Children and Families Bill

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a film maker because it is in that capacity that I have spent the past 18 months making a documentary film about teenagers and the internet. I wish to speak only to Amendment 233, which is the narrowest of the amendments in the group, but in my view it is important and I have added my name to it.

The amendment is very modest, but within it lies the suggestion that at this time young people need additional help to navigate a world in which the very concept and experience of growing up has changed completely. It is a new and confusing world in which videos featuring beheadings occupy the same space as a homework assignment. The intense sexualisation of media and merchandising, the ubiquitous presence of hardcore pornography and the pressures of 24/7 connectivity are not simply the stuff of the Sunday papers. These are palpable pressures in the real-world lives of young people, and they have real-world impacts. Young people mirror pornographic scenarios denuded of the concept of consent and, most importantly in my view, of intimacy of any kind. They adopt a culture of anonymity that teaches cruelty without responsibility.

The working group should pay particular attention to the role of the internet and social media in sex and relationship education and in online bullying and harassment. It should do so with one eye on the particular problem of young people with learning difficulties, who are extremely vulnerable in this unfettered world. It should address the specific question of the demands placed on young women of body image, sexual norms and its relationship to self-harm. I have read much of the research and it is compelling.

The Government’s stated position is that the current, 2000 curriculum provides a good foundation on which teachers can build. But it has not been updated in 13 years. In that time, the ways in which young people access information, learn about sex and negotiate their interpersonal relationships has profoundly changed. The advent of the smartphone has been a game-changer. It is not simply about the internet and computers; the smartphone ensures that the adult world, in its full beauty and abject horror, is in the hands of children. It is a device which ensures that, once in trouble, a child finds it very difficult to get away. It is a personal device which effectively means that parents can no longer reasonably expect to fully know what their child is accessing or who is accessing their child.

The Minister has also said that the Government,

“trust teachers to deliver the education that pupils need and adjust it for the modern world”.

Teachers are crying out for a new level of information, uninflected and up to date. As someone who has conducted hundreds of hours of interviews over the last year, with some of the most eminent academics on this subject, I have had access to the research. I have also done hundreds of hours of interviews with young people. It is beyond any single teacher’s capability to collate information in a meaningful way and in an up-to-date manner, for the new world order that presents so many problems for young people. I cannot imagine any reasonable grounds on which the Government would refuse to gather the most recent research and best practice, and put it in a form where it is easily accessible to teachers and parents.

I quote the Minister again:

“Technology is moving very fast, and we do not think that constant changes to the regulations and top-down diktats are the way to deal with this”.—[Official Report, 30/1/13; col. 1580].

It is moving very fast. Very soon, we will have an entire generation that has learned its sexual norms from hardcore pornography; friendship rules from Facebook, and self-image from Pinterest and the rest. Of the many professionals I spoke to, not one—either technological or educational—suggested a list of sex regulations or diktats. However, hundreds of adults—parents and professionals—say that they feel more equipped to guide the young when they have the authority of robust information.

I have been absent from this Chamber during Committee on this Bill, so I have had the singular privilege of reading nine days of debate in one weekend. One of the exciting, or perhaps encouraging, things—and noble Lords may not realise this—is that the conversation was littered with the words “holistic”, “whole child”, “whole family” and “child-centred”. I suggest that this modest amendment sits very well within the deliberations of the Bill and reflects that attitude. The only possible reason for rejecting it, because it marks such a small step that needs so little in the way of resources, is the fear of what the working group it would create might recommend. I would ask the Minister to find a way of gathering the guidance, even if there is then a further debate and a fight about what we might then do with it.

I will not quote the many supporters of this idea because others have already done so, but I take the opportunity to say that all the research I have done and the people I have gathered on my journey I would be happy to put in the service of the Minister and Her Majesty’s Government.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, I also would like to speak briefly in support of Amendment 233, which was so ably and vividly introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I have a particular responsibility in the Church of England for education, so I am pleased to be able to bring that authority and support, as it were, on behalf of all the schools that I represent. This is a small but important and crucial piece of work.

As has been said, it is interesting to note that the Mothers’ Union, the Children’s Society and a further 70 different organisations which are involved in and have some knowledge of this area all support the proposal. It was a few years ago now, but the board of education that I represent worked with the Sex Education Forum to try to produce some new guidance, but unfortunately that work was not taken up. It is clear from all we have been saying that the purpose of education is not simply to present children who can pass exams, but to create an opportunity for young people to take control of their lives and values, and to realise their hopes through their approach to life. It is a much larger task, and for that social, emotional and spiritual intelligence is important, along with academic prowess. When the chips are down, nothing matters more to us than our relationships and how we form them. As we have just heard described so vividly, this is a new age for people as they form their relationships.

Building a network of friendships and exploring more intimate relationships with particular people are hard tasks for young people today because they have been made extremely complex by the rapid changes in technology. It is in fact some 13 years of revolution since the last guidelines were produced. This is a fascinating world, but it is a jungle, and our young people have to navigate it. A rare consensus seems to be building around the need to update the guidelines, so it is vital that we seize this opportunity. As part of its commitment to addressing these issues, the board of education that I represent has been compiling resources for use in church schools and any other schools to help combat homophobic bullying. That is an important piece of work, but the problems go much wider. Given that, I want to say briefly that we need to get on the case urgently.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, briefly, I lend my support to all three amendments. In their different ways they are designed to do something about which I feel absolutely passionate, which is to make sure that all children and young people, in whatever sort of school they are, have access to high-quality, age-appropriate and up-to-date sex and relationships education. Of course, I always put it the other way around and say “relationships and sex education”, for a reason I shall come to in a moment; that is absolutely critical. We must focus on the need for all young people to understand the importance of healthy relationships. It should serve them as part of their fundamental education going through life.

I have read through all the evidence of what people think at the moment. We have heard it and I do not want to repeat it. We know what the National Association of Head Teachers thinks. We saw the reports of the consultation on PSHE education in March this year and the Mumsnet survey. I will just quote from the Brook survey of 2011, where one in four young people said they did not get any sex and relationships education in schools at all and 26% of those that did said that their SRE teacher was not able to teach it well. I fundamentally believe that relationship education should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum and taught by specialist teachers and others who really understand these things. At the very beginning, I should have declared an interest as vice-president of the charity Relate.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, this is an important amendment. The Refugee Children’s Consortium, a coalition of more than 40 NGOs that are involved in this sphere, is very concerned about this legislation and is looking for changes. Three or four weeks ago, I was with a group of four young people in Cowley in Oxford; 16 years old, three were from Eritrea and one from Somalia. They were so pleased to be at the end of a journey that had taken months, and to have access to education and safety. That was the thing they kept on saying: “We are safe”.

The Children’s Society told me that this is the time of maximum happiness. From that point on, it is all downhill, with 95% of the young people who come there having to go back at the end of a process that in many cases will lead to destitution—the word that we have used quite often. That, of course, has many implications for physical health, as a result of being malnourished and not being able to get access to a doctor. It leads to illegal work, sexual exploitation and all kinds of problems. There must be another way, a more humane and civilised way, of handling vulnerable young people who have all their lives before them. It seems crazy that, at the age of 18, everything should just turn over. Their needs for education and safe housing are basic things. The age of 18 should not be so critical that it makes people destitute. This is a really important amendment and we need to take it seriously. Destitution is not the answer.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, for 21 years I was a lay member of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal. I used to hate it when we had young people of 18 presented to us for deportation. These youngsters had been through school, some of them having come to this country when they were seven, eight or nine years old, but they had no clue how to go through the legal system or get a solicitor—there were free lawyers in those days. It would have been extremely difficult for them to establish a life in their own country again. Many had lost touch with their parents, or their parents had died. They did not know what they would be going back to and, in many cases, did not speak the language. It is incumbent on us—this is maybe part of the social care aspects of the Bill—to see that social services ensure that their immigration status is settled before they are 18, so that when they leave school or are out of the care of the community they know where they stand.