March 26 (UPI) -- Britain's House of Lords revived an effort to ban children younger than 16 from using social media, only two weeks after the House of Commons voted to override a previous bid by the upper chamber of Parliament.
In a 266-141 vote early Thursday, peers backed former Conservative education minister Lord John Nash's amendment to the Labour government's Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill for a second time after MPs defeated it in favor of a 3-month public consultation and bounced the legislation back to the Lords.
"Delay has consequences," Nash said in a statement after the vote.
"Tonight the House of Lords sent for the second time an unambiguous message to the government: hollow promises and half-measures are not enough. That they voted in even greater numbers than before sends a very clear message to the government that they must act now to raise the age limit for access to harmful social media sites to 16," he added.
Nash, a venture and private equity capitalist who has served on the boards of a number of Californian tech firms, which he said were run by "some of the most able, innovative, entrepreneurial, wealth and job-creating people in the world," said the industry was not taking child safety seriously.
