UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 338-iHOUSE OF LORDSHouse of COMMONSMINUTES OF EVIDENCETAKEN BEFOREJOINT COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
CHILDREN'S RIGHTS
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament: W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935 |
Oral Evidence
Taken before the Joint Committee on Human Rights
on
Members present:
Mr Andrew Dismore, in the Chair
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Lord Dubs Lord Morris of Handsworth |
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Dr Evan Harris Mr Virendra Sharma Mr Edward Timpson |
Memorandum submitted by Children's Commissioner, SCCYP, NICCY,
Children's Commissioner for
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Sir Al Aynsley-Green, Children's Commissioner, Ms Kathleen Marshall, Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People, Mr Keith Towler, Children's Commissioner for Wales and Ms Patricia Lewsley, Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, gave evidence.
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the Joint Committee on Human
Rights' evidence session on Children's Rights.
We are joined by Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commission for
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: It is a very
important question. I do believe, on the
evidence we have, that there is a climate of intolerance, increasingly so,
against children and particularly young people in our society today. The evidence that I offer to you includes,
first of all, the analysis of media coverage for children and young
people. Children and Young People Now a
few months ago published a piece of research which showed that 71 per cent of
media articles about children and young people were negative with pejorative
phrases like thug, hoody, yob, feral, et cetera, being used routinely. More recently CRAE, the Children's Rights
Alliance for
Q2 Chairman: Is this new? I recall reading
that one of the ancient Greek philosophers was moaning about young people in
the days of ancient
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: We can go
back to Shakespeare's time where he talked about the wish for adolescents not
to be present. There has been a
challenge through the centuries for the emerging young adults and their testing
the boundaries of society but I do think what is happening now is unprecedented
in terms of the persistent demonisation of children and young people. One of the most powerful examples of this
intolerance by society is the increasing use of the mosquito deterrent. This is a devise which is being installed
with no regulation and no need to display a notice that it is in use. It is a device designed specifically to
target the ear of the young. Once you
are passed the age of 25 or so you lose the ability to hear high pitched
noises. I understand more than 5,000 of
these devices have been installed across the country deliberately designed to
stop children and young people gathering.
Of course there are two sides to a story and many shopkeepers may have
difficulties with groups of people standing outside their shops, not all of
them of course being children, but we feel this is entirely
indiscriminate. If there was a device
that was targeting the elderly in the same way there would be uproar. This is indiscriminate; any young ear can
hear it. We now hear from the parents of
babies and children who now understand why their children become upset when
they go to some locations. We hear from
parents of autistic children, these children being exquisitely sensitive to
abnormal noises. The second point is it
is not tackling the root cause of the problem, which is why do children and
young people gather there. I go out
where they are gathering and listen to them. I walked the streets of a north country city
recently in a blizzard and the children told me "We have nowhere to go, nothing
to do. Adults do not like us and adults
will not work with us." Things can be
done differently. In
Q3 Chairman: What can the government do about it? You have mentioned a couple of things there? Anything else in terms of improving attitudes rather than the core problem?
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: One of the really important things is to demonstrate how by listening and involving children and young people everyone will win. We were so concerned about this skewing towards demonisation that two years ago we launched our first attempt with the 11 Million Takeover Day where we invited organisations to show how they could engage with children and how by so doing they would get value from it. In the first year we had 10,000 children who were engaged with us in 500 organisations including some parliamentarians and local authorities. This exercise demonstrated the importance of listening to and engaging with children and young people. I think we need to start a momentum which swings away from this demonisation. The CRAE report on how the media can be more positive in its portrayal of children is very, very important but it is society that needs to understand the value of children in our midst.
Q4 Chairman: You said a strategy is needed to combat negative perceptions of children but you also comment on the poor implementation of existing children's strategies in your memorandum. How would a formal strategy help?
Ms Lewsley: We have a
ten-year children's strategy in Northern Ireland that we had some input into
but unfortunately the action plan coming out of that was not worth the paper it
was written on because it was a cut and paste exercise of departments around
the issues that they were already doing instead of looking at some of the
innovative solutions that they could do.
If you have an overall strategy where we can all feed into, if you are
talking about some kind of ten-year children's strategy in
Q5 Chairman: Has the children's plan made a real practical difference to children's lives?
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: In terms of children's rights, which is a separate issue, I certainly think the landscape has been transformed over of last eight years. I am the first to commend the current administration for how they have taken it into the heart of government. When we look at the policies that have come out, I do not think anybody really could dissent from the need for these policies. As I tour the country, everywhere I go, through the creation of children's trusts and the new local authority legislative arrangements, there are definitely things happening. It is patchy and some places are much better than others but if everything that was good that I had seen was being done everywhere we would be in a very different landscape. In terms of policy I really do support what is happening and I also support the thinking from the other political parties. The challenge is to make a difference at the front line, at the grass roots in communities, and this is everybody's business: it is parents, families, schools, communities, faiths and government. There is a limit to what government can do by legislation; it is everybody's business.
Q6 Mr Sharma: How would children benefit if age discrimination provisions encompassed under-18s?
Mr Towler: In the evidence that we gave to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child we were very concerned about discriminatory issues in relation to children and we took a very strong line about the extent to which although there has been in some of the administrations a clear view about anti-discriminatory practice, in reality, and it echoes the point that Sir Al was making earlier, we have seen very little progress in the way that we had hoped or anticipated. The key issue for me is the extent to which children as a group face significant discrimination on the basis of age and are excluded because of their age from so many opportunities. There is a real issue for the way in which, just picking up some of the themes we have already discussed, children and young people perceive that themselves because that discrimination is pretty clear to them. Issues in relation to benefits, issues in relation to the way in which they are allowed to participate or not participate in particular issues, those issues around discrimination are acute and all of us as Commissioners would face those issues pretty much every day in relation to how children feel an acute sense of right and wrong because children inherently do. They might not have the language to talk about discrimination but they inherently know when something is right or wrong.
Q7 Lord Morris of Handsworth: Anti-social Behaviour Orders are one of the main routes into the
criminal justice system for young people in most of the
Ms
Marshall: I think Scottish local authorities were never keen on Anti-social
Behaviour Orders in the first place when the legislation was going
through. It was very controversial and
there was a general feeling that there were more positive ways of dealing with
what anti-social behaviour there was.
Despite quite a lot of political pressure at some points to use the
anti-social behaviour legislation more, Scottish local authorities just have
not done it. I do feel that if they felt
it would have helped they would done it.
There were only 14 Anti-social Behaviour Orders on children under 16
between 2004 and 2008. Also in
Q8 Lord Morris of Handsworth: Perhaps you can tell us if you think that the rest of the
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: If we are talking about anti-social behaviour, let us be clear at the outset that this is a major concern in our society today. Not all anti-social behaviour is committed by children. We need to keep a very clear perspective of that. The public needs to be reassured that something is being done and so in one sense the application of an ASBO is attractive. One hears repeatedly anecdotes of how applying ASBOs to known troublemakers has transformed local communities. The challenge of course is what happens after that and this is where I have my greatest difficulty. There has, as far as I am aware, never been a rigorous, robust national evaluation of ASBOs to assess the evidence whether they do actually stop or prevent crime and anti-social behaviour. I have seen some young people who have had ASBOs applied to them and their lives have been transformed. They have been pulled up short and they have had to address the error of their ways but sadly we know that increasing numbers are having ASBOs applied to them and sometimes they can be seen to be a badge of honour.
Q9 Lord Morris of Handsworth: What are the lessons that the rest of the
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: I think the most important point is what Kathleen said just now that the Scottish system is a welfare-based system rather than a punitive system. I believe passionately that children must be brought up to understand the boundaries of good behaviour and to be held to account if they transgress those boundaries. The UNCRC endorse this view that there is a tendency to criminalisation and punishment above the best interests of children. I think we can learn a great deal from the Scottish system.
Q10 John Austin: One thing which you seem to be saying is that there is nothing in
principle wrong with an ASBO but it is the application and the targeting of
it. Is there a difference between the
Scottish and the English experience? In
relation to
Ms Marshall: For starters it is against the Convention on the Rights of the Child which is as good a reason as any when we are looking at the concluding observations. It is just the whole tradition about labelling children at an early age as troublemakers and criminals. I know they feel it very badly themselves. I remember speaking to one young girl who had just gone out of the Children's Hearing System and had her first criminal conviction and she was saying "That is me now. I will never get a new job." It was a kind of hopelessness. I think if children and young people feel they are branded then that actually puts them into the spiral of hopelessness. We really have to support them and try to get them through that. We have to have faith in our children and regard them as of all people the most redeemable and not condemn them to that label, telling them they can do better than that and urging them on. The Children's Hearing System has always had anonymity attached to it and perhaps because we do have that strong culture the whole naming and shaming idea does not fit very well with what we have been doing. I do not think anyone has shown us any evidence that going down that route is actually going to make things any better. Why should we change to do that if it is not going to make things better? We would rather keep with the welfare-based system that we have.
Mr Towler: I wanted to
say that the All Wales Youth Offending Strategy, which is a strategy drawn up
in partnership between the Welsh Assembly Government and the Youth Justice
Board, picks up the kind of welfare issues, the welfare model, that Scotland
have taken forward and comes up with a principle that children within the Youth
Justice System should be treated as children first and as offenders
second. As a consequence of that, what
we have seen in
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: I support
what Keith has said about the need for early intervention and early
recognition, the Family Nurse Partnerships, for example, which are being rolled
out in
Q11 Mr Timpson: Whilst we are still talking about the branding of children and why the Criminal Justice System can play its part in that, there is the minimum age of prosecution of children. I know this is something the CRC has looked at and recommended that it should be raised to between 14 and 16. Can I ask, first of all, whether there would be any exceptions to that raising of the minimum age in terms of any particular offences, thinking back to high profile children's cases in the past, but also how the progress is going in Scotland in trying to move forward that raising of the minimum age of prosecution of children across Scotland?
Ms
Marshall: If I could answer the second one first, there has been a Bill
published now which will be raising the age to 12 in
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: I think we
all remember the James Bulger murder by
Q12 Mr Timpson: Despite the Bulger case we are still at the minimum age of
prosecution of ten in England and Wales as opposed to Scotland, if the Bill
goes through, which will leapfrog from eight to 12. Although there may be some resonance within
public opinion that there needs to be a shift there still has not been progress
made on the statute book. What are the
barriers for this minimum age being raised across the whole of the
Mr Towler: I think one of the big barriers is about public opinion and political strength to do something that may be perceived by the public to be a very soft act. I echo everything that Kathleen and Sir Al have said. I think raising the age of criminal responsibility is a pivotal discussion that we need to have in this country. It illustrates the extent to which we value our children in terms of how we respond to them when they are getting into trouble. The question we need to be asking is why that is happening, not that we do not do anything but what is the route to resolution. For children as young ten and 11 the route to resolution should not be our criminal justice system. I think in terms of a debate the courage is about political courage to take a stance on something in the face of perhaps a media response and a public response that might not be sympathetic to a move of that nature.
Q13 Mr Timpson: Can I move on to talk about detention of children and adults together
or separately? You will be aware that
the
Ms Lewsley: No, the fact
that the reservation to Article 37 is there we need to look at it and it needs
to be implemented. The problem for us is
we actually have women and young women housed in the same environment as males
in Hydebank. We do not even have a
separate women's prison in
Q14 Chairman: Could I come on to the issue of restraint? It is an issue that has been reported on quite a lot over the last 18 months or so as I am sure you are aware. Do you agree with the independent review that the use of pain compliance, even in exceptional circumstances, would be irreconcilable with UNCRC?
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: Again let us be realistic about the circumstances of sometimes highly disturbed and even dangerous young people in prison. In the course of my work using my power of entry I have visited a number of institutions. I have seen for myself the atmosphere inside these places. I have also seen for myself violence erupting in front of me quite unexpectedly and within a few seconds there was a violent altercation between young men who were very seriously intent on harming each other. That is the reality prison officers have to face. Quite clearly there has to be some approach to handling that. The debate is extensive and prevention of that kind of outburst is key. I do raise questions about the culture within the prison service. For example, in this present day and age one would not dream of sending a disturbed young person to an adult psychiatrist for care yet in the prison service the prison staff are not specialists in the care of juveniles. We do feel there should be some special attention paid to the recruitment and training of prison officers who understand young people and also the means of preventing violence arising from the circumstance. In terms of the restraint review, we regret that the review was tightly focused on the issue of the immediate concern over restraint. We would have much preferred a wider review of why we are incarcerating so many young people in the first place. We are also concerned that use of pain distraction techniques has not been removed completely. The UNCRC has been quite emphatic in its condemnation of this arguing that pain should never be used on especially young people who in their lives have been exposed to violence and pain and suffering as a way of resolving conflict. We do think that the approach needs to be changed. I would highlight one other issue which I do not think has had sufficient attention which is the high levels of restraint applied to girls in prison. I draw to your attention this report published just two weeks ago by Nacro and the CfBT Trust which looks at the provision of care for girls in custody. Of course there are some startling statistics here which I could just sensitize the Committee to, the fact that the use of custody for girls has risen sharply. Overall custody has risen by 56 per cent but those for girls increased by 297 per cent. We are locking away more girls than ever before yet 40 per cent of these girls suffered violence at home, 33 per cent had sexual abuse, 71 per cent have some form of psychiatric disorder, more than 89 per cent are engaging in self-harm, 49 per cent are drug dependent and around 50 per cent have literary levels below the average 11-year old, and 71 per cent have been involved in social care prior to their admission. I give you those statistics to emphasise the extreme vulnerability of these girls. Against this point we know that girls are only 7 per cent of the youth custody population but 20 per cent of all restraints in the secure estate have been performed against girls. Why is that the case? There needs to be very serious questions asked of the specific issue of girls in custody linked to the issue of restraint. I return, if I may, to my introductory comment: let us understand the reality of the difficulty that prison officers have to face in dealing with these sometimes very dangerous young people.
Ms Lewsley: It is slightly different in Northern Ireland where we have seen our numbers reduced and that is because of some of the reports that have come out of the Criminal Justice Inspectorate, a report by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister and some of that has been due to the fact of the kind of training that prison officers and others are now given on how they handle that. It is a more underlying philosophy approach of managing juveniles in custody and individual planning for each child.
Q15 Chairman: Is this what Sir Alf is recommending in terms of specialist prison officers?
Ms Lewsley: Yes, but not
just the general training of prison officers and how they manage but also about
the rules that are put in when there is an incident, how that is reported and
the fact that parents are then told that this has happened and why it has
happened, the child is told what has happened and they have an opportunity to
add to the report or take from it some of the issues that may have been
reported that they feel were untrue and the whole possibility of the healthcare
officer being informed of the incident as well.
It is a complete package and that is important. As Sir Al says, in
Q16 Mr Sharma: My question is on child poverty. The government has already argued that significant progress has already been made on child poverty. How can the government reduce child poverty during the recession? Can legislation make a difference or will it just be a statement of intent?
Mr Towler: There are two big things I would like to say in response to that: one is that the child poverty target that the government sets to end child poverty by 2020, to half it by 2010, is something that all of us feel extremely strongly about and would want to make sure, taking the point you are saying about economic downturn at the moment, that that commitment to ending child poverty by 2020 is a commitment that needs to stay in place. What we really require is a cross-cutting approach, to use the jargon, to ending child poverty and to target those who are at greater risk of poverty. It seems critical to me that we tend to think very much about poverty in a financial sense but this is also about poverty of opportunity. Education as the key to lifting children out of poverty is something I think we really need to hold on to. Like the other Commissioners, I will spend a lot of time meeting with children and young people every week and the aspirations that those children and young people have in some of our poorest communities are incredibly low. They do not expect to get many offers to go and do exciting things that you and I might have taken for granted in our childhood. There has been a lack of progress. We have seen what progress we have made financially stalled. I am concerned about the way in which we are now defining what child poverty looks like and how we, as a government, will get to the point where at 2020 we can say we have ended child poverty. It seems to me that if we are going to get there we need a very clear route map and we do not have the route map at the moment. There is an issue for the devolved administrations about the extent to which each one of the devolved administrations is doing what it can do in relation to child poverty, something that I welcome in terms of what the Welsh Assembly government is doing. This is where the devolved administrations and the UK Westminster government really do need to identify what that route map is. What are the stages that are going to get us to ending child poverty by 2020? At the moment I am not convinced, and I do not think my colleagues are, that we know what those stages are.
Ms Lewsley: The worry is
that we will hit any of the statistics put out there. I think Keith is right that it is about
poverty in its wider sense and not just about financial poverty. I know that the
Q17 Lord Dubs: Could I turn to the question of children who are asylum
seekers? The
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: That is a very important question. We are already talking with government over the practical implications of this, but with a reference to the general issue of asylum we do not oppose government's legitimate right to decide who stays in this country and who goes. We cannot accept everybody who might want to come to these shores so it is a question of how it is done which is of concern to us. We have adopted the approach of looking at the child's journey through seeking asylum. What are the milestones: first point of contact with the authorities, the screening process, residential care for unaccompanied asylum seekers and the process of arrest, detention and deportation at the end point. We have looked at each of these milestones using my powers of entry to go and listen to what children and young people have to say about their experiences. This is what we collectively bring to the table: we bring the views and the experiences of children. We believe, and we proposed in our report to the UNCRC, and as you know we all worked together on this, that children seeking asylum experience serious breaches of their rights, and the immigration control we believe takes priority over human rights' obligations to these children. We do hope and welcome this removal of the reservation but we want to know exactly what that will mean in practice to the plight of children who are arrested. There is this pejorative or emotive phrase of dawn raids, of children being taken from their homes, taken to deportation removal centres like Yarlswood and their experiences. What difference will a child tomorrow in Yarlswood see as a result of the removal of the reservation? We have no doubt at all that there are many aspects of the journey which require exposure, that the damaging impact of the process is profound for many children and at the end of the day does every child matter? This of course is the title for the report published this morning from immigration lawyers. I give great commendation to government for the steps it has taken for making every citizen child matter through its policy but I argue that how we treat these most vulnerable, damaged, exposed children should be a barometer of how we regard children collectively. I fear there is much to be done to improve the lot of these vulnerable children.
Q18 Lord Dubs: Could I direct my next question to Kathleen Marshall and it is again about children and detention? I think you said recently the fact that detention of children is still used too frequently and not always as a last resort.
Ms Marshall: In the asylum context?
Q19 Lord Dubs: Yes. Is it ever justifiable to detain children in that context?
Ms Marshall: It is one of
these situations where people will give you very, very hard cases to try to get
you to say that in some situations it might be and then you are opening the
breach to that. I would prefer to say it
should never be possible to detain children.
We do have a pilot starting in
Q20 Lord Dubs: I understand that the government not long ago decided to set up a
centre in
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: I have some limited insight into it. I think the view I hear from men in the field is that that pilot was not really properly set up in the first place and its evaluation and the conclusions need to be challenged. We would certainly welcome a model, perhaps along the lines of the Australian system, which consists first of all, of much earlier engagement with families, getting their trust very early in the process before it becomes locked into adversarial conflict. I think that the proper testing of alternatives to detention still needs to be done in this country.
Q21 Chairman: What is the alternative you use in
Ms Marshall: They are just
setting it up at the moment. It is an
independent group of houses, a more hostel-type situation, and this idea of
having the ongoing relationship is certainly part of it and I think that has
been part of the problem before. The
immigration authorities will post people things and send out letters but it is
not received in the context of understanding that people think they have done
and then it all comes as a surprise.
This whole idea of the relationship and having an alternative and trying
to make it clear to people that they are moving along a process and trying to
encourage voluntary return is just about to be trialled in
Q22 Lord Dubs: I hope I am allowed to say that what you have said is music to our ears.
Ms Marshall: What
difference should the removal of the reservation make? We have had a lot of progress in
Q23 John Austin: Can I go on to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the vexed issue of education. Some of us might feel that insufficient resources have been made available to make integrated mainstream education work effectively. Patricia Lewsley may have been saying the same thing in her report when she said that the government has yet to develop or invent a strategy to increase the number of pupils attending integrated schools. Do you think that there is necessarily a conflict between the concept of the needs of the child and the provision of sometimes separate specialist education and the Convention? Are you necessarily opposed to what the minister is arguing for when he says that there will be a reservation and an interpretative declaration?
Ms Lewsley: We have huge
problems around this reservation particularly when it is around education and
not being inclusive. Our own Minister of
Education has done a review of special educational needs and inclusiveness and
part of the problem is that it has been blocked because, for whatever political
reason, they do not want the inclusive part of it and they are saying that some
of the people that are in this inclusive should not be in it. The biggest issue for us and the negative
impact of this reservation for children in
Q24 John Austin: It is not so much the principle of the reservation that the government may enter but how the government may interpret that reservation.
Ms Lewsley: And implement it.
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: I agree with
Patricia and the word "choice". There is
no one size fits every child who has one of these difficulties. Each child needs a personalised programme and
what is in the best interests of the child.
Inclusivity means different things to different people. I was up in
Q25 Mr Timpson: The Children, Schools and Families Sub-Committee which also sits recently heard evidence from Christine Gilbert, chief executive at Ofsted, about the high figures in the latest Ofsted report of child deaths. Perhaps I could address this to Sir Al to start with. Do you see those figures of 282 child deaths during that period of April 2007 to August 2008, of which I think 17 were later reclassified as not having been a result of abuse or neglect, as a failure of our child protection system?
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: I would like to take the general context of deaths of children. The death of any child clearly is a tragedy for all concerned and there are many factors which lead to a child's death. I welcome the creation of CEMACH, the confidential inquiry into the deaths of children, and this is all children not just those who are in the care of the State. Already this is demonstrating important issues. For example, in my own work in the past I have looked at the deaths of children from head injury and there are usually avoidable factors which can be pulled out which can lead to improvements in services. I certainly think that in the context of safeguarding children and child protection we must investigate why any child dies and that should be done comprehensively and transparently and lessons learned from it. That is the nub: how do we learn the lessons from the investigation of any child who dies.
Mr Towler: I agree completely. One of the recommendations that we as Commissioners put to the UN Committee which they did not pick up was the issue about deaths in custody of children. We called collectively for a public inquiry into deaths in custody. That was unfortunately not picked up by the UN Committee but it remains a huge concern and the same principles that Sir Al outlined should apply.
Ms Lewsley: It also talks
about early intervention and prevention and picking up some of these signs
before we get to the stage of fatalities.
Certainly for us the numbers are rising in
Q26 Mr Timpson: Do you draw any comfort from the fact that Ofsted have said that over and above their comprehensive area assessment, which they are now going to undertake, they are also going to do regular child protection inspections of each children's services department? Do you welcome that or do you still feel more needs to be done?
Ms Lewsley: There
probably is more that needs to be done.
We would say, particularly in
Mr Towler: One of the
things that have become really clear to me in
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: It is also important to remind ourselves that countless children are being effectively protected despite these difficulties. I cannot believe there will ever be a system which prevents any tragedy completely.
Q27 Mr Timpson: Can I move on to a very brief topic around the Coroners and Justice Bill which is currently going through the Committee stage. One of the proposals within it currently, and we will see what comes out of the Committee stage, is the establishment of information sharing orders which would also encompass information from Contact Point about children. This Committee has previously expressed some concerns about the Contact Point system. Do you have concerns about the proposal that that information on children held at Contact Point may become embroiled in the whole issue of information sharing and data sharing between agencies both in the public and private sector?
Ms Marshall: I am not sure what Contact Point is?
Q28 Mr Timpson: Contact Point is effectively a database holding information about children.
Ms Marshall: We do have
that in
Mr Towler: I am not sure
if it applies in
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: The only point I would make is listening to the views of children and young people themselves about Contact Point and our information suggests they are very concerned about that eventuality and information being leaked or accessed by people who may be inappropriate. At the end of the day what really matters in child protection is how individual staff work together, and shared information is key to this. We need to see the impact of the introduction of Contact Point. The co-location of staff is essentially fundamental to how we can get better child protection.
Ms Marshall: Information
sharing has been a constant issue in
Q29 Dr Harris: I am sorry I have not been here but I have another Select Committee dealing with science, completely different. I wanted to ask Sir Al about something that we have reported on which is the rights of children in respect of religious freedom in schools. We have argued that Gillett-competent children should not be made by the school, or indeed by their parents, to worship if it is not their choice. Your evidence did not say anything on that and I was wondering whether you are aware the Children's Rights Alliance have raised it and whether that is something you are aware of, the act of compulsory collective worship in schools?
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: It is something we are aware of but we have not got evidence in terms of what the views of children are that I can share with you today.
Q30 Chairman: Can I ask about you the UN Convention and its incorporation into domestic law. Beverley Hughes said last year that it would be a fruitless task. How do you respond to that?
Ms Lewsley: Obviously we
now have a Bill of Rights that has been produced in Northern Ireland and I
suppose for us ten years ago we would not have thought that that was possible
because of the political make-up in Northern Ireland and we are worried will it
actually be swayed how it will be kept on the shelf and gather dust. That was our opportunity to embed the UNCRC
in a Bill of Rights for
Q31 Chairman: There is a devolution issue here in relation to the Bill of Rights debate generally which can be dealt with at length in our own reports on the Bill of Rights and Freedoms which we published last summer. Coming to the devolution dimension, does it make things more difficult when it comes to incorporating things like the Convention?
Mr Towler: It makes it
challenging. I have listened to debates
from lawyers in the Welsh Assembly government who talk about the difficulties
of UNCRC and enshrining it in a measure that the Assembly might want to take
forward. The question there is about who
is it difficult for. Is it difficult for
you as a lawyer or is it about us as the Welsh Assembly government getting this
right for children? The danger,
particularly with devolved administrations, is we might find devolved
administrations moving at a different pace and what we need is an issue around
children's rights which applies across the
Q32 Chairman: I suppose that is a general question for Al. As far as England is concerned, we have got the Bill of Rights debate which is rumbling along or rather not rumbling along because we still have not seen the government's green paper on this although it has been promised for an awful long time. Is there a risk that the progress of children's rights generally becoming bogged down whilst we wait for the wider constitutional reform issues around the Bill of Rights debate which may or may not make specific reference to children's rights?
Sir Al Aynsley-Green: I think that
one has to accept the reality of parliamentary process and this may well take
some time. My first important point is
just to remind you what happens in
Q33 Chairman: We heard in Northern Ireland about BORIS from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission when they were giving evidence to us a couple of weeks ago and the importance of a bill of rights in schools there.
Ms Marshall: The Scottish government are considering right-proofing all legislation and possibly including a statement on children's rights in policy memoranda accompanying Bills. They have been trialling a children's rights impact assessment so they are starting the process.
Chairman: Thank you very much. It has been a very useful session for us. We will be having a session with the minister in a few weeks time.