My Lords, I hesitate to speak after such a powerful speech, but I want to make three brief points in support of these amendments. First, my noble friend Lady Jones referred to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is important to have a rights-based approach to sex and relationship education. People sometimes say that there is too much emphasis on rights these days and not enough emphasis on obligations. However, we must remember that this about the right to safety—a very basic right for children and young people. A few years ago, in Leicester, colleagues and I did some interesting research about young people’s transition to citizenship. We were quite surprised that the young people found it much harder to articulate their rights than they did their obligations. They knew what their obligations were: many of them had expectations about paid work and knew their obligation to be good citizens in the local community. However, when we asked them about
their rights they did not know what to say: they did not know about rights. It is a myth that we have got too much into rights and not enough into obligations.
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The second point which links to that, to which we have perhaps not paid enough attention in my noble friend Lady Massey’s amendment, is about democratic principles and citizenship education. I am glad to say that my party now supports votes at 16. If we are to have votes at 16, or even votes as we have them now, it is really important that young people have good citizenship education which prepares them for that and, as has been said, infuses the ethos of the school. There has just recently been quite a bit of debate about whether there is any point in voting. The comedian Russell Brand has been saying, “Don’t vote, it encourages them”. Well, we want to encourage young people to vote. We want them to know why they are voting and what is at stake. That is another reason why this education is so important.
Thirdly, I am a member of an informal parliamentary mindfulness group. I know that mindfulness is now being taught in schools and is one path into the three Cs that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, referred to. All of us, whether we are young or older, face difficulties in our life. We have bad days, and mindfulness helps us to steer a path through that and helps to achieve the contentment to which the noble Baroness referred. I hope that that will also be part of the mix when we think about citizenship education and sex and relationship education.