Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my education interests as set out in the register, in particular my chairmanship of the E-ACT Multi-Academy Trust, where we are enjoying recent “outstanding” Ofsted judgments in schools, while applying the national curriculum.

This is a good Bill. It is necessary legislation to tackle a legacy in which vulnerable children have become more vulnerable, and schools are struggling on multiple fronts. I will focus my time on the part related to schools. Today we have heard some argue, in effect, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, pointing to improvements in England’s PISA rankings for reading and maths as an indicator of the success of the current system. This ignores the reality facing many schools. Our absolute performance in reading and maths has stagnated in PISA, and in science it has declined. Most worryingly, as so powerfully set out by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, the life satisfaction of our young people has plummeted. Persistent absence remains high, teacher retention is poor and NEETs are way too high. As others have said, we must use this Bill to drive ambition on standards and well-being, regardless of structures.

Academies have, by and large, worked well—but I do not believe that is because of the freedoms initially promised. A Schools Week survey of 120 academy trust CEOs found that the majority believe that the removal of academy freedoms relating to pay, curriculum and the employment of unqualified teachers would have little or no impact on their ability to run and improve schools. The success of academies is much more due to strong governance and effective leadership than so-called freedoms. Good governance is the bedrock of school improvement: it safeguards quality and challenges poor performance. When I took over as a academies Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, I was conscious that it was the likes of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, putting his personal reputation on the line, that ensured strong governance and the delivery of quality. I have some concerns that the unfettered use by officials of the powers of direction in Clause 49 of the Bill could interfere with that good governance. I will want to explore that in Committee.

I am supportive of where the Bill has got to on pay, but wonder whether we should also explore whether the pay of senior MAT executives should be referred to the STRB, so that MAT remuneration committees receive guidance to prevent pay inflation in that part of the workforce.

The Bill’s measures to bring academies and local authorities closer together are also welcome and overdue. In particular, giving councils a greater role in oversight of academy admissions is a significant step forward for vulnerable children.

Finally, on smartphone bans, like the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, I am sceptical but listening. I am perplexed as to what the sanction would be for a legal ban. Would it not be better, as a few schools are now doing, to use geofencing technology that creates a virtual boundary or fence around a school? When a smartphone enters or exits the school, the technology can automatically block use altogether or restrict its actions—or open it up again. Surely, we need to both protect children from the harms of technology and educate them to use it responsibly and realise its opportunities.

In summary, this Bill is not about rolling back progress; it is about building a system that values robust governance, real accountability and the well-being of every child. It puts children’s interests, not structures or ideology, at the centre of reform. That is why I urge your Lordships to follow the advice of my noble friend Lady Morris to put rhetoric behind us and work together for the benefit of children.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

I turn to home education. I have tabled Amendment 279 to allow local authorities—

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, whom I respect and enjoy debating with, but does he accept that if all 80 of us who made Second Reading speeches—and I enjoyed his four minutes—speak for nine minutes, as he has done, ranging across the whole of the Bill, it will make a nonsense of the work of this House?

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I have a great deal of respect for the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I do not think all of us are going to make a nine or 10-minute speech, but I will wrap up now and hope that keeps him happy.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 183CA and 183CB in this group. Before I do so, I will add my support to Amendment 177, from my noble friends Lord Nash and Lady Barran, and Amendment 458.

It is odd that, while we are legislating in this Bill for the provision of breakfast clubs, of which I have previously said I am a fan, legislating for the use of social media by teenagers and the use of mobile phones in school seems to be a step too far for a Bill that is focused on children’s well-being. That is despite the wealth of evidence, to which my noble friend just alluded, about how disruptive phones can be to children’s well-being and learning.

It is not good enough to say that 90% of secondary schools report having a policy in place to ban the use of phones in the school day—which, by the way, means that one in 10 allows access to phones in the school day. What matters is how effective those policies are, and the evidence shows that, in too many cases, they are not effective enough. Around 80% of secondary schools surveyed by the Children’s Commissioner allow children to keep their phones on them in the school day, with the expectation that it is not seen or heard. However, the evidence shows that that is not working. The National Behaviour Survey in 2022-23 found that 36% of secondary school teachers reported phones being used without permission in at least some of their lessons in the past week, while 59% of pupils reported the same.

When the previous Government introduced guidance on mobile phones in schools, they said that they would keep the approach under review and move to introduce statutory guidance if the situation had not improved. A key milestone for assessing that was the publication of this year’s National Behaviour Survey. When I asked the Minister in January when she expected it to be published, she said that it would be in the spring. I may have missed it—I do not think that I have—but could she update the Committee on when we can expect the results of the latest behaviour survey?

My amendments, in a sense, follow on from my noble friends’ Amendment 177, which I support, but they specifically focus on the advice and guidance for parents, teachers and carers of preschool-age children. To be clear, unlike many who have participated in this Bill so far, I am no expert in this area; I am working hard to ensure that I am across, and understand as best I can, the evidence in this area. However, to some extent, that is the point of my amendments: if you are a parent, childcare professional or teacher of preschool children, there is no clear summary of the available evidence and no clear advice on the best approach to children’s use of screens and technology in their early years, yet such screens and technology are ubiquitous.

A good starting point for both amendments would be the Chief Medical Officer’s advice provided for in Amendment 177, which crucially specifies that it should differentiate by age. I could not find any public guidance from the Government or Ofcom that really reflects that. In fact, much of the guidance that is available is inappropriate for very young children and may give parents a misleading understanding of how they can best navigate this tricky area for preschoolers.

In my experience—I declare my interest as a mum of two preschool children—there is nothing mentioned by your GP, by your health visitor or at children’s centres: so many of those important touch points in the early years of a family. The same absence of advice or guidance extends to early years childcare and education settings too. I could find no reference in the early years standards framework to the appropriate and safe use of screens in early years settings, and that surprised me. My amendments simply seek to fill these gaps to provide proper guidance to parents and early years settings. So I would be keen to hear from the Minister about what work the Government are doing in these areas.

Within the Government’s opportunity mission, they have set themselves a milestone of

“75% of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development in the early years foundation stage assessment by 2028”—


an increase from 67.7% currently. With screens so ubiquitous in children’s and parents’ lives, and excessive screen use shown to impact on so many of the early learning goals, including communication and language, physical development and social and emotional development, this must be an essential part of the Government’s plans here.

Research shows that significant proportions of younger children have access to smart devices, including phones, and spend significant time online. Ofcom’s Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report 2025 shows alarming trends, not just on the scale of use but on the pace of change. One in five three to five year-olds have their own mobile phone, extending to 85% of their age group using any device to go online. More than half use messaging sites or apps and half use livestreaming. The proportion of parents of three to five year-olds who say that their child uses social media apps or sites has significantly increased in recent years, from around a quarter in 2021 and 2022, rising to three in 10 in 2023, and almost four in 10 this year. Over a third of parents of three to five year-olds whose child uses social media use it on their children’s behalf, and over four in 10 say that they use sites and apps together with their child. However, two in 10 of these parents indicate that their child uses these apps independently.

Many of the debates we have had about keeping children safe online focus on teenagers, which is not surprising given that the legal age for accessing social media is 13—it is older for some apps currently—and many of the observed harms are particularly acute in teenage years, as we have heard. But what constitutes appropriate use of devices and an appropriate amount of screen time will vary wildly for a two year-old compared to a 12 year-old, and we must reflect this.

So, more specifically, can the Minister say whether my understanding is correct that there is currently no guidance for preschool settings in the early years standards framework on the safe and appropriate use of screens, and if that is the case, do the Government have any plans to introduce such guidance? Can she also say what plans there are not just to produce guidance based on the best available evidence specifically for parents of preschool children, but on how they plan to disseminate this? For example, are there any plans to integrate guidance into the Start for Life campaign, or to provide tips and information for new parents through the health visiting programme?

I end by emphasising that this is not about judging parents or telling them what to do. I use screens and my kids use screens—both of us, sometimes or often, too much. It is not about moral panic either. It is about recognising that the ubiquity and nature of screens in our lives has changed. If we equip parents, caregivers and teachers with clearer information and tools, we can help them navigate this ever-changing environment with more confidence and support. It is important that the Government recognise this, particularly for early years development. I look forward to hearing their plans in this area.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, as this is my first substantive contribution in Committee, I declare my education interests as chair of E-ACT multi-academy trust, of STEM Learning, of Century-Tech and of COBIS. I also own half of Suklaa Ltd, which has a number of education clients.

Amendment 458A in my name is an amendment to Amendment 458 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I am seeking to add an exemption for educational purposes to the exemptions from the policy of smartphone bans in schools proposed by her amendment. I have read Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation, Christine Rosen’s Extinction of Experience and Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop’s excellent Disengaged Teen. I know that our children are losing out on the vital developmental impact of unstructured outdoor play, thanks to the distractions of technology.

We are all losing the multisensory benefits of engaging with real-life experiences because we are too busy on our phones, including in this Chamber, and we are losing empathy as a result. The overconsumption of violent online content is increasing the bystander effect that distinguishes us as communities of people.

Our children are increasingly disengaged from learning, partly due to boring content at school and partly due to diminishing attention spans, thanks to too much time scrolling short-form videos on TikTok and Instagram. I am only too aware that social media is addictive by design and is the main culprit in this complex set of problems. Multiple systemic reviews and surveys confirm that excessive smartphone use is associated with poor sleep quality, increased depression and anxiety and lower life satisfaction among teens, something that this country has a particular problem with and that cannot be solely blamed on phones and social media.

This month, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a large study tracking more than 4,000 adolescents and finding that the smartphone risk to youth mental health is primarily linked to the addictive use of smartphones, social media or video games. Those who reported compulsive use were two or three times more likely to experience suicidal thoughts or self-harm by the age of 14, compared with their peers. The study found that it was the addictive behaviour that was the strong predictor, not the amount of screen time per se.

I therefore have some sympathy with Amendment 177 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I compliment him on the way he introduced his amendment—echoing, almost word for word at times, the speech he made on the very first group of amendments in this Committee. However, I am unpersuaded that Chief Medical Officers are the right people to lead on this. I am concerned that Ofcom may not be as rigorous as I had understood when we passed the Online Safety Act in enforcing the terms and conditions of platforms relating to their minimum age limits. It may well be that this House should look to another opportunity in the next Session to toughen Ofcom’s responsibilities and duties in this regard, once we have seen a little more of the impact of the Act as Ofcom is implementing it. Amendment 183CA from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, seems quite sensible, and I think Amendment 183CB should be pursued by the DfE, but in close partnership with Ofcom as the regulator.

Amendment 458 clearly has merit. Most schools have adopted such policies to ban or control smartphones following the previous Government’s guidance. At E-ACT we are now piloting the use of signal-blocking pouches that pupils are required to store their phones in during the school day. The early findings are that this has had a really positive impact on the schools concerned in terms of learning and behaviour. I am told by a friend who is a parent of children at Westminster School, over the road, that it is using geofencing technology so that when pupils enter the location, phones’ functionality is changed to turn off social media but to retain their use for emergency broadcasting, due to the security risk related to their proximity to Parliament.

In all these schools, children are benefiting from having a rest from their phones. Teachers benefit from the lessening of distraction and the absence of a back channel of conversation going on through lessons. In some other schools that have done this, there is even a reduction in playground fights because pupils are no longer able to film and share them online.

However, I am also working hard on issues related to media literacy, in part as a member of your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee. The issues relating to social media addiction are now being amplified by the ease of creating highly credible false content using generative AI. The algorithms will not only continue to be addictive but feed content that is misleading, upsetting and disturbing, as any of us can now create images, audio and video, at will, of anything that we can imagine. This needs a more sophisticated response than simply a ban. This needs education, in schools and for adult parents and grandparents. It was clear from the committee’s witnesses that just relying on a knowledge-rich teaching of media literacy will not work. If we just tell young people what is dangerous and harmful, what to look out for, we will fail. Children do not want this to be yet another thing that we tell them off about.

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[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, in the amendments they have proposed. I also agree very much with the comments made by others, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, who made some important points, especially about the risk of overloading schools. My noble friend Lady Shephard made some very important points about safeguarding. When, as chief inspector, I reported on sexual harassment and abuse in schools, it was notable how much of that we found to be linked to smartphone use.

I would like to clear up a bit of confusion, because I think we are not properly distinguishing between personal and school-controlled devices. I think the noble Lord, Lord Addington, was heading in this direction a moment ago in his remarks. Every school has many school-controlled devices—computers and sometimes tablets—and it is much easier to maintain the framework of safeguards around devices that are owned and controlled by schools than it is around personal devices.

These devices are suitable for teaching media literacy and many other things or in teaching children how to use technology. They can also very effectively provide technology. The dividing line here is between devices schools are able to control fairly fully and devices that essentially remain children’s property and in the children’s control, and where there will never be the level of supervision needed to make them safe—at least not in the foreseeable future.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I am interested in what the noble Baroness said—that the laptop and tablet learning devices that schools have would be sufficient for teaching media literacy. Does she suggest, therefore, that they should install social media apps on those devices, and teachers would have to create profiles and personas that would start to mimic children so the algorithms would then think of them as children and start to feed them the sort of stuff the noble Lord, Lord Russell, was talking about? Is that really what she is saying? Would it not be easier for the purposes of media literacy for the personal devices that children are looking at, with the personalised feeds those children are seeing, to be used in order to educate them?

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

It is perfectly possible for children to log in on different devices. They can log into a social media account and the school can use broader control facilities to ensure that all information is wiped, or all personal details are wiped, at the end of a session. That contains the range of what children are doing in any given session.

To give another analogy, we do not teach children about the risks and harms of drugs with drugs and the paraphernalia for using them in their hands or on their desks. More generally, I am afraid that the history of teaching children about risks and sensible and safe behaviour do not have that much to show that they can be successful.

One of the saddest reports that we published during my time at Ofsted was on child obesity. It showed, sadly, that the schools that were doing the most to promote and encourage healthy eating did not have measurably different obesity rates from the schools that were doing the least. So I think there is reason to fear that simply an educational approach, as has also been advocated here, might not be all that effective.

Finally, I will explain why, although I agree with so much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, I have come to the opposite conclusion. It is important that we think about how to reinforce the authority of head teachers and teachers in this difficult space. With legislation, they would not have to argue the toss with parents to sustain a school policy that will always be disliked by some parents. What we have seen and heard, including expressed so eloquently in this Chamber today, shows that mobile phone use by the young is likely to be at least as harmful to them as smoking, and we have no difficulty with having a ban on smoking in schools. I believe that a ban will reduce arguments and give time back to schools—to heads and teachers—as well as helping children. So I hope that this amendment will be included in the final Bill.

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France, Spain, Italy and Greece have already acted. Sweden is banning social media on 1 July, as well as access to phones at school. Spain has banned phones as well, and it has seen a full year’s gain in maths performance. France has banned phones at school and seen improved academic results and reduced bullying. These amendments are about the safety, well-being and healthy development of our children. I too do not agree with the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, because I do not think that children need to be taught at school on mobile phones about the dangers; they can be taught differently. I also feel that children do not need to learn to use phones when they are young—they can learn later. It is not a question of learning to swim when you are young; this is a question of learning how to use technology.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

At what age does the noble Baroness think that children should be taught how to use phones safely?

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

Children could use phones that do not connect to the internet—phones that do not access social media—like the old phones, if they need to phone their parents in an emergency. With the mobile phones that we are talking about now, for children under the age of 16, their brains are not developed enough to understand the harms and dangers—and, as we have said, it is all very addictive. Big tech companies know how to get children to look at certain sites. In our generation, we did not have phones and we did not have that exposure to predators, and we did not have so many mental health issues among the youth.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support what my noble friend Lady Jenkin has just said—it seems to be an excellent prescription for the right way forward.

We approached these technologies with such innocent optimism when they arrived. I absolutely remember what it was like at the beginning of smartphones. We were worried about how we would get them to everybody and how people could afford them. I remember an early example, with my noble friend Lady Shephard of Northwold, when I was briefly her Whip in the Lords and she was in charge of education. We were looking at this wonderful new system which would enable us to replace all maths masters with machines—I am delighted that it has not happened. Even Alpha School in Texas, which is part of the latest round of optimism that AI can do everything, is not looking at replacing maths masters either but merely at having AI to help them. We have to be careful about optimism when it comes to new things.

I think we have reached the point with smartphones when we know that they are damaging. We know this from all of the research that has been done and from personal experience—which in my case very much echoes what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, described. Children’s lives at school should be full and social, but the spaces between classes are dominated by phones. All their social interactions are mediated through phones. Even when they are talking to each other, they are talking about what is on social media. The effect on boys, and on their relationships with and ability to relate to girls, is not good.

We have reached the point where we ought to start doing something. We cannot allow this level of harm to continue. I suggest that the Government do something along the lines of the West Dunbartonshire experiment. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Knight, remembers the set-up in West Dunbartonshire where they tested various approaches to teaching children reading. It was supposed to be a five-year experiment but it collapsed after a year and a half, because part of the design of the study was that the schools running various different methods were talking to each other. After a year and a half, the schools that had not been assigned phonics said, “I’m not putting my child through this. The phonics works—we’re going to do that”. It produced a real sea change in the way schools approached teaching children reading, because teachers could absolutely see what the difference was. As my noble friend Lady Jenkin described, we would expect such differences.

Let us set something up and see how it works and what the differences are between schools that have various models—the current model, the intermediate model proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the total ban that I would favour—and see what happens. Let them talk to each other about how they are experiencing this process. Do not try to run it as a total blind trial with only the academics pronouncing at the end; let it be an interactive thing between the schools involved. We would very quickly find out what was working and get a good groundswell for the right solution, which may well be that of the noble Lord, Lord Knight—I do not know.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

Is that not what is happening at the moment? A vast number of schools are, in effect, banning smartphones—as many people would like—some have an intermediate approach, and then there are a few outliers that are not banning them. Is it not the case that the noble Lord is making a good argument not for proceeding with this right now but for going ahead with a proper study on the impact of those various regimes and then acting once we know what we are talking about?

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, there are indeed a number of these things going on, but no organised study with an organised direction is taking place. There is no communication between schools, with them saying to each other, “Yes, we could do it that way”. I am looking at a Government who, I suspect, have not been persuaded of the need to act now. Let us do a study now and get something set up, so that we can definitively get to the best answer. While academies are allowed to be different from other schools, a wide range of policies are being enforced. If we take advantage of that, understand what is going on and allow the schools to share that information as the process goes on, I think we will find ourselves with an answer quite quickly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that a smartphone amendment on its own is not sufficient. As the Minister said a couple of times on previous days in Committee, I will be coming to that later. I will try to address the noble Baroness’s points. If I have not done so by the end of my speech, I ask her to please intervene again.

Some have questioned why we favour freedom and discretion for school leaders in areas such as curriculum and staffing yet seek to mandate action on smartphones. The answer lies in a couple of areas. The first is about accountability. When school leaders make decisions about teacher pay, qualifications or curriculum, they are held accountable through Ofsted inspections, public examination results and parental choice. The consequences of their decisions are measurable and visible. Smartphone policies operate in an entirely different landscape. Here, schools face external actors: powerful social media companies with business models that are predicated on capturing and monetising our children’s attention. These companies employ teams of neuroscientists and behavioural psychologists to create algorithms designed specifically to keep our children scrolling, clicking and consuming content that ranges from the merely distracting to the genuinely harmful. We can all think of cases that, tragically, have been fatal.

The facts surrounding smartphone usage among children paint a sobering picture. A quarter of the UK’s three and four year-olds now own a smartphone—these are toddlers whose cognitive development is being shaped by screens before they can properly read. This figure rises to four in five children by the end of primary school. We are witnessing the digitisation of childhood itself. The emerging evidence linking smartphones and social media to the explosion in mental health problems among young people cannot be ignored. Research demonstrates that the average 12 year-old spends 21 hours a week on their smartphone, which is equivalent to a part-time job. One in four children and young people uses their devices in ways that are consistent with behavioural addiction.

Beyond mere time-wasting, smartphones fundamentally disrupt sleep patterns and concentration, as we have heard from a number of noble Lords. Applications are deliberately designed for addiction, through sophisticated dopamine triggers, as my noble friend Lord Bethell said. This pattern appears consistently across western nations, with research showing that earlier smartphone acquisition correlates strongly with poorer adult mental health outcomes, particularly affecting girls.

The academic evidence is equally compelling. The OECD data reveals that two-thirds of 15 year-olds, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, report phone distractions during their mathematics lessons, with distracted students performing three-quarters of a year behind their peers. Even brief non-academic phone use can require 20 minutes for students to refocus on learning. We are not talking about minor inconveniences. We are witnessing a systematic undermining of educational achievement.

Experimental research has moved beyond correlation to establish causation. Studies where students are randomly assigned different conditions—one of which I will send to my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Knight—prove that simply having a smartphone in one’s bag, jacket or desk reduces attention capacity and cognitive performance. Students with device access during lessons achieve measurably poorer results because the very presence of these devices is profoundly distracting.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I do not disagree with a word that the noble Baroness has said about these weapons of mass distraction. I am not saying that young people should be able to carry them around—I was advocating the use of lockable pouches. However, is it not possible that there are some circumstances where a teacher, for legitimate educational reasons, would want those pouches to be unlocked and for phones to be used? If that were to happen, is it right that it would be illegal?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not a teacher and probably never will be, sadly—although probably happily for children. My answer to the noble Lord is what was behind my offer to sit down and talk to him. When I talked to teachers prior to this debate about the noble Lord’s amendment, they reacted a little as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, did or suggested that much of this could be done on existing school devices. If there are gaps in that, of course I am very happy to listen to the noble Lord’s expertise. I will press on, or I will be growled at by the Front Bench for going over time.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step. The first step was the Online Safety Act, but maybe this is the second step. I really do welcome the fact that the Government have moved from questioning the evidence to recognising the national concern about this issue. However, our Prime Minister has said on numerous occasions that the first duty of a Government is to protect their citizens, and he is right. Here and now, we have a clear and present danger to children. The first duty of government is not to consult; it is to act.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I have followed these issues closely through my work on the Online Safety Act, first as a member of the Joint Committee, then on the Opposition Front Bench and now on your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee. I added my name to Amendment 91 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and I am delighted that that Government are listening and hope that Ministers can give the noble Baroness the reassurances that she seeks.

Turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, I first thank him for raising these important issues and detailing the harms so compellingly. The harms caused by social media are clear, both in terms of the harmful content and that they are addictive by design. The algorithms operate in a moral vacuum; platforms’ algorithms do whatever it takes to keep us on screen. I am attracted to the Government’s proposal in the consultation around banning addictive design rather than a blanket age ban. That could see a huge reduction in harm for all of us, as today’s University of Sussex research about doomscrolling demonstrates.

However, it is our children whom we most want to protect. My 14 year-old at home is time-limited on her phone; she is not allowed her phone in her room overnight and is limited to two social media accounts. This is difficult to parent, but it is our responsibility as parents to navigate it with our children. Incidentally, the two social media accounts she chooses are WhatsApp and Pinterest. Both are allowed under the Australian social media ban. One keeps her connected to family and friends, and the other she needs for her GCSE art. Under Amendment 94A, on my reading of it, it seems pretty categorical that it would include all social media platforms and she would be banned from both.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I am interested to hear from a Labour politician, for whom I have a great deal of respect, that there are parents who can control their kids, but it is the most vulnerable kids and the least advantaged kids who live in households in which there is no discipline who are the most exposed.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

The noble Lord and I debate with great respect and friendship. My reading of

“regulations made by statutory instruments require all regulated user-to-user services to use highly effective age-assurance measure to prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users”

is that this is categorical.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, is that it would be up to the Government, approved by this House and the other place, which apps are in and out. Clearly, it would be possible for those apps suitable for children to be excluded, as would WhatsApp and Wikipedia. The Lib Dems have drafted their amendment in such a way that it would include everybody, and it would be up to this very complicated procedure with Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to work this out—which, frankly, would be a nightmare.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I will move on. I will try harder to read further to get to the same place as the noble Lord, Lord Nash—but I doubt it.

Pinterest was implicated in the suicide completed by Molly Russell. Molly’s father, Ian, is thoughtful, brave and inspiring. I listened to him talk on the BBC this week about why he and countless other expert children’s charities are against a blanket ban on social media for under-16s. They worry about the unintended consequences for children’s safety. A blanket ban is likely to lead to under-16s finding less regulated platforms to connect to online, such as gaming platforms or the dark web. It is worth noting that according to recent Internet Matters research, boys spend significantly more time on gaming platforms than on social media platforms.

Children may also turn to VPNs, which would then undermine the child safety gains of the Online Safety Act. The VPN amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, tries to address this, but age-gating VPNs may be extremely problematic. My phone uses a VPN, following a personal device cyber consultation offered by this Parliament. VPNs can make us more secure, and we should not rush to deprive children of that safety. A blunt, blanket ban—it is a struggle not to call it a Blunkett ban—would also deny young people the positives of some of the less addictive social media.

Young people will continue to want to connect with each other. They will want to share music, their photos and videos, and their creative content. I was of the mixtape generation, now replaced by the shareable playlist. Young entrepreneurs will want to market their products: will they have to use an adults account on an adult’s phone, and be exposed to the risks of adult content as a result?

When I speak to young people in my capacity as president of Young Citizens, I am struck by how well informed they are. They find out what is going on in the world through social media. Is it right that we lower the voting age to 16 and simultaneously prevent access to news for 15 year-olds when we want them to become well informed?

The arguments for doing something urgent and meaningful about the dangers to children of social media are compelling, but so are the arguments for doing it in a more sophisticated way. For that reason, we should back the Government’s consultation. I note that this is a three-month consultation. Can the Minister please reassure us that action will follow within the 12-month timeline suggested by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Nash?

We should at the same time urgently review how the Online Safety Act is working. We need to retain the risk-based approach to regulation in the Act. But Ofcom’s current stance of treating all children, all the way to 18, as the same is flawed. We need age-appropriate design, and we should give Ofcom the unambiguous requirement to ensure that age restrictions and guidance about social media access are rigorously enforced. This in turn requires mandated, robust age assurance. We must develop this, sensitive to the digital rights of children and mindful that we do not want unwittingly to require big tech to hold sensitive data about our children. I also echo Ian Russell’s call for us to listen to children and young people as we make these changes. That is one of the really good reasons why we should go ahead with a consultation.

I conclude by urging Ministers to act swiftly and to listen to parliamentarians, but also to experts and young people, and then to act robustly, platform by platform, to deliver the ambition of the Online Safety Act to make this country the safest place in the world for children to grow up.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight. Like him, I have been involved in debating online safety issues—from the internet safety Green Paper through to the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill, and then seeing the Online Safety Bill become an Act. I declare an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation.

I will speak in support of my noble friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley’s Amendments 94B and 94C, which are amendments to Amendment 94A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash. In doing so, I urge the House to strengthen his proposal by transforming it from a blanket ban into an effective, harms-based approach to social media regulation that can actually be implemented and enforced within the same timetable.