Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group—I was a minute or so late, for which I apologise. I wanted to hear the arguments of those who oppose Amendment 177 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I will just address a couple of those. I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said that we cannot warn children of the danger of smartphones if they are not using them in schools, but let us be more realistic. The school day is only seven or eight hours, and there are 52 weekends and 15 weeks’ holiday. They are going to use these awful things, whatever we do. But at least schools provide a safe space if they cannot use them—we heard the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, about not being mugged on the way to school. I see it in my own schools where, although we have bans, the kids get around them. If they have hair similar to that of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, how do we know whether they have AirPods in their ears? With the so-called magnetic pouches, you can buy a disabler on the internet to get rid of it. The list goes on and on. I agree with the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that you cannot uninvent them, but they are very toxic. We look back on tobacco and sugar, yet we are allowing these things to go on while people cogitate, when it is so obvious that we should be bringing a much more vigorous ban of these devices into schools as soon as possible. I support the noble Lord, Lord Nash.