Baroness Spielman (Con)

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, in the amendments they have proposed. I also agree very much with the comments made by others, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, who made some important points, especially about the risk of overloading schools. My noble friend Lady Shephard made some very important points about safeguarding. When, as chief inspector, I reported on sexual harassment and abuse in schools, it was notable how much of that we found to be linked to smartphone use. I would like to clear up a bit of confusion, because I think we are not properly distinguishing between personal and school-controlled devices. I think the noble Lord, Lord Addington, was heading in this direction a moment ago in his remarks. Every school has many school-controlled devices—computers and sometimes tablets—and it is much easier to maintain the framework of safeguards around devices that are owned and controlled by schools than it is around personal devices. These devices are suitable for teaching media literacy and many other things or in teaching children how to use technology. They can also very effectively provide technology. The dividing line here is between devices schools are able to control fairly fully and devices that essentially remain children’s property and in the children’s control, and where there will never be the level of supervision needed to make them safe—at least not in the foreseeable future.