Children who are left by their parents in front of the television or computer games often lack the basic life skill of being able to communicate properly, a former chief inspector of prisons warned today.

Lord Ramsbotham said many children were not ready for school because computer games and television had prevented them from learning how to interact with each other and adults.

Speaking in the House of Lords, the crossbencher said many parents did not seem to understand the damage that was being done to their children by entertaining them with electronic games.

He said: "There is no doubt that the lifestyle that is connected with children being dumped in front of the television or given computer games or some other means of alleged entertainment, neither of which involve parents, in fact is damaging to their ability to communicate, which will be in fact a lack of a life skill.

"It's not helped by the fact that parents don't seem to understand the damage that is being done to a child's development by being exposed to all this stuff that comes to them at the flick of a switch or button and it includes preventing them from being ready for education when the time comes."

Lord Ramsbotham's comments came as peers debated a Private Member's Bill to limit the access of children to adult content on the internet.

The legislation, which was receiving its Second Reading in the Lords today, was brought by the fellow crossbencher Baroness Howe of Idlicote.

She said while Prime Minister David Cameron had worked hard to secure a voluntary agreement from internet service providers to protect children online by establishing online filters, new laws were needed to ensure only adults could access pornography through a proper system of age verification.

Lady Howe told peers it was necessary that ISPs ensured it was always an adult who disabled filters designed to block over-18 content.

Putting forward her Online Safety Bill, Lady Howe said: "Proper age verification is defined by online gambling takes place at the point of which the person confirms they wish to access adult content.

"Rather than age verifying the person who elects to disable the filters, the industry wants to age verify the person in whose name the account is held. This is a problem because evidence suggests that parents often leave the set-up stage to their more technologically literate children."