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Showing every spoken contribution, including 11,997 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
As I said, the average rural council will see an increase in core spending power of 21.1%; Shropshire itself will see an increase of 13.8%. I do understand that councils that find themselves in need of exceptional financial support are at the point at which they need the Government to stand behind them in one way or another. I would be very happy to meet the hon. Lady to talk in further detail about what more we can do.
The fair funding review deliberately took into account the different types of local authorities that were funded through the settlement, from London authorities and urban authorities to authorities for coastal or rural communities. For the first time we made sure that deprivation was picked up in the funding formula, and the level at which we did that was in the hundreds of households, not the thousands or tens of thousands of households. The idea behind that is to enable us to really home in on where deprivation exists across the country.
The fact is that there is not a community, high street or town centre in any part of the country that is not blighted by a building that stubbornly will not be brought back into use. It is right that if owners are not willing to take action, the Government will do.
The hon. Member has raised that issue a number of times, and the answer is the same as before. The fair funding review, for the first time, took into account the assessed need in each area, the resource available to each council to meet that need, and where the Government had to act as an equaliser in the system. That is what we have done. If there are examples of where it is not quite working and its application is not as it should be, I am happy to receive representations, and I would be happy to meet him.
The Department will support local councils going through local government reorganisation to ensure that those partnerships are maintained. The Local Government Association has a good toolkit available for councils to help them ensure that the transition is managed in the way that he describes.
We have an established best value regime that assesses all councils objectively, based on evidence, and of course we take the audit position very seriously. I will confirm in writing exactly where we are up to with that local authority, but to be clear, just because the status of the local authority is as the hon. Gentleman describes, that does not mean that the community it serves should be denied funding.
Obviously, we take decisions on local reorganisation on a county-by-county basis. When we are in a position to issue a “minded to” notice, we explain at length how we will balance the competing interests to get the right balance, but I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s point. The identity of place matters, and places that are urban have quite a different character and economy from those that are rural. By and large, I think we try to strike that balance well in the decisions that are taken.
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the widely varied roles of local government and how connected local government is to communities. Many local authorities take pride in reaching the gold standard from animal welfare charities. I am happy to take up her point and perhaps respond in writing.
The Government do not intervene in local authorities’ individual budget-setting decisions. We also recognise that local authorities are doing their best to try to wrestle competing interests in areas in which there is huge demand, such as adult and children’s social care, special educational needs and disabilities, and temporary accommodation. However, the hon. Gentleman rightly points out the success of that programme, and I hope that all councils look to ensure that the community impact of budget decisions is being adequately managed.
As explained in the letter, it is not for the Secretary of State to determine the names of local authorities; local authorities have the legal right and ability to change them themselves. My advice is to crack on with it.
The involvement of commissioners in any local authority, or envoys for that matter, is a last resort after all else has failed, so no Government take such an intervention lightly. We also want to ensure that there is an exit for intervention. We have proven, in Liverpool and other places, that where the council shows sustained improvement, we are happy to review that. Although Birmingham has taken significant steps at improvement, there are still steps yet to take.
It is our intention that all the local government reorganisation areas will have an election in 2028 and a vesting day in April 2029.
Well, I would hope that the clue is in the name—a shop that primarily sells vapes.
We are bringing forward legislation for the overnight visitor levy, and an essential part of that is to ensure that all short-term lets are on the register and that we know who should pay that taxation in areas where the mayoral or foundation authority agrees to it. We are in conversation with DCMS about what implementation of the register needs to look like.
We have agreed, as part of the transitional arrangements, that the committee system will be allowed to continue for an extra year in the way that my hon. Friend describes.
All of us are concerned about the announcement for Poundland and its 30,000 staff members. These are people in every one of our communities. I do not think there is a high street in the country that does not feature a Poundland. As confirmed this morning, the Government are in conversation with Poundland to ensure that it is supported where it can be, but I absolutely understand the community impact that my hon. Friend describes.
There is definitely a pattern, particularly among short-term lets, of transferring to business rates to avoid paying council tax; that is why we need the short-term lets register that Members have spoken about today. I would be happy to meet Cornish MPs as a group to talk this through further.
I really welcome the change to the business rates threshold, which will take hundreds of businesses in Bournemouth town centre out of paying rates. However, has my right hon. Friend considered the knock-on impact on business improvement districts, which often step up to fill the gap when councils cannot keep the streets clean or keep shopfronts looking nice? As more areas are coming out of rates, what are the Government doing to look at the impact on BIDs?
Victims of domestic abuse who have come over as dependants can currently apply for settlement immediately. Will that change under the new rules?
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is bringing out a short-term let registration scheme in March. Unfortunately, due to data protection rules, it cannot be more of a licensing scheme, so owners of properties will not be obliged to file liability insurance or fire safety documents. DCMS tells me that MHCLG is the Department that could set up such a licensing scheme. Is that something the Minister will consider?
This Labour Government are helping families in Cornwall with their energy and fuel bills. Nearly 37,500 households in Truro and Falmouth will get £100 directly into their bank accounts. The drop in VAT and standing charges going will also help. In a rural and coastal constituency, where a car is not a luxury, the extension of the 5p fuel duty cut will help, as will the rise in travel rates, and the extension of the red diesel cut will help our farmers.<span id="682" class="column-number" data-column-number="682"></span> We are also tackling the specific challenges facing rural, off-grid communities. Some 14% of Cornish households rely on heating oil, including 5,000 families in Truro and Falmouth, which is well above the national average. Suspending those tariffs alongside more than £50 million of support for low-income households that use heating oil will make a real difference to those homes, as will regulating the market. By pairing that short-term relief with the warm homes plan, this Government are helping rural families to move towards cleaner, cheaper heating on their own terms. I have been working with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on a medium-term solution to license hydrotreated vegetable oil for use in heating. It has been trialled in Kehelland village in Cornwall with great success, and I hope to engage with DESNZ to get that rolled out further. On devolution, Cornwall will be designated a single strategic authority. That will hopefully bring growth, funding and further devolution on top of the £30 million Kernow industrial growth fund announced last year. A delivery plan will now be worked up, and I look forward to seeing the further devolution of powers to unlock housing, skills and economic growth. Truro and Falmouth enjoys a vibrant local tourist economy, with independent shops, bakeries, cafés and pubs. Raising small business rate relief to £18,000 means that 56% of retail, hospitality and leisure properties in the south-west will pay no business rates at all. Together with that real-terms business rates freeze, 6,500 hospitality, retail and leisure properties in Cornwall will benefit. Crucially for Truro and Falmouth, the right to buy community assets scheme, support for co-ops and high street rental auctions will give local people the tools to take back vacant units and bring empty shops back into use. I would like to see those powers rolled out to our town and city councils. The unitary authority has limited resources and our town councils have grown to fill that gap. They are very capable and they could run those schemes in the absence of appetite from the unitary, and they know their high streets far better. We have many towns of approximately 20,000 people, each with an expanded town council. In Cornwall, only 11% of our housing is social housing, against a national average of 18%. We have 26,000 households on the social housing waiting list. I therefore welcome extending preferential borrowing rates for councils. But Cornwall’s housing revenue account is struggling to put more investment into repairs, and rents are low in Cornwall, so rent convergence will take time. It means that the HRA has had to reduce the annual funds available for new homes. One of the barriers is the £90 million debt from the self-financing arrangements dating back to 2012. If that debt was reduced, Cornwall could do more. HRA and debt reform would allow council houses to be built once again in Cornwall. There are root causes of our housing crisis in Truro and Falmouth. We have many holiday lets, which are a good thing for Cornwall, but I welcome the Government’s plans for a registration system. We need to go further to look at licensing, too, to check that insurance and fire safety documents are seen and that local authorities can inspect properties.<span id="683" class="column-number" data-column-number="683"></span>
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Will my hon. Friend give way?
A week ago, three blocks of flats in Canning Town underwent emergency evacuation after serious structural flaws were found. A further two blocks have subsequently been evacuated. With over 300 flats now evacuated, and no timeline or indication of when this will be resolved or when residents can return, this is causing a huge amount of distress and serious financial worry. Will my hon. Friends take whatever action they can to help resolve this appalling situation, with a particular eye on support for the families and businesses who have been displaced?
It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse. It has been a superb debate. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on introducing this e-petition debate. It has been a very thoughtful debate, and rightly so, because questions about children, social media and online safety go right to the heart of family life in this country. I have two young girls aged six and one. Although they are not yet at the stage of social media and telephones, the daily fight to get them off screens at that age requires the diplomatic skills of the UN, because screens are everywhere. As parents we probably set the worst examples. Our whole lives are on our phones now, whether we are at work or trying to do family admin. We all live in a digital age where we are more connected than ever before. Being online can bring huge benefits, from making new connections to learning new skills. I pay great tribute to Leo and his colleagues for setting <span id="291WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="291WH"></span>up this petition and getting the issues brought into the public domain, while we highlight the trade-offs that the Government have to make to keep children safe. I want to be absolutely clear from the start that children are at risk of real harm online. Those risks have been present for some time, and successive Governments have failed to regulate to keep children safe online. As the Secretary of State has made clear, our ambition is not simply to make the online world safer, but to enable and empower children and young people to use it safely. That requires an active Government who are prepared to step in when children are being harmed, but also to step in to give children alternative uses for both the online and offline world. We are not starting from scratch. The Online Safety Act introduces one of the most robust systems globally for protecting children from harm online. It is important to state that the Act is not perfect, but everything that we do beyond this builds on the Act. It is one of the most robust pieces of legislation globally to try to protect children from harm. I take on board the criticisms and points made by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) and other Members about the Ofcom analysis, which showed that over the first nine months it had not seen a major reduction in online harms among children. None the less, we can prove the counterfactual that there has not been a massive increase, so perhaps the Online Safety Act is working to the extent of not increasing the harms. However, we want to get the harms to the lowest possible level. We have to be honest: we will never deal with 100% of harms. What we are trying to do with the Online Safety Act and all the regulations on top of that—the under-16 social media ban, features and functionalities bans, and AI chatbot restrictions—is layer on as much as we possibly can to increase the number of harms we can take out of the system. We will never get to 100%, though, and we have to be honest about that. The Online Safety Act’s child safety duties came into effect in July 2025, requiring platforms to prevent children from encountering pornography, self-harm material and suicide and eating disorders content. Providers must also protect children from other types of harmful content such as violent content and bullying and abusive content. But we always knew we had to do much more. That is why earlier this year we launched the “Growing up in the online world” consultation to hear directly from parents, experts, stakeholders and, more important, young people themselves. The wider public also had to be involved in deciding how we can make the online world safer and more enriching for our young people. The consultation received more than 116,000 responses. Nine in 10 parents who responded told us they support a ban on social media for their children. The analysis showed they were screaming out for help, to go to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith). Although what we heard from young people themselves was more nuanced, two thirds of children who responded to the consultation told us that they would support age restrictions for under-16s on at least some social media. Ofcom’s latest research found that almost three quarters of children aged 11 to 17 had seen or heard potentially harmful content online in a four-week period, including six in 10 who encountered bullying and five in 10 who encountered hate content directly.<span id="292WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="292WH"></span> We believe that social media services create unique risks for children, and while many of them have made welcome changes, they have not gone far or fast enough to keep our children safe. We think that the responsible thing to do is ban social media companies from offering services to children under 16, but it does not stop there. This is not about stopping children from going online altogether; it is about making sure that the services they use are safe and suitable. To make these changes work, companies will be required to use highly effective age assurance that is backed by Ofcom’s robust enforcement powers.
That goes to the heart of the problem, because social media is indeed a very loose term. Platforms that might have been out of scope are perhaps being brought into scope by having new functionalities that we might think are different from the social media platforms we are seeking to regulate. For example, Spotify has introduced stranger conversation functionality to its platform. Does that mean that it comes within scope? It depends how social media is defined and whether platforms are morphing into something different. For example, when Facebook was first introduced, it was a service for bringing university students together and letting them communicate with each other. It is now a worldwide content platform where anyone in the world—billions of people—can sign up for an account, interact with each other and upload their own content, which can be served through algorithms; of course, every bit of it is monetised. My hon. Friend is right that technology is moving very quickly, as is the definition of social media, and that is why the regulations have to be flexible enough to deal with some of those harms. I will return to the question of scope shortly. To answer the question asked by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk, the first regulations will be laid before Parliament before the start of the Christmas recess, with restrictions coming into effect in spring next year. While social media services pose a unique risk, there are, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) said, other services that children can access that have many of the same harmful functions. That is why we are also preventing under-16s from accessing some of the riskier features. They will not be able to livestream themselves or communicate with strangers on a wide range of services, including gaming. We call this the Australia-plus model because we are bringing in gaming, which is not included in the restrictions there. 16 and 17-year-olds will have those protections applied by default. There will be no cliff edge on the adult social media experience: when they hit 16, restrictions will be applied by default when they enter an account until they are 18. We will introduce default protections for 16 and 17-year-olds on persuasive features on social media such as autoplay and personalised feeds to support <span id="293WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="293WH"></span>young people to manage their time online. We will also apply default overnight curfews, including muting push notifications. Many Members have mentioned the other features and functions on social media that are addictive but may not be as harmful as the really extreme harms, such as child sexual exploitation or some of the other stories we hear. There is a spectrum of harms, including the addictive nature of social media, the lack of sleep from using it and the neurological difficulties it is causing in the adolescent brain—that is why social media companies design them that way. In fact, there is a Science and Technology Committee hearing tomorrow morning on the neuroscience of childhood and how social media is affecting children. It is worth looking into these big issues, and that is why we are applying overnight curfews to try to combat the impact on sleep and attention as part of the social media defaults, including muting push notifications. These protections will sit alongside a wider package of measures including stronger safeguards around AI chatbots and measures to promote a more positive and educational experience both online and offline. We want children to enjoy the benefits of the online world but give parents the confidence that they can do that safely. We know that regulation alone is not enough. We must also help children and young people to build media literacy and critical thinking skills to navigate the online world safely and prepare them for an increasingly digital future. I have spent a lot of time in schools in my constituency talking to 11 to 15-year-olds about the social media ban. I think hon. Members are absolutely right to suggest that we do not give young people enough credit for their understanding of dangers online. They understand when there are things online that they should not be seeing. They are very much aware of bullying and of those addictive features, and we do not give them enough credit for being able to navigate this themselves. We are therefore strengthening digital resilience and media literacy through changes in the curriculum and practical support for parents and carers, while helping children and families to access high-quality online content. This is about building on the protections that we already have and going further where children need us to. The Government cannot and will not look the other way. We must move more quickly and decisively to keep people safe online, and nowhere is that responsibility more important than in protecting children from harm. Since I took on my online safety role in the reshuffle, I have spent a lot of time with grieving families. I encourage all Members of this House—Ministers, Cabinet members, Back Benchers and those who are just interested in this issue—to spend some time with the grieving families to hear directly from them how social media has impacted their family life. They have some incredibly difficult stories that are harrowing to hear, but I think all Members should hear them. The test for the Secretary of State and me is that if we get to the end of this process and find that all these regulations would not have saved their children from the harms that led to their deaths, we will have failed their children and failed to protect the children of the future from harm. That is a very high bar, but it is a bar we have to meet, because the social media companies have not. Over years, if not decades, <span id="294WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="294WH"></span>they have consistently turned the other way, and they are starting to take action only because they realise that legislation is coming to restrict accounts for under-16s. Our job as a Government is to build an online world that is safer and more responsible, where platforms take responsibility. If we ask more of the online world, we should also offer more in the real world: stronger communities, better youth provision and more trusted adults around young people. Safety is not just about what we block; it is also about what we build, and we are determined to do that. I will run through some of the interesting and important questions that hon. Members have raised. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who introduced the debate with a tremendous speech, talked about age-gating and the Australian example. What Australia has not done—we have been learning this from Australia—is have highly effective age verification. That is the gateway to making sure that the ban works. Many hon. Members have rightly challenged me, as the Minister responsible, on what that will look like. We are looking at this at the moment. Should it be at the app store level, as the shadow Minister said? Should it be at the device level? Should it be at the level of each individual social media platform? We are working through those issues to see what the most effective option is, but the principle for us is to ask, “What is the most effective system of age verification to ensure that under-16s are protected from social media platforms?” My hon. and learned Friend talked rightly about the risky parts of gaming. We are bringing gaming into our approach, through features and functions. We will pass the under-16s social media ban this side of the new year, and it will come into effect in the spring of next year; we will then bring forward a host of regulations on features and functions, including stranger communications, which is the biggest problem with Roblox and some of the other issues that hon. Members have raised. That will allow gamers to continue to have the functionality of stranger pairing, but without the ability to talk to strangers in a gaming context. That should resolve some of these issues. A lot of the harms are where vulnerable people are taken from the gaming environment to other platforms, in order for grooming and exploitation to continue. That is a commitment of the features and functions part of this, which overlays the social media ban. I will talk a little about isolating young people, because that is always on my mind; I know the Secretary of State thinks about it a lot as well. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire, who is the baby of the House—I was hoping to be the baby of this debate, but I have been beaten by probably everybody else in the Chamber—for telling his personal story, which is a very brave thing to do. Isolation is a concern, particularly for vulnerable communities, but from the data and information that we have, we are seeing that the most vulnerable young people are the most susceptible to being involved in these harms. The balance here is about whether we have these spaces where young, vulnerable people can seek that advice or the communities that they wish to be part of and where they can have that enrichment, or whether we protect them. On balance, protecting people is probably the best place to be, while enriching the offer that we can give young people so that they are confident that they can go to safe spaces with safe people they can talk <span id="295WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="295WH"></span>to about their experiences. This is not an easy thing to resolve. If anyone said it was, they would not be telling the truth. Let us talk a little about the way back. Essentially, it all comes down to the scope of the social media ban. What we want to do with the ban, which we announced in June, is capture user-to-user platforms whose purpose is to enable online interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside having an algorithm. The Australian regime includes platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. We will not be naming platforms directly in the regulations. Ofcom will subsequently apply the regulations to the social media companies and then determine whether it will produce a list of the companies that are in scope. I will explain what Ofcom will do in the regulations and what the thought processes are. Social media companies that think that they are in scope and that have more than a certain number of users will have to self-notify to Ofcom as being in scope of the legislation, and then conform to the regulations. We are working through the detail of how we translate the Australian scope into the UK context, and it is really important to get this right within that. Several hon. Members talked about the regulations, about meeting the criteria and about what the off-ramp is. Essentially, the off-ramp or the way back is for platforms to prove, through their design, that they meet the regulations. It is just a case of reversing the situation. If stranger communication is banned and your online platform is subsequently not to be available to under-16s but you have that functionality, it is quite clear that you do not comply with the regulations, so the way back is to comply with the regulations and fall out of scope. That is an easy thing to say but not an easy thing to deliver, but that is the principle with which we will go forward on this. If there are services like Lego Play or—YouTube has been mentioned—YouTube Kids, are there ways in which you can stop the harms being created by the algorithms, the recommender systems, the commenting systems or the conversations that can be had with strangers? If you have created a service that complies with all the regulations, is it then available to under-16s? I would say that currently the Government’s position is that, yes, there has to be an off-ramp, and the Canada model is something that we are looking at quite closely in terms of its regulations.
Mine too, Mrs Hobhouse. It was such an engaging conversation that we were trying to have with each other, so I do apologise.<span id="296WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="296WH"></span> I suppose the simple answer to the question is, “We don’t quite know yet, but probably not.” And this is the answer to the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), in terms of time. When we announced we were going forward with the ban, we had to have a legislative vehicle to put this through. The difficulty with that is this: we took the powers, in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, to put the regulations through. That means that we can do it quickly, and that is why we can make the commitment to do it this side of the end of the year. That then means that we have to make a whole body of potential legislation, in statutory instruments, in one go in December, which is not an easy feat if we want to get this right. I think the discussion about what the way back looks like will have to be a future discussion, probably alongside the features and functions part of the debate later on, after spring next year, when this is being implemented. That is not entirely settled yet, but given what we have to try to achieve by December, it is probably the only way to be able to put that in place.
Let me go through the timeline, because it is really important. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act gives us the power to make the regulations. We will make the regulations in December this year. These will come into effect in late spring, and by the time they come into effect, Ofcom will have to have done the work in terms of implementing the regulations, bringing the platforms that are in scope into scope and then starting to enforce what needs to be done. But there will have to be an implementation period after Ofcom has developed the guidance and what must be done on enforcement, so the day from which under-16s will no longer be able to access social media will be in late spring. Between December and late spring, Ofcom will develop the guidance required to implement the regulations. Throughout that process, we will be working on the features and functions, which relate to things like the stranger communications that I have already laid out. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury spoke about her own daughter and about a phone being on her Christmas list. I think the 116,000 responses to the consultation were just parents crying out for the necessary tools. The Labour party conference had many panels on online safety, and the example that was always used was alcohol licensing. Many of us will have a bottle of alcohol in the house; we know that under-18s are not allowed to drink it, but that does not stop some of them doing so. The tools cannot be foolproof, but they give parents the ability to say, “That is harmful to your health. It is harmful to children, and there are laws in place to say you can access that only when you are over the age of 18.” That gives parents the ability to draw a line in the sand, and I think a lot of them are crying out for the tools to help make those decisions. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has put a lot of thought into what is happening on offline activities at the same time. We cannot have a situation in which the online world is restricted for <span id="297WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="297WH"></span>under-16s but there is nothing for the offline world. We have put over £500 million into the Youth Matters fund to refurbish or build 250 new facilities, as well as a £22.5 million investment over three years to support up to 400 schools to provide youth-tailored enrichment schemes. We have made a major investment in the Youth Matters national youth strategy, a 10-year plan to ensure that every young person has somewhere to go, something to do and someone who cares. I think part of having someone who cares is about the ability to open up to someone who is not a parent, which allows a young person to have some of the difficult conversations that they may have sought to have online. We heard about the nine-point plan of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), who is no longer in her place. She has been right at the forefront in trying to see what a way back looks like and what it needs to be effective. I encourage Members to look at that nine-point plan and see the neuroscience event tomorrow that my hon. Friend will be part of as a member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. My constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), demonstrated what is in his own inbox, which is probably a demonstration of what all our inboxes looked like around the country following the consultation. He highlighted a number of civil society organisations that have very strong views on this issue, one way or the other: they either support or do not support the ban, or they may reluctantly support a ban because something needs to be done. The challenge that the Government face in developing these regulations can be seen not only from this afternoon’s debate, but from what has been said by all the civil society organisations out there. I pay tribute to them all; many of them, such as the Molly Rose Foundation, have been set up on the back of tragedy and in horrendous circumstances. There is no one solution that they are proposing, and it is therefore the Government’s responsibility to find the best way forward that keeps children safe online and has the maximum benefit. I will finish by mentioning a few more of my hon. Friends who raised some really good questions. We heard about international comparisons and the EU KIDS Act from my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles). We are basing all our evidence on international comparisons. Of course, we have the Australia model, which we talk about a lot, but the Canada model is currently being developed, and there is also the EU KIDS Act, which I was in Brussels talking about just last month. Those international comparisons will certainly affect what we think about, and the Council of Europe is right on this issue. I sat on the Council of Europe many years ago, and it will do a lot of great work in developing both the right of the child and the human right of access and protection from harm, including the protection of children from harm. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas), who is a fantastic resource on this issue, and I thank him for how he has been able to help us develop some of these regulations. Being online has huge benefits for young people, such <span id="298WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="298WH"></span>as the ability to learn the guitar, like my hon. Friend—perhaps he should have given us a little song this afternoon to see whether his YouTube tutorials actually worked. We often get questions like that—what will people do if they want to try to learn to play the guitar? Again, I emphasise that we are not banning people from being online, and we are not banning children from being online. Logged-out features can be used. If online platforms such as YouTube want to come forward with a new or redesigned platform that complies with the regulations, and wish to test whether they could be removed from scope, it is up to them to do so. In fact, we have been crying out for platforms to do that for many years. We have ended up in this position because they have not complied or had any intent to comply. They must comply with the regulations that are put in place. I will finish with why we are doing this. I talked about the grieving families. I have a whole folder of their stories in front of me, and the harm is there for all to see. There are extreme cases of child sexual exploitation, children who have had to be taken into safeguarding because of their online experiences, or children who have died. Some of the stories are unpalatable, if we think about our own children; the Government have a responsibility to act. As the Secretary of State said in the House on introducing the under-16 ban, social media companies have not done enough to keep children safe online. The Ofcom analysis shows that they are still not doing enough. The Government have to step in. We do not want to ban people from doing things. We do not want to ban under-16s from being on social media, but that is the only way in which we can protect children from its harms. We are determined to ensure that children have an enriched experience online, and that media literacy and the education system allow them that experience, but also that they have an enriched experience offline. I think the Secretary of State describes it as giving children their childhood back, which is a really good way of putting it. Let the message today to Leo and all the petitioners be a really positive one: we hear their concerns, but we back parents, we believe in young people and we are determined to make the online world work better for them. That is the task we have to do between now and December, and it is the responsibility of not just the Government, but all Members. I re-emphasise what the Secretary of State has set as the benchmark: we have to be able to look those grieving families in the eye and say that we have done all we possibly can to make the online world a safer place, so that other people’s children do not end up like their children did. If we can achieve that, we will have achieved something not just for this generation, but for future generations as well.
<Question HRSContentId="{140F2E1B-F17B-4B8E-8E9C-F0C4AAF1CCDD}">22. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{573AD019-993A-483D-8EC9-A4755104B7D6}">What steps she is taking to reform the leasehold sector.</QuestionText> </Question>
Leaseholders living on Barrington Road and St James’s Crescent in my constituency, in buildings owned by Metropolitan Thames Valley housing association and built by the contractor Guildmore, have been trapped in limbo for more than four years. They are unable to sell and worried about fire safety, while MTVH and Guildmore continue to argue between themselves about who is responsible for fire safety defects in the building, who will complete the remediation, and who will pay for it. There is still no plan or timescale, and communication has stalled. The last substantive update that I received was back in May of this year. Can I ask the Secretary of State for her personal support and intervention in unlocking this completely unacceptable dispute, so that my constituents can at last sleep soundly in their homes and make plans for their futures?
The Government’s commitment to children and young people is clear in the scale of the education reforms they are bringing forward, from the restoration of early years services through Best Start family hubs to the expansion of childcare, the roll-out of free breakfast clubs, curriculum reform, special educational needs and disabilities reform, technical and vocational qualifications from the age of 14, work experience, social media regulation and apprenticeships. It is the Education Committee’s role to scrutinise the detail of the Government’s policies and their delivery, but there can be no doubt as to the scale of their ambition for children and young people across our country. I welcome the announcement in the Budget of the establishment of a new parental allowance for self-employed fathers, partners and adopters. This will enable parents who have previously been excluded from parental leave and pay to have precious bonding time together as a family with their baby or adopted child.<span id="624" class="column-number" data-column-number="624"></span> Earlier this year, my Committee published a report on reading for pleasure, which documented the immense benefits it brings children and young people in the development of empathy and compassion, good mental health and wellbeing, language skills and attainment at school. We also highlighted the concerning drop in the number of children and young people choosing to read for pleasure and a range of interventions that are needed to turn the situation around. I therefore welcome the additional £15 million that the Government have allocated in the Budget to increase access to books for young children. I would add, however, that the most concerning decline in reading for pleasure is seen among teenagers, and that school libraries can play a hugely valuable role in supporting children to sustain reading at secondary school. My Committee has called on the Government to extend their important pledge to deliver a library in every primary school to secondary schools, which could be done with an investment of £15 million. I hope that the Government will continue to look at how that important pledge can be extended. On examining the delivery of apprenticeships, my Committee noted that children and young people are not provided with nearly enough information about apprenticeships, and that this information often does not come in time for them to properly consider apprenticeships as an alternative to university. I therefore welcome the expansion of the mayoral apprenticeship brokerage pilots, which have the potential to ensure both that employers are supported to offer more apprenticeships and that young people have access to information about these fantastic opportunities in their local area. I further welcome the increase of £60 million a year for new PE and sport partnerships. This will increase the availability of high-quality opportunities for children and young people to participate in sport and physical activity in school and in their local area, directly contributing to better physical and mental health. However, the Committee remains concerned about some areas of interest to us that were not covered by the Budget. Our report on higher education and funding raised concerns about the impact of the international student levy on higher education institutions and a lack of join-up between the Home Office and the Department for Education. The Government’s impact analysis for the proposed international student levy now suggests a loss of income to the higher education sector of £280 million —more than £100 million higher over three years than originally estimated. Universities consistently told us that the international student levy would prove to be relatively inelastic to increases in fees, and the impact analysis supports that. We can be enormously proud of our universities; they are internationally renowned powerhouses of economic growth and anchor institutions in their communities that offer life-changing opportunities to thousands of young people and mature students every year. However, they are facing extreme precarity in their financial sustainability, and it is vital that Government policy seeks to bolster them, not to push them over a cliff edge. I urge the Government to look carefully again at the international student levy to ensure that it is both proportionate and fit for purpose.<span id="625" class="column-number" data-column-number="625"></span> My Committee has long raised concerns about the disparity in the treatment of further education colleges and schools with regard to VAT. Further education colleges have a critical role to play in the Government’s important objective of tackling the scandal of almost 1 million young people not being in education, employment or training. Colleges are places of hope, inspiration, support and inclusion where young people can find their passion and gain the skills they need to pursue it, yet unlike schools, they cannot reclaim VAT. Ministers have written to me with a technical explanation of the rules on VAT exemptions, but they are looking at this issue the wrong way round. Whatever the technical justification, the reality is that schools and colleges are not on a level playing field with regard to VAT. The response should not be, “This is what the rules say,” but, “How can we change the system to make the rules fair?” This Budget represents the Government’s excellent commitment to children and young people, but there is further to go. My Committee will continue to press the Government and scrutinise their commitments.
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, particularly the provision for care workers to obtain settlement on their existing five-year route. What support and provision are being offered to those who came here on a care visa and are tied to exploitative sponsors, or those who have been unable to continue working as care workers because of exploitative sponsors?
I am pleased that this Budget sets a clear priority to address the cost of living. More than 44,000 households in my Smethwick <span id="644" class="column-number" data-column-number="644"></span>constituency will receive the £100 payment to help with their energy bills, and the business rates freeze will benefit 52% of retail, hospitality and leisure properties in the west midlands, including 1,198 properties in my constituency. It is clear that decisions taken by this Labour Government, the current Chancellor and the previous Chancellor have been instrumental in keeping UK growth at the top end of growth in all G7 countries. Furthermore, in the past two years the Government have set out an ambitious programme of investment in key industries, including in nuclear energy, green energy and defence industries to name a few. Alongside that public investment, those industries will need crucial private investment to grow to their full potential. For that reason, I would have liked to see the restoration of the 30% up-front income tax relief for venture capital trusts, which was reduced to 20% at the last Budget, as that relief is vital in supporting British small and medium-sized enterprises in their early stages of development. Venture capital trusts already support over 1,100 British companies, predominantly in tech sectors, employing over 100,000 people and generating £21.8 billion in revenue in the last year alone. Those businesses often have high up-front costs, long development cycles and uncertain terms that can make conventional finance difficult to secure. In 2006, when the relief was reduced from 40% to 30%, fundraising reduced by around 65%, and it took 16 years for it to recover. At last year’s Budget, the relief was reduced further from 30% to 20%, and as a result, industry estimates suggest a decline in fundraising of anywhere between 30% and 60%, which is equivalent to between £1.25 billion and £2.5 billion less growth equity for UK scale-ups over the next five years. Restoring the 30% relief would incentivise investment in SMEs across the country to support Government investment. It would allow investment into firms that are crucial to the supply chains that will help to secure our place as a global leader, build our national resilience and deliver growth in every postcode. Every pound invested by VCTs unlocks an additional £2.33 in funding from additional sources. The Treasury has already shown a willingness to support small businesses. Indeed, last year the then Chancellor listened to the industry and implemented changes that it had been requesting for many years. I hope that the Treasury will consider restoring the relief to 30% as part of a wider industry strategy that supports our ambition for growth in every postcode.
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a strategy for recycling decommissioned submarines; and for connected purposes. Every time I drive back to my constituency, there is one sight that tells me I am nearly home. It is not a cathedral or a castle; it is the Goliath crane that stands above Babcock’s dockyard at Rosyth. That crane came to the area just over 15 years ago to help put together the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, and it has been part of the west Fife skyline ever since. The dockyard underneath the crane has been there for a good deal longer—more than a century—and the people who work there are some of the most skilled that I have the privilege to represent. Right now, they are doing something nobody in this country or any other has done before. HMS Swiftsure, a cold war hunter-killer submarine that left service in 1992, is on track to become the first Royal Navy nuclear submarine ever to be fully dismantled, with the work due to finish by the end of this year. Around 90% of her is expected to be reused or recycled. More than 500 tonnes of material has already been stripped out and recycled, with cabling, circuit boards, insulation and electrical equipment each sorted into its own waste stream. Her fin has been lifted off whole, so that its steel can be recovered. The best of the high-quality steel from these boats is already being turned into components for future Royal Navy submarines, such as those in the Dreadnought class. Put simply, the submarines that kept us safe through the cold war are helping to build the ones that will keep us safe for decades to come. I have been to see the work for myself; I have been inside HMS Swiftsure and have seen the incredible care, diligence and professionalism that the workforce bring to their jobs. I thank everyone involved in the work, in particular Ken Dyke, the nuclear operations director; Gary Thomson, who supervises the lifting; and Dean McGuiness, one of the welders on the project. They and their colleagues have made an incredibly complex process look straightforward when it is anything but. Other countries are watching our work. Australia, our AUKUS partner, will one day have to retire its own nuclear submarines, and it will not be the only one. If we get this right, what is being learned at Rosyth is something that we can sell and export to the world. In the end, this is a story more about people than these old boats. It is about the apprentice starting out, the engineer picking up skills that very few people have, and the families who can find a good job without ever having to leave Fife. Governments of every colour have known about this problem for a very long time, going back to the commissioning of the first nuclear submarines. In 1995, a Conservative Defence Minister stood in Rosyth and promised that the dockyard would not become a graveyard for old submarines. Some 31 years on, six submarines are still waiting to be recycled, and recycling of the seventh is only now being finished. Dreadnought, Britain’s <span id="613" class="column-number" data-column-number="613"></span>very first nuclear submarine, has been tied up at Rosyth since 1980. She has now spent far longer waiting to be recycled than she ever spent at sea. In 2019, the National Audit Office found that not one of the 20 submarines retired since 1980 had been disposed of. The Ministry of Defence had hoped to have begun this process by 2011, but it has missed that by years. We have had promise after promise, and far too little delivered. This Bill seeks to close that gap. Alongside Swiftsure, six boats at Rosyth are waiting their turn: Dreadnought, Churchill, Resolution, Repulse, Renown and Revenge. Another 16 are at Devonport. About 200 people are working on the programme at Rosyth today. Carry that work on to the next phase, and Rosyth could support around 300 skilled jobs for 20 to 30 years, and perhaps even longer. That is not an offer we get in many areas of industrial policy. Since I was elected, I have raised this matter with Ministers more times than I can count. I am sure that they are fed up with answering written questions on this topic, but I will keep raising the matter, because Rosyth should be the place that the country and the world turn to for this work. We talk a lot in this place about growth, usually in percentages and forecasts, but growth should not be abstract. Growth is a young person getting an apprenticeship; somebody landing a skilled job; a family feeling secure enough to buy a home; and a community knowing that investment is coming and jobs are being maintained. Every boat dismantled means work for welders, engineers, project managers and technicians; orders for local suppliers; and places on courses at Fife college and Forth Valley college. However, I am sad to say that some Opposition Members have opposed this work. At the very moment when the Rosyth workforce is showing that this work can be done safely and to the highest standards, some in the Scottish National party have chosen to peddle unnecessary scare stories, instead of trusting the skill and dedication of local people doing incredible work. That is scandalous. Those SNP representatives are turning their backs on hundreds of skilled jobs, and on apprenticeships for young people in Fife. The men and women at Rosyth are not a risk to be managed; they are the reason this is working. I say to <span id="614" class="column-number" data-column-number="614"></span>anyone in the SNP who opposes this programme: come to Rosyth, meet the workforce and then explain why they would rather those jobs went somewhere else. Some other country will attempt to crack this problem. What the Rosyth workforce needs more than anything is certainty. Such skills cannot be switched on and off. If we leave a long gap between one boat and the next, the experienced people will retire or move on, the apprentices will find work elsewhere, and we will end up starting again from scratch, with further delay, further cost and more nuclear submarines sitting in Rosyth, not being handled. The Bill would place a duty on the Secretary of State to publish a strategy for recycling the UK’s decommissioned submarines. It would have to include a timetable for the boats waiting at Rosyth and Devonport, a plan for the skills and supply chain on which the work relies, arrangements for safe regulation and waste, and regular reports back to the House. We do not need any more open-ended promises; we need a published plan, and Ministers answerable to Parliament for delivering it. There is a security argument as well. Being able to look after a nuclear submarine from the day it is built until the day the last piece of it is recycled is part of having a sovereign nuclear capability, and we should keep that capability in this country. For more than a century, Rosyth has helped to keep this country safe. The six submarines still sitting in the Forth represent years of work, hundreds of careers, and a chance to build something here that the rest of the world is going to need. This Bill is for Ken, Gary, Dean, and the people they work alongside, and for the young people of Fife who could follow in their footsteps. I commend it to the House. <em>Question put and agreed </em><em>to</em><em>.</em> <em>Ordered,</em> That Graeme Downie, Mike Martin, Sarah Hall, Damien Egan, Alex Baker, Alex Ballinger, Richard Baker, Michelle Scrogham, Lincoln Jopp, Al Carns, David Taylor and Luke Akehurst present the Bill. Graeme Downie accordingly presented the Bill. <em>Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 December, and to be printed (Bill 170).</em>
I thank the Minister for giving way and for his explanation. Can he at this stage give any indication of the thresholds at which this mechanism would kick in and allow the Department to make those directions? It is perfectly right that a windfall on interest can be put to good public use, but I am interested in where the Department currently considers the threshold for that windfall to start, so that we can know when those schemes might start making a contribution.
Will the Home Secretary set out what internal changes she will make in the Home Office? One complaint I often get from people waiting for their ILR decision is about the length of time it takes to get that outcome from the point of application. As part of this new package to improve the system, what will happen to reduce the waiting time for applicants?
Does my hon. Friend agree that if we think about the online world in the same way as the real world, it is a ludicrous idea that we would deliberately send children to go and interact with strangers—probably adults—in an unsupervised and unregulated environment where we would have no idea what kind of conversations were happening, and that no parent or politician would ever endorse that?
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. Let us be honest: for far too long, tech companies have profited obscenely from addictive algorithms and harmful content aimed at children here in Britain. These are not British companies, but they have become absurdly powerful—probably more powerful than any Government. Generations of young people are paying the price, and we have a mental health crisis. We can all see that. This is not random; it is happening for a reason. Social media has become almost unavoidable for people growing up. They are not making a choice. As one of my colleagues said, there is no choice—they have to be on it. Young people in the UK spend an average of more than four hours a day on social media. That means that most of their free time is spent staring at a screen. We also have a mental health crisis—I think they are linked. This is fundamentally changing what life looks like, and how young people see themselves, build friendships and form opinions and world views. The consequences are apparent all around us. The incredible rise in diagnosed and undiagnosed anxiety is just startling. I had no experience of it until becoming an MP and visiting schools, where I was absolutely blown away by conversations with teachers and parents. The scale is off the charts. It is much more common among girls and people with a disability. Young people regularly describe feeling like they have no control over what they see online. Again, there is no choice here. They are being sent these things for hours and hours every day and deep into the night. In the Government’s consultation this summer, nine in 10 parents backed a social media ban for under-16s. Two thirds of young people agreed that under-16s should not be allowed to use at least some social media platforms. That is not surprising at all, given what I have seen in schools in the last couple of years. Every time I visit schools in Plymouth, teachers tell me about the impact it is having, describing levels of mental health distress unlike anything ever seen before. Students themselves tell me they want help getting off these platforms. I always ask for a show of hands: “If no one else was on this platform, would you miss it?” For most people, the answer is no—they are only on it because everyone else is on it. They do not want to be on it. I acknowledge that some would disagree with that, including around 400 of my constituents who signed this petition, but they are in the minority. We know from whistleblowers inside these social media companies that they have known for years and years that these harms were coming. It is not as though they did nothing about it; they have done something about it—they have deliberately hidden it, over and over again. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told our colleagues in the US Congress that the company’s leadership knew how to make platforms safer but refused to act, “because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”<span id="283WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="283WH"></span> There is no reason to think that any of these companies will do anything different ever again. They are companies—they are trying to make money. We cannot put the wellbeing of our nation at the mercy of profit-making organisations, especially ones that reward addiction and exploitation. I am delighted that this year the Government announced decisive action to protect children from social media. I am extremely grateful for the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and the Minister for Artificial Intelligence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Kanishka Narayan), for getting that over the line. I am also extremely grateful to Labour colleagues who signed a letter I organised to the then Prime Minister urging him to take action. A week after that, he did indeed launch the consultation, which has now led to this decision from Government, so I thank everyone who signed that letter. Government now have to implement, and the question is how they do it. There is a duty to protect children, and I am so pleased that we are finally going to do that. There is also a duty to allow children access to the benefits of the internet and the online world. Many of my colleagues have spoken very eloquently about that today. How do we do that? A 15-year-old who wants to go on YouTube to learn French or learn the guitar should be able to do that, so there is a challenge for Government on how they do a ban. Am I suggesting that they should just trust the tech companies? No. But surely there is a world in which we are nuanced enough for Government to get a legally binding, written assurance from platforms to provide services that are not included in the ban. Surely there is a world where we are agile enough to be able to react and say, “You said you were going to do this. You have not done what you said you were going to do. You are now included in the ban,” without having to do primary legislation. I am super conscious that I grew up benefiting from YouTube. I learned the guitar on YouTube. I do not know how I would have learned it otherwise. I would have had to pay for many lessons. I do not think it is fair to tell the next generation that they cannot have those opportunities, so there is a challenge for Government. It is not as simple as just enacting this ban. It is about working out how we carry on giving access to those platforms. Those are tough conversations with big companies. On age verification, there are countless ways to verify someone’s age without handing over sensitive personal information. I know that some parts of the political agenda argue that any online regulatory action from the Government creates a privacy problem. The burden should not be on Government to do that. The burden should be on the tech companies themselves to find and implement solutions. They know all our information anyway. Those tech companies 100% know our ages. They have some of the brightest engineers in the world. Parliament and Government should set the rules, and they should comply with them.
I take the hon. Member’s point. The scale of what those companies know about us—whether we want to acknowledge that or not—really does not correspond to whether we have put our age into an online form or not. We can live in a world where we pretend they do not know that about us and our children, or we can live in the real world where they do know it, and we should just acknowledge that. It is not an invasion of privacy to acknowledge that because it has already happened. To get away from that would be a much bigger debate—not about restricting some aspects of social media for under-16s, but a much bigger conversation around the internet. I am not saying that I endorse it, but frankly that ship has sailed. I know people have concerns about the experience in Australia. Clearly, many young people are still using social media. I accept that no system is going to be perfect. Young people will find a way around restrictions. That happens with alcohol. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), who is not in her place just now, alluded to the fact that young people still drink alcohol illegally. They smoke cigarettes, do other activities like not wear a seatbelt, and they probably break the law or get around restrictions in some way. That does not mean that we should just throw bans out the window.
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend; I guess we are just debating what those methods are. I fully agree that the cause of these issues is the technologies now being basically monopolised into four or five massive companies. This debate is about what we do to tackle that. I will address the cliff edge argument, where some folks suggest that if we stop young people having access to certain social media until they are 16, and then they suddenly have access, they will be super-vulnerable or in some way unprepared for the social media world. I do not think that makes sense, because it implies that exposure is the same thing as preparation—it is not. The brain in someone under 16 is developing and needs protecting. It is in a better place to deal with the harms once the person is 16 than when they are 14. I do not find any credibility in that argument.