Relationships and Sex Education

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Yes, we are keen to get on and do this, and the plans at the moment are that the results of the consultation response will be published on GOV.UK within 12 weeks of the consultation closing. We will make an announcement on the draft regulations and draft statutory guidance at the start of next year. At that point, we will, if appropriate, make clear any changes to the draft statutory guidance and regulations prior to parliamentary debates, during the passing of the associated regulations.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful that the Government are going to make progress in this important area. I thank the Minister for spelling out the content of the teacher education aspect, which has partially answered the question that I wanted to ask. Some of us have raised on a number of occasions the issue of the increase in violence and harassment against young girls in schools. In particular, there is the fact that a lot of young boys get their sex education from pornography online. They are getting sex education, but it may not be the appropriate sex education. This issue of violence is becoming endemic, and I wonder whether we are a little bit mealy-mouthed in all this in talking about internet safety and harms. In the content that the Minister quoted, he talked about illicit internet information, or something. Should not we call a spade a shovel? Perhaps I am influenced by listening to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles. We are talking about a serious increase in pornography available at school level. I hope that people recognise how difficult it will be to tackle. If we do not make it clear that these sorts of issues are included, I wonder whether some people may miss it as an important aspect.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. The key point that I would like to make is that this is the first change to this part of education for 18 years, which is extraordinary when you think that 18 years ago very few children owned a mobile phone, and Facebook did not even exist—so this is a major step forward to bring us into the 21st century. The Secretary of State said today that this would be kept under review every three years or so, to make sure that we were keeping on top of any further developments that occur in the online world. I gave the noble Lord, Lord Storey, a taste of some of the things that we are including, although I did not give the whole list. To give the noble Baroness some reassurance, it includes strengthened content around areas such as relationship focus and bullying, including cyberbullying. We are very alert to this—it is so important.

I can tell you a terrible story in my own life as an academy sponsor. Last year, in one of our schools a young girl of 16 went on a date with a boy. They ended up in bed together, and the next day the boy boasted on Facebook, and the girl was so mortified that she hanged herself—dead. That is the reality. That boy will have to carry that for the rest of his life, and a young girl lost her life. So there is no one more passionate about this than me.