Julia Lopez MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 9 Sept 2026 · Jaguar Land Rover: Redundancies · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister for his statement. In his final Prime Minister’s questions, Keir Starmer spoke emotionally about how he had saved jobs at Jaguar Land Rover. Two months later, we hear news of 4,000 job losses at Britain’s biggest car manufacturer and the new Minister for Reindustrialisation is forced to make his first statement to the House on de-industrialisation. JLR workers will have spent another weekend contemplating their future, wondering about the impact on their careers, families and communities, and questioning the sustainability of the British car industry and the countless businesses in JLR’s nationwide supply chain—firms whose vital industrial capability, once lost, will be hard to replace. JLR is still recovering from a crippling cyber-attack, of course, and the Minister has talked about the headwinds facing all car manufacturers. They include massive barriers erected by China to sell into its domestic market, while Chinese cars are aggressively sold into our own. Tech is changing the car industry from an engineering business to a component assembler and software installer. These shifts are huge and undisputed. The Business Secretary has said that JLR must become more competitive, but the question remains: what are he, the Chancellor and the new Prime Minister doing to make our country more competitive—and fast? I am not talking about tortoise-like speeches on triple helixes, sector plans, state-backed loans or union negotiations. I am talking about hard, urgent choices on tax, regulation and energy. Let’s take the ZEV mandate, which dictates that the manufacture of petrol and diesel cars will be banned in this country in just over three years’ time, and which is seeing our firms being fined right now for customers not buying electric vehicles that they do not want. Having been manoeuvred into joint ventures and having had their designs copied by Chinese competitors, British manufacturers are now being forced to subsidise the Temu Range Rovers that are gobbling market share. It is crazy economic self-harm. The Conservatives would abolish the ZEV mandate. That is what unions want too. Can the Minister tell us: will the Government act? Our industrial base is crippled by ruinous energy costs. We are being asked to applaud the Government’s industrial energy scheme, which does not start until next year, fails to address the underlying problem, and will not bring down prices for the whole economy. How will it position us against the competition? BICS will bring down energy costs by 25%, but given that our industrial electricity costs are four times that of the US, twice as high as France and 46% higher than the global average, our competitive disadvantage remains. The Conservatives have a cheap power plan to slash energy costs for the entire economy. It involves hard-nosed choices: repealing the Climate Change Act 2008, axing the emissions trading scheme, scrapping wind and solar subsidies, investing in nuclear and getting the North sea drilling again. Will this Government be similarly tough, or will they continue to pretend that British industry is not having its legs cut off by net zero? The Chancellor talked ploddingly this week about reducing the burdens on business, but the truth is that, through regulation and tax, the unemployment Act and the national insurance hike, Labour has made it riskier and more expensive to employ people. That is bad for business, because it adds another cost pressure, and it is bad for sales; 20% of JLR’s vehicles are for the domestic market, and right now too many Brits are too worried about tax bills, inflation and jobs to buy premium cars. How does this new iteration of Labour intend to untangle the mess of these past two years? JLR sells nearly a third of its cars to America. US tariffs on them are four times higher than when Labour came in, but it is because we are outside the EU that we at least got a better tariff deal than member states—and it is the same with the India deal. As this new Prime Minister ingratiates himself with Brussels, can we be assured that he will not negotiate away our competitive advantages? We know, too, that tariff and quota deals can change. The Foreign Secretary’s performative pronouncements on Israel and the Prime Minister’s ongoing failure to set out a defence plan risk antagonising the Americans and throwing us into another round of tariff negotiations that could cripple our car and life science industries. What will the Minister do to make sure that his colleagues are not jeopardising JLR jobs with dubious diplomacy, and are any trade measures being considered when it comes to China? Britain is de-industrialising before our eyes. In the west midlands and beyond, there will be pain in every postcode. More Whitehall schemes and an army of mayors are not going to stop the rot. The Government cannot solve all of JLR’s problems, but it is the job of Ministers to create conditions in which it and countless other businesses can manufacture competitively in Britain. Are Ministers going to accept that this involves tough choices and then act with the urgency that this crisis demands?

• 1 Jul 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  I think the Secretary of State just said that the eminent professors are wrong. Aside from research spend, one of the core reasons for the budgetary pressures in physics is the ruinous cost of energy under Labour. It is ideology in research spend, and it is ideology in energy policy. In March, the Secretary of State said we need to sort out the problems facing physics funding as soon as possible; it is now July. Has she lobbied the Energy Secretary to stop him driving up the core costs of our critical scientific research institutions?

• 1 Jul 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  Professor Brian Cox is among the eminent scientists warning about the impact of Government cuts to research on advanced physics and astronomy—a move that he calls “inexplicable”. Meanwhile, the Government are spending millions on projects examining climate coloniality, decolonising justice and transforming LGBTIQ+ asylum policies. Are those the Secretary of State’s research priorities too? If not, has she made that crystal clear to UK Research and Innovation?

• 16 Jun 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I thank Members across the House for their contributions to this Bill over many months and for their relentless scrutiny. I have never known a Minister to be in such a rush, with three hours of protected time left. I am grateful to officials both in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and in Parliament for their hard work in getting this legislation to its final stage. I particularly recognise the hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) and his team in providing such top-notch scrutiny of the Bill during its passage through the House. The Opposition have remained at all times supportive of the principles behind the Bill. It was the previous Government who recognised the need to increase cyber-resilience standards for critical digital infrastructure and services, including managed service providers and data centres. It is welcome that those entities—which are so vital to the functioning of the economy, public services and our daily lives—are now covered. However, I said on Second Reading that opportunities to legislate in this area are few and far between, and we need to ask two questions to assess whether this law is fit for purpose: will it work, and is it enough? There was already an urgent need to strengthen our cyber-defences. However, AI is equipping hostile states, criminal gangs and opportunists alike with tools capable of eroding our national defences at speed and at scale, in ways that will affect businesses, the public sector and our infrastructure. It is right that Parliament legislates to raise the collective security bar, but the nature of the cyber-security risks that necessitated this Bill have developed rapidly as we have been taking it through this House. That demonstrates the difficulties we all face as legislators in dealing with the constantly shifting sands of the digital age. We may need to be ready to return to this subject sooner than we had hoped. It is right that critical digital infrastructure such as data centres will fall within the scope of regulation, but we need to recognise that no security measures or standards are 100% effective. Government and businesses need to ensure that essential data and workloads are stored and processed in a way that keeps them secure and operational even when they are under attack. Resilience is key—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ apparent targeting of Amazon Web Services sites in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain earlier this year has shown that digital infrastructure is becoming a prime target in times of conflict. It would be irresponsible to assume that these facilities will not also be targets for cyber-warfare, which is why we have to look closely at concentration of risk, our overall resilience, and any leverage we can build in maintaining access to the best technology going forward. From work on the security of our telecoms infrastructure to scrutiny of the platforms on which critical Government services run, we must now be thinking extremely carefully about our procurement of digital technology. A further significant development since this Bill was introduced is the rapid advance of AI systems capable of identifying cyber-vulnerabilities, particularly in poorly protected legacy IT across Government and public services, including the NHS. It highlights the urgent need to address the Government’s extensive legacy estate, which is especially exposed to exploitation. Nothing in the Bill addresses that need, yet the Government are creating a broader digital architecture for hackers to attack through their plan for Government-issued digital IDs. If public trust is to be restored, especially after the Government’s abortive attempt to introduce mandatory ID last year—still, I fear, a risk by the back door—such systems must always remain both optional and secure. It is therefore concerning that the Public Accounts Committee felt compelled to write to the permanent secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology in April to criticise the lack of urgency in reviewing legacy IT equipment, given both the sensitivity of the data involved and the scale of the cyber-risk. Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge set out one of the most significant threats that this Bill fails to address: the intensifying cyber-security risk posed by the Chinese Communist party and its affiliates. It is regrettable that the Government have, for a second time, voted down amendments that would have compelled the Secretary of State to create a register of hostile state actors threatening the cyber-security of essential networks and information systems. Those concerns are not restricted to Conservative Members, which is why the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) attracted cross-party support. The risks posed by cellular IOT modules have been set out expertly in the Chamber today. IOT modules supplied by Chinese manufacturers are now embedded in nearly all internet-connectable products and devices, from smart TVs to electric cars. They can be used to intercept data and track locations, and can even be controlled remotely. The scale of the cyber and physical security threat from IOT modules is the tip of the iceberg, with components that can be used for espionage or cyber-attacks or disabled remotely woven into countless aspects of our critical national infrastructure. This is an issue that is not going away. In summary, although this Bill is necessary and goes some way towards enhancing our cyber-resilience in critical areas, it will not be enough in isolation. It heaps all the burden on the private sector, yet it would have been insufficient to prevent the Jaguar Land Rover incident. It does not address public sector vulnerabilities, and it falls far short of meeting the moment that the now former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), lamented that this Government were missing in their approach to our collective defence and security. It speaks to this Government’s continued inability to grapple with and address the red lights that are now flashing on the national dashboard. The “corrosive complacency” that Lord Robertson called out in the Government’s approach to investment in defence can also be seen here, in the Government’s ongoing refusal to address the urgent threat to our national cyber-security caused by our reliance on technology and components from nations that have demonstrably malign intent. We are living with the uncomfortable reality that the end of history was a dangerous illusion; one that has led to us gradually outsourcing our critical industries to our geopolitical rivals and competitors, only to have their wares sold back to us in the form of latent time bombs. That is why this legislation, which we support, can only be a discrete tool in addressing a much wider challenge. Cyber-security is no longer a niche compliance exercise; it is about protecting the fundamental economic and defence interests of our nation. That is why I suspect we will be returning to cyber issues in this House before too long, and with greater urgency.

• 15 Jun 2026 · Social Media Ban for Under-16s · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. As someone infamous for her impatience, waiting for the Prime Minister to opine on something that she genuine cares about must have been as frustrating for her as it has been for us. Today the Prime Minister announced, as his shot at a legacy, something that six months ago he said he was personally opposed to—a ban on social media for under-16s. We can be grateful that he got there in the end, but the victory is not his. Thanks must go to some of the gutsier Labour Back Benchers whom we have heard cited today, the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Education Secretary and, in particular, my noble Friend Lord Nash for his dogged determination in pursuing his amendments. Above all, we must thank those parents who took the senseless tragedies that befell their families and turned their pain into a legacy that will benefit so many children. They have conducted themselves with dignity and grace, and many are in the Gallery today to see the results of their courage. The Prime Minister’s about-turn tells many stories. If he were a man with views, his position could have been laid out at the start of the year, with the consultation used as a chance to polish the policy. As it is, officials’ heads have been left spinning trying to retrofit details to this damascene conversion. The Prime Minister likes to make a virtue of process, but he has used process in this case as a tool to avoid doing what so many hon. Members said was not only inevitable, but right and entirely necessary. We have had votes: the Prime Minister instructed his troops three times to vote against the ban. We have had debates: the Prime Minister would not give a view. But lo, a career-critical by-election comes along and, upon realising that protecting kids is not just popular but vital, the Prime Minister has finally found his voice. With Makerfield going to the polls on Thursday, perhaps we should use the next couple of days to maximum effect by trying to extract his opinions on funding defence, cutting welfare and getting cheap energy, because this country has been waiting for leadership for too long. As Conservatives, we believe in the ultimate responsibility of parents over their children, but they face huge challenges in keeping their children safe online. It is not simply a matter of denying them a phone or a computer. There are many good uses of tech that children and young people should be free to explore, but the onus is on us, as adults, to create a positive place for their exploration. Instead, activity that would never be tolerated in the real world has been normalised, monetised and algorithmically amplified, to the detriment of kids. The Online Safety Act 2023 was a step forward, but we better understand now that it is not just what children see, but how social media works. The success of the policy will depend heavily on its implementation, and the announcement still begs many questions. What additional resource is the Secretary of State giving to Ofcom? She is asking the regulator to take on a substantial amount of extra work. Does she expect tech companies to contribute more towards the regulator’s budget or will the funding come from her own budget? When can we expect precise definitions of what brings a platform into scope? A list of banned platforms has been briefed today, but it is not clear why some do not make the cut. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that this work will not distract from implementing the final stages of the OSA? What lessons has she learned from the circumvention of the Australia ban that will make the UK experience and our ban more effective? The Secretary of State talks about more effective age assurances, and I agree with her about the need to reset social norms, but will she be ruling out mandatory digital ID as a requirement for accessing social media? What privacy protections will be in place if children’s images are taken as part of face scanning for age verification? Is she considering age verification at app store level as a means not only of more reliable protection of children, but as a chance to reduce friction for adults wishing to access social media? The Government have said that they are considering overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18s. How do Ministers square granting 16-year-olds the solemn duty to vote, but not the power to have a cheeky night-time scroll on Instagram? The same applies to romantic chat bots. How is this going to work? Will the restrictions apply to 16-year-olds or 18-year-olds, given that both meet the age of sexual consent? On efforts to prevent children from taking or sharing nude imagery, will the Secretary of State set out the scope of the law she is considering and categorically rule out client-side scanning tools being applied to adults’ phones? We are told that the first set of regulations to enable the social media ban could be in effect by spring 2027. How confident is the Secretary of State that she will achieve her timeline? She will understand that this policy is not easily implemented—she has made reference to that—and she has detractors who share the aim but not the means, fearing that a ban pushes children out of supervised accounts and towards riskier services. What does she say to those, like Ian Russell, who believe that this policy is not only wrong but cynically timed? She suggests that it comes down to enforcement of the OSA, which makes my earlier questions more relevant. Finally, I wish to ask the Secretary of State about her tweet last week on updating the Online Safety Act to remove illegal content with greater speed during “times of crisis”. The scenes in Belfast rightly appalled every decent citizen in our nation. The vicious barbarism of Hadi Alodid, just like the despicable murder of Henry Nowak, has ignited anger and sparked protests that have led to indiscriminate violence against innocent people. Violence and protest can often mix, but they are none the less two very different things. Laws exist that prohibit incitement, criminalise threats to kill and stop platforms from hosting illegal content, and they must rightly be enforced with strength. On the other hand, peaceful protest is a legitimate response to failure—in this case, the perceived failure of the political class to adequately deal with concerns that the public have raised time and again via the ballot box. In such circumstances, I appreciate that the Government have a job on their hands to ensure that work to stop the spread of illegal content is not perceived to be or does not become an attempt to obscure legitimate political comment. What powers are being taken? How will “times of crisis” be defined? What assurances can the Secretary of State offer the House that she understands that if the Government do not get their approach right, any actions she proposes risk stoking the very unrest that her policy is designed to subdue? For too long, we have implicitly decided that childhood and parenting must simply adapt to the darker manifestations of the internet as a reality of modern life. Giving parents the support that they need is not the same as the state stripping them of their ultimate responsibilities, but when harm from social media to our children is real and growing, the time comes for action, even when the answers are not perfect. I look forward to working with the Secretary of State on ensuring that the implementation of her policy is as close to perfect as it can be.

• 20 May 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  There was no clear answer from the Secretary of State. It sounds like Labour is about to trade away our Brexit freedoms on tech regulation, yet tech Ministers have been briefing behind the scenes that we must not lose Britain’s Brexit freedoms on tech when it comes to AI, data and agritech. Will she now publicly admit what her Ministers have been briefing behind closed doors: Brexit was not some exercise in nostalgia pushed on us by uninformed thickos? It has given Britain a competitive advantage in the industries of the future.

• 20 May 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  I was born in Harlow, would you believe it, Mr Speaker? Can the Secretary of State guarantee that under Labour’s EU reset, Britain will not align with any EU tech rules, including the AI Act?

• 11 Mar 2026 · UK-based Tech Companies · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) on securing this incredibly important debate. He brings a unique blend of glamour and tech nerdery to the House. Frankly, it is something Parliament could do with much more of. I am grateful for the valuable contributions from the hon. Members for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor), for West Dorset (Edward Morello) and for Caerphilly (Chris Evans). There is a real showing of strength for the tech sector across the country, which I welcome. As we are debating Government support for UK-based tech companies, I would like to do a bit of scene-setting. Before 2010, Britain’s digital economy was fragmented and under-developed; London’s emergence as Europe’s tech capital was not destiny; the Silicon Roundabout was only nascent; Government digital services were scattered across thousands of outdated websites; and the connection between our world-class universities and a thriving start-up ecosystem had not yet been fully realised. In Government, the Conservatives deliberately worked with the tech sector to create an environment in which it could grow—the hon. Member for West Dorset made a point about how we need to do that—which included targeted measures on start-ups, such as the seed enterprise investment scheme. Scale-up has been mentioned as a real challenge that remains today, as has inflation in relation to the SEIS. We supported Tech City, which turned east London into a global hub for start-ups and innovation; we modernised Government services through the creation of the Government Digital Service and platforms like gov.uk; and we invested heavily in digital infrastructure, substantially expanding gigabit broadband coverage. The hon. Member for Strangford talked about how our parties like to help each other to help every corner of the United Kingdom. I remember that particular help on gigabit broadband was given to the DUP when a particular political deal was done a few years ago. Over the following decade, that strategy paid off. Entire sectors, from fintech to artificial intelligence and from cyber-security to digital health, took root and expanded. Today, the UK digital sector generates well over £200 billion in GVA and employs 2.6 million people in its digital companies. In 2025, the combined market valuation was $1.2 trillion. It is the largest tech ecosystem in Europe, and among the largest outside the US and China. I confess that when Labour wangs on about 14 years, I say, “Yes, 14 years in which Britain built Europe’s most dynamic tech sector and the economic output of our digital sector more than doubled.” We were also alive to the risks that a strong tech sector could pose if it was not managed correctly. That is why we introduced major legislation to shape the digital economy, and promoted competition and consumer choice. Principally, that was the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which addressed the market powers of the largest digital platforms. The principle behind that legislation was simple and profoundly Conservative. We believe that in a strong, competitive, capitalist economy, success should come from innovation, talent and providing a great product to the customer, not from gatekeeping power or monopoly control. That brings us to the challenge at the heart of this debate, which is that in digital markets, power has been concentrated in a handful of global firms. Those firms are brilliant; they bring many tools and skills, and they bring scale. However, that scale has consequences. If we are to prevent it from being used to steamroller other businesses that may be more innovative or provide a better product to the consumer, and if we are to generate more growth and retain more value in this country rather than see it taken abroad, we need digital markets to be open and competitive. One obvious place for intervention is the mobile app ecosystem. For many digital businesses today, the app stores operated by Apple and Google provide incredibly useful and efficient distribution platforms. However, that value comes with a toll, because it creates huge gatekeeping power for those companies. Consumers may not realise it, but that risks costing them and our economy significantly. Developers are often required to use the platform’s payment systems and to pay commissions of up to 30% on digital purchases. That is a gigantic revenue stream generated from not doing an awful lot. Those companies may argue that they provide security and maintenance and so on, but app store commissions for Google and Apple are thought to generate up to £2 billion each in net revenue from their UK operations. That means higher prices for consumers, fewer resources for innovation, greater entrenchment and platform dominance. Then we throw up our hands and ask, “What can realistically be done? What is the alternative to those companies?” It becomes a downward spiral where we have less power to deal with these challenges. Google and Apple’s power extends far beyond simply running app stores. They can control direct communications and what developers can say to customers, insist on particular payment platforms, prevent developers from informing users when products are cheaper elsewhere, and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill listed some critical examples, but he also mentioned companies such as Amazon. We are all familiar with the sheer power of Amazon, but if it cannot sufficiently challenge app store market power, what chance does a smaller British tech company have? The legislative framework to address this exists in the DMCC Act, which gave the Competition and Markets Authority conduct requirement powers and allowed it to mandate specific behaviours. However, developers, competition lawyers and tech businesses tell me that they worry the CMA has gone soft, with long investigations and voluntary remedies. They believe it reflects political direction. This exposes a wider problem with the Labour Government. We left them with the strongest tech ecosystem in Europe, but I fear they have no real plan for growth. As a result, they have a troubling reliance on big tech companies, because they are telling them they will give them big investment headlines—but that risks entrenching dependency and stifling home-grown innovation. In their first set of returns, Labour Ministers had met big tech firms roughly 70% more often than their Conservative predecessors. That culminated in the US-UK tech deal, where there were a lot of big headlines, but I am not entirely sure what the substance was. There were interesting articles in The Guardian this week about some of those deals and I think there was a lot of circular investment going on. There was also a very interesting debate yesterday in this Chamber in which Labour MPs began to question some of what was going on; they were worrying about the dependency being created, along with the security and economic implications that brings. Last year, the Government asked the competition watchdog to support “the overriding national priority of…economic growth.” However, if growth is defined as just bringing in big tech, it is predictable how the regulator will act. In February, the CMA approved voluntary commitments from Apple and Google. In fairness—I have spoken to it about this directly—it contends that this could deliver faster results. However, smaller tech firms worry that it will delay action on the substantive issue of fees. As we highlighted in yesterday’s debate on tech sovereignty, the UK risks drifting into a position of high dependency and low resilience, where too much of our digital economy relies on infrastructure and platforms that we simply do not have any control over. That matters not just for innovation but for economic strength, consumer protection and national security. I must stress that this is not an argument against American companies; it is an argument about competition and the dangers of its absence. In fact, courts in the US have already upheld these principles to the benefit of smaller US tech firms. We must ensure an open digital market that rewards innovation from wherever it comes and gives UK consumers and developers the same freedoms that American developers can now enjoy because of that court ruling. The same problem exists with the CMA’s cloud inquiry, which is examining the extraordinarily important issue of market concentration. We expect a determination this month. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft dominate the cloud market, and the Government recognise this as a chronic risk. It is a red light that will be flashing more urgently after the three recent global cloud outages, not to mention the destruction of AWS data centres in the Gulf. The answer to our chronic dependency must surely come through robust competition measures. We await the CMA’s strategic market status decision with bated breath. The rapid development of AI could, in the best-case scenario, inject real competition into these markets, with AI agents empowering the consumer. Or—this is my real worry—it could entrench the market dominance and power consolidation that we have seen in other parts of the digital economy. Will the Government and the regulator start to think about the power of agentic AI in particular? What happens when an AI starts to curate products for the consumer in ways that shut out smaller vendors from the picture, or necessitate expensive deals with the AI giants to get products into the agent’s selection? What kind of digital economy do we want? Do we want one that is dominated by a handful of global gatekeepers, or one where a broad range of innovative companies can compete, innovate and grow on merit, delivering a diverse economy and benefits to the consumer? As Conservatives, our view is very simple: we have to give UK tech firms the tools to win. Those are: low taxes, so that innovators can invest and scale; cheap, abundant energy and high-quality digital infrastructure; access to the best global talent; and the celebration of successful people, not taxing them out of the country with envy-driven politics. It is about public procurement that backs British innovation, deeper pools of investable capital and, critically, strong competition policy that ensures that no company, no matter how large or powerful, can use its market position to drive up prices and crowd out competition. That was our approach in office, and it remains our vision for the future of Britain’s tech economy. I hope that the Minister can set out some specifics about how he, too, recognises the importance of competition in the digital sphere.

• 10 Mar 2026 · Technology Sovereignty · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah) on securing such an important debate. It is so well attended, and it is a shame that it is not longer; I commend everyone for their two-minute raps. In the context, I will plug tomorrow’s Conservative-led debate on Government support for UK tech, which will be an opportunity to speak about some of the concerns that have been expressed on a cross-party basis about the direction of tech policy. We all come to this place with experiences that shape our thinking on these critical tech issues. Members have probably never heard this before, but the hon. Lady is a former telecoms engineer— [ Laughter. ] She brought her expertise to Ofcom and is now a distinguished Select Committee Chairman. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) brings his experience as a computer engineer, and the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) his experience as a “crusty old” physics teacher. He talked about quantum, and one question that I have in relation to today’s launch of the policy on digital identities is whether a quantum-proof system is being built. I come to this debate as a former Cabinet Office and telecoms and digital infrastructure Minister. During my tenure, the Government in which I served faced three supply chain crises that permanently changed how I think about resilience: Brexit, covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Each forced us to confront uncomfortable truths about where we source from, whom we can trust and what risks we carry when we fail to think strategically about our dependencies. I also think of my experiences on a trip to China in 2018 as a new Back Bencher visiting Huawei’s Shenzhen lab. I later found myself as the Minister overseeing the removal of high-risk vendors from the 5G core, and I saw how an earlier decision not to scrutinise those providing critical infrastructure came at real economic cost as well as security cost. Security risk and economic risk are deeply intertwined and will become ever more so as more of our economy moves online. In the space of a week, those Gulf economies that have been expanding voraciously into the digital sphere have found three AWS data centres under attack—a deliberate strategy by Iran to cripple critical digital infrastructure and, in so doing, mete out economic pain and chaos. Those experiences shape how I think about technological sovereignty. We have to be clear about what we mean by that. It does not mean autarky, complete self-reliance, or pretending that Britain can or should build every piece of technology ourselves. That is not realistic or, actually, risk free. It is not about stopping important tech companies investing here and bringing expertise. I see it instead as being about resilience and influence. It means understanding the risks that we are carrying in the tech stack that we increasingly rely on; mitigating those risks; and ensuring that we do not steadily reduce our leverage by ceding power to companies or countries whose influence over those systems may ultimately exceed our own. We are seeing this play out in the cloud, where I think we need to be pursuing a dual strategy whereby, alongside the hyperscalers, we start to expand our edge capacity, with smaller data centres and a more pluralistic market, using competition policy and thinking strategically about procurement. We need to think about it in terms of the components that power modern computing. How do we make ourselves an indispensable part of any critical supply chain in the way Taiwan and the Netherlands have done in relation to chips? We need to think about the concerns in relation to Chinese tech in energy policy. I think that as we move further into the renewables space, we are building in quite a lot of risk there. We have heard today about critical minerals, and I have talked about high-risk vendors in telecoms. Dependency on China and dependency on America are not equivalent risks. None the less, I worry that, having learned the lesson about Chinese technology, the Government now appear content to place an extraordinarily high level of dependence on American hyperscalers instead. Of course the US is our closest ally and has enormous expertise that in many respects we cannot match—we cannot do so in every field—but sensible allies hedge their risks. That is especially relevant when we think about some of its cloud rules, which have been mentioned today. The Government are pursuing an odd strategy here. We are upping our dependency on the US while reducing our reliability and credibility as a partner. Similarly, while inviting circular investments in mega data centres, entering into data partnerships with AI firms and blowing ever larger balloons of fantasy out of the US-UK tech partnership—something that has been picked up today, but also in The Guardian this week—the Government are actually making it harder for UK tech firms to grow, because of Government procurement rules, high taxes, crippling energy costs, wealth taxes and all the rest of it. I appreciate that we are very short of time—I am getting a little nod to shuffle along—but my worry is that the Government thus far have not had a strategy for tech sovereignty and are heightening our dependence on US hyperscalers. I would be very grateful if the Minister could address those concerns, which I think are shared across the House.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I am sure the applicability of the legislation in Scotland is something that can be debated when the Bill comes before the House. To give them credit, many Labour MPs understand the fact that there is an absence of any Government position, and they will not be taking their foot off the pedal. I suspect that many may have the guts to speak out today—although perhaps not. Those MPs recognised immediately that a consultation is a mechanism for a delay that goes beyond the summer and into another parliamentary year before the sniff of legislation. That holding position is now falling apart, as we have seen from the Minister here today. It is the threat of a very large group of Labour MPs backing the Conservatives’ Lords amendment that is pushing this Government into action—it is government by rebellion. We ask the Liberal Democrats not to let us be distracted from the moment of truth that is coming up, when we hope there will be cross-party support for the noble Lord Nash’s amendment. For too long, the internet has been treated as a space that cannot be governed. It has functioned like a pioneer society, with extraordinary opportunity but minimal rules. However, pioneer societies improvise customs and eventually retrofit themselves with rules to sustain societies, often after hard-won experience and dispute. That is the process through which we are now going, and we are realising that, as the online society was built, we were not vigilant enough when it came to protecting childhood. We did not recognise that this new territory would bleed into the old world. [ Interruption. ] The Minister is shouting from the Front Bench that I am embarrassing myself. We as a Government brought forward the Online Safety Act, but there are gaps in it, and we have taken a clear position as the Opposition that we think children should not be on social media. He is looking very angry, but what is his view? Can he stand up and tell us what his personal view is? As the Minister with this responsibility, what does he think should be done, having launched his consultation with such earnestness? Come on, tell us! Would he like to tell us?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I set out clearly at the beginning of my speech why we cannot support the motion, which is effectively a blank cheque. Notwithstanding the fact that the hon. Member for Twickenham tried to set it out in her speech, nobody actually knows what the Lib Dems are trying to do here. The proposal before us is that the Liberal Democrats take control of the Order Paper and then can say whatever they like on internet governance. I am sorry, but I do not think that is the way to conduct ourselves in Parliament. There have to be clearer proposals.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  Today we are debating something that is very important: the protection of children from online harms is vital. I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on what I thought was a very heartfelt speech, but I fear that her good intent has been rather thrown under the bus by her party leadership. Setting aside the importance of this subject, let us look at their method of bringing it forward—a point which has been raised rather expertly by Members from across the House. Today the Liberal Democrats are doing what they do best: slightly nutty stunts. With all the menace of Captain Mainwaring they are attempting to seize control of the Order Paper and effectively declare themselves not only Government for the day but, with their loosely defined online services Bill, rulers of the internet. It is a gimmick. It is the parliamentary equivalent of boinging into the Chamber on a giant bungee. Though the hon. Member for Twickenham put a little bit of flesh on the bones in her speech, the motion itself simply requests the power to barge through this House with a blank-cheque Bill for which we have no details and in so doing let the Government Benches clean off the hook. It has all gone a bit Benny Hill. It is a great shame because it is a distraction when the moment of truth on social media for children is coming to us imminently. They know that from the panicked recess briefings that the Prime Minister has been caught on the hop on an issue that is of deep concern to families, children, teachers and communities across the country. Before too long the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will return to this House and Members will have the chance to vote on a credible proposition: an amendment tabled by the noble Lord Nash that no child under the age of 16 should have access to harmful social media.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was pointing out that the Minister has no manners, but wishes to shout from a sedentary position. I sat listening to him and waiting to see if I could decipher, in his very long and self-regarding diatribe, whether he actually has any opinions, but it turns out that he does not. He is very comfortable to sit on the Front Bench and chunter away at me. [ Interruption. ] You see, he again says that I am such an embarrassment.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I am not seeking to occupy a moral high ground. I am seeking to set out a way towards keeping children under 16 off social media platforms, because trying to legislate for specific different activities is very challenging, as I think we saw with the Online Safety Act. There are very good causes and there are very important activities that we sought to stop online, but turning that into a workable law is a huge challenge. That is one of the reasons why we think it important to take a “whole of society” approach that tries to shift the debate and say that certain types of online space for people under 16 are simply not appropriate—a principles-based approach to governing the online world that tries to steer away from some of the difficult debates about how to write implementable law to stop nasty and negative behaviour.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I appreciate where the hon. Member is coming from. I do not think it is wrong to seek evidence and ask for people’s views, but the Prime Minister should be honest about what he wants to do. The problem is that he has been floating various opinions, and he is being buffeted by Labour MPs and by the Opposition and others. If he does not think this is the right approach, he should feel confident in saying so. He has said a whole range of different things about this, and the Government are seeking to launch a consultation, but nobody actually knows what precisely is being consulted on. If Labour MPs were honest with themselves, I think they would recognise that. I suspect they are having very serious conversations with the party’s Whips, saying, “Well, actually, we would like to know what the Prime Minister does think about this issue, because we’re not convinced by this consultation—we think it’s kicking the issue into the long grass, and we’re worried about the length of time that will mean before we get legislation to protect children from various challenges online.” That is the very reason why the Minister has stood up before them today to say, “We are probably going to do something—very definitely, maybe—in the summer.” He is saying that because the pressure is growing from Labour MPs. It is being briefed out that the Government are going to bring forward amendments to the Bill because they are being buffeted into doing so. The problem is that nobody knows what this Prime Minister believes. On every single issue for the Government at the moment, and despite the very large Labour majority, this Prime Minister is being buffeted around, and that is the problem.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I am sure that the issue of the functionality list can be explored as time goes by. It is important to point out that this is not a moral panic but a structural problem. Today the Leader of the Opposition gathered a panel of grieving parents who had lost their children, and in that context negative online activity was recognised to have real-world and utterly tragic consequences. The children had been drawn into dangerous challenges, coercive relationships, bullying and bribery, all of which created despair in those young minds. That showed us plainly why the pioneer phase must now come to an end, at least where children are concerned. Pioneer societies do not remain lawless forever; eventually they are retrofitted with rules and boundaries, and protections for the vulnerable. It is striking that, after years of the problem building up, countries around the world are reaching the same conclusion with remarkable synchronicity—not because it is fashionable, because Governments are copying one another or because anyone thinks that this will be particularly easy to impose and enforce, but because the evidence has accumulated to a point at which denial is no longer credible. If social media were broadly harmless for children, this would not be happening, but Governments with very different. political traditions are acknowledging the same reality: that when it comes to children, some control must be wrested back. I suspect that this trend will be reflected vividly in the Chamber today, with examples from across the nation of what is happening in the real world because of the laxity in the online world.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I would not envisage that parents would be responsible for that. There are mechanisms to make sure that platforms would not be permitted to provide accounts to under 16-year-olds and they would have to have highly effective age-assurance techniques. In fact, I have spoken recently to representatives of a major platform who said that they had very effective techniques for testing whether somebody trying to open an account is the age that they say they are. I will not take further interventions for a little while so that I can make progress, as I know other people want to speak. There are serious arguments against implementing a ban, some of which have been heard, and they deserve to be addressed and not dismissed. We are likely to hear more about those doubts today and they must be listened to respectfully. Indeed, I hold some of those anxieties and reservations myself. The first argument is that a ban would be unworkable and that teenagers would find workarounds through virtual private networks, foreign platforms or fake credentials. They will, of course, because teenagers have always tested boundaries. Fake IDs, sneaky booze and under-age rule-breaking are traditional parenting challenges, but we do not abandon age limits simply because they are imperfect. Instead, we impose them because they change norms, shift behaviours and offer parents reinforcement rather than resistance. Of course, the mandatory age limit will not remove every child overnight, but it will remove a critical mass and that matters. Some fear that such a ban would require de facto compulsory digital ID, undermining anonymity and civil liberties, and again, that concern must be taken extremely seriously. However, as I have just suggested to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), age verification does not require a single state-mandated digital identification system. Other jurisdictions have explicitly prevented platforms from requiring accredited digital ID and instead mandated multiple verification techniques, with responsibility placed on platforms and not citizens. As I said, I was speaking to a major tech platform recently that set out some of those techniques, which can now be used very accurately to assess a user’s age. However, we must be clear that we do not have a surveillance state simply because 13-year-olds are kept off Facebook. A third argument, and a point that has been made, is that social media provides vital support and connection for many children, particularly those who feel isolated offline. That can be true, but it is not an argument for leaving the entire system untouched. This is not about banning the internet, messaging, educational platforms, health support or professional development services; those places can and should remain accessible, and that is happening in other jurisdictions. This is about a specific category of platforms whose business models depend on maximising attention and emotional arousal and which are demonstrably harmful at scale. Another concern is the unintended consequence that children may be pushed into darker corners of the internet. That needs to be included in the Government’s consultation when it eventually sees the light of day, particularly whether there needs to be parental consent required for downloading certain apps. Doing nothing already leaves children exposed, in plain sight, on platforms that we know are optimised against their wellbeing. Protection will never be perfect, but neither is inaction benign. Doing nothing is not neutral. It leaves parents despairing, schools firefighting and children navigating a digital frontier with no one by their side. There is also a broader freedom argument, which is that by keeping children off adult social media platforms we can restore freedom to adults online and will no longer need to contort those digital spaces to be universally child-friendly, which is where some of the challenges have come in. Finally, this is about leadership. As I said earlier, a consultation without direction is not leadership, and a consultation that pushes real change 18 months down the line is, in truth, a decision to do nothing now. Labour MPs know that, which is why the coming moment will not rest on this rather nutty Lib Dem takeover attempt. Instead, it will rest on the Nash amendment, when this House will have a clear choice: to accept that the pioneer phase is over; to recognise the sanctity of childhood, which deserves clearer rules; and to acknowledge that giving parents support is not the same as the state stripping them of their ultimate responsibilities. Parents will and must always be the first line of defence. When harm is real and growing, leadership requires a decision, even when the answers are not perfect.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I can agree with that. My point is that this Government are trying to suggest that a consensus can be found in the absence of their having a policy position. They are talking about a consultation, but what on earth are they consulting on? Nobody has a clue. They have not been able to say anything about what they actually want to do, because the Prime Minister has no opinions, which is why he is in such deep trouble. Those on the Labour Benches can get out of their tree and get all uppity about it, but this— [ Interruption. ] No, the Prime Minister is being blown around like a paper bag on this issue, and everybody knows it. First of all, he said that his children did not want to ban social media; now he says that his children are the reason why he wishes to ban social media. He said there is going to be a consultation, but it has not materialised. What does this man actually think?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the hon. Member for that intervention—I went off on a nostalgia trip in my brain, thinking about MSN chatrooms and all the rest of it. That was a time when people were not really aware of the power of the internet, and the predatory behaviours subsequently started to become normalised and industrialised. Although it might be tempting to want to try to go back to that place, I do not know whether we can actually get there, but it is certainly something we can aim towards and aspire to. The hon. Gentleman has made an important point. The essence of social media does not involve bad intent; the problem that we are seeking to solve is the way in which it has been manipulated and changed over the years to amplify negative behaviour.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  We think that the current priority is ensuring that under-16s are taken off harmful social media platforms, but I am sure that there is room for a market to develop, over time, that will not feature negative algorithms and activity, and that there is a world in which new products could retain the essence of positive social interaction.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with the hon. Member wholeheartedly. Until now, we have implicitly decided that childhood must simply adapt to an environment that we as adults find totally overwhelming, undermining of our own sense of self and completely irresistible. We have been exposing our children to this place of no settled social rules where that exposure is constant, the boundaries are porous and responsibility is diffuse. Behaviour that would never be tolerated offline is normalised, monetised and then algorithmically amplified. The Online Safety Act, which we have discussed already, has been a step forward in trying to wrest back control, but it is, of course, an imperfect one. It focuses primarily on illegal content, seeks to keep the most extreme material offline and introduces age-gating for pornography and other over-18 content. That work does matter, but the problem before us today goes well beyond illegality and explicit material. There are also many concerns about the complexity of policing content, in terms of both the implementation and intent. The central question is not just what children see but how social media works. Social media platforms are addictive by design. Their algorithms are engineered to maximise engagement and stickiness. They reward outrage, comparison, emotional intensity, competition and repetition. They draw children away from purposeful activity and into feedback loops that erode attention and resilience. Not all platforms operate like this globally, funnily enough. The Chinese version of TikTok is time-limited and feeds children content of scientific or patriotic value. In the west, it is emotional arousal that is fed to our kids. Children are not simply consuming content; they are being shaped by the environment itself. It is happening when their brains are still developing. Their impulse control, emotional regulation and ability to assess risk are not the same as for adults. We recognise this everywhere else in law—in alcohol limits, in safeguarding rules and in age of consent protections—yet online we have decided to suspend that logic, and the consequences are increasingly visible.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  There were very real and important debates during the passage of that Bill about legal but harmful material and whether people should be able to speak freely online. Our approach was to seek to create a space where adults can speak freely while accepting that children should not be in some of these spaces. That was the point that the Leader of the Opposition was trying to make. We were moving very dangerously into the realms of free speech, and it is not for an online regulator to start telling people what they can and cannot say online when it is not something that is illegal to speak of in the real world. That was the challenge that we got ourselves into as a Government, and that is why we changed parts of the approach that we were taking to the Online Safety Bill. I appreciate the concerns that are being raised, and I am trying to answer them as honestly and straightforwardly as I can. When we consider the amendment from Lord Nash, this House will have its opportunity to make an unequivocal statement of principle: that when we believe that something is harming children at scale, we accept that it is insufficient to leave the status quo unchallenged or simply to commission a consultation. That applies especially when it is a consultation to which this Government have provided absolutely no political direction or view and that has been much trailed but still not actually launched. In truth, this consultation was not ready. It was a mechanism to get the Prime Minister out of another of his tight fixes. The Tech Secretary might be very good at emoting and telling us all how impatient she is for change, how she cares, and indeed for how many years she has cared, but when she made her statement on social media for children in this Chamber a few weeks ago, she said nothing about what the Government would actually do, beyond seeking more time to take a position. I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham for pointing that out, and I have sympathy with why she is trying to use this mechanism today, because we are all trying to tease out what the Government are seeking to do. It was extraordinary to listen to the Government Minister, who said with great sincerity, “We will act robustly in responding to a consultation.” What does he actually believe? What do the Government think we should do on this issue? Nobody has a clue. They are talking about a huge range of things that could be done, but it is for a Government to provide political direction; it is not for a Government to seek consensus. [ Interruption. ] It is for a Government to take a position and to take a view. It is for a Government to have opinions. It is for a Government to have policy positions. It is not for a Government to try to make sure that everybody in this House agrees. [ Interruption. ] It is pathetic to see those on the Labour Benches getting out of their tree about this.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  This is a Conservative amendment in the Lords that has gained cross-party support, so it will be coming back to us. The hon. Member raises an important point about why this policy was not brought in under the Online Safety Act. That Act tried to do many, many things. In many ways, it took so long because it risked becoming a Christmas tree Bill, and many good causes were hung off it. That did cause challenges. I think that as the debate has moved on we have realised that it is not just about illegal content that children are being exposed to and some of the things that the Online Safety Act was trying to change. There is an issue in general about children being in this space: there are addictive algorithms, and it is not just about illegal material but the fact that it is changing how children are thinking about interacting. Maybe we have to stand back as a society and say, “This is simply not the right place for children to be. We can create adult online spaces, but for children we think that there are other ways in which they should be interacting with the world.”

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I respect the hon. Member’s intervention for its politeness, but I do not think the answer is suddenly to encourage all children who are finding it hard to find purposeful and meaningful activities in the real world to retreat to their bedrooms. One of the challenges we have seen is that children have felt that the online space is the most stimulating for them. Unfortunately, that has led to an even greater retreat from the real world, and I think we can all recognise that that has been a negative for society.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  I have set out before what we were trying to achieve with the Online Safety Act and why certain things were in it and others were not. I do not want to go over that again. The consequences of these design features are increasingly visible, including rising anxiety and low mood, poor sleep, shredded attention spans and cyber-bullying that follows children home.