Munira Wilson

I was about to expand further on that before I took the two preceding interventions. Perhaps the hon. Lady will allow me to continue and, if I have not addressed her concerns, she can intervene on me again. Ofcom would be given the powers to force platforms that do not want to play ball to do so or to face serious consequences. We believe that that would mean a ban on harmful social media for under-16s. Family friendly services such as Wikipedia or Tripadvisor would be available at a lower age, as those sites fall under the current user-to-user definition in the Online Safety Act. We know, however, that even 16 could be too young to access the most harmful of sites—those that host violence and pornography—which is why our proposals would allow what we think are really harmful platforms, such as X, to be age-gated up to 18. A harms-based approach, like the one we are proposing today, is supported by 42 charities including the likes of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Molly Rose Foundation and others, and would protect children from the worst of the web without breaking the parts of the internet that families actually rely on. Crucially, it is future-proofed and could be applied to chatbots, games and other emerging technologies. I welcome the fact that the Conservatives’ Opposition day motion a few weeks ago, which we were unable to debate, moved towards the Liberal Democrats’ nuanced approach to keeping under-16s aways from “harmful” social media. I hope that the Conservatives will be able to support our motion today and this approach going forward, despite the fact that they were unfortunately unable to do so in the other place just a month ago.