It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who, like so many Members, is incredibly passionate about these issues and did an enormous amount to shape the Bill in its current form. Many Members here today are deeply frustrated that they have not yet had any opportunity to scrutinise some really important areas of the Bill, and I share their frustration. I will attempt to be as brief as I can so that as many of them can speak as possible while we make sure that we do this Bill and these children justice.
When we scrutinised the Bill on Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and I said that it would come to be characterised as much by what was not in it as what was. That is the motivation behind our new clause 20, which would ensure that sex and relationship education is available to all children across the country. The nation has been shocked by child grooming scandals where young girls have been systematically exploited by older men—often men who they thought were taking care of them.
Research by the Children’s Commissioner has found that far too many young people—boys and girls—do not know what a good relationship looks like. Worryingly, it also found that many of them did not even understand the concept of consent. Our view is that we are failing to equip young people with the knowledge, skills and resilience they need to keep themselves safe. We must do much more to tackle child abuse, but more importantly we must prevent it from happening in the first place.
Young people are increasingly exposed to risks online. We think that the question is not whether we can afford to talk to them about issues as difficult as this, but whether we can afford not to. We think that all children should have the opportunity to access age-appropriate sex and relationship education. In a departmental report on personal, social, health and economic education, young people said that they valued the chance to express views safely and ask questions, and felt that that had improved their relationship with others. We believe that parents should retain the right to withdraw children aged 15 or under because they know their children best, but equally we know that the vast majority of parents would like their children to have access to sex and relationship education. For children whose parents do not talk to them about these issues, this could be critical in keeping them safe, especially given that a third of
girls say that they have experienced unwanted touching. We are keen for the Government to support our proposed new clause 20.
Amendment 33, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West, seeks to ensure that we do not put speed before getting it right for children. It would ensure that children are not placed in fostering or adoption placements either before it has been decided that adoption is the plan or, in the Minister’s words, as early as the first week in care. We debated this at length in Committee, so I will not labour the point, but that debate gave me more cause for concern, not less.
It seems to me that placing children in fostering or adoption placements before the local authority has decided that that should be the plan is more disruptive for the child. Conducting an informal matching process, possibly within a week, before placing the child and then considering their wishes and feelings about whether adoption is suitable and the placement is the right one runs the risk of putting more people off adopting, as many Members have pointed out, and of more adoption breakdowns, which plays into children’s biggest fears that this for-ever home may not be the right one. As always, when we talked to children about this, they felt strongly that their views should be heard.