The mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey is calling on the government to introduce a ban on mobile phones in schools – a move she says will not only safeguard children, but also improve their behaviour and engagement in class.

In February 2023, Brianna, 16, was stabbed to death by two 15-year-olds after being lured to a park in Warrington.

In the lead-up to the attack, her killers had spent time on the dark web. At the same time, Brianna was also trapped online, struggling with a phone addiction.

Her mother Esther Ghey’s Phone Free Education campaign is driven by her personal experiences as a parent and the impact Brianna’s phone use had on her education.

“All the arguments that me and Brianna had were down to her phone use,” Esther said.

“But even in school, she had issues and I used to have phone calls from the school saying that Brianna wouldn’t put her phone away.”

Brianna, who was transgender, struggled with an eating disorder and also self-harmed.

Her mother says the constant time she spent online exacerbated those issues, while impacting her behaviour at school, where she had 120 safeguarding logs and 116 behaviour incidents recorded by her teachers.

“It was so difficult as a parent, because I felt in one way that I was failing and then in another way, and this is really difficult for me to speak about, I was so annoyed with Brianna,” she recalled.

“I thought, why can’t you just go to school, get your head down and just focus on your education, because this is important.

“Only now, after two years of being immersed in this world, do I realise that actually, it’s so much harder than that.”

Research by the Children’s Commission has shown that 79% of secondary schools are still allowing pupils to bring their mobile phones into school, and even into classrooms.

How phone ban is working at Brianna’s old school

Esther is campaigning for government guidance on phones to become statutory, with funding also set aside for the equipment to help schools implement the ban, arguing the lack of legislation is “setting children up to fail”.

At Birchwood Community High School in Warrington, where Brianna was a pupil, they introduced a ban on phones last September.

At the beginning of the day, pupils turn off their phones and place them in pouches, which are locked. At the end of the school day, the pouches are then unlocked.

The headteacher, Emma Mills, said introducing these measures has come with several benefits.

“It’s had an impact in all areas of school, and it’s actually had a really positive impact in ways that I didn’t foresee,” said Ms Mills.

“Attendance has improved this year. In terms of behaviour, behaviour has improved. We’ve had no permanent exclusions this year in school, which is actually the first time since I’ve been headteacher in six years, there’s been no permanent exclusion.”

This summer, the school also saw its best-ever GCSE results in the core subjects of Science, maths, and English.

‘They can live without their phones’

For Ms Mills, another significant change has been the atmosphere in the school.

“They’re not as worried, they’re not as distracted,” Ms Mills said.

“They’ve realised that they can live without their phones. Something else we’ve really noticed is that it’s a bit louder in school at breaks and lunch times. It’s because they’re talking more, they’re interacting more, and they’re communicating more.”

The positive impact of a ban at Brianna’s old school has served as encouragement to Esther, who has written an open letter addressed to Sir Keir Starmer and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, asking for government support.

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High-profile signatories include the actress Kate Winslet, as well as actor and film producer Stephen Graham.

For Esther, who will deliver the letter to 10 Downing Street next month, the campaign is not just Brianna’s legacy, but also creating societal change.

“I think it’s important that we teach young people to live in the real world,” she said.

“It’s going to impact society at one point and I think this small amount of investment in students now will have a massive impact in the future.”

Police across the UK dealt with more than 3,000 protests over three months this summer – more than three times as many as just two years ago.

There were 3,081 protests this June, July, and August across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council have revealed.

Last summer, when riots were raging across the country following the Southport murders, police dealt with 2,942 protests. In 2023, it was 928.

The summer months this year have been dominated by widespread demonstrations, some against the ban on Palestine Action and others against housing asylum seekers in hotels.

‘Increasing tension’

Gavin Stephens, chairman of the NPCC, said it was clear that there has been “more community tension and more division”, adding that “we all have a responsibility, policing included, to set the tone”.

“Anybody in a leadership position should think about how we can reduce and defuse tensions and not sow division,” Mr Stephens said.

The senior official said protests this year were a “chronic pressure” for police compared to last year’s disorder, which was acute.

“This is not talking about the volume of protest, and this is not a commentary from policing on people’s right to protest peacefully,” he said.

“We absolutely support that in a democracy, but we do know that there is a climate of increasing tension and polarity in what we’re seeing.”

He is convinced communities will be able to reunite and “reset”, and said claims that the UK is on the verge of civil disobedience are “exaggerated”.

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It comes as policing leaders are pushing for a major restructuring of forces in England and Wales, hoping to bring more powers to a national level.

They also want to overhaul how funding is calculated for each force.

A government white paper on potential changes to the service is expected to be published in the coming months.

The total cost of relocating Afghan nationals to the UK is estimated to be more than £2bn, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO).

This includes 7,355 people eligible for resettlement in the UK under the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) scheme, which was launched for those whose personal information was leaked in a February 2022 data breach.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) estimates the cost of resettling people in the UK through the ARR scheme to be around £850m, not including legal costs or compensation claims.

But the ministry does not know the exact cost resulting from the data breach resettlement scheme because it did not separately identify the costs in its accounting system, the NAO said.

It added that the MoD had not provided enough evidence to give the NAO “confidence in its estimate of £850m in relation to past and future costs”.

The total cost of all Afghan resettlement activity between 2021 and 2029 – including the ARR – is expected to exceed £2bn.

About £563m of this has already been spent on Afghan resettlement schemes between 2021-22, for those who helped the British military during the war, and 2024-25, for those put at risk because of the data breach. The MoD expects to spend a further £1.5bn by March 2029.

Data breach undiscovered for 18 months

The cost skyrocketed due to the creation of the ARR scheme and those eligible under it, which came after an unnamed British official accidentally emailed details of 18,714 Afghan nationals who applied to be relocated to the UK under the previous scheme outside a secure government system.

He sent the email in February 2022 in an attempt to verify information, believing the dataset to only contain around 150 rows of information, but it actually contained around 33,000.

The MoD discovered the leak in August 2023 after seeing details of the emails had been posted by a Facebook user.

UK officials sent around 1,800 ARAP applicants in Pakistan a warning via WhatsApp to say their data may have been breached.

Shortly after, two journalists inquired about the breach, causing then-defence secretary Ben Wallace to seek a court order, with the High Court granting a super-injunction. The super-injunction was only lifted in July 2025.

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In April 2024, the government secretly launched the ARR scheme specifically for those whose personal information was leaked in the data breach, who were ineligible for other resettlement schemes and who were at significant risk of reprisal by the ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The MoD did not record separately who was resettled via the ARR scheme, arguing this was to maintain the secrecy of the ARR scheme while the super-injunction was in place, preventing disclosure of both the data breach and the existence of the injunction itself.

£400m spent on resettling Afghans affected by breach

The ministry estimates that £400m of the £850m estimated total cost of resettling Afghan nationals via the ARR scheme had been spent by July 2025, but the NAO said it had not been provided with sufficient evidence to support either estimate.

In early July 2025, the government closed the ARR scheme to new applicants.

The NAO report was welcomed by Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, who said: “After the High Court super-injunction was lifted earlier this year, confusion still remains over the reported £850m historic and future costs relating to the breach, with the MoD unable to provide sufficient assurance over their numbers.

“This figure does not include all legal costs or compensation claims, which currently remain unknown.”

He added that the Public Affairs Committee would be examining this issue in its inquiry next week.