Lord Bethell (Con)

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for a very moving speech there, but I will address his point directly. This amendment does not object to a child having a basic phone for safety. My plucky 11 year-old son travels to and from school every day with a big rucksack and a violin on the Circle line and the Jubilee line, come rain or snow. It worries the hell out of me every time he leaves the house, and I am not happy until he is back home. That is why he has a Nokia dumb phone in his pocket, so he can call me if he needs to. I confess that he sometimes plays “Pong” on a black and white LED screen when he is bored, but that does not damage his frontal cortex or bring him into touch with predators. He does not have a smartphone with all its nasty algorithms. Until they invent such a box as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, quite reasonably described, that is what a smartphone contains. I do not, for instance, allow my son to go to the local pub, the Westbourne, where he might be beaten up. For the same reason, I do not let him on Instagram, with all its bullying. I do not allow him to go to the Ministry of Sound—wonderful organisation though that is—because he will be confronting sexual predators. For the same reason, I do not let him on Snapchat. I do not give him methamphetamine—whizz—or Es, because they are addictive and would mess with his brain, as do TikTok and YouTube reels. I do not, for instance, allow him on X, where he might see internet filth. For the same reason, he is not allowed to go to Soho to watch peep shows. Toxic digital platforms are designed for adults and are engineered for addiction, fraudsters and predators—and, I am afraid, they are screwing with too many of our children’s brains. A simple device that makes calls and sends texts poses none of these challenges. That is what children should have. That is why schools should be in a regulatory position to ban smartphones during school hours.