Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Chris Vince Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan]

The hon. Member is a tireless champion for children and young people, and he regularly writes to me even though education is a devolved matter. I will say a bit more later about the support available for children with special educational needs and disabilities. He will know that SEND is at a crisis point, and this Government are absolutely committed to reforming the system and are working at pace to do so.

New clause 20 introduces a duty for new corporate parents and local authorities in England to work collaboratively with each other when it is in the best interests of children in care and care leavers when undertaking these duties. That is to avoid siloed working or duplication of efforts, addressing the challenges that children in care and care leavers face holistically in the same way that parents do when supporting their children.

New clause 21 introduces a duty for relevant authorities to have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State. The guidance will set out how the duty relates to different corporate parents and how that will continue to contribute to outcomes we seek for children in care and care leavers. We will develop that guidance in partnership with the sector and with the relevant authorities listed in new schedule 1.

New clause 22 introduces a duty on the Secretary of State to report on their corporate parenting activity every three years, bringing accountability to the new duty and allowing us to monitor progress and the impact of implementation. New schedule 1 provides a power for the Secretary of State to amend the list of corporate parents by affirmative regulations. The purpose is clear: where children in care and care leavers can be further supported by the addition of new public duties as corporate parents, or where we need to make changes to existing ones, they need not wait for fresh primary legislation. We shall have the power to act swiftly and powerfully in their interests. I am sure that hon. and right hon. Members across the House share the Government’s ambition to drive a step change in the experiences and outcomes of some of the most vulnerable children and young people in society and that they will support these new clauses.

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

Although not explicitly mentioned in the document, young carers are obviously a group of young people who may be vulnerable and, having spoken to the Department for Education, parts of the Bill will support young carers better. Will the Minister touch on that?

[Stephen Morgan]

Supporting young carers is a key priority for this Government. My hon. Friend is a real champion on these issues, and I am very happy to work with him to ensure that the views of young carers are heard in this place.

The Government have tabled amendments to the information sharing and consistent identifier duties in clause 4. The wider picture is that children are too often failed by inadequate or patchy information sharing, which is not good enough. The Bill enables us to make the change that children need, and the amendments will ensure that we get that right from the outset.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

I want to concentrate today on our new clause 36, which would ban phones from our schools. The new clause would also write into law some of the content of the very good private Member’s Bill drafted by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), because this does not need to be a party political issue.

When I was on the Science and Technology Committee back in 2018, I got us to do a report on screen time, social media and children’s mental health. Back then, the evidence was already very concerning, but by now every alarm bell should be ringing. Over the last decade, there has been an explosion in mental health problems among young people all over the world, over the exact same period that smartphones and social media have become dominant in children’s lives. The growth in mental health problems is focused almost entirely on young people, not older people. Children now get smartphones at a very early age. As the Education Committee pointed out in a good report last year, one in five of the UK’s three and four-year-olds now has their own smartphone. By the end of primary school, four out of five kids have a smartphone.

There are many different ways in which smartphones and social media cause problems for children. They displace time in the real world with friends. US data, for example, shows that prior to 2012 children spent over two hours a day with friends, but that had halved by 2019. The proportion of children feeling lonely and isolated at school has exploded all over the developed world. But smartphones are not just a time sink; there is also the lack of sleep. Children are tired in school, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has increased massively and concentration is impaired. This is a feature, not a bug. Apps are designed to be addictive and drip feed users dopamine.

At a recent school meeting that I organised in my constituency, I heard from local doctors about how excessive screen time is damaging eyesight and giving young kids the kind of back problems that one might expect from someone in late middle age. Eight out of 10 children are exposed to violent porn before the age of 18, many at a really young age. The average age at which kids see porn is now 13. The shift to a smartphone-based childhood is also leading children to be exposed to graphic violence, sextortion and self-harm encouragement, and is doing terrible things to girls’ self-image. According to the Office for National Statistics, one in five children aged 10 to 15 says they have been bullied online, and 72% of that is happening during school time.

As well as being bad in their own right, these negative effects come together to damage education. Although a ban of phones in schools cannot fix everything, it is a vital first step and can make a big difference in itself. I spoke to one headteacher who said that when they went from a policy of phones not being out to a full, “start of the day to end of the day” ban, with phones being handed in, the number of detentions they had to hand out fell by 40%, and teacher recruitment and retention improved, too.

[Chris Vince]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way; he should take this as a constructive intervention. As a former teacher, I know some of the challenges of mobile phones—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), will remember when hers went off during my speech in a debate on financial education. Will the shadow Minister also consider those groups who may require a mobile phone—I have perhaps given him a hint as to what I was going to mention—in particular young carers, who obviously need contact with family and those cared for?

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Member has brilliantly anticipated a point I was going to make, and if he looks at the text of the amendment he will see it is carefully drafted exactly to allow carve-outs for those who need them, for example as health devices, so I hope he is reassured on that point.

Attempts by the tech industry to lobby, to muddy the water, to run interference and to sow confusion are unconvincing. The problems hitting our children all over the world are not just a coincidence; there is more and more evidence for a causal link. For example, Sapien Labs asked questions about adults’ mental health and combined them into a mental health quotient score. They asked the same people when they first got a smartphone and the results were stark: the earlier someone gets a phone, the worse their mental health, particularly for girls. As with smoking, a powerful social gradient is also developing with smartphones and social media. That is going to widen gaps in school achievement unless something decisive is done.

Sadly, many people still do not know about the risks from smartphones but a growing number of parents do know and are worried about the problems with smartphones and social media, but we face a collective action problem: we worry that our kids will miss out if they are the only ones without them, and that is the problem that needs solving and Government need to be part of that. Across this country there has been an explosion of parent-powered campaign groups aiming to fight back including Smartphone Free Childhood, Safe Screens, Delay Smartphones and the new “Rage Against the Screen” campaign. Over the last year they have gained hundreds of thousands of members and together with the shadow Secretary of State and the Leader of the Opposition we met some of them this morning and I pay tribute to them for their work.