Contribution
My Lords, a good speech is a short speech.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I have spent most of this debate rewriting my speech. I have tried hard to listen to what noble Lords have said. We have three options before us tonight: the Government option of a consultation; the Liberal Democrat option; and the option from my noble friend, Lord Nash, as it relates to social media.
Briefly, before I talk about the three options, I would like to say to my noble friend Lady Penn that, rather than being a warm-up act, she gave us a master class in how to present an amendment. She made a well-argued, practical case for her amendment, underlining the importance of shifting norms for very young children at the earliest possible stage and calling urgently for firm action, and timing on that action, from the Government. Like others, we look forward to the Minister’s reply.
To return to the group of amendments that deal with social media use, we have before us, as we have heard, an opportunity to end the harm that our children and grandchildren are experiencing as a result of the hours that they spend on there. I was going to talk about the merits of my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment, but I think others have done that extremely ably.
I will therefore turn to the key differences between my noble friend’s amendment and that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Between the fiercely critical comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about Ofcom struggling and critically undermining implementation and wider failures, and the comparison made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, of Ofcom being to the tech companies as “Dixon of Dock Green” is to “Crocodile Dundee”, I think those noble Lords have done my job for me. The key element in the Liberal Democrat amendment is that we would give powers to Ofcom and the Children’s Commissioner to decide which apps are safe or not safe. Whether it is my noble friend Lady Harding, who may be in a slightly different place in this debate than I am, or many other noble Lords around the House, they have noted that Ofcom is struggling with the powers that it was given in the Online Safety Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Berger, put it extremely well. Do your Lordships want to give to a struggling organisation one of the most complicated jobs before us? I would suggest that we do not. It should of course advise the Children’s Commissioner and the Government, but it should not be responsible.
The second reason it should not be responsible is one of democracy. We have too many recent examples, of which your Lordships will be aware, where we have delegated incredibly important powers to unelected and relatively unaccountable officials, however competent they might be, and we should not do that again. Our democracy depends on our colleagues at the other end being given the chance to decide, and Parliament deciding, what is or is not appropriate for our children, taking advice from every expert that they can draw on, many of whom we have heard from this evening.
Thirdly—I was finding it hard to wait to the end to get to this point—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, should be not mentioned anywhere near this endless reference to a “blunt, blanket ban”. I was so grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, as I was about to read out proposed new subsection (5) of Amendment 94A from my noble friend and the noble Baroness. This would not be a blanket ban, and it is, if I may say so, irresponsible of noble Lords who kept asserting that and referring to it as such, even once my noble friend had clarified that it was not the case. Crucially, proposed new subsection (2)(b) would also give our Government time to learn both from some of the scientific work that is going on and from the Australian approach. Amendment 94B would add neither in terms of flexibility or future-proofing but would dilute democratic accountability, which we do at our peril.
Turning to the Government, I would say that now is the time for leadership on this issue. The proposed consultation and approach set out in yesterday’s Statement, with a government amendment at Third Reading, does not feel like leadership. We have heard tonight that we do not need another national conversation. The nation has spoken very clearly about its level of concern, and parents and children will not thank us for further delay. The Government argue that views are divided, and we have heard tonight that the children’s charities are split and bereaved parents are split. If we wait for consensus on this issue, the one thing I am confident of is that not a single one of us will still be in your Lordships’ House. As Martin Luther King wisely said,
“a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus”.
The Government need to get moulding, and fast, because we owe it to our children to act now to protect their childhood.