Starmer is now taking questions.
Q: When will this start?
Starmer says the government can move quickly.
double quotation mark We took powers, earlier this year to make sure we could move at speed.
I was very conscious that with the Online Safety Act it took the last government eight years from sort of identifying the beginnings of the problem to actually passing legislation,. [I] was determined that will not happen in this case.
He says legislation already passed gives ministers the powers to act using secondary legislation.
double quotation mark We hope to pass regulation before Christmas,. therefore to bring the ban into force in the early part of next year, probably about springtime, so we can move a real pace here.
Kemi Badenoch has been holding a press conference at the same time as Robert Jenrick. She said Keir Starmer should resign if he cannot prove. the long-delayed defence investment plan (Dip) will protect national security.
She said the Tories would apply three tests to decide if the Dip would protect national security.
First, it had to ensure defence spending rose ot 3% of GDP by 2030. “As a minimum. the funding must deliver the additional £28bn over four years that the chief of defence staff has asked for”, Badenoch said.
Second, the Dip had to meet a “readiness” test, she said. She said spending could not be “backloaded” into the next parliament.
And, third, the Dip had to pass a “capability” test. Badenoch said:
double quotation mark The plan must be transformative. It must enable us to address the threats of the next war, not the last. The defence investment plan should equip Britain with a more lethal. operationally effective armed forces with a mixture of traditional equipment and modern tech such as drones and counter drones.
Badenoch said Starmer should resign if his Dip could not pass these tests.
double quotation mark If the prime minister is unable to provide the leadership within his cabinet to deliver a defence investment plan that meets these three tests,. he should resign now and make way for a leader who can.
Yesterday Nigel Farage published a 6,000-word essay on his new Substack account claimed. Britain is a two-tier state – biased against white people. There is a much shorter rebuttal explaining Farage’s charge does not stack up from Rob Powell from Sky News here.
But, at his press conference this morning, Robert Jenrick, Reform UK’s Treasury spokesperson is banging away at the same theme. He claims. for at least the last 20 years the labour market has been biased against British workers who have faced unfair competition from migrant workers willing to accept low pay.
He says Reform UK would address this with two new policies.
Reform UK would scrap Labour’s rise in employer national insurance contributions – but only for British workers, Jenrick says.
And Reform UK would impose a migrant labour levy on firms that employ foreign workers. It will be extremely low for high-skilled workers,. it will “clamp down hard, very hard, on employers who are dependent on cheap foreign labour”, Jenrick says.
Jenrick said the full details of the migrant levy would be set out nearer the election. But he said. a levy set at around £3,750 for a full-time worker on the national living wage could raise £10bn from non-EU migrants. This would more than pay for scrapping Labour’s employer NICs increase, he says.
YouGov has released polling showing that three quarters of parents support a social media ban for under-16s. But more than half of parents do not think a ban will be effective, the same polling says.
And here is Nigel Farage ’s take. The Reform UK leader said:
double quotation mark Whilst the social media ban is well-intentioned, it’s unlikely to work given the mass adoption of VPNs.
It will also mean the introduction of Digital ID via the back door.
The real answer here is handsets for children with limited features.
The Green party has issued this statement about the social media ban for under-16s. A party spokesperson said:
double quotation mark The Green party welcomes action to address the harms social media can cause to young people. The impact on mental health. online safety is well documented as is the huge concern among parents, teachers and many young people themselves. Stronger safeguards are clearly needed. We also need to guard against potentially more dangerous platforms setting up.
However, organisations including the NSPCC. the Molly Rose Foundation have warned that a blanket ban could leave some young people, particularly disabled and LGBTQIA people, more isolated and cut off from support. We also need to see real investment in youth services. creative activities for young people to fill the void that will be created by this ban.
Sundus Abdi is a Guardian reporter.
has said. the social media ban for under-16s announced by Keir Starmer this morning could push teenagers into using “less-safe services”.
is a vital resource for young people, educators and parents. Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services.
At his press conference,. in his interview on ITV’s This Morning, Keir Starmer stressed his respect for Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly died aged 14 after seeing harmful content online. The Molly Rose Foundation was set up in her memory.
Its chief executive, Andy Burrows, has just released this statement about the announcement this morning.
double quotation mark The prime minister has chosen to gamble on an unenforceable social media ban that will quickly unravel. When that happens parents. children will ask why he chose not to follow the evidence but take the politically expedient option instead.
A social media ban will fail to tackle fundamental product safety risks issues. leaves parents with a false sense of safety. A majority of children will continue to use high risk sites that will have no incentive to implement robust protections.
This is not what online safety experts believe will work and is necessary. Keir Starmer has chosen to abdicate responsibility for tackling harmful algorithms. his legacy will be setting back children’s safety by years.
Q: Have you got an 80th birthday present for Donald Trump?
Starmer said he did have a present for him,. he would keep it secret until he gave it to Trump. But he did wish him happy birthday when they spoke yesterday, he said.
Starmer said politicians “have to control disinformation”.
Shephard turns to the Makerfield byelection.
Q: Do you want Andy Burnham to win the byelection.
Q: So what will happen if he challenges you?
Starmer said he did not think there should be a leadership challenge.
But, if there is one, he will fight it, he said.
He said he was elected two years ago with a mandate to serve for five years.
He said he always said change would take time. He completely understood why people want that to happen more quickly.
Starmer said his son was 17 and his daughter 15. She would be affected by the ban, he accepted. He said her views on this policy were “slighly mixed”.
But he. his wife Victoria had always wanted their children to be happy and confident, or happy and safe, he said.
But social media does not make children happier, he said.
Keir Starmer is being interview on ITV’s This Morning. The presenters are Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley.
Q: You used to be against a ban. Why did you change your mind?
Starmer repeated the point he made at his press conference about starting the consultation with an open mind.(See 8.35am.)
He said he spent a lot of time with parents who have lost children through social media.
He said all parents want their children to be safe and happy. But social media does not make them safe or happy, he said.
Shephard then asked about Ian Russell,. played a clip of Russell describing Starmer as a “nowhere politician” who was just cherry picking from the consultation.
Starmer stressed his respect for Ian Russell, as he did at his press conference earlier. (See 9.02am.)
When it was put to him that Russell thought this ban would let social media companies off the hook. because it covered access to social media, not the content available on social media, which Russell views as the real problem, Starmer said the government was looking at restrictions on children up to the age of 18, going alongside the ban for under-16s.
He said it would be hard for children used to social media.
But. in future, he said he hoped this ban would lead to children becoming teenagers no longer having an expectation of being able to access social media.
Keir Starmer’s social media ban for under-16s has not been universally welcomed. Campaigners focusing on privacy and individuals’ rights have expressed concerns, or outright opposition.
James Baker. the freedom of expression programme manager at the Open Rights Group, which campaigns for freedom of speech online, said:
double quotation mark These headline-grabbing proposals by a prime ministers on his way out fail to address the root causes on online harms – business models. reward harmful content …
Over 16s in the UK will have to hand over identity documents or biometric data to unregulated age verification companies. The government has completely failed to acknowledge the harms that could come from that.
Kerry Moscogiuri, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, said:
double quotation mark This is a case of the right diagnosis but the wrong prescription …
The problem is not. children exist on social media; it’s that social media companies have built platforms that are unsafe by design. Banning under-16s risks treating children as the problem rather than addressing the companies. systems that create the risks in the first place.
Young people deserve to be safe online, but they also have rights. Social media can expose children to harm, but it is also where many young people learn, connect with friends, find support, organise around issues they care about. make their voices heard.
And this is from Jack Coulson, head of advocacy at Big Brother Watch.
double quotation mark The British people have always, rightly, rejected mandatory ID schemes. Now the government is imposing digital ID checkpoints for the internet. This is not like Challenge 25 for alcohol. We will all face a “papers, please” demand to get online.
Charities that work on behalf of children have welcomed the government’s announcement.
Chris Sherwood, chief executive at the NSPCC, said:
double quotation mark Today is a win for children. parents and all of us who have campaigned for better child protection online. Big Tech must not have access to our children where their dangerous platforms are causing appalling harm to young people. This is a watershed moment for child protection.
And Lynn Perry, chief executive of Barnardo’ s, said:
double quotation mark For too long, children have been put in harm’s way – left to navigate an online world,. the risks that come with it, alone. So we welcome the government’s decision to take decisive action in making the online world a safer place for children.
Ofcom says it is ready to enforce the new social media rules announced by Keir Starmer.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the communications regulator said:
double quotation mark So far. Ofcom has driven some of the strongest changes of any online safety regulation in the world, from widespread age checks to grooming protections for children.
But the industry needs to go much further to make people safe.
The government has entrusted us to build on this progress with new measures to protect children,. we’re ready to work closely with them as the detailed regulations take shape.
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