Covid-19

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Joy Morrissey

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con) [V]]

I welcome the Government’s decision to prioritise the reopening of schools on 8 March, and that should mean that every child is back in school. According to a study by Co-SPACE and the University of Oxford, there has been overwhelming harm to children from lockdown restrictions and school closures, particularly to their mental health. Child abuse reports to the NSPCC have risen by 79%, and anxiety and depression have increased substantially, as have self-harm, eating disorders and thoughts of suicide, according to the Royal College of Paediatrics, Ofsted and Reachwell. Even when the country was being bombed during world war two, schools remained open. We have no historical precedent for the damaging effect that school closures have had on our children’s education and future.

Since parents have had to shoulder much of the responsibility for teaching during the pandemic, please will the Government commit to consulting representatives of parents’ and children’s groups, as well as teachers and unions, to develop detailed plans for our children to catch up on a lost year of education? Only parents know the full extent of the damage that this lockdown has inflicted on our children, and parents’ voices and parental choice need to be prioritised. We need to be prepared to consider radical options, including summer learning camps and even giving parents the choice to allow their child to repeat the whole academic year.

I urge all MPs to meet parents’ groups—including, for example, UsforThem—to hear about the damaging effects of lockdown and why it is essential for children to return to school. In that parent group, one parent in particular has shared her story with MPs, telling of the emotional and psychological effects the lockdown has had on all her children. She begged MPs to consider the long-term mental health consequences of the lockdown. One of her children developed Tourette’s syndrome in the first lockdown, and this weekend that same child tried to take their own life. They did not want to live in a world under lockdown any more, and at the A&E, the attending physician said that they were seeing an increase in children presenting with mental health disorders during this lockdown. She asked me to share her story today because it is important that parents speak out on behalf of their children and the effects that this lockdown has had.

Depending on the level of trauma, particularly for primary schoolchildren during the pandemic, some children will lose their speech and language ability altogether. We saw this during the first lockdown. Children from every background will be manifesting signs of extreme stress and anxiety upon their return to school, such as obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, anger, aggression and self-harm. I urge that schools in England be given additional funds, ring-fenced, for mental health support for children and for increased levels of teaching staff to help to provide mental and emotional support for children.

Finally, every school I have spoken to during the pandemic has begged the Government and media to stop their negative reporting of the pandemic—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I have allowed the hon. Lady to exceed her time in the hope that she was going to conclude, but I am afraid that I have to stop her there.