. Yeah. PQs PQs OK. PQs OK. Yes. Yeah, yeah. No. Yeah I Duke of I'm I'm just I'm just I'm. I'm just I'm. Together and work together. That's. No. No. Yes. No. Yes. Baroness No. Yes. Baroness Burt. No. Yes. Baroness Burt. No. No. No. No. And No. No. And they No. No. And they are.

to? to?

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Please. Lord Maude. No. Please. Lord Maude. No. It's. No No more.

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Ofsted. My Lords have voted content 53

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My Lords have voted content 53 not content 116 The not contents not content 116 The not contents have it. Amendment have it. Amendment 100 have it. Amendment 100 already debated, not moved. Amendment 101 already debated. Not moved. Amendment 102 Lord Mohammed of Tinsley.
22:38
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Portrait Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (Liberal Democrat)
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Thank you, my Lords. >> Thank you, my Lords. >> It is very late, so I will not go through the five pages of my go through the five pages of my speech. However, I just want to start by talking to both 102 and 103 that are in my name. The arguments have been well rehearsed previously. I do want to thank the Minister under the place, Josh McAllister, for actually meeting with some of us to go through the issues. The Minister there is very clear that the issue around, particularly the postcode lottery as such, in terms of the child in need reports that are often produced for children, in some areas it's as high as 70%.

And the research added in some areas it's 20. And the children's Commissioner actually found that some of the young people known to social care in some local authority areas, the lowest was 3%. And my Lords, as we've heard earlier in previous debates and your Lordships' House that that number cannot just be demographics. My suggestion and the Children's Commissioner suggestion has been, and we continue to maintain this, that we do need some national thresholds. Those thresholds should be at least there to allow ten.

So we don't have this, you know, big gap between depending on where a young person lives, the care they may get and the child in need report is quite crucial. I understand that the Minister in Other place is very sympathetic to the issue itself, but doesn't see that as a way forward. I'm hoping I can use my power of persuasion late into this evening and night to the Minister in front of me to say whether you will be willing to at least continue to talk and to see if we can find a way forward.

On the other amendment 102. My Lords, I will just briefly just refer to my notes, which is around establishing a child protection body, a body that would work to improve child protection practice, advise government and the sector, as well as conduct inspections. It is an important issue in addition to the one I raised earlier. I don't intend to speak any further, but I would welcome a response from the Minister in terms of given that we do agree that there is a problem, whether you would now be willing to at least look at whether we can at least reinvestigate the national thresholds or not.

So with that, I

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beg to move. Amendment proposed after clause

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Amendment proposed after clause 27, insert the following new clause

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as printed on the Marshalled List. My Lords, I too will be brief. I

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My Lords, I too will be brief. I was slightly surprised at the need for amendment 102. If I've for amendment 102. If I've understood correctly, the government has committed to establishing a child protection agency and is currently consulting on it. I absolutely understand if the noble Lord wants to raise this, because clearly implementation will be crucial if we're going to avoid blurring lines of accountability and creating a bureaucracy. But but it'll be interesting to hear what the noble Lady has to say on that.

We covered the issue of standards We covered the issue of standards for children in need thresholds at committee. On these benches. We retain the view that we need flexibility in the system so that practitioners can use their professional judgement to look at the overall situation of a child and keep it under review. But I absolutely accept that there are real problems at the what might, one might call the top end of section 17 with an extraordinary number of children who are suffering child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation still being classified as children in need rather than child protection.



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My Lords, rising to speak to the amendments of this last group this evening, they both refer to introducing new clauses referring to the establishment of the Child Protection Authority and consistent support for children in need. As we've heard, this group of amendments raises important issues about child safety, wellbeing and support. And I just want to absolutely assure the noble Lord the government is, as he did outline, completely committed to working in this area and specifically turning to amendment 102, tabled by the noble Lord Lord Mohammed, which seeks to impose a binding timetable for the establishment of the Child Protection Agency.

Just by way of background, establishing a Child protection Authority was one of the recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. In a statement to the House of Commons on the 8th of April 2025, the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls announced that the government will establish a child protection authority in England. As the noble Lady Baroness Barran alluded to, on the 11th of December 2025, we published a consultation on the Child Protection Authority which sets out the proposed roles, responsibilities and powers of the authority.

This will help make the child protection system clearer, more unified and ensure there is ongoing improvement through effective support for practitioners. The design and delivery of this authority requires consultation, including with child protection experts and victim supports, to ensure it has the right constitution and powers. Given this,
22:44
Baroness Blake of Leeds Portrait Baroness Blake of Leeds (Labour)
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we do not think it is prudent to agree an arbitrary timeline, but will be working to publish the government response in the summer of this year, following which we of this year, following which we will move to legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows. Turning parliamentary time allows. Turning to amendment 103, also tabled by the noble Lord Lord Mohammed Bam, aiming to reduce regional variations in the support that children in need receive. Again, we thank the noble Lord for his amendment, recognising the commitment within it to improving support for children.

I think we are all united in that aim across the House, but we do not feel that this proposal would actually achieve the that that aim. Section 17 of the Children's Act 1989 places a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of any child in need by providing appropriate support and services. It gives local authorities discretion to respond to local needs and account for available resources. This amendment, which calls for a prescriptive national criteria and automatic referrals, removes this flexibility and will ultimately narrow the cohort of children who would be eligible for support.

Our reforms to family help and multi-agency child protection, backed by 2.4 billion over the next three years, will reduce reliance on rigid thresholds and expand access to timely, targeted support for children and families. Exactly what we feel this amendment would restrict. Separately, in December 2023, the statutory guidance working together to safeguard children strengthened the the the whole proposals to make it explicit that local authorities and safeguarding partners should publish a threshold document for statutory services under section 17.

Ofsted inspects whether these local thresholds are set appropriately and the effectiveness of child in need support and services. Working together is clear that plans setting out support and services for children should be reviewed regularly against progress. I hope this will help address the noble Lords concerns. However, we do welcome the focus and particularly the opportunity to to speak to outline our plans in these areas. Having highlighted how we are addressing the issues raised, I hope the noble Lord feels able to

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withdraw his amendment. I want to thank the Minister for

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I want to thank the Minister for her response, and I don't intend to prolong proceedings any further. And I don't intend, and I'd like to

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And I don't intend, and I'd like to take leave to withdraw those amendments. OK. Is it your Lordships pleasure? The amendment be withdrawn? The amendment be withdrawn? Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 103 already debated, not Amendment 103 already debated, not moved. Member 104 already debated. Not moved 105. Withdrawn. Amendment 106 already debated, not moved.

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My Lords, I beg to move that further consideration on report. Do now adjourn.

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now adjourn. Question is that consideration on report? Be now adjourned, as

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on report? Be now adjourned, as many of that opinion will say. Content contrary, not content. The contents have it. My Lords, I beg to move that the

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My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn.
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