Keeping children safe online is a priority for this government. That is why the Secretary of State announced a ban on social media platforms offering their services to under-16s.

We aim to use the same model as Australia. This means capturing user to user platforms, whose purpose is to enable social interaction, which allow users to post material alongside algorithms. A narrowly defined list of exemptions, including messaging and educational services, will also be set out and kept under review.

The Secretary of State will set out the final criteria in regulations that she brings forward before the end of 2026.

The Government has announced its intention that live streaming and stranger communication, including in gaming, will be switched off by default for 16- and 17-year-olds and banned completely for under-16s. Services will need to enforce these restrictions through robust age checks, with requirements set out in regulations later this year.

The Secretary of State wrote to Ofcom’s leadership, making clear that enforcing the Online Safety Act, and these new protections, must be a top priority.

Age assurance technologies play an important role in ensuring that platforms are providing an age-appropriate experience for children on their services.

Ofcom has agreed to launch a rapid assessment of what constitutes highly effective age assurance for establishing whether someone is over 16. Ahead of this, Ofcom are set to publish a report on the effectiveness of age assurance by July 2026, which will help broaden our evidence base and inform future policy options.

The government will make sure that Ofcom has the resourcing it needs to implement and enforce its new duties, including age based restrictions on social media platforms. The Secretary of State has urged Ofcom’s new chair to consider what changes might be needed to Ofcom’s structures and ways of working to deliver effective implementation of its duties.

I cannot give the noble Lord specific detail on that. I come back to the point that there has been a consultation on the use of the powers under the Online Safety Act. That consultation has been completed; Ofcom will now reporting to government before April this year. That is when the provisions in the Online Safety Act, which had cross-party support, will be implemented.

I think we have to be slightly careful about the use of the numbers. The noble Lord talked about “literally hundreds of thousands of children” missing their education. That is conflating a number of different things, and I do not want to give the impression that there are hundreds of thousands of children missing all their education. There were 86,200 children identified as being home educated in the spring of this year, 24,700 children were classified as children missing education on the census day, and 94,900 missed education for a period at some point in the academic year. On bringing legislation, I think the noble Lord will have seen that a Private Member’s Bill has been introduced in the other place, and he may have heard my right honourable friend the Secretary of State speak warmly about it.

The Department for Education regulates independent schools in England. Independent schools must be registered with the department, are required to meet the independent school standards (ISS), are subject to regular inspection to check that they are meeting the ISS and can be subject to regulatory and enforcement action where they fail to meet the ISS. The ISS require independent schools to have effective safeguarding and child protection arrangements.

Unregistered independent schools are unregulated and the department has no assurance that they are meeting the independent school standards. They therefore represent a significant safeguarding risk.

Conducting an unregistered independent school is a criminal offence under section 96 of the Education and Skills Act 2008. The Department for Education, Ofsted and the Crown Prosecution Service work together to investigate suspected unregistered independent schools and, where appropriate, prosecute those found operating them in line with department’s policy statement. The policy statement, 'Prosecuting unregistered independent schools', is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulating-independent-schools.

Where a suspected unregistered independent school is investigated and Ofsted find safeguarding, child protection or health and safety risks, other statutory authorities are informed to ensure they can also take appropriate action.

Regional sites will benefit considerably from this £60 million investment in our national cultural infrastructure, irrespective of where their headquarters happen to be located. Of the 100 projects this Fund will support, over a third are based wholly outside London and the South East. For historic reasons there is a cluster of older, more expansive estates in London that require particular care and attention, but this is not at the expense of other regions, with projects funded across the North West, South West, North East, Yorkshire, and others. In fact, every single one of the multi-site organisations has received funding for one or more of its regional sites.

Regional organisations have been further boosted by our Museums Estates and Development Fund (MEND) worth over £18 million, available exclusively to non-national accredited museums for maintenance projects. Throughout the pandemic, this Government has supported locally-accessible culture and heritage across the entire nation, with 70 per cent of awards from our £2 billion Culture Recovery Fund to date going to save thousands of organisations outside of London.

Protecting children is at the heart of our online harms agenda and is key to wider government priorities. The government published the Online Harms White Paper in April this year which proposed the establishment of a duty of care on companies to improve online safety, overseen by an independent regulator with strong enforcement powers to deal with non-compliance.

The White Paper sets out our expectation that companies should protect children from inappropriate content, including pornography, and we will produce guidance for companies to keep children safe online, ahead of the new regulatory framework.

We are committed to the UK becoming a world-leader in the development of online safety technology and expect age verification to continue to be a tool used by companies to keep children safe online.

The government wants the UK to be the safest place in the world to go online. As set out in the Online Harms White Paper the government will take action to tackle content or activity that harms individual users, particularly children. We will establish a new statutory duty of care, overseen by an independent regulator to make companies take more responsibility for the safety of their users and tackle harm caused by content or activity on their services. The regulator will take a risk-based approach, prioritising action where there is the greatest evidence or threat of harm, or where children or other vulnerable users are at risk. Ahead of the implementation of the new regulatory framework, we will continue to encourage companies to take early action to address online harms.

With regards to the social media application TikTok, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has a live investigation on TikTok’s compliance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) relating to the protection of children’s personal data. The GDPR is regulated and enforced by the independent ICO, and as such, the government is unable to comment further on live investigations.

There are strict controls on the content of all gambling advertisements, including television adverts and online. Gambling operators who advertise in the UK must comply with the advertising codes, which ensure gambling advertising does not target or appeal to children or young people. The Gambling Commission works closely with the Advertising Standards Authority and has recently consulted on expanding the sanctions available if codes are breached.

We considered advertising as part of our Review of Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility. The response was published on 17 May. The Review looked at protections around gambling advertising and set out a package of initiatives to strengthen protections further, including forthcoming guidance from the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) on protecting children and young people. It also recognised that there were gaps in the evidence available, and proposed measures to fill these, including significant research commissioned by GambleAware into the impact of gambling advertising on children, young people and those vulnerable to harm.

My Lords, it is very important that all children are properly safeguarded, and local authorities have a wide variety of powers in the Children Act to achieve this. Those powers apply to all children, whether attending school or not. In addition, local authorities are required by the Education Act 2002 to ensure that their education functions are exercised with a view to safeguarding children. My department issues statutory guidance relevant to these functions.

I agree with the noble Lord. Much home education is very good, and we welcome the dedication of parents who take on that responsibility and do it well. However, we have concerns about unregistered schools. We have provided additional resources to Ofsted, including by creating a new team of dedicated inspectors to inspect suspected unregistered independent schools. They and the DfE have been taking action to make sure that these settings cease to operate unlawfully. We are also creating guidance for local authorities on how to tackle unsuitable out-of-school settings and unregistered independent schools, including on how to use their existing powers. We hope to publish this guidance as soon as possible.

An independent school is defined as any school at which full time education is provided for five or more pupils of compulsory school age, or one or more such pupils with an EHC plan or a statement of special educational needs or who is “looked after” by the local authority, and is not a school maintained by a local authority or a non-maintained special school.

Local authorities have overarching responsibility for safeguarding children and young people in their area, regardless of where they are being educated. We are supporting authorities to use their existing powers under safeguarding or health and safety legislation to disrupt and tackle both unsuitable out-of-school settings and unregistered independent schools. We also continue to work closely with Ofsted and the police to tackle such settings. In the great majority of cases that Ofsted has investigated, this collaboration has resulted in those settings complying with the law. Ofsted are continuing to investigate a small number of cases that have not yet complied.

The number of possible cases of unregistered independent schools that may be operating continues to fluctuate all the time, as new settings come to our attention and existing ones are closed down or are confirmed as not operating as schools. However, Ofsted’s Annual Report 2015/16: education, early years and skills, published on 1 December 2016, noted that at the time of publication, Ofsted was working on 152 possible cases that they suspected might be operating as unregistered schools. The report states that about a third of those settings were associated with particular faith groups. Ofsted will publish its next annual report later this year.

The 2016 annual report can be accessed on gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/574186/Ofsted_annual_report_education_and_skills_201516_web-ready.pdf.

We are unable to confirm the position at a UK level as fisheries protection is a devolved matter. However, the Royal Navy Fishery Protection Squadron comprises of 3 offshore patrol vessels of which one is currently tasked to meet the contractual commitment to the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) for the purposes of fisheries enforcement in England.

The number of RN Offshore Patrol Vessels reflects the adoption of a risk based, intelligence led operational model that enables targeted enforcement interventions in the right place at the right time. The requirement for all vessels over 12 metres in length to be fitted with the satellite tracking devices (Vessel Monitoring System) gives a real time picture of where fishing activity is happening enabling the efficient employment of patrol vessels. This information is monitored at the MMO control room in Newcastle.

In addition, when the RN Offshore Patrol Vessels are at sea but conducting other tasks they are still able to provide a presence which has a deterrent effect. This is supplemented by joint working with other agencies such as Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authorities (IFCAs), UK Border Force (UKBF) and the Police to ensure effective and timely intervention where illegal activity is suspected. Radar sweeps can be used by patrol vessels to identify potential targets and the AIS (Automatic Identification System) is also used in fisheries enforcement to detect fishing activity, including where fishing vessels are operating.

I have already said that this is something we are seriously looking at.

Under the Children Act 1989, local authorities are under a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people within their area by providing a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs. This is regardless of the type of educational provision.

Section 47 of the same act requires the local authority to investigate whether action should be taken by them to safeguard or promote the welfare of children suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm.

The statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children (2015) and Keeping children safe in education (2014) clarifies the core legal requirements for individuals and organisations to keep children safe. The guidance applies in its entirety to all schools. Schools have responsibilities to notify the local authority if there are safeguarding concerns about individual children or recruitment issues linked to individual staff. Statutory guidance also sets out how all schools are expected to cooperate with the local safeguarding children board to ensure that safeguarding practice across the area is joined up and robust.

If a local authority has concerns about the general adequacy of statutory safeguarding arrangements in place in a particular academy, they may notify the academies regulator, i.e. the Education Funding Agency (EFA), which can seek compliance, or Ofsted, which has powers to inspect safeguarding arrangements. In such circumstances, the EFA will take appropriate action to check that the academy’s arrangements are compliant with its statutory responsibilities. The EFA may also notify Ofsted of any concerns or evidence it has about an academy’s apparent failure to operate adequate safeguarding arrangements.

Working Together to Safeguard Children, 2013 defines abuse and neglect including emotional abuse. Social workers will use this definition when deciding what action to take to protect a child. Some level of emotional abuse is involved in all types of maltreatment of a child, though it may occur alone.

To be registered as a social worker, students will have undertaken an approved course providing an understanding of forms of harm, relevant legislation and policy, and the ability to assess risks and intervene appropriately.

Following the Narey review of social work education, the Chief Social Worker is leading work on a definitive document that will define more clearly the knowledge and skills required by children’s social workers. The ability to identify and intervene in cases of mental or emotional abuse will be a key part of the document.

Local authority funding for safeguarding children and young people is included within core funding for children’s social care which comes from the Department for Community and Local Government’s Formula Grant and local taxation. Funding is not ring-fenced and it is for local authorities to decide how to apply their funding across the services they deliver. A report from the Audit Commission^[1] published in November 2013 found that children’s social care has been largely protected from spending reductions from 2010/11 to 2013/14.^[1] http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Tough-Times-2013-Councils-Responses-to-Financial-Challenges-w1.pdf