Smartphones and Social Media: Children
Nick Fletcher Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Miriam Cates
My hon. Friend is right. There is a problem of collective action: the costs of being the only child or the only parent without that phone are too high—far too high for ordinary parents to resist. I will come to what I see as some of the solutions later, but he is absolutely right to highlight that issue.
Even if the material being viewed is benign, smartphones and social media are highly addictive and provide a constant off-ramp to our mental focus and erode our concentration. I wonder how many hon. Members in the past 11 minutes have thought about or looked at their phone; I certainly have. As I said, when Steve Jobs was asked in 2011 if the iPad might be addictive, he remarked that he had designed it to be so.
We know as adults how difficult it is to control our own phone use, but the average child gets 237 notifications a day. That is a concentration-busting, addiction-fuelling dopamine hit every four seconds of waking time. If there were no laws against the sale of tobacco, drugs or alcohol to children, we would not expect parents to be able to defend their children from the might of big pharma or big tobacco, yet somehow we do expect ordinary parents to be able to protect their children from the vested interests of the likes of Meta, TikTok, X and Apple, the wealthiest and most powerful countries—sorry, companies—the world has ever seen. In fact, they are more powerful than most countries. Apple has $3 trillion in the bank, which is as much as our GDP, so they are more powerful than many countries.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) remarked, parents could refuse to give their child a smartphone, but the fact that 97% of teens and half of nine-year-olds have one gives an indication of the extreme pressure and social isolation experienced by the only child in a school or class without a phone. We surely cannot believe that 97% of parents are bad parents.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent speech. Does she agree that we could do the following three things? We could ban smartphones in schools, ban social media up to the age of 16 and, as adults, take personal responsibility, which I believe Conservative MPs do better than anybody else. Thus, when we are with our children, we should keep off phones, or at least spend an hour a day when we are not on our phones and can set an example to the next generation coming through.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Nick Fletcher Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
We are speaking today about science and technology, but I want to speak first about some of the important issues raised in the Budget, starting with the pension changes. They were made to get Mr and Mrs Jones’s hip replacements done, or to get someone’s tumour removed. They will get the consultant in the operating theatre and each of us on the road to recovery when we need it—and they will do it immediately. If the change had been made on a sector-specific basis, I believe it could have taken much longer. We were all young and struggling once, but young doctors’ future is bright—so bright that they will complain in 20 years’ time that they want to put more than £1 million in their pensions—so I suggest that they get off the picket line, ask for a sensible pay rise and start to earn their stripes.
On childcare, I am a social conservative, so I believe that the best people to look after the children are mum, dad, nana, grandad—family. I know that it is tough for many out there; I know that some have no choice. I am judging no one on their choices or the position that they find themselves in. I also know that the Chancellor wants to help, but I think that part of the £4 billion could be used to provide some choice for parents by giving them the option to stay at home or go to work.
I am sure that we all think we have important jobs—especially in this place—but we should never devalue the job of being a great parent. When I was bringing my children up, I was always told, “Spend time with your kids when they’re young, or you’ll be forced to spend time with them when they’re older”, meaning in the headmaster’s office, with the social worker, with the police or with the judge if they stray. We do not want that for any child, so let us do all that we can to embrace family life. It works, and it is proven, so let us do it.
Doncaster is not necessarily the first place that someone thinks of when they think of science and technology, but it needs to be if levelling up is ever going to work, and I think that it is close—really close. If we are helped by the Government, we have an opportunity to get Boeing in Doncaster, to get hybrid air vehicles in Doncaster, to get the advanced manufacturing and research centre in Doncaster.
Somehow, along the way, Doncaster and South Yorkshire lost their industry—mainly because of strikes. I grew up with strikes and saw the damage that they did. I saw the jobs go. That is why I am no supporter of strikes. But we now have an opportunity to be leaders again. In the centenary year of the Flying Scotsman being built in Doncaster, how great would it be to have the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre open a new innovation site in Don Valley?
Although 2022 was not a good year for Doncaster, with the loss of our airport, maybe 2023 will be the start of a new revolution. Who knows? Maybe we can get not only Boeing aircraft flying in and out of our airport when we get it open again, but Boeing manufacturing in Doncaster. The investment zones announced for South Yorkshire will benefit from £80 million of tax breaks and should entice the investment that we need.
Why can Doncaster not be part of the nuclear story through SMRs? Why can Don Valley not be part of the carbon capture story? Those industries will all benefit from this Budget, and I want them all in Doncaster. “Growth” and “investment” are the words of this Budget, and I want them there. If we can land that, the children of Doncaster will have a future—a future where quality jobs are available right where they live, in a city where they can bring up their families and their parents can help with childcare, and they can reciprocate later in life by looking after their ageing parents. That would mean an end to fractured families with hundreds of miles separating them.
There was lots in this Budget that the Opposition have tried to denounce, but we all know that the Conservative side of the House earns and the Labour side spends. The Conservative side understands its people and where they work; it understands the value of work; it understands the balance between achieving net zero and killing our towns and cities in a competition of who wants to be the greenest; it understands the value of education, skills and increased productivity, rather than just opening our borders.
No one has shouted loudly enough for Doncaster. The people have only ever heard that they are left behind and deprived, and that it is always the Tories’ fault. Well, they do not hear that rubbish from me; they hear only that if they try, try, try, they cannot help but achieve, achieve, achieve. Excuses will always get us nowhere. Excuses over the last 60 years from a Labour-run authority have got Doncaster nowhere—look at what happened to our airport, and all the excuses from the authority on why it could not use its devolved powers.
Things are changing. Doncaster is great because its people are great, but it could do so much better. Yes, our city could be so much better, and under this Government, it will be better. With this Budget, we will get through the cost of living crisis, get a future for our next generation, and make saving our planet work for us, not against us. The future is now bright for the first time in 60 years, but that is only because we have a Conservative from Doncaster in this place, and it would be even brighter with two more. I will vote for the Budget. I thank the Government for the £20 million and the new direction that the levelling-up partnership will bring to my city, Doncaster.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Fletcher Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. What happened in her constituency was an absolute tragedy and I pass my condolences on to the people affected. We have received her letter, and I am terribly sorry that it has not yet received a response. I was made aware of that only last week. I am asking for this to be looked into, because I appreciate that she has highlighted things that she sees as gaps in the system, but, as she knows, the Met is also investigating this. I will look very carefully to see whether they highlight issues that the Government themselves need to consider.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
It was encouraging to see the news this week that Amazon Prime video is taking steps to adopt the British Board of Film Classification ratings. However, this makes the decision of Disney+ to continue to disregard UK best practice even more disappointing. Do the Government agree that it makes it far harder for parents to properly regulate their children’s viewing when age ratings are unfamiliar?
Julia Lopez
I know that my hon. Friend has done a lot of work on supporting parents and children in transparency in this area. Something that we want to do in the media Bill is to regulate video on demand in the same way that we do with broadcast. We continue to view the BBFC age ratings as best practice, and I too welcome the news this week about Amazon taking on those ratings.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Andrew Selous)
The Church will always support marriages and family relationships that are committed to mutual flourishing —Jesus’s first miracle was, after all, at a wedding in Cana in Galilee. The Archbishops’ commission to strengthen families and households will report next month.
Nick Fletcher
The 2021 census has shown that people living on their own are more likely to be renting, less financially secure, have lower levels of happiness and higher levels of anxiety. Some 60% of people living alone are men. Marriage is a sacred bond between man and woman. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should promote marriage at every opportunity and bring back tax allowances to suit?
Andrew Selous
My hon. Friend is right to look at all the measures that can support marriage, given that in the UK 23% of households are lone-parent households, compared with, say, 13% in the Netherlands. He is also correct that there is a lower burden of family taxation in France, Germany and the USA. There will be a range of measures to support marriage in the Archbishop’s proposals next month, which I hope my hon. Friend will support when they are published.