Peers have voted to ban smartphones in schools and block restrictions on good schools expanding, in a double win for the Tories.

The amendments to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill were passed on Tuesday night in a House of Lords session that ran into the early hours.

If the smartphone ban becomes law, it would apply across England during school hours – although there may be exemptions for sixth-form students and medical devices.

A second amendment on school growth will stop Labour plans to force good schools to limit their numbers.

The changes will now be considered by MPs during the parliamentary tussle known as ‘ping-pong’, when legislation is batted between the Commons and Lords until agreement is reached.

Baroness Barran, the former Tory schools minister who brought both amendments, told peers: ‘Smartphones are so often the gateway drug to social media.

‘We should be in no doubt about the nature of the harms that are created by having smartphones in schools, and indeed on the bus to and fro. Photos taken without consent, and then sexualised via a nudification app that are then traded online.

‘Exposure to live-streamed content, including children watching a live suicide on the bus home. And of course, endless potential for distraction.’

She added on X afterwards: ‘This is so important. And it wouldn’t have happened without the fact that head teachers and parents are saying enough.’

The vote came after heads and families called on the Government to outlaw phones in schools.

Baroness Barran pointed out that currently, schools that try to impose their own bans are meeting resistance from ‘a vocal, emotional and at times physically challenging minority of pupils and parents’.

Labour said changing the law was unnecessary, and instead issued non-statutory guidance.

However, in November, a Government poll of heads revealed only nine per cent of secondary schools make pupils hand in phones for the school day, while only five per cent ban them completely.

Lord Bethell, the former manager of the Ministry of Sound, likened smartphone access to allowing children to attend nightclubs or sex shows or take illegal drugs.

He said his 11-year-old son was not allowed to go to the Ministry of Sound nightclub ‘because he’ll be confronting sexual predators and for the same reason I don’t let him on Snapchat’.

He said: ‘I don’t give him methamphetamine, wizz or Es because they are addictive and would mess with his brain, as does TikTok and YouTube reels.

‘I don’t, for instance, allow him on X, where he might see internet filth and for the same reason he’s not allowed to go to Soho to watch peep shows. My Lords, the toxic digital platforms are designed for adults and they are engineered for addiction, fraudsters, predators and I’m afraid they are screwing with too many of our children’s brains.’

It comes after teenage campaigner Flossie McShea, 17, said she was exposed to phone videos of porn and beheadings while at school. 

Others supporting the amendment, which passed with 178 votes to 140, included Baroness Morgan, the former education secretary and Baroness Spielman, the former head of Ofsted.

In a second victory, another Tory amendment was also passed, which prevents the schools adjudicator from ordering schools to reduce the number of pupils they want to admit.

The bill originally gave the schools adjudicator the power to limit the number of pupils a school could recruit – potentially stopping popular schools expanding.

It is understood the original move was aimed at stopping successful schools hoovering up pupils from struggling schools and taking funding away from them.

However, Baroness Barran said: ‘The way to sort this out is not by requiring the most popular highest performing schools in an area to cut their pan. It pays no regard to the interests of children nor to the rights of parents to choose a higher performing school for their child.’