Rebecca Paul

I concur with everything my right hon. Friend says. It is completely accessible to all our children, so it is very hard for one child to be kept separate from it. That is why it is important that we address it. However, increasing the digital age of consent is just the first step—we have so much more to do. We also need to ban smartphones in schools for children under the age of 16. On a typical workday, 42% of older teenagers say their smartphone is distracting them from schoolwork, and half say that social media has distracted them enough to impact their grades. Notably, only 11% of schools are genuinely smartphone free, and children at these schools get GCSE results one to two grades higher, so there is clearly a big upside to banning smartphones in schools. I urge the Government to seriously consider implementing this much needed restriction, which would be a game changer, protecting children and improving educational outcomes in one fell swoop. Our schools need this ban in statute, not just in guidance, in order to be able to effectively police and enforce it. I pay tribute to Smartphone Free Childhood for all its work to raise awareness on this important issue. In closing, I hope that Members will support the Bill today, which would move us forward in our mission to protect our children from an increasingly insidious online realm that they are simply not equipped to navigate. I also hope that this is just the beginning, and that in moving forward we will see the digital age of consent raised to 16 and a ban on smartphones in school. The value of those two changes alone would be huge for our society, and would safeguard the wellbeing of this and future generations of children. I cannot think of anything more important.