Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)

My Lords, I have also put my name to most of the amendments. As with the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, that some of them do not have my name on them is because I arrived too late. Between her and my noble friend Lady Kidron, they have said everything that needs to be said very powerfully. As one who has more recently become involved in a variety of Bills—the Policing and Crime Bill, the Online Safety Bill, and the Victims and Prisoners Bill—in every case trying to fight for and clarify children’s rights, I can say that it has been an uphill battle. But the reason we have been fighting for this is that we have lamentably failed to protect the interests of children for the past two decades as the world has changed around us. All of us who have children or grandchildren, nephews or nieces, or, like me, take part in the Learn with the Lords programme and go into schools, or who deal with mental health charities, are aware of the failure of government and regulators to take account, as the world changed around us, of the effect it would have on children. In our attempts to codify and clarify in law what the dangers are and what needs to be put in place to try to prevent them, we have had an uphill struggle, regardless of the colour of government. In principle, everyone agrees. In practice, there is always a reason why it is too difficult—or, the easy way out is to say, “We will tell the regulator what our intent is, but we will leave it up to the regulator to decide”. Our experience to date of the ability of a regulator entirely to take on board what was very clearly the will of Parliament when the Bill became an Act is not being made flesh when it comes to setting out the regulation. Unless it is in an Act and it is made manifestly clear what the desired outcomes are in terms of safety of children, the regulator—because it is difficult to do this well—will not unreasonably decide that if it is too difficult to do, they will settle for something that is not as good as it could be. What we are trying to do with this set of amendments is to say to the Government up front, “We want this to be as effective as it possibly could be now”. We do not want to come back and rue the consequences of not being completely clear and of putting clear onus of responsibility on the regulators in two or three years’ time, because in another two or three years children will have important parts of their childhood deteriorating quite rapidly, with consequences that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.