Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
Order. Can I just check whether the Member has been here for a while or just arrived? Members should not be intervening after traipsing in during a speech. I will allow Ms Smart to continue.
5,731 spoken contributions under 12 words (interjections such as “Will the hon. Member give way?”) are hidden. Show them
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Local Transport: Planning Developments
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) for bringing forward this debate. On paper, Mid Leicestershire is well connected between the M1 and the A46, but the reality for my constituents is a different story. I am not coming at this as a nimby; I am not opposed to development for the sake of it. I recognise the pressing need for housing, particularly for young people to get on the property ladder, and for growth. However, what I cannot accept is endless development without the infrastructure to sustain it. Homes without roads, rail links and other public transport make the lives of my constituents poorer. So while the map may suggest connectivity, the daily experience of my constituents tells a different story. In Markfield, for example, residents regularly contact me about the Fieldhead roundabout. Many residents face delays of more than an hour when travelling just a few miles to get to work, to hospital appointments, or to simply take their children to school. All of that is happening while further development is being granted, and there appears to be next to no consideration of the long-term and cumulative impacts of developments on connectivity. In Stanton-under-Barden, residents have effectively been cut off from Coalville and the surrounding villages since last September. Their sole bus service has been cancelled as the direct result of disruption caused by a large development at the entrance to the village. While Leicestershire county council claims that alternatives are available to residents, my casework suggests otherwise. In Ratby, there is a prolonged closure of roads—again, as a result of developments, which have even disrupted the regular delivery of people’s post. The question is: what can we do to help residents with the ongoing challenges posed by continued development, while ensuring that we have places for the next generation to live? First, I believe that there must be a fundamental re-evaluation of whether section 106 money is being spent as originally intended. We are consistently told that those contributions from developers to local authorities exist to mitigate the impact of new developments on existing residents, to fund roads, schools, transport links and community infrastructure—but does that actually materialise? In 2024, it was reported that councils are sitting on more than £6 billion of unspent section 106 money. That is £6 billion that was intended to ease the pressure on communities—to improve junctions, support bus services and enhance local amenities. Instead it lies dormant or, worse still, is returned to developers.
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Local Transport: Planning Developments
The hon. Lady and I both served on Leicestershire county council together, so we are both well aware of that issue. We have made the case before to ensure that the money is invested in local infrastructure, and will continue to do so. Secondly, I have seen in Mid Leicestershire the consequences of being a constituency that straddles multiple local planning authorities. Decisions made on the edge of one authority impact the residents who lie on the other side, in the other authority. I tabled two amendments to the Bill that became the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 that were aimed at addressing that issue. Sadly, the Government chose not to adopt those amendments, so I ask the Minister to relook at the issue to ensure that where multiple planning authorities straddle different areas, that is taken into consideration when planning permission is granted. Finally, we should not support the Whitehall assumption that all roads must lead to London. We need to link big cities in the north, in the midlands, east and west. That is how we will truly level up. Most of us in this House recognise that we do need development, homes and growth, but development without infrastructure is not progress; it is a burden. We need better connectivity in our local areas, the infrastructure for which goes hand in hand with planning reforms. I urge the Government to take on board the many constructive suggestions from today’s debate, so that we have a system that truly recognises the need for infrastructure before and alongside development.
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Local Transport: Planning Developments
Does the hon. Lady agree that the utility sector should be a statutory consultee? In a previous life, I worked for a utility company. One of the frustrations for that company was that it was often asked to provide infrastructure to support massive housing developments, yet there was no requirement for it to be consulted as part of the planning process. Does she agree that is wrong?
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Preventing Ill Health
As the House will know, pharmacies are an important part of the system to prevent ill health. Last week, I raised the challenges that pharmacies in my constituency of South West Hertfordshire and across the country are facing due to rising costs and a lack of funding support. I wrote to the Minister for Care last April and have followed up several times since. How can I arrange a meeting with him to discuss these concerns further?
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Gaza Healthcare System
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing the debate to allow us to consider this important matter, and Members who have contributed to it. To pick up on some of the things that have been said so far, it is pretty obvious that everybody in this Chamber who has taken part in the debate and in other debates, whether here or in the main Chamber, wants peace for Gaza and for Israel. As always, there will be differences about the route to that peace, what people feel is getting in the way, and what more needs to be done. On some of the things that were said about the volume of aid, I note that since the conflict began, about 2 million tonnes of aid have entered Gaza. As for the management of that aid, given the industrial scale of the misappropriation of aid and the dual-use items that have enabled Hamas, over two decades, to build their terror network and to sustain their war effort, something is required to ensure that security concerns are addressed.
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Gaza Healthcare System
I will make a little progress first, given the time, but I will take interventions. The new NGO restrictions that are about to come into place affect some 15% of the aid agencies operating within Gaza, and those agencies have contributed about 1% of the aid delivery throughout the conflict. Some of those that have been notified of the new restrictions have applied and been approved to operate again in the area.
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Gaza Healthcare System
I thank the hon. Lady for my temporary elevation; I enjoyed my 30 seconds as a Minister, but that is all I will get for now. I will come on to future aid, the volume of aid that needs to get in, dual-use items, to which I have referred, and other issues. I just wanted to pick up on and address some of the alternative facts. The situation in Gaza is serious and severe. Hamas and their Iranian sponsors bear responsibility for the continued suffering. Hamas launched their attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. They have refused to disarm and have infiltrated and used civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, as shields and military defensive positions. The whole House should be united in calling Hamas out, and it is important that the Minister gives us an update on the steps that the Government are taking to support the implementation of the 20-point peace plan for Gaza, including the removal of Hamas.
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Gaza Healthcare System
I will come on to the UN’s stats on the amount of aid that has been misappropriated shortly. I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, but I think it is a tad rich to talk about one-sidedness when the word “Hamas” was hardly mentioned in many of the contributions that we heard earlier. The Government say that they have been calling for broader aid access, but calling for something is not the same as achieving it. We need to know whether Ministers have put forward specific, concrete proposals for the opening of individual crossings and entry points into Gaza, whether those proposals have been presented directly to the Government of Israel, and their response. Will the Minister tell us what quantity and type of medical aid has been funded and prepared for this moment? Where is it currently stationed? How much of it has entered Gaza? Which organisations are distributing it? Critically, what new safeguards are in place to ensure that UK aid reaches innocent civilians, not terrorist groups? Aid diversion is not a peripheral concern; it is central. Since the ceasefire announcement on 10 October 2025 and 11 February 2026, the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs notes that 1,532 aid pallets have been verified as being intercepted during transit within Gaza. Although the destination of the pallets cannot be confirmed, it does not require too much imagination to work out where they have ended up. That is why we cannot discuss Gaza’s healthcare collapse in isolation from the wider political and security situation—the two are inseparable. The ceasefire provides an opening, but a ceasefire is not peace, and the Government seem curiously reluctant to acknowledge what is needed to convert one into the other. If the ceasefire is to translate into something sustainable, Hamas must be removed from power once and for all, and their terrorist infrastructure must be dismantled. Events of recent days—the violence between Hamas and armed groups and clans within Gaza—underline precisely why Hamas cannot be permitted any future role in the governance of the territory. Hamas have no regard for human life or human dignity; they never have. That brings me to governance. Rebuilding Gaza’s health system without addressing who actually governs Gaza is an exercise in futility. Have the Government had any meaningful say in the composition of the transitional Administration? Has anything of substance on governance reform emerged from the so-called memorandum of understanding with the Palestinian Authority—a document that did not even address corruption or antisemitism in school curricula? If the Palestinian Authority is to play an extended role, it must implement the most significant reforms in its history. That includes on healthcare, welfare, education, and frankly, basic democratic accountability.
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Gaza Healthcare System
I am running out of time, and I have taken several interventions. Our support should be conditional on those reforms being delivered. Have the Government made that case clearly to the Palestinian Authority? I also ask the Minister whether the UK will be scaling up its involvement in the Civil-Military Co-ordination Centre. Is Britain contributing to the demilitarisation of Gaza and the disarming of Hamas? Have the Government had any discussions with the United States about the consequences for Hamas if they do not engage constructively with phase 2—
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Gaza Healthcare System
I thank you, Sir Jeremy, and I thank the hon. Lady for the point of order and continued interventions. Have the Government had any discussions with the United States about the consequences for Hamas if they do not engage constructively with phase 2 of the ceasefire process? We also want the UK to be engaged in expanding the Abraham accords. Saudi normalisation with Israel remains, in our view, the single most consequential diplomatic prize in the region, and potentially the most realistic path to a durable peace. We are enthusiastic supporters of that route, but we are considerably less convinced that the Labour Government share that enthusiasm or are working with the urgency the moment demands. The people of Gaza are suffering. That suffering is real and severe, and demands a response commensurate with its scale. The fighting war may have ceased temporarily, but the people of Gaza are still living with the jackboot of Hamas holding back any hope of prosperity or rebuilding the healthcare system. The Opposition have consistently called for more aid, including healthcare aid, to flow into Gaza, for it to be delivered safely and exclusively to innocent civilians, and for a sustainable end to the terrible conflict that guarantees security for both Israel and the Palestinian people.
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EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
More than seven in 10 voters in my constituency voted to leave. That was not an accident, it was not confusion, and it was not because they were lied to. Having spent seven happy years working in the European Parliament, I was not unfamiliar with the EU’s strengths, as well as its faults, but if there was one thing that caused me some hesitation before I decided to campaign for leave, it was knowing that it would be a huge undertaking. Unpicking 50 years of legislation and regulation would clearly be disruptive for many businesses, including many in my constituency, and would use up a lot of Government time for at least a decade. Of course, a global pandemic, a once-in-a-generation energy crisis and the shockwaves of war in Europe have added to the disruption. But to attribute every headwind to Brexit, as some Members have done, may be politically convenient, but it is economically simplistic. Some Members have spoken about a £90 billion hit. The reality is that, since Brexit, UK GDP has grown at about the same rate as Italy’s, and above that of France and Germany.
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EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
No, I only have five minutes. For that £90 billion to be credible, one would have to imagine that we would have vastly exceeded the growth of every large European country if only we had stuck to what we were already doing, closer to the framework that those countries with lower growth are still in.
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EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
The hon. Lady raises an important issue. Last summer, the Federation of Small Businesses in Northern Ireland said that two thirds of the SMEs in Northern Ireland that moved goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland had ceased to do so because of the way EU checks were being conducted. The Northern Ireland protocol says that if the UK experiences diversion of trade, we can take unilateral action. If two thirds of small businesses does not count as diversion of trade, what does? As the record shows, exports to the EU grew more in the five years since we left in 2021 than they did in the six years before the referendum. The Opposition have set five clear tests for any renegotiation with the European Union: no return to free movement; no new payments to the EU; no loss of fishing rights; no dynamic alignment with EU rules; and no compromise on NATO’s primacy in European defence. Those tests are not ideological; they are the minimum requirement for respecting the 2016 mandate. Dynamic alignment may sound technical, but it means accepting rules that we no longer shape. Budgetary contributions may be dressed as programmes, but they mean sending money back without membership—often far more than can be fairly attributed to the costs caused by our participation. A customs arrangement that restricts our trade autonomy undermines the very sovereignty that voters endorsed. Brexit was never about isolation: it was about independence. It was about being outward looking on British terms. We now have the ability to strike trade agreements globally. We have joined the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, helping to open access to markets in 11 high-growth economies, from Canada to South Korea and Australia. Many of the bilateral trade deals that we have signed go far beyond the proceeding EU trade agreements, with deeper digital trade and data chapters that are important to so many of the sectors in which Britain is strongest. Financial market reform has reduced the risk margin for life insurers, meaning that we can promote long-term growth and divert more to long-term infrastructure and green technologies. In agriculture, the UK has moved to environmental land management schemes, based on the principle of public money for public good, to support environmental outcomes instead of just paying landowners to own land. Our duty is clear: to honour the mandate, to defend the sovereignty the people voted for, to work with our allies as equal sovereign partners where we can, and to protect our country’s ability to take its own decisions in our nation’s interest.
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Topical Questions
T8. Last Friday, a doctor came to my surgery and produced a letter that he and around 100 other doctors and consultants from the hospital in Grimsby had sent to the then interim chair. They were concerned about a rundown of services at Grimsby and Scunthorpe hospitals and a further concentration on Hull. That has been made worse by a series of interim chief execs and chairs. Will the Minister give an assurance that Grimsby and Scunthorpe hospitals will not see any rundown in their services?
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Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Seventh sitting)
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way, if only to repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove has just said. The Minister and the Government Whip were both on their phones, and I do not think they were fully concentrating on the fact that M&S has reported that it got more information about its information loss from the FBI than from our own agencies. I repeat that for the record so that the Minister has a chance to concentrate on that very important information.
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Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Seventh sitting)
Does the shadow Minister agree that if Labour Members vote against new clause 5, it would be a classic case of “Do as I say, not as I do”? If they are happy to go on the record as voting it down on that basis, does the shadow Minister agree there would be an element of what is politely termed “variable geometry”? The more direct word is “hypocrisy”.
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Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Seventh sitting)
While we are talking about resources and the application of the Bill, I raise with the Minister that, on page 102 of the impact assessment, it states that the going rate for a contract lawyer is £34 an hour. To my mind, that is out by a factor of probably 10. In the 10 days since our last sitting, has the Minister had a chance to re-examine the impact assessment and discover whether that was a genuine error? That number gets multiplied many times in the impact assessment. Has he had a chance to look into that?
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Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Seventh sitting)
I am a little confused—which is easily done, I hasten to add. The new clause says: “The management body may be held accountable for failures by the body to comply with duties relating to the security and resilience of its network and information systems.” Does the hon. Member not think that the directors of companies are already responsible and accountable for their companies? Why does the state need to tell them more about those responsibilities?
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Online Harm: Child Protection
Today we are debating something that is very important: the protection of children from online harms is vital. I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on what I thought was a very heartfelt speech, but I fear that her good intent has been rather thrown under the bus by her party leadership. Setting aside the importance of this subject, let us look at their method of bringing it forward—a point which has been raised rather expertly by Members from across the House. Today the Liberal Democrats are doing what they do best: slightly nutty stunts. With all the menace of Captain Mainwaring they are attempting to seize control of the Order Paper and effectively declare themselves not only Government for the day but, with their loosely defined online services Bill, rulers of the internet. It is a gimmick. It is the parliamentary equivalent of boinging into the Chamber on a giant bungee. Though the hon. Member for Twickenham put a little bit of flesh on the bones in her speech, the motion itself simply requests the power to barge through this House with a blank-cheque Bill for which we have no details and in so doing let the Government Benches clean off the hook. It has all gone a bit Benny Hill. It is a great shame because it is a distraction when the moment of truth on social media for children is coming to us imminently. They know that from the panicked recess briefings that the Prime Minister has been caught on the hop on an issue that is of deep concern to families, children, teachers and communities across the country. Before too long the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will return to this House and Members will have the chance to vote on a credible proposition: an amendment tabled by the noble Lord Nash that no child under the age of 16 should have access to harmful social media.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
This is a Conservative amendment in the Lords that has gained cross-party support, so it will be coming back to us. The hon. Member raises an important point about why this policy was not brought in under the Online Safety Act. That Act tried to do many, many things. In many ways, it took so long because it risked becoming a Christmas tree Bill, and many good causes were hung off it. That did cause challenges. I think that as the debate has moved on we have realised that it is not just about illegal content that children are being exposed to and some of the things that the Online Safety Act was trying to change. There is an issue in general about children being in this space: there are addictive algorithms, and it is not just about illegal material but the fact that it is changing how children are thinking about interacting. Maybe we have to stand back as a society and say, “This is simply not the right place for children to be. We can create adult online spaces, but for children we think that there are other ways in which they should be interacting with the world.”
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Online Harm: Child Protection
There were very real and important debates during the passage of that Bill about legal but harmful material and whether people should be able to speak freely online. Our approach was to seek to create a space where adults can speak freely while accepting that children should not be in some of these spaces. That was the point that the Leader of the Opposition was trying to make. We were moving very dangerously into the realms of free speech, and it is not for an online regulator to start telling people what they can and cannot say online when it is not something that is illegal to speak of in the real world. That was the challenge that we got ourselves into as a Government, and that is why we changed parts of the approach that we were taking to the Online Safety Bill. I appreciate the concerns that are being raised, and I am trying to answer them as honestly and straightforwardly as I can. When we consider the amendment from Lord Nash, this House will have its opportunity to make an unequivocal statement of principle: that when we believe that something is harming children at scale, we accept that it is insufficient to leave the status quo unchallenged or simply to commission a consultation. That applies especially when it is a consultation to which this Government have provided absolutely no political direction or view and that has been much trailed but still not actually launched. In truth, this consultation was not ready. It was a mechanism to get the Prime Minister out of another of his tight fixes. The Tech Secretary might be very good at emoting and telling us all how impatient she is for change, how she cares, and indeed for how many years she has cared, but when she made her statement on social media for children in this Chamber a few weeks ago, she said nothing about what the Government would actually do, beyond seeking more time to take a position. I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham for pointing that out, and I have sympathy with why she is trying to use this mechanism today, because we are all trying to tease out what the Government are seeking to do. It was extraordinary to listen to the Government Minister, who said with great sincerity, “We will act robustly in responding to a consultation.” What does he actually believe? What do the Government think we should do on this issue? Nobody has a clue. They are talking about a huge range of things that could be done, but it is for a Government to provide political direction; it is not for a Government to seek consensus. [Interruption.] It is for a Government to take a position and to take a view. It is for a Government to have opinions. It is for a Government to have policy positions. It is not for a Government to try to make sure that everybody in this House agrees. [Interruption.] It is pathetic to see those on the Labour Benches getting out of their tree about this.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I can agree with that. My point is that this Government are trying to suggest that a consensus can be found in the absence of their having a policy position. They are talking about a consultation, but what on earth are they consulting on? Nobody has a clue. They have not been able to say anything about what they actually want to do, because the Prime Minister has no opinions, which is why he is in such deep trouble. Those on the Labour Benches can get out of their tree and get all uppity about it, but this—[Interruption.] No, the Prime Minister is being blown around like a paper bag on this issue, and everybody knows it. First of all, he said that his children did not want to ban social media; now he says that his children are the reason why he wishes to ban social media. He said there is going to be a consultation, but it has not materialised. What does this man actually think?
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I am sure the applicability of the legislation in Scotland is something that can be debated when the Bill comes before the House. To give them credit, many Labour MPs understand the fact that there is an absence of any Government position, and they will not be taking their foot off the pedal. I suspect that many may have the guts to speak out today—although perhaps not. Those MPs recognised immediately that a consultation is a mechanism for a delay that goes beyond the summer and into another parliamentary year before the sniff of legislation. That holding position is now falling apart, as we have seen from the Minister here today. It is the threat of a very large group of Labour MPs backing the Conservatives’ Lords amendment that is pushing this Government into action—it is government by rebellion. We ask the Liberal Democrats not to let us be distracted from the moment of truth that is coming up, when we hope there will be cross-party support for the noble Lord Nash’s amendment. For too long, the internet has been treated as a space that cannot be governed. It has functioned like a pioneer society, with extraordinary opportunity but minimal rules. However, pioneer societies improvise customs and eventually retrofit themselves with rules to sustain societies, often after hard-won experience and dispute. That is the process through which we are now going, and we are realising that, as the online society was built, we were not vigilant enough when it came to protecting childhood. We did not recognise that this new territory would bleed into the old world. [Interruption.] The Minister is shouting from the Front Bench that I am embarrassing myself. We as a Government brought forward the Online Safety Act, but there are gaps in it, and we have taken a clear position as the Opposition that we think children should not be on social media. He is looking very angry, but what is his view? Can he stand up and tell us what his personal view is? As the Minister with this responsibility, what does he think should be done, having launched his consultation with such earnestness? Come on, tell us! Would he like to tell us?
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Online Harm: Child Protection
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was pointing out that the Minister has no manners, but wishes to shout from a sedentary position. I sat listening to him and waiting to see if I could decipher, in his very long and self-regarding diatribe, whether he actually has any opinions, but it turns out that he does not. He is very comfortable to sit on the Front Bench and chunter away at me. [Interruption.] You see, he again says that I am such an embarrassment.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I respect the hon. Member’s intervention for its politeness, but I do not think the answer is suddenly to encourage all children who are finding it hard to find purposeful and meaningful activities in the real world to retreat to their bedrooms. One of the challenges we have seen is that children have felt that the online space is the most stimulating for them. Unfortunately, that has led to an even greater retreat from the real world, and I think we can all recognise that that has been a negative for society.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I appreciate where the hon. Member is coming from. I do not think it is wrong to seek evidence and ask for people’s views, but the Prime Minister should be honest about what he wants to do. The problem is that he has been floating various opinions, and he is being buffeted by Labour MPs and by the Opposition and others. If he does not think this is the right approach, he should feel confident in saying so. He has said a whole range of different things about this, and the Government are seeking to launch a consultation, but nobody actually knows what precisely is being consulted on. If Labour MPs were honest with themselves, I think they would recognise that. I suspect they are having very serious conversations with the party’s Whips, saying, “Well, actually, we would like to know what the Prime Minister does think about this issue, because we’re not convinced by this consultation—we think it’s kicking the issue into the long grass, and we’re worried about the length of time that will mean before we get legislation to protect children from various challenges online.” That is the very reason why the Minister has stood up before them today to say, “We are probably going to do something—very definitely, maybe—in the summer.” He is saying that because the pressure is growing from Labour MPs. It is being briefed out that the Government are going to bring forward amendments to the Bill because they are being buffeted into doing so. The problem is that nobody knows what this Prime Minister believes. On every single issue for the Government at the moment, and despite the very large Labour majority, this Prime Minister is being buffeted around, and that is the problem.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I set out clearly at the beginning of my speech why we cannot support the motion, which is effectively a blank cheque. Notwithstanding the fact that the hon. Member for Twickenham tried to set it out in her speech, nobody actually knows what the Lib Dems are trying to do here. The proposal before us is that the Liberal Democrats take control of the Order Paper and then can say whatever they like on internet governance. I am sorry, but I do not think that is the way to conduct ourselves in Parliament. There have to be clearer proposals.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I agree with the hon. Member wholeheartedly. Until now, we have implicitly decided that childhood must simply adapt to an environment that we as adults find totally overwhelming, undermining of our own sense of self and completely irresistible. We have been exposing our children to this place of no settled social rules where that exposure is constant, the boundaries are porous and responsibility is diffuse. Behaviour that would never be tolerated offline is normalised, monetised and then algorithmically amplified. The Online Safety Act, which we have discussed already, has been a step forward in trying to wrest back control, but it is, of course, an imperfect one. It focuses primarily on illegal content, seeks to keep the most extreme material offline and introduces age-gating for pornography and other over-18 content. That work does matter, but the problem before us today goes well beyond illegality and explicit material. There are also many concerns about the complexity of policing content, in terms of both the implementation and intent. The central question is not just what children see but how social media works. Social media platforms are addictive by design. Their algorithms are engineered to maximise engagement and stickiness. They reward outrage, comparison, emotional intensity, competition and repetition. They draw children away from purposeful activity and into feedback loops that erode attention and resilience. Not all platforms operate like this globally, funnily enough. The Chinese version of TikTok is time-limited and feeds children content of scientific or patriotic value. In the west, it is emotional arousal that is fed to our kids. Children are not simply consuming content; they are being shaped by the environment itself. It is happening when their brains are still developing. Their impulse control, emotional regulation and ability to assess risk are not the same as for adults. We recognise this everywhere else in law—in alcohol limits, in safeguarding rules and in age of consent protections—yet online we have decided to suspend that logic, and the consequences are increasingly visible.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I have set out before what we were trying to achieve with the Online Safety Act and why certain things were in it and others were not. I do not want to go over that again. The consequences of these design features are increasingly visible, including rising anxiety and low mood, poor sleep, shredded attention spans and cyber-bullying that follows children home.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention—I went off on a nostalgia trip in my brain, thinking about MSN chatrooms and all the rest of it. That was a time when people were not really aware of the power of the internet, and the predatory behaviours subsequently started to become normalised and industrialised. Although it might be tempting to want to try to go back to that place, I do not know whether we can actually get there, but it is certainly something we can aim towards and aspire to. The hon. Gentleman has made an important point. The essence of social media does not involve bad intent; the problem that we are seeking to solve is the way in which it has been manipulated and changed over the years to amplify negative behaviour.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
We think that the current priority is ensuring that under-16s are taken off harmful social media platforms, but I am sure that there is room for a market to develop, over time, that will not feature negative algorithms and activity, and that there is a world in which new products could retain the essence of positive social interaction.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I am sure that the issue of the functionality list can be explored as time goes by. It is important to point out that this is not a moral panic but a structural problem. Today the Leader of the Opposition gathered a panel of grieving parents who had lost their children, and in that context negative online activity was recognised to have real-world and utterly tragic consequences. The children had been drawn into dangerous challenges, coercive relationships, bullying and bribery, all of which created despair in those young minds. That showed us plainly why the pioneer phase must now come to an end, at least where children are concerned. Pioneer societies do not remain lawless forever; eventually they are retrofitted with rules and boundaries, and protections for the vulnerable. It is striking that, after years of the problem building up, countries around the world are reaching the same conclusion with remarkable synchronicity—not because it is fashionable, because Governments are copying one another or because anyone thinks that this will be particularly easy to impose and enforce, but because the evidence has accumulated to a point at which denial is no longer credible. If social media were broadly harmless for children, this would not be happening, but Governments with very different. political traditions are acknowledging the same reality: that when it comes to children, some control must be wrested back. I suspect that this trend will be reflected vividly in the Chamber today, with examples from across the nation of what is happening in the real world because of the laxity in the online world.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I am not seeking to occupy a moral high ground. I am seeking to set out a way towards keeping children under 16 off social media platforms, because trying to legislate for specific different activities is very challenging, as I think we saw with the Online Safety Act. There are very good causes and there are very important activities that we sought to stop online, but turning that into a workable law is a huge challenge. That is one of the reasons why we think it important to take a “whole of society” approach that tries to shift the debate and say that certain types of online space for people under 16 are simply not appropriate—a principles-based approach to governing the online world that tries to steer away from some of the difficult debates about how to write implementable law to stop nasty and negative behaviour.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
I would not envisage that parents would be responsible for that. There are mechanisms to make sure that platforms would not be permitted to provide accounts to under 16-year-olds and they would have to have highly effective age-assurance techniques. In fact, I have spoken recently to representatives of a major platform who said that they had very effective techniques for testing whether somebody trying to open an account is the age that they say they are. I will not take further interventions for a little while so that I can make progress, as I know other people want to speak. There are serious arguments against implementing a ban, some of which have been heard, and they deserve to be addressed and not dismissed. We are likely to hear more about those doubts today and they must be listened to respectfully. Indeed, I hold some of those anxieties and reservations myself. The first argument is that a ban would be unworkable and that teenagers would find workarounds through virtual private networks, foreign platforms or fake credentials. They will, of course, because teenagers have always tested boundaries. Fake IDs, sneaky booze and under-age rule-breaking are traditional parenting challenges, but we do not abandon age limits simply because they are imperfect. Instead, we impose them because they change norms, shift behaviours and offer parents reinforcement rather than resistance. Of course, the mandatory age limit will not remove every child overnight, but it will remove a critical mass and that matters. Some fear that such a ban would require de facto compulsory digital ID, undermining anonymity and civil liberties, and again, that concern must be taken extremely seriously. However, as I have just suggested to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), age verification does not require a single state-mandated digital identification system. Other jurisdictions have explicitly prevented platforms from requiring accredited digital ID and instead mandated multiple verification techniques, with responsibility placed on platforms and not citizens. As I said, I was speaking to a major tech platform recently that set out some of those techniques, which can now be used very accurately to assess a user’s age. However, we must be clear that we do not have a surveillance state simply because 13-year-olds are kept off Facebook. A third argument, and a point that has been made, is that social media provides vital support and connection for many children, particularly those who feel isolated offline. That can be true, but it is not an argument for leaving the entire system untouched. This is not about banning the internet, messaging, educational platforms, health support or professional development services; those places can and should remain accessible, and that is happening in other jurisdictions. This is about a specific category of platforms whose business models depend on maximising attention and emotional arousal and which are demonstrably harmful at scale. Another concern is the unintended consequence that children may be pushed into darker corners of the internet. That needs to be included in the Government’s consultation when it eventually sees the light of day, particularly whether there needs to be parental consent required for downloading certain apps. Doing nothing already leaves children exposed, in plain sight, on platforms that we know are optimised against their wellbeing. Protection will never be perfect, but neither is inaction benign. Doing nothing is not neutral. It leaves parents despairing, schools firefighting and children navigating a digital frontier with no one by their side. There is also a broader freedom argument, which is that by keeping children off adult social media platforms we can restore freedom to adults online and will no longer need to contort those digital spaces to be universally child-friendly, which is where some of the challenges have come in. Finally, this is about leadership. As I said earlier, a consultation without direction is not leadership, and a consultation that pushes real change 18 months down the line is, in truth, a decision to do nothing now. Labour MPs know that, which is why the coming moment will not rest on this rather nutty Lib Dem takeover attempt. Instead, it will rest on the Nash amendment, when this House will have a clear choice: to accept that the pioneer phase is over; to recognise the sanctity of childhood, which deserves clearer rules; and to acknowledge that giving parents support is not the same as the state stripping them of their ultimate responsibilities. Parents will and must always be the first line of defence. When harm is real and growing, leadership requires a decision, even when the answers are not perfect.
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Online Harm: Child Protection
We all want to find a solution to online harms—we would not be in this debate if we did not care about protecting children—but the way to do that is through a long consultation period outside the Chamber before we come forward with a Bill. Procedurally, this is not the way that we debate Bills, assess their merit or take them through the stages of becoming law. If the Liberal Democrats want to take this seriously, they should use the correct procedure for taking forward a Bill. We should all be able to debate it. There should be a long consultation process, and then we can take it forward together.
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National Wellbeing Indicators
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has compared GPs’ salaries to that of the Prime Minister. I can understand why he is taking a keen interest in how much a Prime Minister is paid, but can the Government assure the House that the GP contract will include an increase in GP funding over and above inflationary pressures? [Interruption.] They are on the frontline of ensuring that national wellbeing indicators in this country improve.
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Local Transport: Planning Developments
Thank you, Sir Desmond, for agreeing to chair this interesting debate. I also thank the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) for securing this debate today. Any Member of Parliament with a pulse who has served more than a day here will realise how interconnected is the relationship between planning decisions, housing developments in their constituencies and the provision of local infrastructure to support them. I bet the biggest complaint every single one of us will have received over our period in office is, “We are not against planning, but we need the infrastructure in first and the development later, because we need to look after not just the coming population, but the existing one.” Trying to balance the needs of future and existing populations is right at the heart of local democratic representation.
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Local Transport: Planning Developments
I am grateful for that intervention. In her speech, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted said that many of the services from Berkhamsted to London were not on time, so I took the opportunity to look up the frequency of those services. I gently point out that people in my constituency would give their eye teeth for a service every 10 minutes and that level of connectivity—they only have to wait a couple more minutes and there is another train, and another one after that. However, I do not diminish her fundamental argument about transport infrastructure, the subject of the debate—you have rightly been generous, Sir Desmond, in letting us stretch that to other local infrastructure—if new populations are to be accepted by existing populations, infrastructure needs to expand at the same pace, and ideally in advance of the growth in population. We have heard a number of good speeches; I commend the hon. Lady’s speech, but I will also highlight the two Conservative contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) made the important point that where we have an increased population, it is not only the roads, but the railway infrastructure, that suffer and need to be expanded. In her case, that is an extended station at Reigate. Her constituency also suffers a double whammy, with travel growth due to the nearby expansion of Gatwick airport. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) made a number of good points. With multiple developments on local transport infrastructure, each one is identified and dealt with in isolation, not considering the cumulative impacts. The argument goes that the road can stand another 500 or 1,200 units, and that might be the case but, when there are 20 cumulative applications, the infrastructure creaks. He made another good point, of which I have personal experience, about constituencies with multiple local authorities, where one local authority can make a planning decision that adversely affects residents in the authority next door. In my case, the Liberal Democrat North Norfolk district council is planning a large increased settlement to North Walsham, totally ignoring the huge impact of traffic going through nearby Coltishall, where everyone is funnelled over a single bridge across the river. There is an ongoing fight, with one district council ignoring the needs of another. Surely we can do better than that. The Government have also taken steps to alter housing targets, moving targets around the country. Those steps have not always been accompanied by consideration of the impact on local transport. A prominent example is the county of Dorset, where a significantly increased housing target is being imposed—top-down, as the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted said—yet one of the first acts of the Labour Government was to axe the improvements to the A303, the road that links Dorset to London and the south-east. Currently, an eight-mile journey that should take only 10 minutes is regularly taking over an hour. The A303 is also the vital connection between the south-east and the south-west—areas where the Government’s targets will result in a significant increase in development, with more people, more cars and more congestion. That example demonstrates the disconnect between what local areas need when it comes to transport and what the Government are willing to deliver. Even when plans have been developed and funding has been secured for key transport schemes, they are often hampered, and sometimes even cancelled due to—in my view—unreasonable and burdensome over-regulation. I need only look at my own constituency and the scheme for the Norwich western link road. The delivery of that scheme is vital to the residents of Norfolk and to the local economy. Traffic congestion, delays, and queues on small rural roads and through communities in my constituency have long been blighting the area to the west of Norwich. Detailed plans were drawn up for a new 3.9-mile dual carriageway, the last section needed to complete the orbital dual carriageway route around the city of Norwich. Plans were developed over seven years with local consultation and £230 million in funding—achieved by me. It was classified as a high-value scheme by the Department for Transport’s criteria. Relying on that planned road, many thousands of new houses had been allocated to land north-east of Norwich. Natural England was consulted throughout that seven-year period; in fact, it was very much part of the team. Then, one week before the final planning application was made, and without any notice to the planning team, Natural England changed its approach to a nearby colony of bats and withdrew its support—not just for that scheme, but for any mitigation approach. That left £50 million of development costs, and local residents and businesses across Norfolk let down. They were not consulted and their views were not taken into consideration. Despite the Prime Minister talking a good game when it came to organisations unreasonably blocking crucial infrastructure schemes for similar reasons—I pray in aid the bat tunnel—the Government did not step in to help. I am interested to hear from the Minister how the Government are planning to stop unelected quangos effectively vetoing democratic decisions. That road may have hit the buffers, at least for the time being, but the associated housing allocations all remain and can be seen in Taverham—it is a very live issue in my constituency at the moment—and elsewhere. This is exactly what residents hate: the process taking over from the reality on the ground. The cart is put before the horse, and then it is going in one direction and cannot be stopped. There is no review. The anger that I suspect we all experience on the doorsteps when residents feel they are being ignored is very real. In November last year, the Government published a rapid evidence report on the impacts of integrated land use and transport planning, which summarised evidence on how combining land use and transport planning affects travel. One of the first suggestions in the rapid evidence assessment for policy makers making land use and transport decisions was: “Developing awareness of potential unintended consequences via short scoping studies ahead of major investments.” It highlighted that that could “enable mitigating action to be taken where appropriate.” Anyone who examines the Government’s record over the past 18 months realises that they have an exceptional talent for not considering the consequences of their actions. Perhaps the Minister would like to feed that suggestion into the wider Government. Let us also look at planning and development in areas with much better local transport provision than many of us currently enjoy. One might think that areas with more developed transport networks would be able to encourage significant planning and development without some of the issues that we have been debating. Utilising areas such as brownfield sites close to existing locations should be an important way to help with some of the planning challenges posed in rural areas including Norfolk. In London, however, which has by far the best transport network in the country, and significantly subsidised transport services with buses, we have seen the London Mayor’s absolute failure to deliver housing. Just look at last year; what has happened is really shocking. In London last year there were just 5,891 housing starts. That is 94% below target and a 75% year-on-year decline—the steepest drop in the country, the lowest tally since records began almost 40 years ago, and the lowest figure for any major city in the developed world this century. What a record.
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Local Transport: Planning Developments
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The failure of the London Mayor is putting pressure on her constituency and many other communities in the wider orbit of London. The Government will say they are trying to take action to integrate these elements and to ensure that planning development does not negatively impact local transport, but in trying to deliver their targets on development, they should stop and consider the steps they can take to make it easier to build infrastructure and support planning that actually delivers local infrastructure improvements, before new populations arise.