Oral Answers to Questions
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Luke Hall)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and for all of his work on this area. I know that he has been integral to the “I am a Housebuilder” campaign to encourage more women into the building sector. Our apprenticeship diversity champions network is supporting gender representation among employers, and it is good news that STEM starts continue to increase year on year—up 7.5% in the last year—but there is more to do, and I look forward to working closely with him on the issue.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
Damian Hinds
I would encourage our friends and colleagues in the Scottish Government, whoever they may be at the time, to pay close attention to Hilary Cass’s report. I think her work has injected some much-needed common sense into the debate, and we are very grateful to her. This Government will always put the safety of our children first, and that is why the gender questioning guidance we have produced in draft is underpinned by the important principle of parents always being involved in decisions about their children.
BACKBENCH BUSINESS
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) for securing this really important debate, although there is clearly a separate legislative process in Scotland, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) just said. I recognise the support and assistance that she has offered me during my time in this place, and the support from other Members present.
While this debate is England and Wales-focused, it is important to highlight the Scottish perspective. This is not a matter of moral outrage or social conservatism, which is a label that is often used. This, for me, is essentially, fundamentally, about safeguarding. Safeguarding has been a constant in my professional life, from my early days in mental health care and looking after vulnerable people through that lens, right up to working with children and young people in cancer care. The principles are about engendering a broad awareness in an organisation of the kinds of issues that may be faced and the kind of red flags that may be seen. It is a shared responsibility and one, I believe, that everyone in society should participate in. It is not something that we should in any way put at risk.
Awareness has increased in recent years because of misdeeds in religious circles, among sports coaches and teaching staff, and indeed, from my experience, in healthcare, where people have used their position of influence and authority for nefarious purposes. Those who will abuse will find a way, and that is just a matter of fact. Predators will go to great lengths to access those they prey upon.
How have we responded as a society? We have had “stranger danger” education, public awareness, and the introduction of safeguarding legislation and policies. We have dealt with concerns in an open and non-judgmental way. We have set up multi-disciplinary practices through child protection teams and vulnerable adult teams. We have not jumped to conclusions and ascribed labels to individuals, but we have taken the necessary steps to explore any circumstance to ensure that, if there is harm, it is limited and is stopped where that is the case. We have the disclosure and barring service down here and Disclosure Scotland in Scotland to ensure that those with a criminal history of a predatory nature are identified and prevented from entering certain spheres of life.
In my professional life, I have had enhanced disclosure in every single job that I have had. It has never been a particular issue, but there are implications of the use of deed poll to change one’s identity, along with growing concerns about GRC identity changes. On the DBS in particular, I met with an organisation this morning that told me of privacy concerns whereby people who use that method, or indeed deed poll, may be able to circumvent the disclosure of prior history. I suggest that the national insurance number could be used as a constant identifier to deal with that.
But there are other ways that we find out about these nefarious practices: disclosure from the child or the young person themselves, witnesses, evidence and indeed criminal investigation. In that vein, a teacher in Scotland was recently sent to jail for three years for molesting two young boys, one aged 11 and one aged 12. That investigation was peppered with the sexualised language that that teacher used with those young men. Like all predatory behaviour, this was about power, control and manipulation, and it included that sexualised use of language.
In terms of parents and safeguarding, we must look out for changes in the behaviour of the young person—whether they become withdrawn or start to use overly sexualised language. Those are the red flags that are normally identified by professionals working with young people, whether social workers, teachers or indeed healthcare workers. If we introduce the type of language and knowledge that the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge mentioned in her opening remarks—the dice game is utterly shocking; it is dehumanising and reduces sex to the penetrative act—
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
Does this not boil down to the very simple point that knowledge without context or consequence is dangerous? Children at these ages, who are often in doubt about who they are, where they are and what they do, and who are sometimes shy and retiring, are very vulnerable to that knowledge leading them down a road, without the understanding of the context and consequences that will come from the decisions that are made, which they may be too young to judge. If that principle were applied, a lot of what my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) has said would disappear from the curriculum because it would be inappropriate.
Neale Hanvey
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point about capacity. It is simply impossible for someone who is seven to have the ability to comprehend their adult sexual being. It is simply unattainable.
Introducing such sexualised language will camouflage or mask the red flags and that is dangerous. There is no place for adult sexualised language in pre-puberty education.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), and my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) for securing this important debate.
We have had a range of views and insights from Members today. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge spoke about the quality of RHSE guidance and curricula and the age appropriate material and its importance. She went on to give a range of examples and she put a number of questions to the Minister. We all look forward to his response.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) spoke with his trademark passion about a range of relevant issues, including the importance of specialisms in schools and quality materials. I thank him for speaking from the heart about his own personal experience with his loved ones. He gave a very tragic example of why we have to get this right in our schools.
The hon. Member for Thurrock spoke about recognising the impact that the internet has on schools and children, and about the importance of teaching consent at a time when we see significant harassment of women and girls. Other Members spoke about the perspectives from Northern Ireland and Wales, which I am grateful for. The importance of engagement with parents and the visibility of materials that schools use were also mentioned.
There are a great many ways in which good quality relationships, health and sex education can and must address the challenges that our children face. Some of those challenges could define the next generation. Sadly, most of them disproportionately affect young women and girls, so I want to make sure we discuss the full breadth of issues that this debate allows.
Labour Members believe strongly that quality RHSE must be part of the curriculum for every school. The 2019 statutory guidance was an important step forward, but the evidence suggests that too many young people are not getting access to the information that is needed both in school and at home. The pandemic has undoubtedly disrupted the introduction of the 2019 statutory guidance, but there is more that the Government can and should do to prevent a looming crisis.
On the specific issue of information on gender identity for trans and non-binary people, which some Members have raised in the debate today, I would stress the importance of regularly reviewing and updating guidance and signposting by the Department for Education, and the need for training and support for all teachers and staff.
Stephen Morgan
I will make progress because I am conscious of time.
I would also point out a recent Sex Education Forum survey, which said that almost 40% of students had been given no information about gender identity or any information relevant to people who are trans or non-binary, so I am very reluctant to accept the opposing argument. In fact, the bigger problem appears to be the lack of information on this issue.
In terms of how RHSE is delivered, there is obviously a balance to be struck. I accept that this is a sensitive debate. That is why guidance must be clear and regularly updated. Support and materials for those teaching in the classroom must be forthcoming. This is about being realistic, proportionate and compassionate.
As we have heard in the debate today, children increasingly face a wild west when it comes to RHSE. Too much is happening in unregulated and unsafe spaces online. Not enough is happening in controlled environments such as classrooms and in conversations with parents. This is feeding a disturbing culture in which sexual harassment is becoming normalised. The same survey by the Sex Education Forum found that a third of children had not learnt how to tell whether a relationship is healthy. More than a quarter had learnt nothing about the attitudes and behaviours of men and boys towards women and girls. One in three said they did not learn how to access local sexual health services, and four in 10 learnt nothing about FGM.
Ofsted’s 2019 report on sexual abuse in schools put it best when it said that
“Children and young people were rarely positive about the RSHE they had received. They felt that it was too little, too late and that the curriculum was not equipping them with the information and advice they needed to navigate the reality of their lives.”
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Nimue Miles, who is passionate about improving sex education to combat violence against women. She said of her own experience that sex education
“doesn’t cover coercion…They don’t cover modern day issues like social media…They also don’t cover sexist jokes, objectification and the impact of pornography.”
Of course, those are complex and delicate issues, and as Ofsted has pointed out, teachers cannot be left to handle them alone. That is why improving the guidance and materials given to teachers is so important, and we must make sure that is delivered.
I therefore have some questions for the Minister. How many of the 10 recommendations made by Ofsted’s review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges have the Government implemented? Will he commit today to provide and improve training for teachers and staff and deliver the materials they need, in one place and in a timely manner, to aid lesson planning during the academic year? What steps is he taking to help schools and colleges shape their curriculum? When does he expect to fulfil the pledge set out in the schools White Paper to
“create and continually improve packages of optional, free, adaptable digital curriculum resources for all subjects”?
How will the Minister improve the advice he is providing to parents and carers about how to support teachers’ work at home? What conversations has he had with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport about defining categories of harmful online content on the face of the Online Safety Bill, and has he made representations that the scope of that Bill should cover all services likely to be accessed by children?
Labour strongly believes that relationship, health and sex education must be an indispensable part of any curriculum. We want to see young people leaving school ready for work and for life, and such education is an essential part of that aim. As it stands, RHSE provision is failing our children and leaving them open to a world in which sex and relationships are misunderstood, harassment is commonplace, and unhealthy and damaging behaviours are rife.
We have a responsibility to our children to ensure they can meet the world as it is now, not as we think it should be or how it was before. Most importantly, we have to give them the tools to shape the world as it will be, and to protect themselves and look after each other in a compassionate and inclusive way. At its most basic, relationship and sex education is about legislation and guidance, but in reality, it is about the information and power we give to young people to shape their world. I hope we can spend more time looking at it in that way, so that we can deliver better futures for all our young people.
Foster Carers
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this enormously important debate, which is a personal debate for me. My contribution will not be about policy. I have a responsibility and a privilege to give a fraternal address from Scotland.
The route into care in Scotland is very different, but the needs and complexities of the children are similar, and they always must come first. I will talk a little bit about my route into foster care as a carer. I will not talk about our family because I am fiercely protective of my children.
My partner and I have been together for nearly 30 years. We lived in London for many years and we spoke often about our options to have a family. We had three protracted and ultimately failed surrogacy attempts, but it was always clear to me that the genetics of the child were not important. What was important was the provision of a loving home and providing a role model or someone who would believe in the child. I do not know whether there is evidence for this principle, but I believe it. Just one person believing in a young person who has experienced trauma or difficulty in their early years can lift them out of that dreadful dark hole and give them a bright future.
I have been involved, in one form or another, in the care of children and young people since being a volunteer with the then Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped when I was at school. I have been a nurse for most of my career, specialising in adolescent cancer. When we returned to Scotland, as a gay couple we discovered that we could foster and adopt, so we threw ourselves into that process and ultimately chose to foster. There are two principal reasons why we made that choice: the support that would be available to us directly through Barnardo’s, which is now a partner organisation, and the support that would be available, because no one can know what will happen with a placement, to the young people that came to us. I would be lying, which is not in vogue at the moment, if I did not say it was an enormous challenge. The first two years really stretched us. I am not talking from personal experience with our kids, but children who have been through multiple placements, suffered abuse and neglect, lived in deprivation and been traumatised come with complex needs. Foster carers have to surrender themselves to that, because if they expect a child to come into their home and surrender themselves to the carers, but they are not prepared to make that commitment themselves, then ultimately the placement could fail.
There is lots of support to help foster carers through that, and we have been incredibly fortunate with the team around the child, the relationship with our social workers and the tremendous gift that having a family has been. The rewards are immeasurable. We participate in three principal areas of care: short-term care, respite care and ultimately long-term permanent care. I could not have had a better experience. It has been the most humbling and enriching experience of my life, without any question or equivocation.
Young people who come into care arrive with difficult challenges to face, whether developmental delay or academic deficits. It is grounded in evidence that young people who are care-experienced can struggle academically, but what will surprise many people who make assumptions is that in reality if people invest their time, energy and commitment in that young person, they can turn that right around. Achieving that depends on more people coming forward, because without good-quality foster carers, there is no placement. The main focus of my comments is to support that drive from the Fostering Network.
I just want to tell a little story. Co-incidentally, yesterday morning on Radio 4 there was a piece featuring Sinéad Browne, a care-experienced person who studied law and threw herself into her education to find solace from her experience. She has formed a fantastic organisation called Compliments of The House. I can only precis what a wonderful story it is, and I thoroughly recommend anybody who is interested to catch up on that piece by listening to it on the BBC Sounds app.
To go back to what I said at the beginning of my speech, it takes only one person to believe in a young person in order to make a difference, but the biggest and most important challenge is getting that young person to believe in themselves, that they matter and that their future matters. For me, that is the essence of what it has meant to be that person. It is not about providing a physical space. It is about providing a home where there is parenting, love, safety and care. The policy parts around that are obvious—funding, training, recruitment and stability—but the journey can be exceptional, and I just want to share that with everyone. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]