G7 summit and upcoming parliamentary bills

This is the Guardian. Thousands of parents say their children are addicted. social media. That is why today Government has decided Ban social media access for children under sixty banning the companany is not the kids. Earlier we looked at screen time. What was your screen time over the weekend? Nine hours. Nine hours. So suddenly you're going to have a lot more time to fill. And what will you do Stare at a wall I'm Pippa Carira, and I'm Karen Stacey and you are listening to Pitics Wekly for the Guardians Hello, Hello. You're looking perky, Pippa. What's up Well, I think it might be the football Kier in. I'm very, very excited about the World Cup. Not least the fact that Scotland is as of this moment, top of our group. It might not last you cynically replied to me when I messaged you about thisular. One no win against Haiti. No, no, take the win away you can get them. And I've got a couple of brothers who are actually at the World Cup and sending me regular updates, including a phone call at four thirty in the morning on Saturday after or Sunday morning. I didn't answer. I waited till the morning for the update. They were banned from telling me what happened but didn't stop them ringing anyway I have to say I was really amazed and impressed by that footage of the Scotland fans at the game. I mean the sound coming out of that stadium and probablyarent the loudest ever recorded at any sporting contest. There is nothing like a group of Scots in full voice and actually one of the biggest tests in my house being because my partner is English, I'm obviously Scottish, is who the kids would support. Maybe it'll change when England actually have their first match, but for the time being, all the kids are on Teams Scotland they really? Yeahally into all. Well when it gets into the knockout round and then there's only one of those teams left, then they won't have to make a choice anymore. Yeah. They can support Scotland. Yes, of course Exactly in the final. Well I does. I'm feeling a little tired this morning because I did fall asleep last night watching Netherlands, Japan and then had to wake up firstirst thing this morning to go to Downing Street to watch Kir Stara talking about kids not watching stuff and specifically not being on social media. Yeah, now I should I don't normally talk about my kids on this podcast, but I will talk about two of them who are just fifteen and seventeen And while you were at Downing Street for that press conference, I was in my kitchen with the radio on knowing, of course that K Stom's announcement was about to come And I made these two kids turn around and listen to the radio. The eldest I have had this conversation with for many years, and he likes a good argument. So we've gone through all the sort of challenges of how it would be enforced. you know, whether there should be a cliff edge and all those sorts of things The younger one has never believed me when I said, yes, the government is going to ban social media for under sixteenens And so the look on his face in particular, when he heard Kir Stormmer himself say on the radio that was going to happen, I won't repeat the word he used, but was it wasn't a word he should have used at home with his momum. But yeah, he wasn't delighted by the out. It is I mean it really is one of those policies that has a very nototiceable effect. I mean, obviously both of us are parents kids who fall under the bam. And so it The government is saying they'll bring it in spring and it's one of those rare times where politics really comes into your personal life as well and it does change things. And as I was leaving the house this morning, my eight year old said, I was having to leave early to get to the press conference and he said are you going to get to ask a question, Dad? And I said, Yeah, I might do. What would you ask if it was up to you? And he said What will Kir Stara do to me if I watch YouTube? And I said to him. I said to him, Well, look, it'll probably be the fact that ministers will punish the companies for letting you be on there. rather than you for being on there. And his response was, right, well, I'm off to watch YouTube then and he trotted downstairs to stick it on the TV. I can imagine that my youngest who's twelve would say something similar. She's very into you what the rules are Yeah and how you're punished vaking them or who's punished. We were talking about this in the office earlier weren't we Yes, it will be on the tech companies themselves in terms of enforcement. But the real life impact of this will be that it gives parents an excuse. When your kids turn around and bug you, Oh everyone at school's got snapchat, can I have it? O Oh Mom, can't I watch Instagram? Can't I have Instagram? Or can't I look at this very interesting educational video on YouTube? and then you walk in later and find them watching mister Beast on It gives parents an excuse to say, no, you're not allowed because it's against the law And in the same way as Once in a blue moon, my children will say, I'm sure every child' says, I don't want to go to school today and you go through all the arguments with them, and eventually you're just like, you know what you have to because if it's on me, if you don't go to school, then I get into trouble. And they sort of you know drag their school bag out the door and off they go. It gives parents an excuse to say no. it's the government's fault. Yeah. And actually, I think you know real in the real world, that will matter hundred percent. Now we should get on to what Kara has actually announced, and it's been described as an Australia plus ban. And the government was watching the Australian social media ban quite carefully because they were concerned about things like enforcement and the fact that kids are able to get round the law by using VPNs to access or indeed persuading their parents to access social media, even though they're not supposed to be on it So the government has announced it's not quite a full ban, but it's a ban for under sixteenens from major apps such as TikTok, Instagram, X, Snapchat, YouTube and Facebook. There will be exceptions for some apps, some platforms which younger children use, and the examples K Starmer gave are YouTube Kids, Lego playlay, and Google Classroom schools obviously rely quite heavily on not social media so much as search engines and so on, but so that they can still benefit from using some of the material that is online that works for their lessons. And kids will also still be able to use there are age restrictions in place as well, I should say, I think it's thirteen for whatsApp and then also signal, which are primarily communications app, so theyough of course ids can have their own channels on those as well. The goovernment would be going further than in Australia by bringing in restrictions on gaming apps which currently strangers adults can contact children without any checks at all on them And also under eight teens, so older than sixteen, will be banned from accessing romantic or sexual AI chat bots. and there'll be curbs on auto scrolls, all these sort of like addictive features which kind of pull kids in and mean they pick up their phone every opportunity. So it seems like yourstarers ended up in a sort of a tougher set of measures, which they hope to legislate for by Christmas and would be enforced by the beginning of next year, then we had been expecting, and then it's sort of justess Elgatar collague heard over the weekend that they would be going for this Australia pllus scheme. It was really interesting watching the Prime Minister this morning in Downing Street make this announcement You felt like He was being his authentic self He seemed to be kind of speaking from the heart bringing in his own personal experience And I kind of believed that he really did believe in this But then you've also got to keep it at the back of your mind that he disagreed with all of this as little as six months ago And I wonder whether there's a lot of things that go on for any politician in this kind of situation, but especially parent who's also legislating for other parents. And we've heard him and you know people close to him saying that, well, his two kids did use social media as they were teenagers and growing up and he didn't think it had done them any harm. He says that having looked at the responses from the consultation that he has changed his mind, I wonder whether having seen what's happened in Australia thenen watch the responses to the consultation come in, then watching the debate change in the country. and I do think the Conservatives backing a ban was a really important moment in this. He has just shifted and He's spoken before, the Prime Minister has spoken about how he is a fan of the Nanny state. And he's quite happy to regulate in people's lives if he thinks the government can do good And this felt like very much a part of that. And this morning at the press conference, he did actually say that part of the reason he changed his mind is because he'd been listening. Yeah. And ultimately isn't that what politicians are you know supposed to do is that if there is a sort of a ground swell of opinion towards a particular position is to kind of reflect on that. And if you think that on balance decide that actually that would be beneficial, then you go for it. And I suppose the other thing I'd also say is that Just because Kir Starmer seems to have had an easy time with his kids or an easi aer time with his kids in social media, I often have this with people I talked about it. I'm like, well kids aren't on all the time. they don' nott like their friends in their bedrooms when they're working or certainly not overnight. I have restriction controls that means that they can't access certain apps beyond a certain time of day or in the morning and the eldest, who's the only one who's at this stage, we didn't let him have anything like Instagram or TikTok or anything like that until he was sixteen anyway.. But what I came to realize, having spoken to many, many parents about this is that that's the exception, not the rule And that most kids for a whole variety of reasons do have freer access to social media, and it's something that parents really care about. I should just mention a couple of things that we are either not in the ban or we don't know about yet. One thing that was kind of widely briefed, but does not appear to be there is the idea of late night curfews specifically for sixteen to eighteen year olds. and it had been mentioned that maybe that group of children would be allowed to go on late at night. Now ministers haven't gone down that route, although they say I'm told anyway that it's a possibility in the future. I think there is a question at some point We are allowing sixteen year olds to have the vote and we really talk about telling them when I' when they can use social media apps my point my seventeen year old m this morning trust me to vot, but you don't trust me to see the results on YouTube. Yeah. ye So know that's been an interesting shift, whether that was in the mix earlier on and now has been dropped, I don't know. We also don't exactly know how the government is going to enforce age verification. Obviously it will be on the technology companies themselves, as we've said think that it will be at the moment that these apps are downloaded from the app store and that you will have to prove your age then rather than every time you load. itself There will be multiple ways of doing so, whether that's to provide identification, whether it be a passport or a driving license or with facial recognition software, which is a really interesting bit of technology because of course it's not completely perfect. And you will also have to have some kind of leeway in there becausecause obviously some people will look a bit younger than they really are, a bit older than they really are. So from the technology experts I speak to, they say you can't just tell the AI tool to set it at sixteen. You actually have to then set it at fourteen to give yourself a bit of a buffer zone There'd be some really fascinating details to work out here. We're told that OcOM now has to go in work those things out probably come back in the autumn, maybe around October and make it clear exactly how this is going to work And then, as I say, next spring, it comes into force. But there's an interesting period there where we're picking over whether this will work or not. Another quite interesting point from the Prime Minister at the press conference earlier when he gave the analogy of children buying alcohol, teenagers buying alcohol. and the fact that even th Obviously, it's against the law under eighteen. Let's not kid ourselves, right? Teenenagers find a way of buying booz, whether it's older kids or fake ID or the pares or whatever, they find a way around it. Some of them But that doesn't mean that you suddenly say, it's aree for all and okay, come on guys, you can buy alcohol at any age Will it mean that no child ever logs onto social media again But look This might shock you, but it doesn't shock parents of teenagers They get around other laws too. But we don't say, oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow So let's not bother banning alcohol sales to children. We don't do that, do we That would be utterly ridiculous Of course there's going gonna to be kids that somehow, whether it's VPNs, whether it'sarents, whether it's fake profiles, whatever, find their way around it. But that still doesn't mean that the government shouldn't legislate if it's something that they regard as being harmful to kids, their mental health, the way their brains work. And also taking up their time. The time that they spend scrolling on social media, it's time they're outside playing football W watching Scotland win the World Cup. Yeah you know doing their paintings, reading books, whatever So I thought that that was quite an interesting analogy and his sort of recognition that things aren't just going to suddenly change overnight. You're not going to bring in this ban and children are never going to be on social media again. That probably slightly helps the cliff edge point, but that there's more of a cultural change over the next generation. By the time my twelve year old is a few years older, then it won't be the norm amongst her friends to go on all of these apps. So it'll be easier for parents And you know I've long thought that we will look back on this period of teenagers who are sort of from probably like fourteen, fifteen now, you know ten years older and think, my God, we let them loose in a wild west And it's amazing that the government didn't act sooner. Can I just give the cynical take on this, which is that all of that might be true, but we are also talking about a Prime Minister who is contemplating the fact that he might not be in position a few weeks time and is trying to, as we have said before, cement his legacy and has chosen something here that will be overwhelmingly popular. And as Lukerill, who know we spoke to you on this podcast before, the Pllster often says one of the most popular things you can do in the UK as Prime Minister is to ban something. It's a cheap way to earn political credit at a time when he doesn't have much. And then I think the last thing we should just say on this is that as Kir Stommer acknowledged In an ideal world firms themselves would take action and you wouldn't need to ban anything. But the reality is they don't want to. don't want to spend the money, the resource, the time. They think that the system they have at the moment is lucrative And so it's only by banning kids from social media that you will actually force them to act. It's not the threats or the ultimiatums. That doesn't work. They've tried that If you bring in a ban, they will need to think, if we want our model to be acceptable to the government and kids to be able to remain on it, then we're going to have to move the most addictive features, bring in better safety elements and give parents more access. ents with disappearing messages and kids can put on their accounts And if this is the way of getting them to move, then maybe this is just what they have to do. Do know what? I think it is also worth listeners checking out today's episode of Science Weekly, our Sister podcast, because on that, the host Ian Sample and Madeeline Finley are going to look at the actual evidence for the harms of social media. And I know this is something that has been hotly contested and they are going to talk about whether scientists really do agree that a ban is the answer Now Kiran, as you have said, this is a prime mininister who currently looks like He might be in his final days. And that is because of course, we're finally at the week of the Makerfield by election. and this Thursday, late at night, maybe into Friday morning, we will find out whether Andy Burnham has won, has seen off the threat from reform and held the seat for labour. If so by how much and what he plans to do when he makes it back to Westminster because obviously's made it no secret of the fact that he thinks that he could provide better leadership or that the current leadership is wanting Everything we've picked up from Labour MPs is that a big chunk, a big enough chunk of them, including some right up in the cabinet that the only way this Labour Government survives probably on the next election is was somebody new at the helm The first question really is is he going to win on Thursday? And it's a question that lots of people not at all connected with politics have been asking me. It's the only time I think I've been asked this much about a by election result since starting this job, but If Andy Burnham loses on Thursday, his team, his allies, the people running his campaign have terrible job at expectations management because we are constantly told that they are confident and getting more confident as time goes on. And this is the only by election I've known where they've They actually do know what's going to happen because they've knocked on every single door in the constituency Several times. Sal times. And apparently, Andy Burnham has now spoken to every single undecided voter. There is no excuse now for not knowing how things are going to go and from everything we're told they' expecting a decent sized margin of victory come Thursday. Because of course, it matters for Labor, not just that he wins, but also that he wins by more than the combined reform and restore vote, because this constituency, we're told polling suggest, as much as you can poll at a constituency level, restore which is nationally on two or three percent of the vote, which is very, very small, Rupert Lowe's party is actually up at seven percent or thereabouts and is likely to come third, beating the Liberdems and the Greens. And so Andy Burnham needs to be able to prove to Labour but bentchures if he does win that he can deliver the sort of victory beats the right combined, not just reform Nig. Yeah, that's a really good point Okay, so then the next question becomes how quickly is he going to move? And there were some stories in the papers this morning suggesting that it could be within hours that Andy Berham makes his move on Downing Street and kind of tells the Pime Minister that he's got numbers and he's triggering a leadership contest. It's kind of not actually what I'm hearing, but how quickly do you think that he might go? So over the course of this by election campaign, the suggestion seems to have been that he would get back to Westminster and see the Lay of the land, that he's so focused on winning the by election first, although we understand that there are sort of a shadow team of people who aren't focusing on the campaign, they are focusing on policy and personnel and plans for a leadership contest or indeed, if there's a coronation for a leadership itself. But everything that we've heard up to this point is that while they don't want to hang about and we would expect to see something happened this side of the summer, they wouldn't necessarily do it on day one. And's not least because of course, Andy Burnham wouldn't actually be an MP until next Monday when the UMP for Makerfield would be sworn in. And some of the reports over the weekend suggested that the departure of John Healley and the damage that that inflicted on Kir Starmer, not just losing a regular cabinet minister, but losing a cabinet minister in an area which was widely seen as Kiirstistara's strength, national security was particularly damaging. And so the suggestion of the weekend seemed to be that that could expedite any attempt by Burnham to challenge the Prime Minister. I think though that to counter that you need to look at what else is happening social media ban, which we're told to we discuss this before, was one of Kstar's sort of legacy plans, although the Lll word is banned in Downing Street, we're told. And also the news that broke overnight about possible agreement deal between Iran and the U.S that would see the Strait of Hormuz reopening and the US Naval bgade lifting and all the commensurate impact on the global economy that would bring. that' good news for the Prime Minister. and things stabilise a bit, that definitely puts him in a stronger position, Not to say he wouldn't ever be challenged, but it makes it potentially harder to do immediately. And then the other thing that we can't forget is of course, it's not just one by election. there would then be the by election for the Greater Manchester Mayeralty. But Burnham has made promises public and private that he would be involved in that campaign in helping labour lead it, that's difficult to do when you're also running a leadership contest. Yeah. And I mean, you mentioned there that the shadow team down here in London Thinking about leadership and policy positions. if he does win that by election, we wrote a story over the weekend about exactly what some of that policy might look like, especially when it comes to ownership of public utilities. So we can put a link to that story in the show notes. I think there are some people who around Andy Burnham who would like him to be quite radical And so let's see how much of that he does decide to carry into government. then of course, the assumption that Berham, Labouror MPs, half of the media are making, if Andy Byerham makes it back to Westminster, that Kir Star will kind of like stand down willingly say, it's fine, Andy Berham. I think that you're a better person to be Prime Minister right now. That is not Kstomer is just now And maybe it is the fierce denial of reality that one of his cabinet members to me last week or maybe it's he's been underestimated his entire political career and has proven people wrong every turn. But Kir Starmer feels he has a mandate. He feels that there has to be a process that's followed and currently there isn't any challenge That's not just I'm told because it's sort of a lawly response, it's because he genuinely worries that you lower the threshold for a labour leader to be replaced, it will happen again and again and again when you get a bit of sort of like angster anger on the back benches. and that he still thinks that there are things that he wants to do beyond these so called legacy issues that we've talked about. And Andy Berham is untested. Andy Burnham, we don't know how he would respond to all the crises that any prime Minister, including Kyoara would face. E if, as we know, lots of MPs think, well, at least he be a better communicator, at least he seems to have likek a political vision. And he's got a bit of sort of vibes about him that as we know in the world of populist politics seems to go down pretty well farar be it for me as the non Scot on this podcast to mention, but there are two other by elections on Thursday, one in Northeast Fife and one in Aberdeen, and the Aberdeen one is one where the Tories have targeted it. And if they do win that, that will obviously be a major moment for Kemmy Badenock to prove Keminenaissance is actually a thing. And just to mention, I will be back on Friday with our colleague Jessica Elgert for a special post by election results episode. so do tune in for that. Okay, let's pause here for a minute and when we come back, we'll be talking about the Prime Minister's trip to the G seven summit in Eviers in the French Alps and what else is going on at Westminster Hello, I'm Max Rususton, the Worldup is back and footbot Weekly is going daily. If you want award winning soccer coverage from a podcast that's been over analyzing the game for more than twenty years and still hasn't run out of opinions or just repeats the same ones over and over again, this is where you'll find it. We'll be producing thirty three daily episodes across the tournament, breaking down all the action, the results, and of course the drama. Can the US make it out of the group stage and into the spotlight on the biggest stage?orld Cup daily Listen, wherever you get your podcast or watch full episodes on YouTube Just after I came back from Downing Street this morning, Pippa, the Prime Minister got in his car and was whisked off to Stanstad Airport from where he was departing for the G seven summit, as you mentioned before the break could be a really interesting one, this one for a number of reasons notot least of which is the fact that he wanted to go there having agreed this defents investment plan But now It is still to be settled, and he's just had his defense seecretary resign over it. So in his meetings with other world leaders, he won't be able to give them the message that Britain is investing in its armed forces and so should you. In fact, he's going to be on the defensive for a lot of the next few days. And they'll be particularly concerned about how that goes down with Donald Trump. Relations haven't been particularly good between Kir Starmer and Donald Trump recently. And I suspect that Trump will have a thing or two to say about the social media ban because obviously it affects big U. S tech firms. It will be a key moment for countries, including France, Germany, the US and the UK to discuss what is happening in Iran and the Middle East. And I think that will be the top of everybody's lists what any deal actually looks like. It's set to be signed in Switzerland later this week Do they get it over the line and what does that mean for the global economy? So Trump may be a bit distracted by that. But at a time when you're talking about defence and Kir Starmer has said that Britain will want to play its part in keeping the strait of Hormz open and sort of resolving tensions in the Middle East, how easy is that going to be for him to do when he hasn't yet got his defense investment plan over the line? whichich of course, he said he will deliver before the NATO summit in early July. The weeakks are counting down. And is he going to be able to convince his new defense seecretary to deliver a plan that he couldn't get his old one to do And also where if he does get any extra money is it going to come from? We know that other government departments have been asked to look at slicing a bit off their budgets to pay for it. so potentially more woe at home, more trouble and more tension within his own cabinet when it comes to funding more money. Yeah, Well, sources close to Dan Jaravis were saying over the weekend that he does want reallocation within the scheme as well as additional money. So that might be where they end up reaching an agreement. And Al Karnes, who also quit as a defense minister, was saying on Friday that he thought that the government was still investing in a lot of old legacy weapons systems that essentially have become irrelevant. And I'm sure that Donald Trump and other members of his administration will be particularly interested in whet the Kirst Stam is going to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to global defense. Obviously, this has been an ongoing sore for other NATO members concerned that the US. could at worst pull out of the alliance and at best that it will restrict how much it contributes financially. So deffence spending is an ongoing issue at home and abroad. But there are another a couple of things that are happening on Monday, which we should just quickly mention. One is that the Court of Appeal has overturned the decision by a lower court to prescribe Palestine action as a terror group which means that they regard the ban as lawful and this is likely to go now to the Supreme Court. Now that impacts on people because there have been protesters out on the streets who have been arrested supporting Palestine action, which they say is an overreach and limits their right to free speech. So let's see what the Supreme Court decides on that, whether it sts with the appeal courourt's decision, or whether it decides that actually the government has taken the wrong steps And this week we'll also have the Assisted Suicide Bill returning to Parliament Lauren Edwards, the labour MP for Rochester and Strud, has said she will bring an identical bill to the one that passed the Commons last year, but obviously failed at the last moment in the Lords. This time, I think MPs will seek to get it past the House of Lords, whether that's by allocating it more time or even using the Parliament Act to overrule the W of the Lords a major moment and of all the things that happen in this Parliament, that will be one of the biggest So lots and lots to keep us busy this week. How I'm going to jggle it with watching the World Cup Q? I do not know. I think sleep might have to be the bit that I sacrifice. Are you going to watch England on Wednesday night? Well, given my children are half English and given I live in England, I'll watch it. I'm not saying I'm supporting but I will watch it Well, I'll check in with you on next week's pod and we'll see how much you celebrated or commiseratedult. Yeah. Well listen, that's all from us for this week. Thanks for listening. If you haven't already, please like and follow Politics week to make sure you keep getting our episodes in your feed and as Kirin said, he and Jess will be here on Friday with all the fallout from the Maker Field by election result. And if you enjoy the podcast, why not leave us a review? Before we go, I just want to tell you that the Guardian's Award winning football weeekly podcast is turning into World Cup daily. I've got to fit that into my schedule as well. Join Max Rushton, Barry Glndenning and the team as they discuss every big match and every big moment every day of the World Cup. Listen now, wherever you get this podcast or watch on YouTube And finally, keep your emails coming. If there's anything you want to know more about from this week's episode, please email us Politics Weekly UK at theguardian. com Politics Weekly UK at theguardian. com This episode was produced by Frankie Toby Music by Axel forcutier Executive producer is M Zepptaj By by Goodbye This is the Guardian.