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Is the Minister, and other Ministers who are involved in this area, fully seized of the fact that this is a very unusual situation, in that the professional bodies and the lion’s share of practitioners are calling for regulation? It is very unusual that they want to see regulation.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I start by paying tribute to Lyla Story, a little girl whose death, aged two, from undiagnosed type 1 diabetes has brought us here today. I wish I could have been giving her a tour of Parliament rather than talking in this capacity, but her name will go down in the history of Parliament, in Hansard, because of the dedicated work that has been done. I pay tribute to her parents, Emma and John, who are with us in the Gallery and who have campaigned tirelessly to raise awareness of this condition. I commend their courage and determination in the face of such grief. I think they have much greater strength than many of us would have in a similar situation. If I had been asked about diabetes five years ago, on 9 March 2021, I would probably have said that my auntie had it, and that it was due to poor diet. If I had been asked the same question on 21 May 2021, I would have given a completely different answer. The change is that I was diagnosed as type 1 diabetic at the age of 33. In the space of 24 hours, from going for a blood test for something innocuous, my world entirely changed, and I was rushed into A&E to be given emergency care. Like many people outside this Chamber, I had little to no knowledge of type 1. The concept of the four Ts—“tiredness”, “thinner”, “thirst” and “toilet”—were unknown to me. The fact that I started losing weight quite quickly was a bonus, I thought. I did not realise what the signs meant. The fact that 400,000 people in the UK have type 1 was news to me, and that more than one in four children with type 1 diabetes are diagnosed when they are in diabetic ketoacidosis was shocking. What is diabetic ketoacidosis? It has been mentioned a few times today, and it is a complication that develops when the body lacks sufficient insulin, leading to high blood sugar levels and the breakdown of fat and muscle for energy. This produces harmful chemicals, known as ketones, that make the blood acidic, which is what proves fatal. The petition before us today seeks to make testing for type 1 diabetes in babies, toddlers and young children a routine part of medical assessments at the point of care. John Story is also seeking to have the NICE guidelines on type 1—NG17 for adults and NG18 for children—updated to include performing a finger-prick test on site at the initial GP appointment, with blood glucose tested using a glucometer. That would occur when a child or adult presented with any symptoms consistent with type 1 diabetes. He would like to see a “test, don’t guess” approach, which we have seen be quite effective for meningitis—we know the signs—and sepsis, so I fully support this concept. NICE has been receptive to making these changes, but ultimately it will be for the relevant NHS commissioning bodies to put the NICE recommendations into practice. We therefore have to look to NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to take up this campaign around increased visibility and testing of diabetic ketoacidosis. I echo the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune): with the disbandment of NHS England, what will we be doing in that regard?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that 90% of cases are actually type 2. That is probably also why we fail to understand the true signs of type 1, because there is real confusion and conflation of the two. I think it would actually give clarity if they were named slightly differently. My hon. Friend is also right that a tsunami of cases of type 2 will be hitting us in the years to come, and we have to do a lot more to raise awareness of that, whether that is about diet or by sharing the technology. Many of us are trying to be visible in wearing the technology and the patches, such as FreeStyle Libre and Dexcom. I think that is very good for removing the stigma and helping people to understand what we need to do in the future. We definitely need to see that tech rolled out for type 2, as well as for type 1. It can still be a bit of a postcode lottery for type 1 at this stage, which is something else that we have to work on. We must not just rely on some of the jabs that have recently become popular. They are a means of helping people to lose weight, which can be a significant part of type 2 diabetes, but they may not be the answer. There are events going on at the moment, saying that we should exercise some caution and make sure that any jabs that are taken are actually legitimate and proper, and not counterfeit. That is a sad side of this: people are seeking medical treatments that could also be harmful. To go back to type 1, I have managed to secure today that I will introduce a 10-minute rule Bill on Tuesday 14 April to make provision for a universal national programme of screening for type 1 diabetes in children, building on all the work that John has been doing. I am working with medical professionals and charities, including Breakthrough T1D—as it is now called—and Diabetes UK, to look into the Italian model that was mentioned, in the hope that we can one day establish a programme that would catch type 1 before symptoms appear, transforming how we diagnose the condition in the future and helping people to prepare earlier. A lot more research is needed, because the key thing is the age at which someone can be diagnosed. We are working on three potential age ranges at which there would be repeat tests. That is vital and fundamental for the future, to make sure that we do not have one in four children being diagnosed when in a state of DKA. In the meantime, I reiterate what the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) said: we want to see the four Ts built into training and education for all healthcare professionals. The four Ts are very important, but that does not necessarily mean that someone has to have every single one of those symptoms. I did not obviously show the signs of all four Ts, but when I had an HbA1c of 95—[Interruption.] That reaction! To put that into context, a normal person might have an average HbA1c of 20, while the threshold for diabetes is 48; I was at 95 at that stage. My ketones at the point of diagnosis were 2.7. At 3, you are at risk of going into DKA, and anything higher—I understand that Lyla may have been at 6 at the point that she was diagnosed—is critical. Clearly, I was very ill, but I had not picked up on all of those signs; I was not aware. Nevertheless, it is important that we have the four Ts in mind, at least as a baseline. We also want to make sure that all GP practices actually have the finger-prick test—the glucometer—available. Numerous practices have been contacted and they do not always have that, which I think is quite shocking. As a baseline, we also need to make sure that provision is there. As John has been campaigning hard for, we want to see the NICE guidelines updated to make sure that this is in the mindset of all our medical practitioners. We also want to see it in the personal child health record—the red book—and within the digital Best Start programme. We the CQC’s role in diagnosing type 1 in primary care to be clarified and strengthened—for example, inspections could assess whether staff receive appropriate training. We want local commissioners to commit to learning from incidents where type 1 is missed. We want NHS England—or whatever the equivalent is when that is disbanded—to work on this further, and we want the Department of Health and Social Care to review opportunities for national initiatives to drive improvements, such as the Getting It Right First Time programme. Everyone should rest assured that there are many fantastic representatives in Parliament who are type 1, and we will continue to fly the flag: my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who sitting in front of me, is type 1; Mr Speaker is type 1; and, of course, Baroness May in the upper House has been a fantastic advocate over the years. I hope that we can also work with some more celebrity figures, whether that is Nikita on “Strictly Come Dancing”, the actor James Norton, the rugby player Henry Slade or the comedian Ed Gamble. There are figures out there, and we just need to make it much more visible and approachable. Type 1 diabetes is not a scary condition—although it is a very difficult one, don’t get me wrong. We live with it 24 hours a day, whether we are too hot, too cold, tired, stressed or whatever. From what we are eating to when we are exercising, there is a lot we have to think about, but it is completely manageable with the right support. I want to end my speech with the memory of Lyla and say thank you to John and Emma for their efforts. I say to everyone: please remember those four Ts—“thirst”, “toilet”, “thin” and “tiredness”.
When the Secretary of State and I last met like this, he lauded the roll-out of youth hubs and the introduction of the youth guarantee as the solution to tackling the scale of young people not in education, employment or training. Since then, however, apprenticeship figures have been updated. The latest figures show that apprenticeship vacancies and adverts have significantly decreased since the Labour Government took office. If we compare the latest figures from this academic year with the same period in 2024-25, apprenticeship adverts have fallen by 27% and the number of vacancies has fallen by 22%. How can the Secretary of State make the promise of a youth guarantee with this alarming reduction in the number of available apprenticeships?
We all agree that it is important to protect our overseas bases and personnel deployed on operations, and that must include Ukraine. Over the weekend, the MOD posted a video on social media from a British-run military repair facility in Ukraine. It has been taken down, reportedly because it revealed the geolocation of the sensitive site. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether that is correct, and can he assure the House that it will not happen again in relation to Ukraine, the middle east or anywhere we have facilities?
I am incredibly pleased to speak in support of Lords amendment 38, which seeks to raise the digital age of consent to 16. I only wish we had much more time for this debate, as it deserves. For years, parents like me have worried about the harms of social media on our children, and the detrimental impact of excessive screentime. We have tried to manage it as best we can on our own. We have felt the sting when we have been told by others that responsibility fully sits with parents, and that good parents do not need the state to help them get this right, yet no one says that about alcohol, smoking or buying fireworks. In all those cases, it is acceptable for parents to be helped by sensible laws put in place to protect children from preventable harm, yet social media and excessive screentime are just as harmful as cigarettes, alcopops and messing around with fireworks in the street, so why would the state not step in on that too? I have three children, and it is fair to say that they love screentime. If I try to talk to them when they are glued to a YouTube video of someone else playing a computer game, they ignore me, completely engrossed. They do not want to go out in the garden, play with their friends in the street or play with toys. Instead, if given a choice, they would always choose to stare zombie-like at their tablet. Thankfully, I have kept them away from social media, but there is only so long I can get away with that. Staring at a screen for endless hours is not healthy. It prevents children from developing the social and cognitive skills they need in adulthood and is terrible for their mental health. It is no coincidence that we are seeing a mental health crisis, which started at the same time as the mass adoption of smartphones and access to social media. It really should be a wake-up call. What does the future look like if our children’s most important relationship is with their phone? Their brains are literally becoming hardwired to respond to likes and shares, rather than human interaction and connection. Social media is doing exactly what it was designed to do: reeling our children in and feeding them content that often is not in their best interest but is highly addictive. We know this because we all experience it the same. Social media is not for children. We do not need any more time given over to consultation to confirm what we already know—
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Sir Alec. With NHS England set to be abolished, how does the hon. Member suggest the Government ensure that awareness for testing for type 1 diabetes continues? Does she agree that it should not be left to fall by the wayside or be picked up by organisations such as Diabetes UK?
My hon. Friend is making an excellent and passionate speech. I think we all here agree that we need to do more to ensure that those with type 1 diabetes get the support they need. While we are here, does she share my concern that 90% of people diagnosed with diabetes are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and the total cost of that care in the UK is about £11 billion? Alongside the important support that we give to those with type 1 diabetes, we should be doing more and taking action to ensure that people do not develop type 2.
I welcome that the strategy acknowledges that antisemitism, an increasingly concerning issue, is being normalised in many corners of society. Indeed, 2025 saw the second highest annual total ever recorded for anti-Jewish hate incidents, at 3,700. What action is the Secretary of State taking to protect the Jewish community from those who may see Israel’s involvement in Iran as an excuse to attack British Jews?
To enhance my right hon. Friend’s point, I have been running a survey in my constituency and the vast majority of respondents and parents have said that they support the concept of a simple age limit on social media, because of these particularly harmful algorithms. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the responsible thing for all of us in this House to do is to support our party’s policy of keeping our children safe by putting an age limit on social media?
I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement, although the Government leaked it on Friday and his Department briefed it to the press yesterday. Parliament should not learn the details of Government policy through newspaper reports. This House deserves transparency. There are some measures in this strategy that we welcome. Efforts to tackle extremism in charities and universities are important and necessary, and we welcome them, but the strategy lacks ambition and action to deliver tangible change. The Secretary of State spoke for two minutes over his allocated time, which is ironic because there is absolutely nothing new in the measures that the Government are announcing this evening. The strategy claims that the Government intend to embed the anti-extremism principles adopted by the previous Conservative Government in 2024, but if that is the case, why have this Government reversed the position on naming extremist organisations? We now have the ridiculous situation where the Government claim they have a policy of non-engagement with extremists but refuse to say who that policy applies to. Last month, we saw this confusion laid bare when the Home Office was asked whether it engaged with the Muslim Council of Britain. Two Ministers gave contradictory answers. When asked whether the MCB had given written evidence to the Macdonald review into hate crime, the Minister for Policing and Crime, the hon. Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), stated: “The Government’s policy of non-engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain has not changed.” However, just two days later, when asked whether the Muslim Council of Britain was on the list of organisations subject to that policy, the Minister for Security, the hon. Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), replied: “The Home Office does not comment on specific groups.” So which is it? This lack of transparency also applies to the review itself. Will the Minister now publish the full report provided to him by the working group? Will he publish a list of every external organisation that the working group met, and every organisation his Department has subsequently consulted on that report? Will he confirm whether organisations deemed extremist or subject to the Government’s policy of non-engagement were permitted to submit evidence? So far, this review appears to have been conducted largely in secret. The Government even had to be dragged kicking and screaming into publishing an email address so that evidence could be submitted. The proposed definition still raises serious questions. Jonathan Hall KC, the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has warned that any definition should include clear examples of free speech that are not considered anti-Muslim hatred. He says it is important that people can still openly discuss difficult but significant topics such as migration and Islamism. The definition risks undermining free speech within the law, it risks hindering legitimate criticism of Islamism and it risks creating a back-door blasphemy law. The strategy also claims that the Government want to promote the English language, but they will not say whether they support the guidance issued to councils in 2013 by the then Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, which advised against routine translation into foreign languages. We should be investing in English language training, not endless translation. Translation undermines integration, it wastes taxpayers’ money and it ultimately harms equality. There is no legal duty on councils to translate documents into foreign languages, yet too often officials gold-plate the Equality Act 2010 and do so anyway. Meanwhile, around 1 million adults in this country cannot speak English properly. This fundamentally limits their life chances and perpetuates separate communities. If the Government truly believed in equality, they would not turn a blind eye to practices such as family voting, where husbands effectively take the votes off their wives. Neither would they tolerate the misogyny and segregation that occur when men prevent women from learning English—[Interruption.] Labour Members might want to listen to this, because I am about to talk about antisemitism and I know that they have had a problem with that. On the question of antisemitism, will the Government challenge anti-Israel boycotts and divestment campaigns in local government, as we have seen recently in Bristol, advocated by a party in this House? Such campaigns fuel hostility towards Jewish people and contribute to the rise in antisemitism. Local procurement boycotts of Israel are supposed to be unlawful, yet Ministers do nothing to enforce the law. They will not even compile a list of the councils pursuing such boycotts. Added to these fears, separatism is on the rise in our country, as the Leader of the Opposition rightly set out in her speech last week. She said that “for too long, Britain has been complacent about our culture and too tolerant of those weaponising identity politics for their own gain…Britain is a multiracial country, we must not be a multicultural one.” [Interruption.] That was in the Secretary of State’s statement, by the way. We must reject the absurd idea that culture is something imported from somewhere else. For integration to work, people must know into what they are integrating. That means a culture that is confident, that is strong and that believes in itself. That is what this Government still seem unable to understand and unwilling to defend.
When this Government came into office, unemployment stood at 4.2%. After a brutal 18 months of job-destroying, anti-business, anti-growth policies, it now stands at 5.2%, with young people bearing the brunt—1 million of them are not in employment, education or training. We Conservatives believe in being in work and off welfare, and that is the best path to eradicating poverty. Will the Secretary of State break with the mistakes of all previous Labour Governments and commit that unemployment will be lower at the end of this Parliament than it was at the start?
Iran!
Emma from Abbots Langley in my constituency has to comply with strict timeframes for her job as a frontline worker within a local government adult care service. Despite that, the video relay service allowance that she receives as a deaf person has been reduced by over 75%, meaning that it is significantly below her working hours. Given that the waiting period for Access to Work reconsideration cases can span up to several months, how can the Minister assure my constituent that the delay will not undermine her ability to work?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Desmond. The Minister will be aware that we have some concerns about part of the UK-India agreement, but those concerns do not apply to the provisions on public procurement, and as such we support the measures in the regulations. In effect, the regulations add the UK-India agreement to schedule 9 to the Procurement Act 2023 introduced by the previous Government. That will mean that suppliers from India that fall within the scope of the agreement will be entitled to participate in relevant UK public procurement processes on the same basis as UK suppliers. We are proud of many of the changes brought in by the last Government through the Procurement Act to boost the UK economy, including the move from the EU’s most economically advantageous tender system to our own, broader, most advantageous tender system. That subtle change of language has massive real-world implications. It lets contracts reflect real value and not just price. Instead of the rigid focus on the lowest price under the previous EU-derived rules, under our new procurement framework we can consider value more holistically, including social and local benefit; instead of restrictive procedures, there is more competitive flexibility, so that buyers can design the process; and instead of it being difficult to exclude bad actors, as was the case under the previous system, robust powers are in place to debar suppliers on national security grounds. I am sure that the Minister will confirm that those powers will still apply under the regulations. Importantly, buyers can now give significant weight to bids that create jobs in their specific region or the sector for which they are responsible, and for the first time, public bodies are publishing key performance indicators for major contracts. If a supplier fails to deliver for the public, it can be held to account and potentially barred from future work. Given those positive changes, it makes sense to apply the new system to procurement covered by the UK-India trade agreement. Of course, due to the transitional provisions currently in place, some procurements continue to be governed by earlier legislative frameworks, including the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016. That is one of the reasons why we agree that the regulations before us, which will ensure that the procurement chapter of the UK-India agreement can also apply to procurements still conducted under those earlier regimes, are necessary. In practice, that means that economic operators benefiting from the agreement will be entitled to the same treatment as UK suppliers in procurements carried out under framework agreements, dynamic purchasing systems or qualification systems that remain subject to the previous rules. The amendments will apply only to procurements commenced after the UK-India agreement enters into force; procurements already under way will not be affected. The Government have indicated that a full impact assessment has not been produced on the basis that the regulations are not expected to have a significant impact on the private, voluntary or public sectors. Given the scale of public procurement in the United Kingdom, it would be helpful if the Minister provided some clarity on a few points. First, what assessment has been made of the value of procurement opportunities in the UK that will now be accessible to Indian suppliers under the agreement? On the flip side, can the Minister further lay out what reciprocal access UK businesses will gain to public procurement markets in India, and what practical support will be available to help UK firms, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to take advantage of those opportunities? Thirdly, could he clarify the expected timetable for the agreement to enter into force and, therefore, for these provisions to begin applying in practice? The regulations are, in many respects, technical in nature, but they form part of the broader implementation of the UK-India trade agreement and therefore could have significant implications for access to public procurement markets, both here in the UK and abroad, so it is right that the Committee carefully scrutinises how they will operate in practice. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
I agree with the Chancellor that de-escalation is desirable, but this conflict is likely to go on for many months. She talks about reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, which I agree with, but businesses are operating in the here and now, and they want reassurance. Forget the 500 businesses that will benefit from the supercharger scheme; what message can she give to medium-sized businesses that are very concerned and are having to lay off staff?
I have only been in the House for 21 years, but whenever we talk about defence and when our armed forces are in harm’s way, I have to say that a blame game on either side is not going to save a single life. While we all want to see de-escalation, the Government, I hope, will have learned lessons in the last few weeks and months to prepare for escalation. Is the Defence Secretary aware of the 2024 report by the US director of national intelligence that underlines the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that Iran holds, and will he work with friends and allies in the region and the new Syrian Government to identify and deal with those stockpiles? Finally, on Akrotiri and other bases in the region, will he ensure that our armed forces personnel and their families are given the right protective chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear kit?
Helping millions of people ensure financial security in their retirement is a cornerstone of the Minister’s Department, but in the Government’s first 18 months, they have disincentivised pension savings by introducing inheritance tax on pensions, removing pensions from their lifetime ISA reforms, forcing pension trustees into mandation and, most recently, introducing a cap on salary sacrifice savings incentives. Through their actions, this Government are pushing people to be more reliant on the state pension, rather than encouraging people to take control of their own financial future. Which will be the next Government U-turn: cancelling mandation, or abandoning salary sacrifice caps?
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. At the same Dispatch Box about half an hour ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer perhaps unwisely delved into the world of military strategy and said a couple of things that were slightly alarming. First, she upbraided the shadow Chancellor for not calling for the de-escalation of the operations against Iran, yet the Defence Secretary’s own statement mentions de-escalation only when it comes to the situation in Lebanon. Can he clarify whether he is calling on his American counterparts to de-escalate in Iran or not? Secondly, she said that to open the strait of Hormuz we would need to support something she called “cross-country” operations with France and the US, and that we were ready to do that to open the strait of Hormuz. Will he comment on that too, please?
Paying illegal asylum seekers £40,000 to leave the United Kingdom is a kick in the teeth for my hard-working constituents. Why are we not using that money to build a detention centre so that we can detain and immediately deport those who arrive in this country illegally?
I am delighted to address the 13 amendments sent back to us by the other place this evening. The volume of Lords amendments reflects the strong feelings in both Houses about the deficiencies in the Bill, but there is a chance tonight to make change for the better. At the moment, the Government seem to do their utmost to oppose anything that they did not come up with—not on merit, but because they have retreated into a tribal bunker in which only ideas emanating from Labour special advisers or union bosses are deemed acceptable. May I suggest that this is not serving the Government very well? Let us take the phone ban. The Education Secretary has turned into a contortionist. First, she told me that a statutory ban on phones in the classroom was a “gimmick”. Then, the Prime Minister slammed it as “unnecessary”. The Education Secretary later admitted that there is a problem, but she said that more guidance can fix it. Finally, she is now consulting on whether to do a statutory ban but refusing to back our amendment, in Lords amendment 106, which would actually deliver one. I am flattered by the energy that the Education Secretary is putting into avoiding agreeing with me, but this is getting ridiculous. If the Government cannot properly argue the merits of their case, we get bad legislation. We had that problem with the Bill when it first came in. The Government still cannot justify the rationale for taking away academy freedoms—the very same freedoms that have delivered improved school standards in this country. Indeed, we now have the absurdity of the schools White Paper rightly saying that academies are the driving force behind school improvement, while in this Bill the Government are destroying academies in all but name. This is palpable nonsense. Do not try to make any sense of it—it is not possible.
With pleasure.
As ever, my right hon. Friend is the voice of reason in this Chamber. Turning to our amendment that deals with pupil admission numbers, Lords amendment 102, I hope the Government will try to explain why they think good and outstanding schools should be made smaller when they are oversubscribed. To be clear, that is exactly what the Government are asking Back Benchers to vote for this evening. Parental choice has been the great driver of school improvement in this country—it empowers parents to vote with their feet and encourages excellent schools—yet the Government want to turn that principle on its head. They want to cut good school places, which is bad for parents, bad for schools and, above all, bad for children. School standards are on the Order Paper this evening, and the Government want to vote against them.
I profoundly disagree with the hon. Gentleman. At a time of shrinking school places, it is important that it is the good school places that survive, and parents should make that choice, not bureaucrats. The Government’s inability simply to admit that they got it wrong in the Bill, and that there is a better way of achieving the outcome they want, is ever present. Lords amendment 41, which would impose a cost cap on school uniform, is palpably better than having a cap on the number of items. It is the height of insanity to insist that it should be illegal for a school to use the football kit it received for free because that would be outside of the item limit. If anyone is thinking that this cannot actually be Government policy, I suggest that they read the guidance that sits alongside the legislation. It literally says that “All loaned or gifted branded items will be captured within the limit if they are required to be worn”, meaning that they come under the cap. That makes absolutely no sense.
The whole point is whether it is compulsory or not—that is the whole point of uniform, and I was reading directly from the guidance. It makes absolutely no sense; how is a child wearing something that they have been given for free going to increase costs for parents? If the “not invented here” syndrome were not running so rampant in the Department for Education, the change made by Lords amendment 41 would already have been made. The same is true of Lords amendment 44. We all know the horrific case of Sara Sharif, which was used as a rationale for bringing forward many of the positive child protection measures in the Bill. The serious case review published at the end of last year set out multiple failings that led to Sara falling out of the system. That review states that, while well intentioned, this legislation would not have helped Sara, so we have brought forward amendment 44 to fix that. It ensures that consent would need to be sought from the local authority to homeschool any child who has ever had a child protection plan. That would mean that the Bill would have helped Sara, which is the Government’s stated aim, but guess what, Madam Deputy Speaker? The Government are now opposing that amendment. We are diligently doing the work an Opposition should do to improve the legislation, but it is being shrugged off by the Government—not on its merits, but because they do not want to accept anything from this side of the House. It is not good enough.
The hon. Gentleman is arguing for things that are outside the scope of the Bill. What we know is that the change made by Lords amendment 44 would have helped Sara in a way that the unamended Bill would not have done. I am not going to push Lords amendments 2 and 21 to a vote this evening, but I reserve the right to come back to them if the Government do not engage constructively in the other place. I am grateful to the noble Lady Baroness Barran for her brilliant work on those amendments and on the wider Bill. Turning to phones, I really want Members to understand how bad things have got with phones in schools, and why a statutory ban is necessary. I know that the Government have issued revised guidance and have asked Ofsted to enforce it, but Ofsted’s guidance on this topic still allows phones to be present in schools. I cannot overstate to Members how damaging and dangerous that is. I was thinking about how to communicate this most effectively, and given that the Government are not listening to me, to parents or to teachers, I thought that first-hand testimony from a young person might get through. I warn you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the following account from a former pupil involves some graphic content that I sincerely wish I did not have to talk about. However, I refuse to shy away from it, because if we are exposing 13-year-olds to such content in schools, we need to be able to talk about it in this Chamber. This is testimony from a girl who was at an outstanding girls’ school that had a “not seen, not heard” phone policy. Such policies are common in many schools across the country and count as a phone ban under the Government’s definition. The Minister says that children’s voices are rarely heard—well, I hope she listens to this testimony today. “When I was around 13 or 14 years old, one of my classmates would pull out her laptop at lunch times. She would connect her laptop through her phone’s hotspot, because the school wi-fi would block any social media, and launch up social media, because some thought it was funny to see how long it took to find an old man wanking—it was never long—or how long it took for somebody to ask them their age, and when they replied with ‘14’, they would send their Snapchat for you to add. The teachers never knew, because we were alone in our forms. “Some of my friends had access to Snapchat from very young, some even primary school, but I did not. I got Snapchat when I was 12 or 13, but I remember before, my friends talking about dick pics in the changing rooms, and one said she got at least 10 in the morning. She’d put up her phone and show us by scrolling through them, just because it was funny that they would just send it. This happened after she added someone on Snapchat that she didn’t know. Others had them too. “Looking back now, I remember pretending to find everything funny, just to fit in, but actually I felt really confused and grossed out at some of the content being shared. All of this happened at school, and we probably should have talked to a teacher, but as an 11 to 14-year-old girl, you’re not going to tell your male form tutor that people were being sent dick pics in school, or that your classmates were sending porn in the form group chat. I didn’t even tell my parents until recently, because I was embarrassed, or maybe because it just seemed normal, but my mum was already pretty strict with my phone usage and if I told her what was being sent around at school, I felt like I would be in trouble and she’d take the phone away. The phone was how everyone connected, so I needed to protect it. Over time, all the sexually explicit stuff just became normal.” I remind Members that this is happening at school and, in this case, at an outstanding girls’ school. It is so far from being an isolated incident—in fact, it is the opposite. It is approaching a norm.
My hon. Friend is completely right. We need that age limit, and we need the phone ban in schools. Polling out today shows that 40% of children are shown explicit content during the school day. That is happening right now. This is an emergency. No more guidance; no more consultations—the Government should legislate, do something about it, and vote to ban phones in schools tonight. The Lords amendments on social media received overwhelming cross-party backing in the other place. They were put forward by the noble Lords Nash, Berger, Cass and Benjamin. The amendments have been extensively debated and are backed by a number of expert groups and bereaved parents. In the place of those amendments, we have the farcical situation where the Government are asking the House to support their own amendment, which does not tell us what the Government will do or even when they will do it. No action is required by the provision being put forward this evening.
This is a safeguarding issue, and we have always taken steps when it comes to safeguarding young people. Let me be clear to Labour Members: the Government can choose to do nothing based on this amendment. Ministers do not have a view on whether social media should be banned, and they have put forward an amendment that does not tell us what they will do. It is extraordinary.
My hon. Friend eloquently sums up why this amendment is so important.
I am sorry, but I will make some progress, otherwise I will get in trouble with Madam Deputy Speaker. We have an emergency, and it is hidden on children’s phones. A quarter of children in primary school have seen porn, and the vast majority access it via social media. Some 70% of teenagers have seen real-life violence online, while only 6% were looking for it. In other words, the social media algorithm deliberately serves it to them. Criminals are using Snapchat and Facebook to groom children. Child sexual abuse imagery crimes are up enormously. Snapchat is flagged in almost half of cases. Meta platforms make up a quarter.
I am sorry, but I really have to make some progress. Sextortion is also a huge issue on social media. In 2022, there were 10,000 reports of sextortion by snap. That was not in a year, but in one month, and those are just the ones we know about. Most horrifyingly of all, social media is culpable in dozens of children’s deaths. To give just one example, Ellen Roome’s son Jools took part, she believes, in a TikTok blackout challenge. That is where young children and teenagers are encouraged to hold their breath until they pass out. Jools died as a result in April 2022, and that was two years after the challenge had supposedly been removed from the platform. When I met Ellen and other bereaved parents, they said that, tragically, their bereaved group just keeps on growing. In the face of that, do Members know what the Government’s consultation says? It says that children like using TikTok to post dance videos. This misguided view that social media is in some way good for children, or that its benefits outweigh the harms I have spoken about, is what has got us into this position.
I am sorry, but I must make some progress. I have heard Ministers argue that vulnerable children or children who are isolated need to find their community online, and I want to put that argument to rest once and for all. All the evidence shows that these children are the most likely to be exploited, groomed and harmed by social media. If a child is scared or isolated, the last thing we should do is put them on social media. It is a terrible argument, and I hope it is not repeated today. The other options that the Government present in their consultation simply do not meet the scale of the challenge. A curfew so that children can only get damaged by social media during the day does not help. Time limits so that children still see the content, but just for fewer hours, are not good enough. Getting rid of scrolling is fine, but how does that stop children being groomed? So far, three senior Labour figures have managed to grasp the seriousness of the situation: the Mayor of Greater Manchester, the Health Secretary and the Labour leader in Scotland. They have judged this policy on its merits, and I hope the House manages to do the same tonight, because we are in a crisis. If Members across the House agree, they need to add their voices and vote for change.
4. What assessment he has made of trends in the number of foreign nationals claiming universal credit.
According to the Government’s own figures, most foreign nationals who are claiming universal credit are not in work. The Government do not seem to want to do anything to bring that figure down, so will the Minister tell us how much this is costing the UK taxpayer?
Given that it was promised at the start of June last year, when will the Chancellor sign off on the defence investment plan?
3. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of unemployment.
Youth unemployment is, in fact, spiking at nearly 5.3%, which is heartbreaking, particularly for young people who cannot get that all-important first job. The Government like to pretend that they are a cork in a storm-tossed sea and unable to do anything about this, but they could reconsider employer national insurance contributions and the disastrous Employment Rights Act 2025, which is driving up youth unemployment.
In 1979 my father took me to Newton Stewart cinema to see “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”, and I recall my father being more upset by a spoof travel documentary that preceded the main film, because there was swearing in it, than he was about the supposed slights to Christianity. It was an early lesson to me that no one in this country, in a modern democracy, has the right not to be insulted or offended, so why are we in this place, the cockpit of democracy, discussing a blasphemy law by the back door?
7. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of unemployment.
The Minister answered a question about unemployment by giving data about employment, so let us focus on unemployment numbers. By how much has general unemployment increased since July 2024?