Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, once upon a time, in a previous moral panic about children’s safety, parents reacted to the media and politicians catastrophising by stopping their offspring playing outside unsupervised. The unintended consequence was the creation of what became known as cotton wool kids, prone to risk aversion, anxiety, lack of resilience and social isolation. Ironically, to compensate, many of those children were forced to cultivate their activities online. Their social interactions became virtual, and here we are.

I worry that we risk similar unintended consequences now if we rush to pass a social media ban for under-16s, so I will be opposing Amendment 94A. I know it has become normalised that, whatever social, cultural or moral panics we encounter, we believe that we can legislate to make them go away. I fear that this sort of lawmaking can lead to avoiding tackling difficult problems and to attempts at quick-fix solutions that too often create a whole new raft of difficulties down the line.

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

I worry about attempts to push this through too quickly or to fast-track it. It is interesting that the three-week fast-track consultation put forward in the other place has been discussed as though it is holding things back. The leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, calls it more “dither and delay”. But this proposal is new; it has only just arrived here on Report as an amendment that would fundamentally change every citizen’s relationship with social media, not just children’s. I worry about attempts at steamrolling it through, with an assumption that everyone agrees that it is so obvious and inevitable that there is no point opposing it. I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, for an attempt at proportionality, even though I do not think it goes far enough.

We are hectored that this is what parents want. There has not been a referendum of parents, though there are polls. Many parents are pulling their hair out and will be tempted by it—it is so much easier to say, “You can’t because it’s against the law”, than it is to assert adult authority. Teenagers’ and children’s pester power can be the bane of all our lives. If only the law could be extended to ban other things and make them illegal—no, you cannot wear that hoodie; no, you cannot spend hours gaming; no, you cannot go to that sleepover; no, you cannot gorge on junk food; no, you cannot go to that party. In truth, this approach encourages parents to outsource their authority and shifts responsibility from parents to the state. All families ultimately are being told that they are incapable of managing their children's habits, and that is a dangerous precedent. It can disarm parents in the name of empowerment. Is there really a consensus among parents on this? Many of my friends are split down the middle, so I do not think we can claim the evidence is in.

What about the incontrovertible scientific evidence that backs a ban? The jury is out. The causal relationship between social media and mental well-being in teens and young people is much more contested than has been implied. Recent extensive research by academics at Manchester University found no evidence that social media has increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression. The chair of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group, Professor Louis Appleby, points out that the evidence is, at best, circumstantial, noting that self-harming in the young began well before social media took hold in that age group. That reflects what I know from my own work in relation to mental ill-health and young people; I do not think it can totally be blamed on social media.

An Oxford University study of nearly 12,000 children showed no correlation between screen time, including social media, and mental health. Instead, the way in which children engage with social media is what determines its impact and—shock horror—in many instances, evidence shows the positive impact of social media use. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said that no more research is needed. That is anti-scientific and complacent, and I do not think it is true.

Let us be clear about what this amendment as drafted would do in relation to user services. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out the dangers to, for example, WhatsApp, websites such as Wikipedia and so on. That needs clarifying at the very least.

Despite histrionic headlines, social media can be used for self-educational ends. There is a new generation of autodidacts who are teaching themselves coding, video producing, editing and even musical instruments, languages and chess. I know that sounds rose-tinted and a bit glib, but social media often is a tool for connections—finding your tribe, making new friends—and a place where you can cultivate solidarity and autonomy as a young person. It can be a counter to the social trend towards fragmentation.

What about allowing the young to explore diverse political perspectives? On the eve of 16 year-olds being given the vote, surely it is important, if not essential, that we do not narrowly restrict soon-to-vote teens to state-sanctioned media channels. We want them to broaden their horizons, and explore and develop a democratic curiosity about the world, and they are going to do that online. When talking to school pupils, as I do often, I recommend that they find out about their peers around the world as part of them learning about international relations. What civic lessons might British children learn by looking at those brave protesters in Iran whose commitment to freedom has given them the courage to take on a theocratic Islamic regime and whose stories we know because they used social media to organise and to connect with each other and the rest of the world? That was, of course, before the ayatollah shut down the internet—oh, the irony.

As for safety and whether this ban will throw children off a cliff edge, it risks not equipping youth with the skills to safely and responsibly navigate the online world, knowing how to identify problems, spot dodgy red flags and apply strategies to deal with them. As the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, pointed out, in all likelihood, many pre-16 year-olds will find ways of migrating to even riskier unregulated platforms or the dark web without guardrails and zero moderation. Our teenagers and children are clever and, dare I say it, devious. They will find a way. They will use VPNs—but it is okay, because noble Lords are going to ban those too. I hear that there is already a roaring trade in fake IDs among pre-teens.

Finally, how will over 16 year-old adults be affected by this ban? Whereas the Online Safety Act age-gated only certain types of harmful content, Amendment 94A would age-gate entire platforms, even when the content is child-friendly or harmless. According to Big Brother Watch, a 70 year-old accessing the neighbourhood news, a 50 year-old looking up the history of golf on Wikipedia, a 30 year-old small business owner responding to customers on Instagram and a 17 year-old wanting to message parents on the way home from school would all require age-verification measures. That is the threat to adult civil liberties and the right to privacy and, in effect, it means that we will have to digitally verify to participate in the public square. I do not necessarily think that young people will gain from this, despite the hyperbole.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I remind the House that we are on Report, and I think some of the contributions are in danger of erring on the wrong side of self-regulation. We should stick to the point; I will be very brief and simply try to explain for the benefit of the Government Front Bench, because in various Bills going through Parliament in the last month or so, this subject has raised itself in various forms. I sometimes notice the Front Bench being slightly amazed at what is coming at them from all sides and not necessarily understanding why. That is largely because they were not in your Lordships’ House at the time we went through the lengthy discussions about the Online Safety Act. What they are hearing today is a collective howl of rage and frustration across the House because what we thought we were very clear was meant to happen has not happened. I will give one or two facts which back up the view of my noble friend Lady Kidron that, whatever we do, we have to gather together—the right reverend Prelate made a very good point—and collectively send a message to the other place that this situation is simply not good enough.

Today, within the last 10 hours, a court case has been going on in California against Snap, Meta and TikTok where a group of parents are accusing those organisations of creating products which are addictive. It so happens that in the last 24 hours, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has settled with the complainants. That is because, I suspect, if they had not settled, the chief executive of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, would shortly have had to appear in person in the court to answer the case against his company. He chose not to do so. Mr Zuckerberg is apparently also in the queue to give evidence at this trial, and it will be interesting to see whether his company takes the same route.

Yesterday, along with many other colleagues, I was part of a session of Learn with the Lords in the Education Centre. I took the opportunity to talk to the young people, most of whom were 14 and 15, about what they thought of a social media ban, which all of them were aware of—probably through social media. Almost without exception, they said they were against it and gave the sort of reasons one would expect, such as “That’s where we get our news from”, and so on. The teachers were completely and utterly in favour of a ban. We can take from that what we will, but I suspect the fact that they see day in and day out in the schoolroom the effect on the pupils they are trying to help, to develop and to manage—and to mitigate, in some cases, difficult behaviours—means that are completely united that this is unsustainable.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, mentioned that in Australia they have a different regulator, an e-safety commissioner. Comparing the e-safety commissioner in Australia with what we have in Ofcom is a bit like comparing “Crocodile Dundee” with “Dixon of Dock Green”. The difference is that stark.

Last week in the Peers’ Lobby, I met one of the bereaved parents whose child has died as a result of exposure to social media. I told that bereaved parent that a group of us were going to meet the chief executive of Ofcom within the next couple of weeks. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Simon, would you give the chief executive a message from me?”. I said, “Yes, of course”. He said—and you will excuse my Anglo-Saxon—“Would you kick her up the arse?”.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is repeating, to some extent, some of the perfectly sensible points that she made in the debate earlier in the year. I just point out that, in Committee, these are probing amendments: no more, no less. It is accepted from the get-go that they could be improved, and what I think would be helpful for the Committee is not a long list of the things that are wrong with the amendment—we accept that there may be some things that are wrong with it—but some suggestions, if the noble Baroness is unhappy with the wording, as to what might be put in its place if, as I think is the case, she acknowledges that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

That is a fair comment. The point that I was going on to make was that she was suspended for misgendering using a gender-inclusive policy similar to that advocated in this amendment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

What would the noble Baroness use instead?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I suggested then that I was not happy with the wording of an amendment, and it has simply been repeated. I made a speech that I thought was reasonable at the time. This is actually not the same speech, but I am raising some of the issues. I ask, as I asked earlier, why would we use that approach to protecting women and girls when women in the workplace are at present actually the victims of some of these gender-related policies? Therefore, if the amendment comes back as a more straightforward, narrowly defined amendment about sexual harassment at work, I would be much more interested in hearing about it. It is the amendment that is repeated, not just my speech. It is exactly the same wording that I objected to before. No account has been taken of any of the criticisms made in Committee, at the probing stage, so I think I can reasonably say that I would like us all to not repeat ourselves, including with this amendment.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Committee stage
Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, I absolutely congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, on her excellently motivated amendment. It is very thought provoking. In particular, this sentence caught my attention:

“The victim may have been criminally exploited even if the activity appears consensual”.


That is one of the most difficult challenges. For some years I have been involved in the grooming gangs scandal, and one of the most horrible parts of that was when the police took the decision that the young 14 or 15 year-old, precocious though she—a general “she”—may have been, was somehow actively consenting to her own rape or sexual exploitation. It was about the notion of this being a child, because the young girl may have looked more adult—it was literally as superficial as that—and about the type, if we are honest, in class terms. Therefore, it was said that she could not be a victim and she was accused of being a prostitute, and so on. We are familiar with that. That is the reason why that sentence stood out to me.

However, I have some qualms, and I want to ask genuinely what we do about those qualms, because I do not know where to go. I am slightly worried, because county lines gangs, as the noble Baroness will know, are a young men’s game. Some of the gang leaders are younger than one would ever want to imagine in your worst nightmare. That is a problem with this, in a way, and with how you work it out. If you have a general rule that this is always a child, how do you deal with the culpability and responsibility of a 17 year-old thug, not to put too fine a point on it, who is exploiting younger people or even his—and it is generally “his”—peers? I am not sure how to square that with what I have just said. It also seems that there is a major clash with the age of criminal responsibility. I am very sympathetic with that not being 10, but how do you deal with the belief that someone aged under 18 is a child, yet we say that a child has criminal responsibility? Perhaps I am just misunderstanding something.

My final reservation is that if we say that everybody under 18 has to be a victim all the time, would that be a legal loophole that would get people off when there was some guilt for them to be held to account for? I generally support this amendment, but I want some clarification on how to muddle my way through those moral thickets, if possible.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Baroness on how she moved the amendment. It is very nice to see a Government Back-Bencher introducing an amendment and taking part; I wish we had slightly more of it.

To bring one back to Professor Jay’s review of child criminal exploitation, she made several important recommendations, of which the first and arguably most important is at the heart of what we are talking about at the moment. She called for a single, cohesive legal code for children exploited into criminal activity, and detailed what that needed to contain. The noble Baroness’s amendment goes to the heart of that matter. Having well-meaning explanations put into advice or regulation is not enough. There needs not only to be a common understanding across all government departments and agencies involved in dealing with these children and gangs; it needs to be completely clear for the police in particular, who are clearly looking into the criminal activity, exactly what it is and what it is not.

With the next amendment, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and I shall speak, we will talk about ways in which a child who is both a victim and perpetrator can be defended—but we will discuss that in the next group. As for this group, I think that I probably speak for all noble Lords who are concerned about this issue in saying that absolute clarity about the definition, so there is no argument about it whatever, would be a giant step forward. The best-meaning attempts to deal with child criminal exploitation over the past decade have been hindered severely by the lack of consistency.

I ask the Government to listen very carefully to what the noble Baroness has asked for. She has said clearly that her wording may not be perfect—I think that in many Bills the wording is not necessarily perfect, even in the final Act—but we have a chance to get this right. I look forward to what the Minister says in response.