Technology secretary says she wants regulator to design plans for online age verification by October – UK politics live

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.

Britain’s plans to ban social media for under-16s will push teenagers towards more harmful platforms. the world’s biggest technology companies have said as ministers push to enact the new restrictions by next spring.

The home secretary’s decision to ban Palestine Action was lawful, the court of appeal has ruled.

Two men have been found guilty of conspiring to carry out arson attacks on property. a car connected to Keir Starmer. Roman Lavrynovych, 22, from Ukraine, and Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, from Romania, were found guilty at the Old Bailey on Monday. Another Ukrainian man, Petro Pochynok, 35, was cleared of the same charge. During a months-long trial, the jury heard that the three men were offered payment to set fire to a car. two houses linked to Starmer by a mysterious Russian-speaking figure named El Money, or “Hroshi” in Ukrainian.

Roy Hattersley, the former Labour deputy leader and author, has died at the age of 93.

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today. do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.

Serco. a big outsourcing company with government contracts worth billions, has clarified its position on Reform UK’s deportation policy after a newspaper report led to the party threatening to cut off its government funding.

Zia Yusuf. the Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, issued a public threat in response to a report in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday that said Serco was “understood to have ruled out investment in a deportation campaign”.

Yusuf has said the party would deport up to 288,000 people annually if they do not have the right to remain in the UK,. early this afternoon Yusuf posted a letter on social media threatening Serco with the withdrawal of government contracts if it did not withdraw the implicit criticism of Nigel Farage’s deportation policy. Yusuf demanded a response within hours.

double quotation mark If the Telegraph’s reporting is correct, the only reasonable interpretation of Serco’s position is that it now believes itself to be an alternative power base to the duly elected government of the United Kingdom,. is willing to act contrary to the interests of the British electorate.

If this were true, a Reform government would be left with no choice. to view Serco as a threat to national security.

I have given Serco until 6pm to clarify their position.

Should they fail to do so, we will take the following steps to decouple the British Government from Serco:

1) On forming a Government. we will initiate an accelerated review of all Government contracting with Serco with the aim of removing Serco as a public contractor within our first Parliamentary term.

2) Where Serco has breached contracts or break clauses are available, we will terminate those contracts. continue to exercise break clauses as they come due.

In response, Serco issued a statement saying:

double quotation mark To clarify our position following reporting in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph. Inaccuracies in the article have been changed following our representation.

As a matter of longstanding company policy. Serco does not take political positions, nor do we comment on the policy programmes of political parties.

Policy decisions are matters for whatever party is in government. Serco’s responsibility is to deliver services as specified by the contracting authority as we have for the past 60 years. We operate across many parts of the immigration system, including detention and preparation for removals. We would expect to offer and perform such services in the future.

Even if it is the case that Yusuf’s threat was prompted by a reported that was wrong or misleading. a threat of this kind by an opposition party to a private company is extremely rare in UK politics. It is reminiscent of the way Donald Trump’s administration operates.

These are from Fraser Nelson, the Times columnist and former Spectator editor, on the threat.

double quotation mark Another evolution in Reform; threatening companies who won’t do what they want.

Serco - like any company or any person - is at liberty not to accept a contract from the government for any reason.

double quotation mark The state designating a company a “threat to national security” because it won’t bid for certain contracts? That’s just not done in democracies.

In her response to Liz Kendall in the Commons. Julia Lopez, the shadow technology secretary, said that six months ago the PM was opposed to a social media ban. She said it was the Conservatives and others who forced him to change his mind. She said:

If this was 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 in this chamber said was not only inevitable, but right. entirely necessary.

But Lopez criticised the decision to include restrictions covering 16 and 17-year-olds. (See 12.58pm.)

double quotation mark How does the minister square granting 16-year-olds the solemn duty to vote,. not the power to have cheeky night-tim scroll on Instagram.

The same applies to romantic chat bots. How is it going to work?

Will these restrictions apply to 16-year-olds or 18-year-olds, given both meet the age of sexual consent?

This is an argument also made with in more detail by the Financial Times columnist Stephen Bush in a column today. Bush says:

double quotation mark Keir Starmer has unveiled plans to ban all under-16s from the biggest social media sites. in measures that are a direct copy of Australia’s ban. One important difference between Anthony Albanese’s Australia. Keir Starmer’s Britain is that in Australia you have the right to vote at 18, while here in the UK, legislation to give 16-year-olds the right to vote has almost completed its legislative passage through the House of Commons.

Although the age at which we gain adult rights. responsibilities is always somewhat arbitrary, the order in which the social media ban and the right to vote apply is not, I would argue, arbitrary at all. For good or for ill, politics in the 21st century takes place in large part on social media. If you have votes at 16 you should not have a situation where 16-year-olds are deprived of the opportunity to participate. engage in the same information environment as other voters. Starmer’s proposal to ultimately go further by placing some limits on what 16-. 17-year-olds – who will be able to vote by the next election – can read and watch online that do not apply to other adults is simply a mess.

Back to Reform UK,. this is from the Economist’s Archie Hall on the tax policy announced by Robert Jenrick earlier. (See 12.42pm.)

double quotation mark Two thoughts on Reform’s cut NI / tax foreign workers proposal:

1. Fans of tax simplification are in for a rough few years, if Burnham is in No 10. Reform are the main opposition.

2. If the foreign-worker tax deters employers, then it won’t raise much money. If it raises money, it definitionally isn’t deterring that many employers. And. regardless, I struggle to imagine how such a narrow tax can cover the cost of a broad-based tax cut like employer NI.

Kendall said he has also asked Ofcom if they have the right capabilities in place.

And, in her letter, she has also “asked them to publish a clear enforcement strategy. an annual report to parliament on how this strategy is progressing”.

This is what Kendall says in her letter.

double quotation mark I am clear that this ban must be rigorously enforced from the outset. Visible, credible enforcement will be essential to building confidence that these protections are real. effective in practice and you continue to have my full support to use the full range of enforcement powers at your disposal. As I set out in my recent letter to Sir Ian Cheshire [the Ofcom chair], robust, effective. timely enforcement of the Act is a priority. I look forward to hearing his assessment of what changes may be needed to Ofcom’s structures. ways of working to deliver this and the other priorities set out in the letter.

Transparency is crucial to public trust and confidence in Ofcom’s enforcement. I am therefore asking Ofcom to submit to parliament. make publicly available an update on enforcement strategy and outcomes and to make this part of its regular accountability to parliament.

Kendall said that she has asked Ofcom to draw up plans for how age verification can work effectively by October.

In a letter sent to Ofcom, she says:

double quotation mark We know. use of highly effective age assurance will be critical to the successful implementation of age restrictions for social media services. I would therefore like Ofcom to launch a rapid assessment of what highly effective age assurance looks like for determining whether someone is over 16. Please also consider what new methods are emerging that could support this in the future.

I would be grateful if Ofcom can publish this by October. This is to help inform parliamentary debate on the regulations I intend to lay by the end of the year.

In particular, Ofcom should consider how age assurance can meet the standard of being highly effective, while making all endeavours to avoid excluding users who are old enough to use certain platforms or features. lack the means to verify their age through passports or driving licences.

In her statement Kendall set out details of the ban as announced by her department earlier. (See 12.58pm.)

And she said she was “strongly minded” to bring in default overnight curfews. breaks in infinite scrolling for 16 and 17-year-olds.

Liz Kendall. the technology secretary, told MPs in her opening statement that the respoinse to the goverment’s consultation on a proposed ban was “overwheming”.

Referring to public support for a ban, she said:

double quotation mark Nine out of ten parents who responded to the consultation told us they want an outright ban on social media, as did three-quarters in our large scale representative survey. 113,000 parents who signed … [the] smartphone free childhood petition.

Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, is giving her statement to MPs now about the social media ban for under-16s.

Just before she started. Nusrat Ghani, the deputy speaker, said the speaker was disappointed that Keir Starmer announced this move first in a speech in Downing Street.

Later, as Kendall was delivering her opening statement, Ghani also intervened to object as campaigners in the public gallery applauded. Applause is not allowed in the Commons (because it can be used to disrupt proceedings).

(see 10.53am ), it said it was not convinced the government’s policy would achieve this aim.

A Meta spokesperson said:

double quotation mark Like others, we don’t think bans will achieve this goal [keeping children safe].

As we’ve seen in Australia, bans risk isolating teens from online communities. information, and driving them to unregulated alternatives that lack built-in protections and parental controls.

To be both effective. easy for parents, any restrictions must be underpinned by an age verification system on devices so people aren’t asked to hand over ID to dozens of individual services to prove their age.

We will continue to engage with the government and Ofcom as they work to implement this policy.

Back in the Commons, Andrew Murrison (Con) asked Luke Pollard if he agreed that Al Carns was right to argue in his resignation letter that the defence investment plan was not just under-funded,. also allocated money for the wrong equipment. (See 11.04am.)

Pollard said he agreed with much of what John Healey. Carns said about the need to spend more money on defence.

He agreed that the government needed to spend more on drones – and that was happening, he said.

He also said the defence investment plan was a “ deliberately scalable document”. which would allow more money to be spent on particular areas on the future.

double quotation mark Spending more on the new capabilities does mean, though, retiring old capabilities.

It does mean doing something that the armed forces have not done for a very long time,. that means discarding some of that kit and equipment that’s been around for many, many decades and investing in newer technologies.

Now, that’s a difficult argument for ministers to make. It’s a difficult argument for those people that are attached to old equipment in particular.

But when we have armour that has been in service since before the Vietnam war, where we have ships that are decades past their decommissioning date, we do need to be honest about the need to retire old equipment. buy new equipment.

Michelle O’Neill. the Sinn Féin first minister of Northern Ireland, has questioned Keir Starmer’s decision to announce a social media ban this week.

Speaking at Stormont, she said:

double quotation mark I find it really interesting that Keir Starmer decides to announce this this morning, in a week that the Makerfield byelection is going to happen, the week that potentially a contender for the leadership of the Labour party is going to come forward,. he seems to have rushed forward with this announcement.

Obviously, we all want to protect our children,. I think this is allowing social media companies to get away in the smoke in terms of their responsibility around stuff that they allow to be on platforms.

So I think that this is a very complex conversation that we need to have a discussion on,. I feel like the announcement this morning has come as a direct result of internal Labour party politics as opposed to what is the right thing to do in this space.

Paul Givan. the DUP education minister in the Northern Ireland executive, said he thought the ban was “the right thing to do”.

Back in the Commons. Desmond Swayne (Con) said Luke Pollard told MPs that John Healey asked him to stay in office when he resigned. Had he not been asked, would Pollard have resigned too? And how much persuasion did it take?

Pollard acknowledged that was a good question. He said he came from a military family; his father was a submariner. He said he respected the decisions taken by Healey and Al Carns to resign, but he decided to stay.