Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Bailey]

I apologise, but I am going to make some progress.

I turn to Lords amendment 106, which deals with phones in schools. The amendment is unnecessary, as this Government are already crystal clear that mobile phones have no place in schools at any point during the school day. We have strengthened the weak guidance provided by the Conservative party to make it absolutely clear that schools should be mobile-free environments by default. We have written to every headteacher in the country to tell them that phones should not be in their schools. We have asked Ofsted to ensure that phone bans are properly enforced, and we have rolled out targeted support, through our attendance and behaviour hubs, for every school that is struggling to make that ban a reality. The Conservative party seems to be deliberately ignoring those facts. Of course, if the consultation tells me that making the guidance statutory will make a difference, we will do it—our amendment in lieu makes that possible—but my honest opinion is that the issue is not whether or not the ban is on the statute book. Rather, the problem is with the clarity of the guidance, and the quality and enforcement of policies, and we have already acted to fix all three.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Will the Minister confirm for the record that the ban on mobile phones in schools will not extend to alternative and augmentative communication devices? Laura in Taunton has put those devices to use for her son. That has transformed his life; it provides an autistic child with an alternative means of communication in school. I hope the Minister will join me in congratulating Laura on her work.

[Olivia Bailey]

I do congratulate the hon. Member’s constituent on her work, and can confirm that there is provision in the guidance—which he can show her—for schools to make exceptions for such exceptional cases.

I turn to amendments dealing with school uniforms and admissions. On Lords amendment 41B, I welcome their lordships’ support for tackling school uniform costs. However, the amendment is unnecessary, and risks creating uncertainty for schools and parents about the Government’s intent and the direction of policy at a time when they will be implementing the limit. The Department for Education has surveyed parents and school leaders extensively over many years on school uniform policies, and we will continue to monitor the impact of this measure, informed by the latest available evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I am very pleased that we have proper time for debate today. I record my dismay that our last debate on this Bill was cut so short, when we had so many important amendments to consider. We spent more time walking through the voting Lobby than scrutinising the provisions of law that we are sent here to make.

I want to start by talking about children in care. As we have just heard, their relationships with siblings can be the most important connections they have. Too often, those relationships are being strained or damaged by a system that just does not support them effectively. To that end, I would also like to commend the work of the charities Become and the Family Rights Group, who have sought to keep siblings connected. It is for this reason that I warmly welcome the Government’s acceptance of Lords amendment 17.

The Minister said that it is a travesty that siblings have been separated. I gently say that it was her and her colleagues who made Labour MPs oppose the Lords amendment from my noble Friend Baroness Tyler in the last round of ping-pong. I am glad the Government have had a change of heart, accepted her approach and put forward their amendment in lieu. I congratulate and thank my noble Friend Baroness Tyler of Enfield. She has been championing this issue for many, many years and I recognise her tireless work. I also recognise the tireless work of the hon. Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell), who, as we have just heard, has also been working so hard on this issue.

The amendment addresses a critical oversight in our current regulations, ensuring that the bond between siblings is not severed simply because their care status differs. These relationships are often the only constant in a child’s life. Protecting them provides a vital anchor of stability amid the profound upheaval of new care arrangements.

Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 106 requires headteachers only to “have regard for” guidance on smartphones in schools, rather than mandating the existing guidance. Young people themselves say that they want a break from the stress of social media at school. We all know the impact that our phones have on our concentration and focus. If Ministers and other hon. Members in this House cannot resist the temptation to look at their smartphones during a debate like this, how on earth do they expect a 14-year-old to ignore a TikTok notification in a double science lesson? According to Health Professionals for Safer Screens, a quarter of children’s notifications go off during the day. I am deeply alarmed that our children’s educational attainment should be hindered by an issue that is so simple to solve. I appreciate the Minister’s comments about guidance and asking Ofsted to look at it. After they made the announcement that they would include the issue in Ofsted inspections, I met a group of headteachers from my constituency. They said to me, “This is yet another thing you are piling on to the Ofsted inspection. Please can you ask Ministers to just get on and make this law?”

Where schools have managed to ban phones during the school day, they have seen a real transformation in pupils, going from being glued to screens to chatting and playing Uno at break times. Headteachers report significant reductions in incidents of low-level disruptive behaviour and lower in-school truancy, and children and teachers are reporting being happier in school.

However, many headteachers are still battling to get their schools to that place. Our headteachers need proper support to do right by our children, where they are challenged by parents who want still to be able to reach their children even during the course of the school day, to ensure that children have a healthy and safe education free from distraction.

I ask the Minister, and the Secretary of State if she is listening, to make this guidance statutory. Will the Minister support schools with the tools and funding to manage this transition to ensure that every classroom is a space where children can focus, learn and thrive, smartphone free, unless they have a need for a device for medical reasons, for special educational needs or because they are young carers?

It is a strange irony that the Government demand endless evidence before reining in big tech yet refuse a single review of their branded school uniform policy. By rejecting Lords amendment 41B to review the effectiveness of the Government’s cap on the number of branded school uniform items, as opposed to the Liberal Democrat proposal of a price cap, Ministers are effectively asking the British public to trust that they have exactly the right answer. The amendment is a significant concession on what we have previously proposed. It merely asks for a review of the policy after 12 months. We have a shared goal on both sides of the House to tackle the cost of living for hard-pressed families, but Ministers seem to lack the humility to admit that there is a chance that their policy prescription to bring down the cost of uniforms may be wrong. The Schoolwear Association has said that 61% of its members may increase prices based on the item cap.

The Government were forced to U-turn on winter fuel allowance for pensioners and on welfare reform for those in receipt of benefits. Why will they not accept the offer of an off-ramp to potentially prevent another forced U-turn somewhere down the line? What do they fear about testing their policy in a year’s time, just in case the uniform suppliers hike their prices in response to this policy, as the industry has repeatedly warned and as a basic understanding of market forces would suggest? The Government cite their manifesto as though it were a shield against better Liberal Democrat ideas, but a manifesto commitment is only as good as its delivery. Parents want action that will actually lower their bills. If the Government are so sure they have got it right, they have nothing to fear from a 12-month review.

On the theme of supporting families, I shall speak to Lords amendment 38. I first offer my belated congratulations to the Government on accepting the merits of part of the Liberal Democrat position in their amendment. Having spent a year opposing our efforts to ban big tech from collecting the data of under-16s, it is heartening to see Ministers finally recognise that we can no longer allow social media giants to treat our children’s personal data as a commodity to be harvested for profit. It is also welcome that the Government have moved towards the Liberal Democrat position of age ratings for social media, by accepting that children of different ages will be affected by the online world in different ways. But the Government have still not gone far enough. Their amendment says only that they “may” make provisions to tackle these issues, not that they will.

The Government’s amendment also remains silent on the predatory nature of addictive design. By ignoring the infinite scroll and the psychological triggers engineered to hijack a child’s attention, the Government fail to recognise that this amendment will leave parents, families, children and indeed the Government fighting against big tech with one arm tied behind their back. The recent US court cases against Meta and YouTube confirm what we already knew. Those apps are designed to keep our children hooked.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her work on this issue. She is right that age classifications that tackle the social media companies, rather than going after children and their rights, are what matters. Recent research by PISA—the programme for international student assessment—on seven internet activities by 15-year-olds in 47 countries found conclusive evidence that life satisfaction is lower at higher rates of social media use by 15-year-olds. Does that not make acting on this issue now even more urgent?

[Munira Wilson]

I could not agree more. There is a plethora of evidence out there showing that we have to act, and we have to act now. I simply cannot understand why the Government are not committing to doing something soon.

Going back to the US court cases, one document revealed that Meta executives claimed:

“If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.”

That is my 11-year-old daughter that Meta is talking about. Another internal memo showed that 11-year-olds were four times more likely to keep coming back to Instagram compared with competing apps, despite the platform requiring users to be at least 13 years old.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman speaks to the language delays that are created by these apps. Does he agree that the fact that these additional needs are going to come into the system on top of reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities system—which parents are already worried about—will create extra anxiety and extra pressures, and is going to store up problems for the future if they are not tackled now?

[Iqbal Mohamed]

I do agree with the hon. Member. I sympathise with the Government—there are huge pressures in all policy areas, particularly children’s services, education and healthcare, and now they have to deal with the tech giants. The Government introduced age-gating for pornographic sites so that people under the age of 18 could not access them. That was absolutely the right thing to do; despite the fact that there are workarounds and technical ways for people to bypass that age-gating, it does project the majority of children from exposure to pornography. Now, the Government must deal with the virtual drug dealers. They must implement laws to protect our children from the harms those companies cause, and must also introduce laws to obligate them to change and redesign their platforms in order to design out those harms.

Academic studies have found that 24% of suicides among 10 to 19-year-olds are linked to high-risk use of digital technology. Heartbreaking cases such as that of the 14-year-old Molly Russell, who tragically took her own life in 2017 and whose legacy lives on through the Molly Rose Foundation, have demonstrated that social media use is undoubtedly contributing to rising rates of self-harm among young people. This is not some future risk; it is a real and present harm. We do not need more consultation, delay or half-measures; we need this Government to insist on safety by design to protect children from exposure to damaging content and platforms, and not to implement anything that aims at damage limitation. We need this Government to listen to our citizens, not to the tech giants. As such, I once again join right hon. and hon. Friends and Members across the House in calling on the Government to commit to raising the age of access to social media to 16 and banning the use of all mobile phones in schools, rather than continuing to leave children exposed to systems that are causing irreversible and unnecessary harm.