Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I personally welcome the noble Baroness back to her place after a short period of illness and thank her for taking the time last week to engage with us to better understand where we are coming from and give us the opportunity to understand where she is coming from. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, for her engagement over the Easter period. Both engagements have been very helpful for us.

My reason for tabling this group of amendments is that we have some concerns around the Henry VIII powers that the Government are seeking. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, may not hold as strong a view as I do on the Henry VIII powers, but noble Lords across this House have issues whenever a Government want to take on lots of powers, and I note that the noble Lord proposes a sunset clause. I have concerns about how the Government intend to make changes once the consultation happens. My view is always that, if these are powers that are required for a set period, so be it; however, I still have concerns around what may happen in future if another Government come in and want to use them. I am sympathetic to what the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has proposed but, through my amendments, we hope that the Government may take the opportunity to support our quest and bring in their own primary legislation.

There is also the issue of whether we have a ban or regulate addictive features. We have always been clear in the amendments we have proposed previously that we did not favour an outright ban for under-16s, but wanted an age rating so that the duty fell upon the social media providers to deal with those features that young people get addicted to, such as constantly scrolling and so on. That is where we stand, and I am sure many Members of your Lordships’ House, if they were able to vote on our amendment, might well be there as well. That is what we need, rather than an outright ban.

I get that your Lordships’ House has previously voted for the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to make sure that this issue stays live. It will be interesting to see what happens later today when some of those amendments will no doubt be proposed.

Secondly, as the Minister mentioned, we have issues around the collection of data and GDPR, particularly around the age of consent. Currently it is 13 and we want it to be 16. I hope the Government address that.

On enforcement and additional harms, while empowering Ofcom on the issue of guidance on addictive features, it will also introduce specific requirements for platforms used to access services to mitigate the risks of them being used to create and distribute child sexual abuse materials. This includes mandating human moderators and co-operating for law enforcement. In all our efforts, we have tried to do the best for our young people. We have tried to help and assist the Government and nudge them in the right direction, and that is what we will endeavour to do today.

Ultimately, from speaking to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and others in your Lordships’ House, I do not think we are too far away from where we should be. It is just a matter of the speed and pace of implementation. I note that the Government keep saying, “It will come out after our consultation”, but we have been debating this since last year. I will put on record again—I have said it in meetings before—that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, was the first to have flagged this, to his credit. To be honest, I do not care which political party someone belongs to if they are here to safeguard our young people: credit where credit is due. We have tried to work across parties, with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and with the Cross Benches to ensure that we get to where we are.

I will briefly move to smartphones in schools, rather than mobile phones, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, because we have always been clear that it is with smartphones that we have a problem. At the meetings that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and others have been to, parents and head teachers have said that the issue of concern is with smartphones, social media, WhatsApp groups and others.

We have noted some parents’ concerns around being able to access or get in touch with their children and young people, particularly in rural areas. That is why we often talk about being able to have the more old-fashioned phones that many of us had 20 years ago, which basically allowed you to make phone calls and not much else. Therefore, we have been clear that it is smartphones that are the issue for us.

I know that my noble friend Lord Addington was very clear about supporting what he often refers to as the “devices” that enable people who need extra support in school and how to deal with that, but that issue clearly fell in your Lordships’ House when we tried to propose it. I take reassurance from the Minister’s commitment about enhancing that guidance, because head teachers have been looking for that. They have been saying that there is a small but very vocal group of parents who, whenever we bring in a policy like this, stop them managing those schools and supporting the teaching of young people, as they constantly have to fend off those parents.

In that sense, the Government are heading in the right direction. They might not be quite where some of us want them to be, but I thank the Minister for that and look forward to hearing other contributions from your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister back to her place, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, for his remarks. I will speak to my Motion A2. For anyone who has studied them, the verdicts in the two US cases are clearly game-changers. The evidence from the social media companies themselves is damning. I have a treasure-trove of these documents, if any noble Lord would like them.

Immediately following these cases, the Prime Minister made some very strong statements about protecting children from the harm of social media, and the right honourable Liz Kendall spoke only yesterday about the importance of highly effective age verification to ensure that children cannot access the harmful features of social media. This is exactly what my proposal does. I listened very carefully to what she said yesterday and, if you can get a fag paper between us, it is a pretty thin one indeed—so I have decided to take the Prime Minister at his word and, instead of batting my amendment back again, to lay an amendment to the Government’s amendments to the effect that they must, rather than just may, raise the age for access to those harmful social media sites to 16 within 12 months. Those sites would be chosen very selectively and, I am sure, would be very few in number—definitely not an outright or blanket ban—and this would be stated in the Bill. I have also proposed in the amendment a sunset clause of two years on the Henry VIII element of the powers that the Government are proposing to take.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Nash]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendments 38V, 38W and 38X as amendments to Commons Amendment 38J—

38V: In subsection (2), in inserted subsection (7)(a), after “modifications” insert “, subject to subsection (8A)”

38X: At the end of subsection (2) insert—
“214B Use of section 214A powers in relation to regulated user-to-user services
(1) The Secretary of State must make regulations under section 214A(1)(a) requiring providers of specified regulated user-to-user services to use highly-effective age assurance measures and reasonable anti-circumvention measures to prevent access by children in the United Kingdom under the age of 16 to those services which they provide, or to specified features or functionalities of such services.
(2) A draft of the first such regulations must be laid before each House of Parliament within eight months of the day on which the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 is passed.
(3) Subject to approval by a resolution of each House of Parliament, the first such regulations must be brought into effect within one year of the day on which the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 is passed.
(4) When making the regulations described at subsection (1), the Secretary of State must—
(a) seek to protect children under the age of 16 from any general or specific characteristics of those services, features or functionalities which it is reasonable to believe, having regard to any advice provided for that purpose by relevant experts—
(i) are likely to cause, encourage or facilitate compulsive, obsessive, addictive or other unhealthy behaviours among children,
(ii) could expose children to risks of serious harm, manipulation or exploitation,
(iii) could expose children to illegal content or primary priority content, or
(iv) could expose children to serious loss of privacy or to contact from strangers;
(b) have regard to the desirability of facilitating studies by charities and independent researchers of the safety and appropriateness for children of the characteristics of regulated user-to-user services;
(c) make any necessary provisions or consequential amendments to ensure that—
(i) the duties on the providers of regulated user-to-user services under those regulations are enforceable requirements for the purposes of section 131 and Part 7 of this Act, and
(ii) section 49 (relationship between duties and codes of practice) of this Act does not apply to those duties.
(5) In this section, a “relevant expert” means OFCOM, the Children’s Commissioner, any of the Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom, the Medical Royal Colleges, and any other persons from whom the Secretary of State considers it appropriate to seek relevant expert advice or input.
214C Supporting children’s understanding of user-to-user services
The Secretary of State must take action to ensure that, effective for the academic year commencing in September 2027, the national curriculum contains age-appropriate material to explain the reasons for children under the age of 16 being prevented from accessing different kinds of regulated user-to-user services, or features or functionalities of such services, including—
(a) the implications for children’s wellbeing of their use of or exposure to services with characteristics of the kind described in subsection 214B(4)(a), and
(b) the range of business models, methods and motivations for and the implications of the online collection and processing of children’s data.””

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to test the temperature of the House.