Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Kit Malthouse

2nd reading
Friday 7th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I would be willing to accept the hon. Gentleman’s encouragement if this were advice to schools, but it is not; it is advice to parents and carers. If there were going to be authoritative advice for schools, as well as other organisations that have charge of children—scout troops, children’s clubs, and other publicly funded organisations that look after children—I would have said, “Possibly,” even though there is to be a 12-month delay before the CMO tells us stuff we already know, as the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington pointed out.

The second step is for the Government to publish a plan for research within 12 months. That is not the conclusion of research, and there is no time limit—just a plan, a vague aspiration that we should have a plan, with no commencement, no sense of budget and no idea of when it might come. I am sorry to say that the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington has been sold a cosmetic pup.

The third and final point is that the Government have to publish this “assessment”—whatever that may be—which, as far as I can see, is fundamentally to tell us something we already know, and which the hon. Gentleman has illustrated extremely vividly. We should all be furious about the delay and prevarication that is being injected into what could have been a huge step forward for parents and children.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am one of the people who is very angry about this, and my right hon. Friend is a co-sponsor of this Bill, so his disappointment must be even greater. However, does he agree that one way forward would be for this Bill, with its present inadequate drafting, to get its Second Reading and go into Committee? The people’s representatives in Committee would then be able to restore the Bill into something closer to what they expected.

[Kit Malthouse]

I was going to come on to that later, but my hon. Friend is completely right.