Named Person talks shut out angry parents
PARENTS have attacked the Scottish Government for excluding them from crisis talks aimed at salvaging the unlawful Named Persons scheme.
Education Secretary John Swinney has opened talks with public bodies and charities after the Supreme Court ruled the controversial ‘state snooper’ policy breached families’ human rights.
He has just over a month to make changes how the legislation allows the state to share information about a child without consent, or admit defeat.
However, the Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said it was dismayed he had made no attempt to contact them.
Executive director Eileen Prior wrote in a blog yesterday: ‘Sadly, SPTC have not been invited to be involved in clarifying and tightening the legislation.
‘We will await the amendments in the hope that what comes out of this is a workable piece of legislation that supports children and families without breaching their rights.’
She also revealed the extent to which the SPTC had been vilified for speaking up against the policy. ‘We have been characterised as the awkward squad, fundamentalists, Right-wing,’ she wrote. ‘We’ve even been accused of supporting child abuse. None of this is true.’
She added: ‘From our perspective, the [Children and Young People] Act was an enemy of trust between parents and their child’s school, health services, social work, police and so on.’
The scheme, which would have rolled out within weeks but has now been put on hold, would impose a Named Person on all under-18s in Scotland. That person would be a health visitor for children up to five, with responsibility then passing to a head teacher or guidance teacher.
Key parts of the scheme allowing information on children to be shared between public bodies without parental consent were ruled ‘defective’, as they fall foul of European human rights law, by the UK’s senior court. The judgment warned the ‘first thing a totalitarian regime tries to do is get at the children’ and ‘within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way’.
However, Mr Swinney vowed to ‘clarify’ parts of the policy, saying it would still be ‘implemented nationally at the earliest possible date’.
But even pro-independence campaigners have warned the SNP the policy has become damaging for the party. Former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars said: ‘No matter how much you tinker with the legislation, it’s unacceptable to parents and indeed to grandparents.
‘The sooner that fact is grasped by the Government, the sooner they will realise that the best thing to do is put the policy into permanent cold storage.’
Maggie Mellon, a former social worker and Women for Independence campaigner, wrote in a blog she didn’t see ‘any sign that lessons have been learned’. A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The ruling requires us to provide greater clarity around information sharing and we will start work on this immediately so we can make the necessary legislative amendments. We have just started work to engage a number of organisations on these issues, and this will include parent representative groups.’