Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley]

Leave out from “disagreement,” to end and insert “do disagree with the Commons in their Amendments 38J to 38P, and do propose Amendments 38Q to 38U in lieu—

38Q: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—
“Protection of children from harmful social media services and features
(1) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, by regulations made by statutory instrument, make provision for the purpose of protecting the wellbeing of children in relation to regulated user-to-user services likely to be accessed by children in the United Kingdom.
(2) Regulations under this section must, in particular, make provision requiring providers of such services—
(a) to assess and specify a minimum age of access for the service, or for specified features or functionalities of the service, as part of a children’s risk assessment carried out in accordance with provisions of the Online Safety Act 2023, with the expected minimum age of access for social networking services being 16 years;
(b) to use highly-effective age assurance measures to prevent access by children below the applicable minimum age;
(c) where a user is identified as being under the age of 16, to apply proportionate measures designed to—
(i) limit the supply of addictive design features and design features that are inappropriate for children, and
(ii) prevent access to content that is harmful to children;
(d) to display to users under the age of 16 clear, accessible and age-appropriate health and wellbeing warnings about the risks associated with prolonged or excessive use of the service;
(e) to keep under review the impact of the service’s design, functionalities, algorithms and business practices on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of children.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2)(c), “addictive design features and design features that are inappropriate for children” include, in particular—
(a) infinite scrolling content feeds,
(b) auto-play of sequential video or audio content,
(c) algorithmic recommendation systems designed to maximise continuous user engagement,
(d) sycophantic or manipulative features, or features that are likely to make a child understand the technology as human,
(e) push notifications and alerts, including at night and during the school day,
(f) the demand for unnecessary data in exchange for services.
(4) Regulations under this section must require OFCOM to publish guidance about—
(a) the criteria for determining an appropriate minimum age of access;
(b) the evidential requirements for children’s risk assessments relating to minimum age determinations;
(c) the identification and regulation of addictive design features in relation to children; and
(d) the form and content of health and wellbeing warnings.
(5) In making regulations under this section the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom,
(b) OFCOM,
(c) the Information Commissioner, and
(d) such other persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(6) Regulations under this section shall be treated as imposing enforceable requirements for the purposes of Part 7 of the Online Safety Act 2023.
(7) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(8) In this section—
“child” means a person under the age of 16;
“content that is harmful to children” has the same meaning as in the Online Safety Act 2023;
“regulated user-to-user service” has the same meaning as in that Act; “social networking service” means an online service that—
(a) allows users to create profiles and interact publicly or privately with other users, and
(b) facilitates the sharing of user-generated content, including text, images or videos, with a wider audience.”

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38U: Title, line 9, after “schools;” insert “about protecting children from harmful social media services and features; about the age of consent in relation to processing of a child’s personal data in relation to social networking services;””

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I personally welcome the noble Baroness back to her place after a short period of illness and thank her for taking the time last week to engage with us to better understand where we are coming from and give us the opportunity to understand where she is coming from. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, for her engagement over the Easter period. Both engagements have been very helpful for us.

My reason for tabling this group of amendments is that we have some concerns around the Henry VIII powers that the Government are seeking. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, may not hold as strong a view as I do on the Henry VIII powers, but noble Lords across this House have issues whenever a Government want to take on lots of powers, and I note that the noble Lord proposes a sunset clause. I have concerns about how the Government intend to make changes once the consultation happens. My view is always that, if these are powers that are required for a set period, so be it; however, I still have concerns around what may happen in future if another Government come in and want to use them. I am sympathetic to what the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has proposed but, through my amendments, we hope that the Government may take the opportunity to support our quest and bring in their own primary legislation.

There is also the issue of whether we have a ban or regulate addictive features. We have always been clear in the amendments we have proposed previously that we did not favour an outright ban for under-16s, but wanted an age rating so that the duty fell upon the social media providers to deal with those features that young people get addicted to, such as constantly scrolling and so on. That is where we stand, and I am sure many Members of your Lordships’ House, if they were able to vote on our amendment, might well be there as well. That is what we need, rather than an outright ban.

I get that your Lordships’ House has previously voted for the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to make sure that this issue stays live. It will be interesting to see what happens later today when some of those amendments will no doubt be proposed.

Secondly, as the Minister mentioned, we have issues around the collection of data and GDPR, particularly around the age of consent. Currently it is 13 and we want it to be 16. I hope the Government address that.

On enforcement and additional harms, while empowering Ofcom on the issue of guidance on addictive features, it will also introduce specific requirements for platforms used to access services to mitigate the risks of them being used to create and distribute child sexual abuse materials. This includes mandating human moderators and co-operating for law enforcement. In all our efforts, we have tried to do the best for our young people. We have tried to help and assist the Government and nudge them in the right direction, and that is what we will endeavour to do today.

Ultimately, from speaking to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and others in your Lordships’ House, I do not think we are too far away from where we should be. It is just a matter of the speed and pace of implementation. I note that the Government keep saying, “It will come out after our consultation”, but we have been debating this since last year. I will put on record again—I have said it in meetings before—that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, was the first to have flagged this, to his credit. To be honest, I do not care which political party someone belongs to if they are here to safeguard our young people: credit where credit is due. We have tried to work across parties, with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and with the Cross Benches to ensure that we get to where we are.

I will briefly move to smartphones in schools, rather than mobile phones, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, because we have always been clear that it is with smartphones that we have a problem. At the meetings that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and others have been to, parents and head teachers have said that the issue of concern is with smartphones, social media, WhatsApp groups and others.

We have noted some parents’ concerns around being able to access or get in touch with their children and young people, particularly in rural areas. That is why we often talk about being able to have the more old-fashioned phones that many of us had 20 years ago, which basically allowed you to make phone calls and not much else. Therefore, we have been clear that it is smartphones that are the issue for us.

I know that my noble friend Lord Addington was very clear about supporting what he often refers to as the “devices” that enable people who need extra support in school and how to deal with that, but that issue clearly fell in your Lordships’ House when we tried to propose it. I take reassurance from the Minister’s commitment about enhancing that guidance, because head teachers have been looking for that. They have been saying that there is a small but very vocal group of parents who, whenever we bring in a policy like this, stop them managing those schools and supporting the teaching of young people, as they constantly have to fend off those parents.

In that sense, the Government are heading in the right direction. They might not be quite where some of us want them to be, but I thank the Minister for that and look forward to hearing other contributions from your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister back to her place, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, for his remarks. I will speak to my Motion A2. For anyone who has studied them, the verdicts in the two US cases are clearly game-changers. The evidence from the social media companies themselves is damning. I have a treasure-trove of these documents, if any noble Lord would like them.

Immediately following these cases, the Prime Minister made some very strong statements about protecting children from the harm of social media, and the right honourable Liz Kendall spoke only yesterday about the importance of highly effective age verification to ensure that children cannot access the harmful features of social media. This is exactly what my proposal does. I listened very carefully to what she said yesterday and, if you can get a fag paper between us, it is a pretty thin one indeed—so I have decided to take the Prime Minister at his word and, instead of batting my amendment back again, to lay an amendment to the Government’s amendments to the effect that they must, rather than just may, raise the age for access to those harmful social media sites to 16 within 12 months. Those sites would be chosen very selectively and, I am sure, would be very few in number—definitely not an outright or blanket ban—and this would be stated in the Bill. I have also proposed in the amendment a sunset clause of two years on the Henry VIII element of the powers that the Government are proposing to take.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Yes, I will undertake to do that. I think it is interesting that that type of question is exactly the reason why the use of what will become statutory guidance is a more appropriate way of dealing with the nuances of this issue than the type of legislative ban on the face of the Bill that some people are arguing for. Because of that flexibility, I will undertake to do that.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her comments and response to the points raised. I thank all noble Lords, in particular my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, for setting out clearly, alongside myself, our position on social media. I welcome the comments on having better clarity on the smartphones issue. I am not minded to test the opinion of the House on this occasion.

Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A) withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendment 41D in lieu of Amendment 41B—

41D: Clause 29, page 50, line 21, at end insert—
“551ZB School uniforms: review of limits on branded items
(1) The Secretary of State must review the effectiveness of measures intended to limit the cost to parents of branded items of school uniform required by the appropriate authority of a relevant school in England for use during a school year.
(2) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the coming into force of section 551ZA, lay the review under subsection (1) before Parliament.””

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the time she gave last week. It enabled me to better understand where she and the Government are coming from and gave me the opportunity to highlight why I think school uniforms and their cost are important, hence my amendment. As your Lordships may recall, I benefited from a policy that David Blunkett—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett—brought in. When my father lost his job in the steel industry in Sheffield, I was on free school meals. We were able to go to the local education authority and get some clothing for school. That lived experience is driving me to try to do the best for young people in Sheffield and across the country.

I absolutely do not doubt that the Government want to reduce the cost of school uniforms. Their measure is to reduce the number of items required, while mine asked for a cap on the cost. As noble Lords may have seen from the amendments we have now tabled, I have stopped asking for that, but I am saying to the Government that, at some point, 12 months from implementation, when they have that review, I hope they will be willing to at least re-look at the possibilities of a cap.

More important for me, going back to that lived experience, I want to keep pushing the Government to say how they will provide help and support. They are going to limit the cost of school uniforms by potentially limiting the numbers, but there is still a cost involved. I want the Government, as and when they can—once the economy picks up, I hope—to support every child who is on free school meals. I hope the Minister can comment on that when she gets up to respond.

On the amendments on the PAN, I will read out information I got this morning from the Confederation of School Trusts. It said: “We are grateful to the Government for the work they have done to bring forward this amendment, which goes some way towards addressing our concerns about the potential impact of this policy on the quality of educational provision in the area. We think the amendments need to go further. Specifically, we believe that schools adjudicators should be under a legal duty to consider”—and this is in bold—“other ways of achieving effective and efficient provision in the area if the local authority is seeking to reduce the PAN for high-performing schools. In order to make a good decision, the school adjudicator should therefore be required in law to consult the relevant DfE regional directors”.

Therefore, we still have concerns, given that the CST has been in touch with us and our colleagues down the Corridor to ask the Government to go further. I hope that, when the Minister gets up, she can give us the confidence that the CST wants.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I acknowledge the work of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, in relation to school uniform and the focus that he has brought to this in the later stages of the Bill.

I will speak to my Motion C1. I recognise that the Government have moved on prioritising quality and parental preference—and it sounds as though they are going to move a bit further, if I followed what the Minister just said. However, we do not believe that the amendment as drafted resolves the issue at the heart of this. On this side of the House, we of course recognise the pressure on schools and local authorities from falling rolls in certain parts of the country. Our concern is that there is a fundamental conflict of interest for local authorities. The easiest thing for them to do is cut the published admission numbers of the larger and more popular schools, particularly if those schools are academies, as a way of addressing that problem.

The Minister described my amendment as a blanket exemption. There are an awful lot of blankets in the Chamber this afternoon, and I do not see how one could interpret it as such. My amendment covers both academies and maintained schools, and its starting point is that consideration must be given to effective and efficient provision in an area. I am not entirely clear why that is a blanket exemption. It would require the school adjudicator to consider the shape of local provision and to explicitly consider mergers and closures.

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As I reiterated in my opening comments, collectively, this will ensure that reducing places is only ever a last resort and will be done only to deliver a choice of good local school places for communities and, in some cases, to protect good schools in the light of the demographic challenges with which we are currently grappling and which will only become more severe in the coming years. We will continue to engage with stakeholders on this, but I hope that noble Lords are reassured about our commitment to quality and parental preference and to safeguarding those things at a time of change and challenge, given the demographic position.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her response to the issue of the cost of school uniforms in particular. I am partly reassured by her commitment. I wish her and her Government well in trying to help with dealing with the cost of school uniforms. She can rest assured that it is not a topic that I will let go of in the next 12 months. I will be constantly snapping at her heels to make sure that the commitments she has given from the Dispatch Box are fulfilled. With that, I am not minded to test the opinion of the House.

Motion B1 (as an amendment to Motion B) withdrawn.