Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

Friday 7th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for helping me out at a difficult moment. I have now found the correct place in my speech, and I will tell him what I believe should happen next.

The debate about both smoking and seatbelts raged for years, with much controversy at the time. Some were demanding higher and higher levels of proof, while others argued that the matter could be dealt with simply through guidance and through individuals’ choosing to change their behaviour.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady recognise that, unlike the indoor smoking ban in particular, the regulation of mobile technology and social media is very much not a one-off event? When the Bill that was to become the Online Safety Act was published, it was genuinely world-leading in many respects, but, as the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) pointed out, many countries have now introduced measures that go further. Should we not be taking action now and then continuing to develop it, rather than just introducing a series of reviews?

[Helen Hayes]

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me for a moment, I will come to some of the points that I think he wanted to emphasise. In the end, in both those cases—seatbelts and smoking—legislation had the effect of changing behaviour and changing societal norms, and in both cases, decades on from the introduction of legislation, it is hard to imagine that the regulation was ever controversial.

Last year, the Select Committee recommended action across Departments to protect children from addiction, online harms and the mental health impacts of excessive use of smartphones. It supported a ban on mobile phones in schools and recommended a formal monitoring mechanism for a ban introduced through guidance, potentially leading to a ban in legislation. It recommended guidance for parents, whom it found to be lacking in confidence when it came to knowing exactly how to tackle this issue affecting children and young people, and recommended that the guidance should include—particularly for parents of babies and very young children—an emphasis on the importance of face-to-face interactions with their children, and guidance on the impact of screen use by parents while caring for very young children. That is an aspect that we do not debate enough in this place. The Select Committee supported an increase to 16 as the age of digital consent and recommended, among other developments, the promotion of a children’s class of phone that can be used for parental contact and for GPS locations, but not for internet access.

I share the worry expressed by many Members that the Government are not acting with the urgency that is required in the face of the evidence they already have. The Bill will deliver, even in the form in which it has been presented today, some positive interventions that will make a difference, but I fear that the Government are doing too little too slowly. Parents want strong legislation, schools want strong legislation, and strong legislation will help to change societal norms in the way that is needed to protect children and young people and to stop the harms.

The Education Committee will take a close interest in what happens from now on—the impact of the measures that the Government are introducing—but I urge the Government to get on quickly with the review and the guidance to which they will commit themselves today, and to go further and establish, with urgency and speed, a framework in law that can help parents, schools and professionals working with children to deal with a challenge that we all need to get to grips with.