Online Harm: Child Protection
Debate between Chris Vince and Gareth Snell(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I will constrain my comments to three themes, and I want to start with policy. This has been a very interesting and wide-ranging debate. We have heard from many speakers across the House who have articulated the heartfelt and thoughtful concerns that all of us have about the pervasive way in which social media can influence our children, our friends, our families and young people in our society. I am the parent of a 15-year-old. I know what that battle is like—hearing the chirp of Snapchat going off every few seconds, it sounds like, some weekends, as my daughter and her friends communicate in the modern way, and trying to understand what she is doing on Roblox, the games she is playing, who she might be interacting with and the other platforms that, frankly, are alien to me, as someone who is past the age when that stuff makes much sense or is of interest.
The simple answer is to say, “We should ban it all—just lock them all away until they’re 16, and it will all be fine.” I worry about my daughter walking down the street—I worry about who she is going to meet when she is walking to school and her interactions in the physical world—but simply saying, “Right, you’re staying in your bedroom until you’re 35”, which we discuss on occasion, is not a solution to those real-world problems. Part of it is about how we help young people to understand the misinformation and disinformation that they are coming across, and it is also about the way in which we regulate the content that platforms share.
The part that has been missed today, in the many wonderful contributions from Members across the House, is that this is about not just the platforms that share the content but the creators who make that content in the first place—the people who go online to sow the seeds of hate and division: the homophobic content, the Islamophobic content, the antisemitic content that all too often is passed off as criticism of the Israeli Government, and the many far-right commentators in this country who put out toxic masculine culture commentary as though it is a reasoned point of debate. I understand what Conservative Members say about free speech, but we have always been a country and a society where it is not consequence-free speech—there are consequences to the things we say and the actions we take, and that is how we come to understand what the social norms are. We seem to have abdicated our responsibility for that in the online world.
I turn to my second point. The 15-year-old I mentioned in an intervention earlier was, in fact, my daughter, who has now given me permission to out her in that sense. The facilities that I enjoyed when I was in my teens simply do not exist any more. My daughter’s world is as much her online friends and sphere of activity as it is the physical world in which we live. Disconnecting people from that because we think it is unsafe does a disservice to them. I am also slightly worried about the impact of the fact that we are soon to legislate, I understand and hope, on giving 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote—a policy that I think will mainly get cross-party support.
I like to think that the political literature that I push through letterboxes in my constituency is of such compelling interest that every young person will snatch it from the letterbox, read it and think, “That is why I am going to vote for Gareth at the next election.” I am sure that the Liberal Democrats’ Focus leaflets have the same impact on young people in their constituencies. The reality is, however, that young people do not read the direct mail that we send out. They do not read our leaflets, or at least not as much as they should. Many young people derive their information, news and views from social media. If we say, “You know what? We are going to cut it off”, where will we force those young people to go?
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I have not mentioned Harlow yet today, so I feel that I should. When I spoke to some young people at Mark Hall Academy in my constituency of Harlow—there we are, I have done it—about the potential social media ban, I was interested to hear what they had to say. They said, “We don’t care about Facebook”—because only old people like us use Facebook—but they did not want us to ban platforms like WhatsApp, which I had not thought of as being social media, although I suppose it is. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important for young people’s voices to be heard during the Government’s consultation, so that we can understand their views on this issue?
Gareth Snell
Absolutely. I understand that my hon. Friend was a teacher in a previous career.
When I think of social media, I think of my Twitter account, which has been dormant for years; my Facebook account, which I use for the clips that all of us in this place are obliged to put out and then deal with the comments beneath them; and my WhatsApp, which it seems that every political party has to run with, because without it we would all stop talking to each other. My daughter would think of her Snapchat account. I too now have a Snapchat account with just one friend—her—and we use that to communicate when I am here and she is at home. It means that I get voice notes and little videos from her, and it is how we keep our weekend conversations going during the week.
We must ask ourselves where we draw the line. Members have mentioned access to YouTube. My daughter will freely use YouTube to help her with her homework. She goes to an all-iPad school, so much of the homework is set on iPads. Apparently the subject of screentime will form part of the consultation, and that should be genuinely considered. Will young people be told, “You cannot use your phone—it is the worst possible thing to have—but here is an iPad to look at for six hours a day, and if you get stuck on question 6, go to YouTube video 4 and follow the methodology”? On one hand we are sending one message, and on the other is something that is inconsistent with that approach. Let us be honest: the first job that all the children and young people we are talking about will have is going to be based on the use of some form of AI assistance, such as Copilot, and will depend almost entirely on the use of technology. We are going to have to think about how we integrate that sort of future-proofing into whatever regulation we produce.
My final point is about procedure. I am very sorry to return to that subject, because this has been an excellent debate. I went to the Public Bill Office—there is no Bill that is referenced in the motion. It is completely blank. I understand that the Liberal Democrats intend, if the motion is passed, to engage in a consensus-based process of writing a Bill in the next two weeks that we can debate and pass in one day. It is clear from what we have heard today—from the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), who spoke so eloquently about the perils of eating disorders, from the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), who talked about the ability to sell drugs online, and from those on the Government Benches, including my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), who talked about the way in which young people interact—that, as I said earlier, this will be a complex piece of legislation.
The idea that we can complete a Second Reading debate in two hours and the full Committee and Third Reading stages in two hours, on a single day, which will include the discussion of amendments, is simply impractical. I genuinely hope that the content of today’s debate will lead to better legislation, as part of the national consultation that the Ministers are leading, but I think that doing this in such a truncated way, through a single motion and on a single day, will lead to bad legislation.
Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
Debate between Chris Vince and Gareth Snell(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to speak in this Opposition day debate. I would say that it is the first time I have spoken in a while, but I did so about two hours ago. [Interruption.] I am already getting heckled.
I thank both my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the shadow Chancellor for their different but equally engaging styles of beginning a debate. I was a little disappointed the shadow Chancellor did not give me any Shakespeare quotes, but he did refer to Dickens at the end.
Gareth Snell
On Dickens, whom the shadow Chancellor mentioned, Mr Bumble, a minor parish official, was described as having
“a great idea of his oratorical powers and his importance”.
Does that suggest to my hon. Friend anyone in the Chamber?
Chris Vince
I thank my hon. Friend, but I must disagree with him, because my next point was to say, in all sincerity, that I am a little bit disappointed with the Opposition motion, which I feel is particularly targeted at an individual. I recognise that the motion is about the Chancellor’s position and does not name her, so there is an attempt to talk about the role that she holds, rather than the individual. However, I just do not like the way that the motion singles out a particular person. I think it could have been worded in a way that made it more about the Budget process—but that is my view. I say that because I feel very strongly about the importance of political debate, but as I hope the Opposition have seen, I always try to avoid political attacks on individuals, and to be honest, the motion makes me feel uneasy.