It is helpful to have that on the record. No doubt, the new clauses will be pored over in a lot more detail after they arrive in the other place. Given our time constraints today, I want to put on the record our concern that we did not have an opportunity in Committee to pore over such proposals; had the Bill been ready, perhaps we would have had. Notwithstanding our support for blocking, we think a lot more scrutiny will be required when there is more time available in the other place to discuss these Government new clauses, on the assumption that the House passes them tonight.
We have argued repeatedly that the Bill should have prepared the UK for the challenges faced by the digital economy and, crucially, should have featured digital resilience as a key part of the provisions. The opportunities of the digital economy cannot be exploited unless we feel safe and secure online, and that is nowhere more important and clear than with our children.
Children are growing up in the midst of an information revolution that, even a decade ago, was unimaginable, with instant access to an astonishing range of content and information. Today’s children are taking in an astonishing five times more information than the generation that grew up in the not so distant 1990s. So, far from tabloid stories about a distracted generation, those growing up today are in some ways on course to be the most informed generation in history. But of course knowledge is not understanding, and wisdom comes in part from experience.
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The challenges of this digital revolution for protecting our children cannot be ignored, and they are challenges parents across the country worry about every single day. They are worried they may not know what their children are being subjected to online, whether bullying or coming across inappropriate images, and as their children come to know much more about the online world than they do, parents feel they may not be best placed to stop it.
Our new clause 10 would help us all face up to that challenge. It would amend the Education Act 1996, so that secondary school pupils would be taught in an age-appropriate way and with the usual safeguards which apply to that Act about the dangers of the online world and how to keep safe. With digital devices more widespread among children than ever before and with five to 15-year-olds spending an average of 20 hours and six minutes online every week, having no clear education to sit alongside the blunt instrument of age verification is an important missing part of the Bill.
Age verification for online pornography to stop children seeing harmful content is of course welcome in the Bill, but, as the Minister himself hinted, it is not the whole answer. We can build a swimming pool, fill it with water, build a fence around it and put up a sign saying swimming is dangerous, but the most important thing is to teach our children to swim. If we solely rely on age verification as the main way to tackle this problem, that is going to be inadequate. Age verification cannot teach children consent or about healthy relationships, or help them to navigate the expectations placed on them and reinforced online; that can only be done through well-devised and taught sex and relationship education, which incorporates discussions about online pornography, so that children can question what they see online in a safe environment.
A recent NSPCC report into the effect of online pornography on under-18s was revealing and troubling. It found that most of them felt that it was a poor model for consent and practising safe sex and that it could distort their image of a healthy relationship. But the Government have so far refused to even consider statutory online sexual education, and their recent “Keeping children safe” strategy dedicated only three paragraphs to the online world. Taking that in tandem with the Bill, which does not make a single mention of online abuse or online education, it seems that Ministers are ducking the challenge —or perhaps they are not able to comprehend it.
We have always known education in this area matters. It is why when we were in government we expanded and updated sex education and commissioned the Tanya Byron review, whose lessons were largely abandoned after 2010. That is also why in the Bill we want to take steps towards developing statutory online education for this smartphone generation. We want it to extend beyond simple sex education to the entire online world, so that children, who, as many people say, are digital natives, can make safe and informed decisions.
With an 800% increase in the number of children contacting the NSPCC about online abuse, it is clear this is becoming a real problem for today’s schoolchildren. They clearly need more support and more advice, and someone to turn to. Statutory online education would work in tandem with a code of conduct for social media providers to prevent online abuse.