Relationships and Sex Education

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Mrs Moon.

I stand as somebody who is passionate about the importance of relationships and sex education for all children at all ages, because I am a child of the generation of section 28. I am a child who was at school in this country when the Government also tried to set rules about what we could and could not learn about what was a healthy relationship. And I remember seeing the damage that that did to children in my school and their sense of self-worth, and to the teachers, who felt frightened to answer the questions that the children had.

I am a child of that generation who, if we are right that we want children to opt out of relationships and sex education, is a living embodiment of the consequences of that, because we were a generation that did not have the internet. However, we had Jimmy Savile. We had predators in our communities. We had children living in families with domestic abuse.

I start today with a concern about the rights of the child in this context. We are all informed by our experience. My own experience is that, living through that kind of education—there was an absence of accurate, factual, child-based education—affected my generation.

For me, the case for RSE for all children at all ages, in an age-based and appropriate manner, is about safeguarding, because in the absence of those lessons it was not that we had a knowledge vacuum in my generation. I clearly remember the day that somebody brought a copy of “Lace”, by Shirley Conran, into school, and the lessons that book gave us. I am still unable to look at a goldfish in the same way that I did before then.

I say to every parent—every parent who is here today, all those parents who have written to me, and all those parents who have not written to me but who have been part of the work that we have been doing in Walthamstow about RSE—who cares about their children and want the best for them: “Thank you. Thank you for caring about your children.” It is the children who will not receive this education but who other children will still have to talk to in the playground, and still be in a classroom with, who I want to ensure are equally taught the right values and the right approach to other children.

For me, that is the question we face when we have an opt-out. What are the consequences for the children who have not had parents in their lives giving them good direction, and who instead have parents who cannot be in the playground with them when that copy of “Lace” is circulated, and who cannot monitor 24/7 what is found on the internet? Yes, it is also those parents who are not the best of parents, but we must make sure that their children are not let down by us.

I say that because I live in a community where we have just had the first successful prosecution for female genital mutilation, which involved a primary school-age child. We have to recognise that not every parent is as good as the parents who care enough to be concerned and who want to get this right.

We also have to recognise the parents who have been misled. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), who opened the debate, spoke so well about that. A woman came to my surgery this weekend to say to me, “I’ve had a leaflet about this. This is about teaching my little boy that he must be a little girl.” That is completely not what this process is about. My generation did not have this education, yet there are certainly transgender people of my age and gay people of my age. If that proves anything, it is that this is not about sex and relationships education; it is about how that child is supported to cope with the world we are in today.

There is strong evidence of the benefits of relationships and sex education at all ages. It helps children to have the kind of healthy, productive childhood we all want for them. When we hear that 45% of teachers report homophobic bullying in primary schools, we know that what we are talking about is bullying, and if we care about the rights of children we must address that. There is also a rising incidence of peer-on-peer assaults—children attacking children. In that vacuum in which the alternative is the internet or the playground, I want a teacher to be the one to help ensure that children are given the best factual and accurate education. For too long, we have allowed this country to put composting as a requirement of our curriculum but not consent and, as a consequence, children have been left vulnerable.

I understand the process the Minister has gone through and, like me, he will have seen many good examples of faith-based sex and relationships education. I feel strongly about the importance of speaking up for faith-based communities who have engaged in the process, and who are the best of their faith by wanting to get this right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) said. However, I also recognise the importance of its being the exception rather than the rule that children are opted out of something that can keep them safe, which is what relationships and sex education is about, at its heart.

I ask the Minister to consider monitoring both the numbers of children removed from lessons and how the consultations happen, and also to consider how we ensure that never again do we see a six or seven-year-old unable to describe their own body parts. If, God forbid, someone tried to touch them or someone in their own family did something to them, we would know that someone would have taught them how to say no and how to speak up. I say to the Minister, please let us not wait another 30 years for another generation of adults to appear who have been told that somehow being gay is wrong. Being gay is part of who they are. There are factual faith-based ways of having the conversations, and there are such great benefits to ensuring that every child has them. I say to the Minister: do not let them get educated in the playground or by the internet.

If the problems we now see as a result of the lack of support for my generation tell us anything, it is that in the 1980s we let a generation down. Let us put the rights of the child first, ensuring that parents are a key part of that but not missing the opportunity to get it right for every child, wherever and in whichever school they may be