Online Harm: Child Protection

Mike Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

It is clear that all of us here today want to see legislative change to protect our children online. There is no doubt about that. The only debate left is how we do it. We Liberal Democrats want to see some urgency, yet more than a month on from when the Secretary of State announced the consultation, we have seen absolutely nothing from the Government. The Minister today failed to answer my question about when we could expect to see that consultation. Given how the Government put pressure on the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) to water down his safer phones Bill back in 2024, they will forgive me for having little confidence that they are serious about legislating for this anytime soon.

There is a disconnect in our society where we assume that as soon as our children come home through the front door, they are safe from whatever harms exist in the outside world. We assume that they can happily hop on to the computer, boot up the PlayStation or relax and scroll on their phone, but in reality, the harms that children face online are far more significant, constant and pervasive than any that they face outside in the real world. Children, particularly vulnerable children, are at greater risk of grooming, seeing something violent or harmful, forming an addiction or damaging their mental or physical health from being online than they are from playing outside.

A 2025 survey by Internet Matters found that two thirds of children said they experienced harm online, that one in five had encountered violent content and that over a quarter of children had been contacted by strangers online. These days there are probably far more paedophiles sitting in a dark room in their underpants in front of a screen than there are waiting in the local park for a child to walk by. When Charlie Kirk was shot in the US, children as young as eight were watching that video within hours here in the UK. The bottom line is that parents are simply not aware of the dangers that their children are being exposed to online.

We have heard some brilliant contributions about the lack of socialising and playing outside, the damage to physical and mental health, the impact on eating disorders, the ability to buy drugs online and far more. I have talked a lot in this House about my belief that we should have a ban on phones in schools. One reason for that is that the evidence shows that when a secondary school has a total ban on having or bringing a phone into school, parents of children at the feeder primary schools are not under pressure to buy their children phones at the age of 10 or 11. By delaying giving children a device till 12, 13 or even 14, we give them some precious extra years when they can grow up a bit in the real world. Every single year counts at that age.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

That is exactly what is happening in Tunbridge Wells. The secondary schools there have moved together to be smartphone-free, and now the primary schools are having that conversation with the parents.

[Caroline Voaden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.

Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to ban harmful social media for under-16-year-olds by introducing age ratings similar to film classifications, so that we can rate the platforms according to the harm they present. We have talked a lot about this, and the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) and others raised the issue of Roblox. The harms of Roblox are clearly something that we need to be aware of. Our approach would include all user-to-user platforms such as forums and online gaming, including Roblox, to ensure that children were properly protected from harm wherever they were engaging with others online.

I want to say one thing about the importance of the online world to children. Back in 2003, my husband died and I was a very young widow. I did not know any other young widows, and I joined an organisation that had a chatroom. This was back in the dark old days when we had very static chatrooms; some Members are too young to even know what that is. Late at night, when I was on my own, that place was a real lifeline for me and a real connection to other people who had been through the same tragedy. My children got to know other bereaved children who had lost a parent. The charity that I later became chair of now has online forums where those bereaved children can speak to each other. They are probably the only kids aged five or six in their school whose dad has died, so it is really important for them to be able to have those conversations with other children. Although we talk a lot about the LGBT community, I know from my personal experience that my kids would have benefited from being able to stay in touch with the other kids that they met occasionally on weekends away if they had been able to chat to them online. So I absolutely know the value of these online spaces for children, but I am also aware of the danger.

Our approach is supported by 42 charities and experts, which work with children, on violence against women and children and online safety. We believe that it is a valid proposal. We want everybody to come together in this House. We want to work cross-party. We know that we need to legislate, and we want to do so together because we owe it to our children—we are the adults in the room. We have to protect them, and we have to do it now.