Children’s Rights

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to develop a cross-departmental action plan to address the conclusions and recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child's assessment of the United Kingdom in 2016, in order to ensure that all public bodies act to protect and promote children’s rights.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, we remain strongly committed to delivering a framework of actions across government and with key organisations. We aim to continue to embed the importance of children’s rights in policy-making across Whitehall. We have successfully delivered the majority of actions, including establishing a UNCRC action group and launching a children’s rights training package and impact assessment template across the Civil Service. We are on track to deliver outstanding actions, including extending the UNCRC to Guernsey.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that optimistic response. Does he agree that children’s rights to health, education, justice, security and so on are of supreme importance? Does he further agree that although these areas do not come under one department but go across departments, only the Department for Education has a team of people working on children’s rights? Would it not make sense if every department had a team of people working on children’s rights so that they could talk to each other and develop a coherent plan? We have been criticised by the UN for not having such a plan. Is it not time for action?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we do not agree with the substantial machinery of government changes recommended by the UNCRC but we work across government all the time. I have to draw on many government departments for most of the answers that I give to noble Lords in this House. We are well joined up and we continue to emphasise that through initiatives such as the Civil Service learning programme which we introduced last year.