Children should be banned from using social media because it is as damaging to them as alcohol and cigarettes, the Conservatives’ shadow Education Secretary has said.
Laura Trott has already been pushing for a legal ban on the use of mobile phones in schools and now believes the Government should go further by forcing social media companies to block access by children under a certain age.
In an interview with The i Paper ahead of the Tories’ annual conference in Manchester, she insisted that the party had not moved to the right even as she called for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Trott, who began her political career working under Lord Cameron, said the Conservatives could regain support by focussing on the economy and exposing the plans of Labour and Reform UK to continue ramping up spending.
The 40-year-old MP for Sevenoaks was Chief Secretary to the Treasury in Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet, having joined Parliament after working as an adviser in Cameron’s No 10.
Close to multiple successive party leaders, she is seen as a rising star – one of the few current Tory MPs who is neither brand new to the Commons nor nearing retirement age – who is a centrist by background but is committed to winning back Reform voters with a tougher stance on immigration.
Trott backed Kemi Badenoch to become Tory leader last year and has since covered the education brief for the party – pushing back against what she says are Bridget Phillipson’s plans to reverse many of the school reforms introduced by Michael Gove more than a decade ago.
Then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Laura Trott, then chancellor Jeremy Hunt, and then Financial Secretary to the Treasury Nigel Huddleston ahead of the Spring Budget in March 2024 (Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu via Getty)VAT on private schools is ‘class warfare’
She argued that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will remove the abilities of academy schools to “innovate” by stripping away some of their freedoms, saying: “The competition which has driven the school system, where good schools are allowed to expand, is also being taken away.”
The Government insists that high standards will remain in place.
The Conservatives are also fiercely opposed to the decision to charge VAT on private school fees for the first time. The shadow Education Secretary said: “It’s doing nothing to benefit state schools.
“All that it’s doing at the moment is sending more children into state schools… This promise is nothing but class warfare which is putting more pressure on state schools.”
So far, the Tories have had less to say about what they would do differently – arguing that detailed policy proposals are pointless several years out from the next general election.
One exception is a push to ban smartphones in schools, an idea that ministers claim is unnecessary because many schools already impose their own bans.
Trott said that schools which do allow phones on their premises should be marked down by Ofsted because they are allowing pupils to be exposed to pornography, drugs and other harmful content.
She added: “We know there’s so much evidence now of the impact that smartphones are having on behaviour, on attainment and on attendance, and that is overwhelming.”
Banning phones also makes children safer as they walk to and from school because criminals know they cannot mug them for their device, Trott said.
Asked whether she would like to go further and ban children from accessing social media even when they are at home, the frontbencher agreed, pointing to a similar measure coming into force for under-16s in Australia.
“We should just have children off it. It’s damaging to them. It’s designed to be addictive, and it takes them away from their childhood, which is the opposite of what we should be doing.”
Social media companies argue that they take the wellbeing of young people seriously and have denied they encourage addiction. In August TechCrunch quoted Facebook owner Meta saying it would alter it’s AI chatbots to take into account teen safety.
“As our community grows and technology evolves, we’re continually learning about how young people may interact with these tools and strengthening our protections accordingly,” Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway said.
Social media companies argue that they take the wellbeing of young people seriously and have denied they encourage addiction (Photo: Getty)‘We ban cigarettes and alcohol’
Trott also insisted there was no contradiction between the Tories’ free-market principles and regulating how parents raise their children.
“We’ve always been very clear as Conservatives that we will protect childhood and this is part of that,” she said.
“So we ban alcohol, we ban cigarettes. This is just an extension of those things. I do think social media is as dangerous as those things for young people. I mean, look at the impact it’s had on mental health.”
Parents currently find it difficult to stop their children going on social apps because “you don’t want to socially isolate your child”, she said – a problem that a blanket ban would help solve.
Reduce taxi usage for SEND pupils
In the coming months, Trott will have to lead her party’s response to planned reform of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision in England’s schools.
In the decade since the system was overhauled by the last government, the number of children with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) – entitling them to additional personalised attention in class, and sometimes other advantages such as free travel from and to home by taxi – has almost doubled.
She said that “the fundamental principle of writing down what your child needs is the right one”, urging governments to ensure that the EHCP regime is not scrapped altogether, and suggested that reducing the variation in provision between different local councils would help improve the system.
But she added that the Government could save money by reducing taxi usage, saying: “Obviously there are some children who cannot get to school without transport, and unquestionably they need to be given that.
“But there are some children who I think we’re slightly doing a disservice to, by providing them with this when actually they’re going to have to use public transport in the future, and we need to prepare them for that.”
Reform ‘more socialist than Corbyn’
The Conservative Party conference in Manchester comes with the Tories doing poorly in the polls, usually third behind Reform and Labour and not far ahead of the Liberal Democrats, and with questions swirling about Badenoch’s future.
Trott insisted that Westminster has a tendency to “over-fixate on the polls” and claimed the Conservatives are well placed to make ground by focussing on the economy and public spending.
She said: “Labour and Reform are both committed to welfare ballooning – Labour because they cannot control or get through any kind of welfare cuts, and the Prime Minister is entirely in hock to his backbenchers, and Nigel Farage wants to expand welfare spending still further.
“That is extraordinary in the current climate, and it is only the Conservative Party who are committed to fiscal responsibility, who know that we need to live without our means.” Reform is “more socialist than Jeremy Corbyn” because “they want to nationalise everything that they can see”, she added.
Asked what the Tories have to offer readers of The i Paper and others who may once have supported the party but believe it has moved too far to the right, Trott said: “I think the rock that runs through the Conservative Party is the fiscal responsibility side, and that is something that is incredibly important, I know, to lots of the individuals that you’re talking about there.”
She added: “On migration, it is something, if you read David Cameron’s speeches going back a very long way, he will always talk about controlling migration.”
She hit out at Reform’s immigration policy, which would see millions of foreign-born UK residents lose the right to stay here indefinitely and force them to reapply for their visa, but criticised Sir Keir Starmer for calling the party racist.
Trott said: “It was a stupid thing to do. I think a number of Reform’s policies are wrong, but to call them racist means that you’re just labelling it without talking about the issues with it, the problems with it.
“Most people think taking away the right to remain from people who’ve lived here for years, who’ve worked really hard or contributed to the system, and who the state’s made a promise to, is not the right thing to do.”
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