Relationship Education in Schools

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell]

We will publish our RSHE guidance as soon as possible, and it will be focused on keeping children’s wellbeing at its heart.

Education can support young people to develop positive attitudes towards people who are different from them and to exercise critical thinking when they encounter situations involving harmful behaviour and harmful sexual violence. These are conversations that we need to have collectively; without stigmatising boys or treating them as the problem, we must recognise that good relationship skills benefit everybody—boys and girls, men and women.

Our intention is that the revised guidance will spark a culture change in the delivery of RSHE and that it will signal our high aspirations for RSHE. We recognise that schools and teachers need support to have these conversations with young people, and we are exploring how best to provide that support in the current tight financial circumstances. That work is a central part of the Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. We cannot achieve that without a significant culture change around equality and our conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Culture change goes beyond schools, but it can germinate from the ideas that children are exposed to in schools, the ways they learn to relate to those who are different from them and the sense of purpose and belonging that schools can provide.

I cannot emphasise how much I welcome the renewed focus on violence against women and girls following the release of the new Netflix drama “Adolescence”, which many Members mentioned. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for providing the opportunity to continue that conversation in this debate.

It is not a new issue for any of us. In 2020, Everyone’s Invited started to collect the testimonies of young people who had experienced sexual violence and sexual abuse, and in 2021, Ofsted published its review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges. Everyone’s Invited has shown us that rape culture and misogyny are increasingly appearing in primary schools, and we will publish a new tackling violence against women and girls strategy later this year, which will set out what further actions we will take as well as the progress that we have made so far.

Turning the tide on misogyny will not be a simple task, and we all need to keep talking about it. We need to keep learning, we need to keep challenging and we need to ensure that boys and young men remain part of that conversation.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

We do not have enough time for the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) to wind up the debate, I am afraid, but I will put the Question.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered relationship education in schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 15th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

Again, that is not my role within government, but the hon. Lady knows that the Prime Minister was extremely eager to come to Parliament and explain the basis of the decision to take the drone strike of 21 August, and he did so on the first available opportunity.

In terms of setting frameworks, it is important of course to treat every case on its merits. In relation to the legal position, as in relation to a political decision making process, each instance will be different and each must be considered on its own facts.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

The recent drone strike in Syria was described by the Prime Minister as a “new departure” and a first in modern times. The Prime Minister said he is

“happy to look at what other ways there may be of making sure these sorts of acts are scrutinised”.—[Official Report, 7 September 2015; Vol. 599, c. 31.]

Given that any action must be necessary and proportionate to meet the key legal tests, will the Attorney General update us on the discussions between the Government and the Intelligence and Security Committee on reviewing the action and any framework that will be put in place to ensure proper scrutiny in future?

[The Attorney General]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her new responsibilities and wish her well in them. I have no doubt that the new Chairman of the ISC will be discussing with the Government what inquiries they wish to take forward. On my engagement in the process, as the hon. Lady understands, the Law Officers convention makes it clear that legal advice is not disclosed outside government, nor in the generality of cases is even the fact of legal advice disclosed, but she knows, too, that in relation to this incident I thought it was right and proper that the fact of legal advice having been given should be disclosed, and it was. I hope she will understand how difficult it is to go any further than that without undermining the good reasons that I believe lie behind the LOC.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Off the top of my head I think there are about 10,300 in our prisons at the moment. We are making progress, as I explained earlier, not only with individual compulsory prisoner transfer agreements such as the one that we have already negotiated with Albania, but with more effective use of the European Union prisoner transfer agreement. Something like 200 cases under that agreement are currently being considered for deportation by the Home Office.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

A Bar Council and ComRes poll published this morning shows that more than 70% of the British public are concerned that the legal aid cuts will result in injustice, and lawyers in Newcastle believe that they will increase costs to the taxpayer. Will the Secretary of State meet me and a delegation from Newcastle to listen to concerns on that vital issue?