LONDON: Britain’s upper house of parliament voted Wednesday in favor of banning under?16s from using social media, raising pressure on the government to match a similar ban passed in Australia.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday he was not ruling out any options and pledged action to protect children, but his government wants to wait for the results of a consultation due this summer before legislating.
Calls have risen across the opposition and within the governing Labour party for the UK to follow Australia, where under-16s have been barred from social media applications since December 10.
The amendment from opposition Conservative lawmaker John Nash passed with 261 votes to 150 in the House of Lords, co?sponsored by a Labour and a Liberal Democrat peer.
“Tonight, peers put our children’s future first,” Nash said. “This vote begins the process of stopping the catastrophic harm that social media is inflicting on a generation.”
Before the vote, Downing Street said the government would not accept the amendment, which now goes to the Labour-controlled lower House of Commons. More than 60 Labour MPs have urged Starmer to back a ban.
Public figures including actor Hugh Grant urged the government to back the proposal, saying parents alone cannot counter social media harms.
Some child-protection groups warn a ban would create a false sense of security.
A YouGov poll in December found 74 percent of Britons supported a ban. The Online Safety Act requires secure age?verification for harmful content.
UK upper house approves social media ban for under-16s
https://arab.news/2u3v7
UK upper house approves social media ban for under-16s
Sudanese man jailed in UK for murdering asylum hotel worker
- Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024
- He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver
LONDON: A Sudanese asylum seeker was jailed on Friday for a minimum of 29 years for murdering a woman who worked at the hotel in central England where he and other migrants were being housed.
Anti-immigration activists have seized on other criminal cases involving asylum seekers, predominantly young men, in hotels to argue that they are a danger to nearby communities.
Last summer, a number of protests at asylum hotels across England – sparked by the arrest of an Ethiopian asylum seeker for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman – turned violent.
The Labour government, nervous of the rise of the anti-immigration Reform UK party in opinion polls, has promised to clamp down on illegal immigration and, by 2029, to stop placing asylum seekers in hotels while their cases are processed.
Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024 after she finished her shift.
He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver. She died in hospital three days later.
Majek was convicted in October and sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment with a minimum of 29 years at Coventry Crown Court, where some anti-immigration protesters gathered outside for the hearing.
Judge Michael Soole said the murder was “particularly vicious” and told Majek there had been a “chilling composure in every aspect of your behavior.”
