The mother of a young soldier who took her own life says she has “sleepless nights” knowing there are abusers still serving in the Army.

A coroner ruled that the Army’s failure to take action after 19-year-old Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck was sexually assaulted by a more senior soldier and harassed by her line manager contributed to her death at Larkhill Camp in Wiltshire in 2021.

One of the men has since left the Army but the other continues to serve.

Jaysley Beck’s mother, Leighann McCready, believes he has been protected by the Army.

“Why should they continue to carry on serving when we’re left absolutely heartbroken? We have to deal with this for the rest of our lives and it’s not fair. It’s absolutely not fair that no action’s been taken.”

Reacting to the announcement that claims of sexual harassment in the Army will be removed from the chain of command and instead dealt with by a new, specialist taskforce, Ms McCready said it was a “step in the right direction” but added that “it should have happened a long time ago”.

Last week, a Sky News investigation revealed claims of widespread sexual abuse.

One former soldier described how, after reporting an alleged rape, she discovered the officers dealing with her case had called her a whore.

Ms McCready praised the hundreds of servicewomen who have spoken out since her daughter’s death and urged the Army to root out their abusers.

“This causes me sleepless nights to know that they’re still serving. It’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to think this is still going on.

“All I want now is for action, for real action to be taken and to continue with the change and continue speaking up”.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said “the Army and MoD have undertaken to carefully analyse and assess all of HM Coroner’s findings into the tragic death of Gunner Jaysley-Louise Beck.

“There is no place for bullying, harassment, or discrimination in the military. This government is totally committed to making the reforms that are needed to stamp out inappropriate behaviour and hold people to account.”

On Tuesday the head of the Army, General Sir Roly Walker, told MPs “I absolutely recognise that we still have work to do. There are some recurring themes which we are addressing. Self-evidently, there continues to be a prevalence of bullying, harassment, and discrimination within our ranks.

“We have to recognise that there are some cultural and structural barriers still.”

Labour was the party that created the welfare state. Now it is intent on cutting it back.

And in Liz Kendall, the government has found a Labour work and pensions secretary clearly entirely comfortable in going harder on benefit cuts than any of her Conservative predecessors since 2015, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

When I ask her about that, she is unrepentant and unfazed by colleagues’ criticisms.

“I am going to be a Labour work and pensions secretary who fixes a broken system,” she said, “who says to people who’ve been written off and denied chances and choices that we believe in them…

“I am cross, because I’ve seen in my own constituency people written off to a life that is not the life they hoped for themselves or their children or their families.

“I want to fix it. And that’s what I’m determined to do.”

This, then, is the moral case for reform that she and the prime minister have talked about in recent weeks.

And on Tuesday, Ms Kendall outlined reforms designed to reduce those claiming the main disability, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to lose personal independence payments (PIP) if they suffer from milder mental health conditions and less severe physical difficulties.

Read more: Further benefit cuts not ruled out

The target is to save £5bn from a disability benefits bill for working-age people set to balloon by over £20bn to £75bn by the end of the decade.

Ask some in Labour and they will privately acknowledge and argue this is but a drop in the ocean, with one insider telling me this week they didn’t think the reforms went far enough.

“I don’t think people have clocked the size of the numbers going on here,” they said. Look at the public finances and you can see why.

While the Labour Party clearly talked about welfare reform in its manifesto, it never signalled it would make these sorts of cuts to the benefits bill. But the environment has changed.

Growth is sluggish, which many businesses – and the opposition – blame on tax rises in the October budget, while the cost of government borrowing is on the rise.

The chancellor now finds herself with a hole in the public finances to the tune of £9.9bn, which she has to fill if she is to fulfil her self-imposed fiscal rule that day-to-day government spending must be funded through tax receipts – not borrowing – by 2029/30.

She was crystal clear to me in our conversation for the Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast that she was not going to loosen her fiscal rules – although many MPs think she should.

She was also clear she wasn’t coming back with more tax rises. Instead it will be spending cuts, and welfare is the first wave, with a spending squeeze across Whitehall departments expected in the Spring Statement.

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Sir Keir Starmer told me last week that his plans to reform the state, with thousands of job cuts already signalled in NHS England and benefit cuts, that there will be “no return to austerity”.

His hope is that reform – be it through technology or efficiency savings – can mean public services are maintained even if rates of spending growth are reduced.

It may not feel like that for those who are at the sharp end of the £5bn of benefit cuts coming down the track.

Liz Kendall would not rule out further cuts to the welfare bill further down the line in an interview with Sky News on Tuesday, which will make many in her party nervous with some MPs and ministers concerned about the motivations of the government in its overhaul of the benefits system.

“The intellectual question hasn’t been answered here: is this about principled reform or is it a cost-saving exercise?,” one cabinet source told me on Tuesday.

“There are some concerns this doesn’t fix the issues around welfare but rather is about finding quick savings.”

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There will be unease among MPs, unions and charities as the Labour Party moves onto traditional Tory territory with welfare cuts as a strapped Labour government looks for savings. It is uncomfortable terrain.

“I have to say these are Conservative policies that Labour MPs will be voting for,” the former Tory work and pensions secretary Baroness Coffey told me on Tuesday.

“Overall, I think a lot of Labour MPs will be very unhappy about what they heard today [but] I think the Conservatives will support a considerable amount of that because, as I say, a lot of this was Conservative policy. We didn’t have time to do the legislation, unfortunately, towards the end of the parliament.”

Sir Keir Starmer has the majority to bring in these changes, but cutting the benefits of those living with disabilities will be controversial in the Labour movement even if the measures are more popular with the wider public.

As one veteran Labour MP put it to me: “This is one of these issues that come back to bite later.”

The devil will be in the detail, and for now, hundreds of thousands of benefits recipients don’t know if they will still be eligible for the main disability benefit – personal independence payments – in the coming months, with the government yet to outline where the £5bn of savings will be found.

It is an anxious time for those who rely on the welfare state. How long a shadow these reforms will cast over Sir Keir’s domestic agenda is hard to tell – but these reforms look set to become his hardest sell.

Teenagers are routinely seeing inappropriate violent or sexual content, “doom-scrolling” and being contacted by strangers online, according to an exclusive survey for Sky News.

More than 1,000 young people aged 14 to 17 in Darlington schools told us what they see and experience online when looking at apps commonly used by teenagers.

Their answers raise troubling questions about whether government and tech companies are doing enough to protect children online amid a growing debate among parents and campaigners about how far to restrict children’s access to smartphones and social media.

Of those surveyed, 40% spent at least six hours a day online – the equivalent of a school day. One in five said they spent upwards of eight hours a day on their phones.

Some of the findings in the under-16 group were striking, including that 75% had been contacted by strangers through social media and online gaming.

Over half (55%) of the Year 10 students, aged 14 to 15, had seen sexually explicit or violent content that was inappropriate for their age.

Concerningly, a large proportion of them (50%) said this always or usually came up on social media apps without them searching for it – suggesting it is driven by algorithms.

Doom-scrolling is the act of spending an excessive amount of time online consuming negative news or social media content, often without stopping.

The survey represents a snapshot of teenagers in one town in the UK, but resonates more widely.

The teenagers said they wanted their voices to be heard in the debate about online safety. While they did not favour a social media or smartphone ban, many wanted tougher controls on the content they see.

When asked if they were in favour of social media companies doing more to protect under 16s from seeing explicit or harmful content, 50% were in favour and 14% against.

‘It’s quite horrific’

Sky News was invited to film a focus group of under-16s from different schools discussing the results at St Aidan’s Academy in Darlington, hosted by Labour MP Lola McEvoy, whose office carried out the research.

Jacob Lea, who is 15, said among the things he had seen on social media were “gore, animal abuse, car crashes, everything related to death, torture”.

He said: “It’s quite horrific. A lot of the things that I’ve seen that I shouldn’t have, have not been searched by me directly and have been shown to me without me wanting to.

“Most of this stuff pops up on social media, Instagram Reels, TikTok, sometimes on YouTube.

“It’s like a roulette, you can go online and see entertainment, because there’s always a risk of seeing racism, sexism and 18+ explicit content.”

Matthew Adams, also 15, said he spends six to seven hours a day online, before school and late into the evening – and up to nine hours on weekends, gaming and messaging with friends.

“After school, the only time I take a break is when I’m eating or talking to someone. It can turn into addiction,” he said.

He also said inappropriate content was unprompted. “I’ve seen a varied spectrum of things – sexually explicit content, graphic videos, gory photos and just upsetting images,” he added.

“Mostly with the violence it’s on Instagram Reels, with sexually explicit content it’s more Snapchat and TikTok.”

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‘It can be sexual stuff’

Summer Batley, 14, said: “I see unwanted content about getting into a summer body and how you should starve yourself.

“It just pops up randomly without searching anything. I reported it, but it keeps coming up.”

Many of the group had been contacted by strangers. Summer said: “I have, and a lot of my friends have as well. They can just randomly come up on Snapchat and TikTok and you don’t know who they are, and it’s quite worrying, they’re probably like 40 years old.”

Olivia Bedford, 15, said: “I’ve been added to group chat with hundreds of people sending images like dead bodies, gore.

“I try to leave but there’s so many people, I don’t know who has added me, and I keep getting re-added. It can be sexual stuff or violent stuff. It can be quite triggering for people to see stuff like that quite damaging to your mental health.”

Asked what she disliked online, Briony Heljula, 14, said: “Involvement with older people, people who aren’t my friends and that I don’t know. It’s very humiliating when other people are commenting and being rude; and it’s quite horrible.”

Fewer than a third of those surveyed (31%) said they were always asked their age before viewing inappropriate content.

When asked about their age on social media, around a third said they usually pretended to be older. But in the focus group, teenagers were clear that they had seen upsetting and disturbing content when they used their real age.

Parents ‘can’t tackle this alone’

Ms McEvoy described the findings as “shocking” and said “the safety of our children online is one of the defining issues of our time”.

“Parents and teachers are doing their best, but they can’t tackle this alone,” she added.

“We need enforceable age verification, better content controls, and stronger legislation to ensure children can go online without fear.”

The Online Safety Act, which was passed by MPs in October 2023, is intended to protect users – particularly children – from illegal and harmful content.

It is being implemented this year, with tough fines for platforms which do not prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content coming in this summer.

A private members’ bill debated by MPs earlier this month proposed that the internet “age of consent” for giving data to social media companies be raised from 13 to 16, but it was watered down after the government made clear it would not support the move.

Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok were contacted for comment, but did not provide an on-the-record statement on the comments by the teenagers.

The companies insist they take issues of safety and age-appropriate content seriously.

Instagram is rolling out Teen Accounts, which it says will limit who can contact teenagers and the content they can see.

Snapchat and TikTok say on their websites that accounts for under-16s are set to private.