The UK has blinked on protecting children; Holyrood must not

Common Weal is not minded to believe Keir Starmer's words from yesterday. They appear to us to be clearly and unambiguously false – but they have nothing to do with Peter Mandelson.

The words concerned are when, having whipped his MPs to reject a ban on social media for children under 16, he met technology platform bosses and told them “things can’t go on like this”. In reality, his actions over the last two days seem best read as sending out the signal that things absolutely can go on exactly like this.

Starmer makes the point that we know the current form of social media is putting children at risk, yet he is understating the point. The literature review Common Weal undertook in the preparation of our policy report on the subject made for difficult reading. The scale of mental distress being experienced by children just now is unprecedented in modern times.

We continue to believe that in any circumstance in which that was true, which did not also result in stupendous profits for the powerful corporations responsible, action would be taken. We know that Starmer has acted to prevent his politicians from implementing a ban. So, given the scale of the 'risk' he identifies, what is he doing?

Mainly, he appears to be 'expecting'. He is quoted as saying he expected “real-world changes” from social media companies. It is very hard to believe that this burden of expectation will lie particularly heavily on these companies. Westminster has now blinked twice in the face of lobbying by the tech industry, and that does not generally increase the pressure to act.

In any case, if excoriating public hearings held by the US Congress in January 2024 haven't led to 'real-world change', mild-mannered comments from Keir Starmer in private seem ill-equipped to shift the dial.

Indeed, it is hard to believe that any of his comments were really directed at the tech leaders at all. They seem mainly to be spin for the public to make his proactive blocking of protections for children sound less like a dereliction of duty. Because they are literally the only action which is being taken which was not already being taken.

The total of Starmer's actions is the UK Online Safety Act and an open consultation. The former does nothing more than require technology companies to prevent children from seeing content like hardcore pornography. That it took over a decade of children using social media and nearly 30 years of mass internet usage before this was done is itself a telling story.

We may get action after the consultation period, but it is very difficult to understand what information the Government needs that it does not have. In fact, it is very difficult to read any of this in any way other than that the Starmer administration is bending over backwards to do everything it can to protect technology companies from regulation.

Why? In a briefing of this length, it is not possible to map the extent of the Starmer administration's links to big technology companies (this is a good primer), but they are extensive. Tech companies formed a significant part of a surge in corporate donations to Labour before the 2024 election. Since then, some of these companies have gained lucrative government contracts.

Individual ministers have their own extensive links and have drawn criticism for questionable contracts with donors. The Starmer project is driven by the scandal-mired Labour Together campaign group, which itself has close networks in the tech industry (though its donations are secretive). The Government met with tech industry executives and lobbyists an average of six times a week during the government’s first six months in office. The overall picture is so questionable that it has led a Professor of Responsible AI to describe the situation as “shocking”.

Enormous strands of government strategy are wholly reliant on the tech sector, from the integration of AI across government, the emphasis on data and surveillance with a string of Palantir contracts and of course, the eagerness to attract investment in the form of large data processing centres.

But perhaps the place to look to best understand Starmer's reticence is the Tony Blair Institute. It has become increasingly apparent that the TBI is heavily involved in shaping government policy, and the TBI makes no secret of its tech evangelism, its digital authoritarianism and its belief in the merits of surveillance. And of course, it has received quarter of a billion pounds of funding from big tech.

This is the reality: Starmer's government has very little by way of coherent economic policy. What it has stretches to 'integrate AI', 'attract technology investment' and 'let big construction build wherever they want'. That so much is reliant on technology and that the government's hand is so weak in that regard means it cannot afford to alienate tech companies, which can easily punish governments that make themselves that reliant.

And so, rather than take this seriously and undertake a comprehensive public-health-focused approach as set out in Saving Childhood in Scotland, Starmer has chosen to sacrifice children to big business profits in pursuit of GDP growth.

The only positive is that the political parties in Scotland are in a different place and action to counter the effects of mobile phones and social media on children is arguably the best aspect of the SNP's manifesto (launched yesterday). It is now crucial they do not fold under lobbying pressure – as Westminster has.