Axe Named Person plan says former SNP leader
THE SNP’s state guardian scheme should be axed because of widespread public fears over intrusion into family life, a former leader of the party said yesterday.
Gordon Wilson spoke out in advance of a key Holyrood debate today, in which the Scottish Tories will call for a ‘pause’ to a nationwide roll-out of the initiative.
Mr Wilson, leader of the party from 1979-1990, said the motion put forward by the Tories – who oppose the policy of assigning a Named Person such as a teacher or health visitor to monitor the ‘well-being’ of all children under 18 – did not go far enough.
He highlighted a Scottish Daily Mail poll on Monday which found 64 per cent of Scots believe the Named Person plan is an ‘unacceptable intrusion’ into family life.
Respondents who judged the policy to be intrusive included 54 per cent of those who voted SNP in last month’s Scottish parliament election.
Mr Wilson said: ‘The SNP Government is right to kick out the cynical political amendment calling for a pause in implementation of the Named Person legislaTories tion lodged by the Scottish Conservative opposition. It does not go far enough.
‘It would be better to go for straightforward repeal. When two-thirds of the population object to it as intrusion into family life, political common sense accepts that stubborn refusal to act will only cause long-term political grief.’
Mr Wilson, a former prosecutor in the juvenile courts, said a solution could be found in the role of the Reporter to the Children’s Panel, which he argued had been weakened over the years.
He said: ‘Teachers, social workers, health workers and the public could refer their worries to the Reporter and the Children’s Panels for scrutiny and action.’
His intervention comes after former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars condemned the scheme, saying it was ‘intrusive’ and the legislation badly drafted.
During today’s debate, the will question whether the scheme, due to come into force across Scotland in August, ‘is deliverable in the proposed format’. But the motion is expected to fail to win the majority backing of MSPs as Labour will vote against it, despite backing a ‘pause’ in the roll-out during the Holyrood election campaign, while the Greens and Lib Dems are also set to oppose it.
Debate over the policy was reignited last week after the convictions of Rachel Trelfa and partner Nyomi Fee for the neglect and murder of Liam Fee.
The two-year-old was killed at the family’s home in Fife, where Named Persons have been allocated to all children since 2009 in an early version of the scheme.
Education Secretary John Swinney has said Liam’s death ‘has absolutely nothing to do with Named Person’.
Last week, he also insisted ‘if the family doesn’t want to engage [with a Named Person], it’s an entitlement, it’s not an obligation’.
But at a conference in Perth in March – Transforming Children’s Services – he told childcare professionals they should ‘aggressively’ challenge people who question Getting It Right For Every Child, the strategy which underpins Named Persons.
Last night, he was less bullish, acknowledging that the Scottish Government recognises ‘there are concerns and misunderstandings about the [Named Person] policy’.
However, he said: ‘This Government is absolutely committed to the Named Person service.’
Last night, Simon Calvert of the No To Named Persons campaign, which has launched a
‘Unacceptable intrusion’
Supreme Court legal challenge against the scheme, warned that ‘those who most need the support and care of the state will fall off the radar’.
He said: ‘Despite this, John Swinney is putting forward the notion that anyone who disagrees with the Scottish Government’s “we know best” approach to the happiness of children as laid out under the Named Person legislation should be dealt with through “aggression” and “intol- erance”.’ Meanwhile, ten organisations that work with parents, families and children – including Barnardo’s Scotland, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, the National Parent Forum of Scotland and NSPCC Scotland – have written to Holyrood party leaders urging them not to pause the roll-out of the Named Person provisions, which they believe ‘formalise the best practice of our education and health services’.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale told the Mail during the election campaign the party would back such a pause, saying: ‘Parents have lost confidence in the Named Person scheme.’
However, Labour sources said that the party’s main focus was to call for a review of the policy to be carried out by the Children’s Commissioner Tam Baillie – who broadly supports Named Persons – in a bid to reassure parents, so its MSPs would reject the Tory motion.
The insider said: ‘The Tories are playing the most horrific politics with this. They have backtracked on their own position and attempted to adopt ours, and didn’t even get that right.’
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