Online Safety

Lisa Smart Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

I support what my hon. Friend says. We need to stop thinking about the online world as somehow distinct from the offline world. As someone who worked with children and young people for many years before I came into Parliament, I know that there are systems and protections in place for people to work with children and young people in the real world. It would be unthinkable not to have that. I find it astonishing that we do not have the same level of expectation for the online world. I very much support what he says.

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

The Secretary of State is right to push the tech companies to live up to their responsibilities to keep children safe. One of the many horrifying things when considering online safety is the number of abuse perpetrators who themselves are children. We have had a case in my local area where a young girl—I obviously will not name her—had covert images taken of her, which were run through a nudifying app. Those images were then circulated by a fellow pupil. Can the Secretary of State say more about what she is doing with colleagues in the Department for Education and elsewhere to support schools and families as they work to prevent children from becoming victims or perpetrators?

[Lisa Nandy]

The hon. Lady raises an important point about some of the apps that exist. I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) for taking such quick and decisive action in this place on Grok. The hon. Lady is right to say that other forms of technology out there are a problem.

The hon. Lady is also right to point to the fact that we need to be much better at supporting schools, parents and wider families to help protect children. When we developed the national youth strategy last year with young people across the country, one of the biggest concerns that both they and their parents had was that far too many young people growing up in this country do not have an adult they trust who can help them to navigate the online space. Many of us—I say us, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I am on a very steep learning curve as the mum of an 11-year-old—would welcome extra help and support. That is something we have been seeking to address through the national youth strategy, but I intend to put rocket boosters under it now.