Online Safety

Debate between Lisa Nandy and Liz Kendall

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

I thank the hon. Member for the way that she has engaged with these proposals. I will try my best to briefly answer as many of her questions as possible. First, on the detail, I have instructed my officials today to begin working up legislation. I appreciate that it is frustrating when a Minister comes to the Dispatch Box and says, “We intend to do this imminently”—the hon. Lady’s party has been in government; they understand the difficulties—but I want to reassure her and the whole House that we intend to do this without delay. The only reason there is not a firm timetable at the moment is because we are the first country in the world to do it. There are a number of questions, some of which she posed, which we need to iron out to ensure that we get this right.

On what would constitute sufficient progress that would rid us of the need to introduce legislation, I would much rather the technology companies move at pace to meet their own social and moral obligations, but in the absence of that, the Government will step up and act. Frankly, if we were able to reach a situation very quickly, which we should be able to do with the right will, where children were not able to take or share nude images, then the problem would be solved. But I have to say, based on what I have seen in progress over the last three months, it is almost certain that we will be legislating in this area.

The hon. Lady asked about which devices. It is phones and tablets at a minimum, but I accept the point she makes, and we are exploring whether it is possible to extend this to other forms of technology.

The hon. Lady asked what I meant when I talked about shaping technology for good. I am a big supporter of the action we are taking on social media for children. I say this as the mum of an 11-year-old and someone who is going through it at the moment and trying to help navigate that; I know all parents across the House will recognise the challenges. I would love us to get to a situation as a country where all people, including children, can be online and find good, trusted information and things that help them to be creative, to feel empowered and to enable them to live the richer, larger lives that they want to live. I think the Government have a right and proper role in helping that to happen. One of the ways in which we are already doing that, building on the great work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), is in trying to use gov.uk as a pioneering service that really does help people to live better lives.

The hon. Lady says that this Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to doing this. Her party was in government for a very long time, and the amount of time it took them to try to introduce any legislation in this area at all was quite shameful. That is not to downplay the role that some members of the Conservative party played in ensuring that we got there, but if it was not for my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West, I do not think I would be standing here today in a position to make this announcement. We should give credit where credit is due: this is a Government who are leading the world in keeping children safe.

The last thing the hon. Lady asked me about, which I know many colleagues are concerned about, is the social media ban that we announced earlier this year. I can reassure the House that we do intend to stick to both the spirit and the letter of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West set out earlier this year. We are on track to meet the timetable that she set out, to lay the first regulations by the end of this year and for the ban to come into force in the spring of 2027. We also intend to go somewhat further than our initial proposition statement, and I would welcome the opportunity to talk with the hon. Lady in more detail about that.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

I really welcome the announcement made by my right hon. Friend today. It will, indeed, be a world first to take this action on device-level protections, protecting children right across the country, and I am very proud to be part of a party and a Government who are doing that. I also thank her for confirming that the vote on the ban on social media companies providing their services to children under 16 will take place this year, for the ban to come into effect early next year. Could she say more about the timetable for other proposals that were made on AI chatbots, overnight curfews and bans on doomscrolling for older children? Together, this package will make the world a safer, better place for children online—that is as well as the work we are doing offline.

[Lisa Nandy]

Once again, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend and thank her so much for all her support both when we worked together in government and since; she really is a class act.

I am not in a position to give a firm timetable for the measures that my right hon. Friend mentioned, but I will commit to coming back to her with one, because I understand that Members across the House will want to know that there will be no delay in taking action on those things. We are also looking at a more comprehensive system, very much in the spirit of the reforms that she set out earlier this year, and we intend to move quickly on that without delay. I do not think we will be in a position to do the whole package by the end of the year, but I would be very disappointed if we had not made enormous progress by then, including meeting the commitments that she set out. I would be particularly disappointed if, by this time next year, we did not have a much more robust and comprehensive package of measures in place.

Grammar and Faith Schools

Debate between Lisa Nandy and Liz Kendall

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

I agree with my right hon. Friend’s point about integrating communities. This highlights the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). There are many types of school that provide a good education, and provided that they are inclusive, have a broad curriculum and work hard to serve the needs of their community, they do very well by their children. The important thing behind today’s motion is that hon. Members on both sides of the House, most of whom are troubled by the Government’s plans, but some of whom support them, would like the Government to proceed on the basis of evidence, especially as schools face a £600 million black hole since the Government abandoned their Education Bill, leaving councils around the country to pay for educational services without the grants to do so.

In their consultation document, the Government make a number of wide-ranging commitments to support their grammar schools plan, but they have not said yet whether this will be new money from the Treasury, or money taken from a schools budget that is already being cut for the first time in nearly two decades. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), who has consistently campaigned against the Government’s proposals, has repeatedly asked for this information; could we finally have it today?

The Secretary of State is apparently consulting on the school funding formula at the same time. The Green Paper says:

“We will ensure that the formula rewards those schools that support schools with a higher proportion of lower attaining pupils and those from less wealthy households.”

Surely the issue of funding should be resolved first. Surely we should know how big the funding pot is and how the funds will be allocated before we are asked to respond to a consultation and vote on proposals that will have profound consequences for children in this country.

There is also reason to believe that people travel further to attend grammar schools. What assessment have the Government done of the additional cost of transport for children under their proposals? The proposed pot is £50 million a year for new grammar schools, but how much in total do the Government plan to allocate to the whole programme? If adequate funding is not forthcoming, that is another reason why children may be well disadvantaged under the plans.

There are other reasons, based on the evidence, to believe that the proposals will make life worse for children in this country. In their consultation document, the Government rightly identified a group of children whose parents are struggling to get by, but who are not eligible for free school meals. That group is much larger since the Government restricted access to benefits. The proportion of pupils on free school meals is now at a 14-year low, despite the fact that there are record projections of child poverty. Having created a hidden group in hardship, Ministers are belatedly going looking for them. They state in their consultation that they plan to develop some kind of methodology to understand where the children are and what impact the new plans will have on them. The most polite thing that I can say about this utterly absurd situation is that Ministers are putting the cart before the horse. May I remind the Minister that it is only a few short years since his Department commissioned Dr Ben Goldacre to help it to ensure that evidence informs policy? Now its approach appears to be to develop policy that informs its evidence instead.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we have evidence about what helps poor kids to do well at school? It is high-quality early-years education, the best heads and teachers in the schools that need them most, and an inspiring curriculum for academic and vocational qualifications. Is that not what the Government should focus on—not on expanding grammar schools?