'Lucky' MP Laura on her battle to provide the best start in life for our children

Laura Trott is passionate about classroom standards. A former state school pupil, the Shadow Education Secretary believes Labour's plan to overhaul academies will be a “disaster” and “destroy” the future for millions of children

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bullying, decreases in attainment, it is all linked to smartphones and I don’t know how much more evidence is required that this needs to change,” she says. “We need to do something about this.”

GIVING a child a smartphone, she states, is giving them “access to pornography, bullying, strangers and sextortion”. She adds: “I can’t believe that this is the system we have at the moment and that people aren’t more exercised in Government.”

Nothing less than the future of childhood is at stake, she argues. “They are so damaging to young people and we seem to have abandoned the precautionary principle that we normally have around childhood, that we prove something is safe before we give it to young people.

“We had a controlled experiment that nobody wanted in this country when, during Covid, children were on their screens all the time – and you can see the explosion in mental health issues that created.”

If children no longer have phones in their hands and if they leave social media, she predicts, it will “reclaim childhood, because at the moment childhood is being destroyed”.

She adds: “I completely get the amount of pressure parents are under because of this, and that is why the state has to step in and help. We must change things. This is something I am passionate about and I will not stop until we see change.”