Statutory Sex and Relationships Education

Simon Danczuk Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for securing this important debate and for all the work she has done on the topic. We have heard some excellent arguments about the need for sex and relationship education, not least from my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey). I want to focus my remarks on my experience of uncovering allegations of historical child sexual abuse and also of representing Rochdale, a town that has been the victim of child grooming gangs.

Over the past few years we have seen a huge number of survivors of historical child sexual exploitation come forward, and I am sure that they have done this only now in part because of the lack of sex and relationships education back then. A review by the Cochrane Library of school-based education programmes for the prevention of child sexual abuse confirms what is obvious, which is that primary-aged children who are taught about the issues are three times more likely to report abuse.

My ex-wife, Karen Danczuk, successfully prosecuted her abuser late last year, after suffering in silence throughout her childhood and adolescence. She is now a patron of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood. She readily admits that she would have been more likely to disclose to the authorities that she was being abused if she had received relationships education. The fact that the abuse she suffered took place at home stresses the importance of that sort of education in schools. Likewise, kids in care and others who lack the typical family support structures may benefit from schools providing information about relationships.

Karen’s case also highlights that 11 is too late to start offering relationships advice in schools; her abuse started when she was about six years old. It is therefore imperative that children are made aware of the power within relationships much earlier in their education. I spoke to Karen earlier today, and these are her own words: “The thing to remember with cases like mine is that I didn’t know any other life. I didn’t know that this shouldn’t be happening. There was nobody saying, ‘It shouldn’t be this way.’ If there had been, maybe I would have recognised sooner that what I was going through was wrong.” What she is saying is that relationships education could be exceptionally helpful.

We also know, however, that the problem is not just historical cases. There are also the cases in Rochdale and Rotherham, towns that have been blighted through the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children. We need to see sex and relationships education improved right across the board. We should not have a postcode lottery. The status quo puts children who might not attend council-controlled secondary schools at risk. More academies and more free schools means that more and more children might be put at risk, and that is simply not acceptable.

All of that is why I support the attempts of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North to make sex and relationships education a statutory requirement in all state-funded schools.