B

Baroness Barran (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 23 June 2025

Debate

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Contribution

I thank the Minister for giving way. Presumably, all the countries that have introduced mobile phone bans in schools have found ways around this. It cannot be beyond the wit of the Government to find a way through this. I also wondered whether the Minister was going to comment—perhaps she will come on to this—on the power of the social media companies. In her remarks so far, she has come up with what were, in a former life, perfectly respectable and effective solutions, such as that parents should set boundaries with their children. But we, as parents or grandparents, are now competing with social media companies that have a great deal of power and expertise to disrupt all those good 20th century-type responses. Lastly, I wonder whether she feels that the figures she gave on schools adopting phone restrictions tie in with the evidence from Teacher Tapp about the level of disruption in lessons that my noble friend referred to.

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