VPN Ban in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill has attracted significant attention for a controversial proposed amendment that would prohibit the provision of VPN (Virtual Private Network) services to children under 18 in the UK. While framed as a child protection measure, this clause raises serious questions about privacy, parental responsibility, and state overreach.

This amendment represents a concerning shift from genuine safeguarding toward expanding state control over digital privacy. By removing tools that parents, employers, and young people themselves rely on for security and safety, the proposal undermines the very objectives it claims to pursue.

What the Amendment Proposes

The proposed amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill contains several provisions that would fundamentally alter how VPN services operate in relation to minors:

The amendment represents a significant expansion of digital regulation, moving beyond content filtering to restricting access to fundamental privacy tools that have legitimate uses for families, businesses, and individuals.

Why VPNs Are Not Just About Circumvention

The government's narrow minded focus on circumvention ignores the legitimate and essential uses of VPN technology. Understanding these applications is crucial to evaluating the amendment's true impact on families, businesses, and young people's digital safety.

Corporate Security and Young Workers

VPNs form the backbone of modern corporate security infrastructure, enabling organizations to connect satellite offices and remote workers securely to central systems. Apprentices, interns, and young employees under 18 could find themselves excluded from secure work systems, creating a two-tier employment market where age becomes a barrier to participation.

Parental Control and Family Safety

Many technically aware parents implement sophisticated content filtering systems using VPN technology combined with tools like Pi-hole blocklists. This approach allows families to filter inappropriate content even when children are outside the home network, maintaining consistent protection across all locations and devices.

The proposed ban would effectively remove these parental tools, forcing families to rely solely on device level filtering that can be easily bypassed or disabled. This undermines parental agency and family-level safeguarding efforts.

Personal Privacy and Digital Safety

For young people, VPNs provide essential protection against unsafe public Wi-Fi networks, commercial tracking and profiling, and location-based harassment. Vulnerable young people including those in care, experiencing domestic violence, or facing discrimination often rely on VPNs as a critical safety tool for protecting their digital communications and personal information.

The Fundamental Contradiction

The amendment claims to protect children, but its practical effects directly contradict this stated objective in several critical ways.

Stripping Away Existing Safeguards

Rather than enhancing protection, the ban removes tools that parents currently use to safeguard their children online. Families who have invested time and resources in creating secure, filtered internet environments would lose these capabilities overnight, with no equivalent replacement offered by the government.

Weakening Digital Resilience

Young people in education and employment increasingly require secure digital access for remote learning, accessing educational resources, and participating in modern workplace practices. The ban conflates circumvention of age gating with illegitimate use of encryption technology, failing to distinguish between malicious attempts to access harmful content and legitimate privacy protection needs.

Rights Based Alternatives

Organizations advocating for children's rights, including Rights for Children, argue that genuine child protection requires addressing root causes rather than restricting technology. This approach focuses on positive rights and community support rather than surveillance and control measures.

Addressing Real Vulnerabilities

Effective child protection should prioritize ensuring access to:

• Housing: Stable, secure accommodation providing a safe environment for development
• Food Security: Adequate nutrition supporting physical and cognitive growth
• Healthcare: Physical and mental health services appropriate to developmental needs
• Education: Quality learning opportunities preparing young people for adult life

The Misdirection Problem

The VPN ban risks becoming a classic policy misdirection: focusing public attention and resources on restricting privacy tools instead of addressing underlying issues of poverty, inequality, and service cuts that genuinely threaten children's wellbeing.

This approach allows governments to appear active on child protection while avoiding the more challenging and expensive work of systemic social reform. If the government truly wanted to protect children, it would implement safeguards rooted in rights and support, not surveillance and bans.

International Context and Expert Opinion

The UK's proposed approach stands in stark contrast to international trends and expert recommendations on digital rights and child protection. The European Union's Digital Services Act focuses on platform accountability rather than restricting privacy tools, recognizing that encryption and privacy technologies are fundamental rights.

Conclusion: Real Safeguarding vs. State Control

The proposed VPN ban in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill represents a concerning shift from child protection toward state control over digital privacy. By removing tools that parents, employers, and young people themselves rely on for security and safety, the amendment undermines the very objectives it claims to pursue.

Real safeguarding lies in empowering families with resources, education, and support, not in restricting access to fundamental privacy technologies. The amendment's focus on technological restrictions rather than addressing poverty, inequality, and social support failures suggests a government more interested in appearing tough on technology than tackling the root causes of vulnerability.

The choice between privacy and protection is a false one; genuine child welfare requires both digital rights and social justice. If the UK government is serious about protecting children, it should abandon this misguided approach and instead invest in positive rights, community support, and evidence-based interventions that actually improve young people's lives.