UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Digital Impact

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for calling this important and timely debate on the very day of the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. I also pay tribute to the charity that she founded, FILMCLUB, which we were discussing recently. It helps children in this country and across other parts of the world to gain a wide experience of film, not just of Steven Spielberg but also Godard and Truffaut, and not just American films but German, French and Asian ones. I am grateful to my own father for taking me to see Russian and French movies and for the joy I have had through my life through seeing such things, which have had so much meaning for me, so I feel that is a huge achievement for my noble friend.

I begin by talking about the positive side of the technology that we are discussing today. Last night I attended the launch of a new Baby Buddy app at the Royal College of Midwives. I have downloaded it myself and I hope some of your Lordships might wish to do so, or maybe suggest to their daughters or granddaughters that they do so. I was speaking to a midwife who helped develop it, and for instance if a mother has difficulty encouraging her baby to breastfeed, there is a video they can download. The midwife explained that by using this video she could very simply—and in a much better way than in the past—show mothers how to help the child to get to the breast. The app also involves using social media, and young mothers spoke about its value in helping them to feel connected, so some of this technology has immense benefits for children and families.

Maybe it is also a good day to remember the work of the late Baroness Thatcher, because she introduced the Children Act 1989, which enshrined in British law the paramountcy of the best interests of the child. This has been foundational. When the noble Lord, Lord Laming, talks about children’s legislation that comes to the House, he says that if only we thoroughly implemented the Children Act 1989 we would need none of this, so the late Baroness needs to be remembered in this discussion.

Finally, turning to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, I think of the institutions which have drawn strength from or been founded on that convention, particularly UNICEF. It works in the developing world to ensure that families who are starving receive nourishment, that children are properly registered and that programmes of immunisation take place. It is currently focusing, particularly in the last year, on hunger in the developing world and the trafficking of children. I also think of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and particularly the work of the first commissioner in his championing of the needs of families who are detained in Yarl’s Wood immigration centre following their failure to seek asylum successfully. We successfully campaigned on that. There is also current work on the sexual exploitation of children, investigating—which is particularly interesting for me—children who go missing from children’s homes and from care. It is therefore right that we have a chance today to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I was taken by the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Farmer and Lord Framlingham, and their concerns about the disappearance of the father from family life. I was troubled recently to read OECD statistics showing that the percentage of children with fathers living away from home, after living in the home, is increasing in this country, and that in about 10 years we would overtake the United States in that regard; Germany will be about stable, France is accelerating a bit. This is an important issue to keep in mind. The research evidence is clear, particularly regarding young men from poorer backgrounds, whose outcomes are far poorer if they do not have contact with their father. There are many circumstances in which it is best that they do not have such contact. It is important to keep in mind that many lone-parent families do extremely well. However, the research shows that fathers’ absence from their sons is a real challenge to the country. That applies also to daughters, and the research shows that they do better if their father takes interest in how they are doing in their school work. I am therefore grateful to the noble Lords, and hope that perhaps we can meet at some point to discuss the use of mentoring for young people. If we cannot help fathers to stay in touch, at least we can ensure that young people have a mentor who can help them to move forward, particularly through adolescence.

I should like to concentrate my remarks on the development of children and the need for adults close to children to feel comfortable with having conversations about this issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, hit the nail on the head; many of us feel really uncomfortable discussing this matter—I certainly do because I know so little about it. Adults need to be made to feel comfortable; children need to be able to talk to them about the issues arising from their use of the internet.

I begin with child development. Humanity is unique in the animal world in its total dependence upon its parents from birth. Some animals are ready to walk and most, quickly after birth, can look after themselves and move on. We have a very long period of nurturance. As a perinatal mental health psychiatrist pointed out to me last night, it takes 25 years for the process of neurodevelopment of the brain to come to a halt. There is rapid development of the brain around the period of birth and for the first two or three years, and then again in adolescence the neurological make-up changes greatly. It is therefore important to realise that we need to allow children to have a proper and long childhood. For instance, in Scandinavia, it is normal for children to start school at seven and spend a lot more time with their families—learning, for example, to swim and ride a bicycle. They then go to school at seven and quickly pick up the reading and writing and do very well. Indeed, in Finland, their performance is among the best in the world. There is real pressure on us all to try to speed up our children. I would say: give them time.

Consider children who are in trouble in the criminal courts, which may see a 17 year-old who is huge, six feet and four inches, with big fists and a deep voice, but who emotionally may be like a 12 year-old. Many will have a history of trauma and being in care. Do not look at children just from the outside and think, “This is a grown-up person”. I spoke to a businessman who runs an internet service provider. He said of this debate, “Children know; they can sort this out”. Clearly, many children are going to be technically savvy and can easily outwit us in terms of using the internet. However, that does not mean that they are mature adults.

Recent inquiry reports on the sexual exploitation of girls in Rochdale highlighted the responses of a few policemen in that area. A 13 year-old girl was having sexual intercourse with a number of different men—inappropriate relationships—and the response of those policemen was, “Well, she knows what she is doing. She wants to be doing it”. I may not have that precisely right and it was the response of just a few policemen, but it demonstrates a failure to understand child development and recognise that we as adults have responsibility to recognise the immaturity of children, which changes over time. I therefore very much welcome what the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is doing in terms of introducing iRights and recognising that we as adults constantly let children freely play around the internet. We need to give them guidance, boundaries and so on.

That brings me to the second aspect on which I should like to focus—the ability of adults to have conversations about this matter, particularly in schools. A while ago, I attended a seminar on child protection and the internet. I was struck by an expert who works with children in schools. He said that it was important to have the sort of protections that I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, will talk about in her report next month. I very much welcome her maiden speech and her expertise in this area. However, he felt that it was at least as important—possibly even more—for children to talk with adults in school about their use of social networks and the difficulties they face. When thinking about the new curriculum and PSHE, we need to equip those teachers in order to have those conversations. More generally, we need to train all school staff and teachers to deal comfortably with difficult issues such as this and others, including difficult sexual matters.

I was struck by a recent article in the Sunday Times talking about the development of Teach First and the launch of a new initiative. Research showed that 60% of Teach First teachers stayed on after five years. That was good news and many are becoming head teachers. However, stories were also told of, for example, a teacher being locked in a cupboard by the children when he went to fetch paper. Another teacher, when his back was turned, was showered with the paper coverings from McDonald’s straws. The teachers have six weeks of training and are wholly unequipped to cope with situations such as this and have to work out their own ways of dealing with them. One teacher said, “I just try to praise them as much as possible and ignore the bad behaviour; and that seems to work”. We really need to think about how to equip our teachers better and I should be grateful if the Minister would ask the noble Lord, Lord Nash, in particular to think about Teach First and academies, and how he can create communities of teachers, because it is important that they do not feel isolated. In Teach First there are many opportunities for alumni to get together and talk about their experiences, particularly challenging pupils, and get advice from other teachers on how to deal with those situations. There should be a sense of connection because we are inviting these Teach First teachers to go to the roughest schools with the most challenged teachers. They are given the least teacher training and we need to think of innovative ways in which to ensure that they get the support they need.

Then there is the approach that we have seen over many years and has been found to be most effective, particularly when working with challenging or challenged children—oh! I see that I have passed my time, so I will write to the Minister.