Queen’s Speech

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I would like my response to the gracious Speech to focus on children. As I always say, childhood lasts a lifetime and everything we do affects children. So my mission in life is to create a better world for children, and I believe that the issues I will highlight today help shape their lives.

To feel as though you belong is so important, and the subject of diversity, especially in the media, needs to be addressed continually in today’s society, where everyone needs to feel as though they belong and are part of our great nation. I hope the Government and Ofcom will continue to ensure the delivery of diversity nirvana, so that all the nation’s children grow up confident and happy.

In response to the Lords Communications Select Committee report on the subject of the theatre, the charity Action for Children’s Arts, which campaigns for children’s rights to the arts, believes that affordable and accessible theatre productions should be created for young children to help stimulate their creativity and imagination. It is also concerned about the drift away from arts subjects within the school curriculum. Ministers have suggested that this is not what was intended, so will the Government give much clearer guidance to schools so that practices such as the EBacc do not have the effect of further reducing arts opportunities for children?

Children as young as four are suffering from anxiety and depression. It is proven that gardening and connecting with nature can not only be therapeutic but deliver many benefits in helping them to deal with life, improving academic performance across the curriculum as well as mental processing and ability. It also helps to develop patience and an understanding of the passage of time, increase self-esteem and decrease anger, frustration and anxiety. As an RHS ambassador—I declare an interest—I hope that the Government will support the successful RHS school gardening campaign, with its mission to introduce children to horticulture and nature and to train teachers in how best to deliver these benefits. The campaign has already reached 6 million children, but there is much more to be done.

Organisations such as the Natural History Museum are also helping children to spiritually reconnect with the natural world through its thriving urban wildlife garden, with its meadows, trees and ponds. The social habits of today mean that children are increasingly disconnected from nature. Many are losing access to green spaces, especially in deprived urban areas. But children who feel connected to nature are more likely to care about the environment. So we need to give them opportunities to explore, by providing school gardens, new parks and allotments.

Childhood well-being starts even before birth. Yesterday, the All-Party Group on a Fit and Healthy Childhood, which I co-chair, launched its eighth report. It is on the subject of maternal obesity and it is our latest attempt to address the important issue of how to ensure that our country’s future is safeguarded by enabling our children to live happy, healthy and fulfilling lives. A healthy society is an economically productive society.

It was such a shame to see the absence of any measure to promote child health and fitness in the Government’s Queens’s Speech. Maternal obesity needs serious attention because by the time a child is born, its life course may already have been determined as a joyful path to health and well-being, or a slippery slope towards childhood obesity and possibly adult obesity. Today, pregnant women are bombarded with all sorts of advice, from doctors, nurses, friends and relatives, baby manuals and media imagery. There is great pressure to blossom, bloom and to eat for two—and then they are expected to lose the weight days after giving birth to return to their skinny jeans.

What is needed are clear guidelines, because research, as detailed in our report, shows the importance of controlled weight monitoring in pre-pregnancy, pregnancy and during the postnatal period. Maternal and paternal obesity raises the risk of serious health problems, both physical and mental, as well as the economic pressures on our already overburdened NHS. Our report calls for the UK to establish its own method of body weight measurement as a routine part of antenatal appointments for all women.

This means training so that doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals feel confident in raising the question of weight in a sensitive manner, with clear guidelines that are UK-tailored, rather than relying on American guidelines that may no longer be fit for purpose. We also recognise the key role and responsibility that advertising and the media play in messaging, and suggest that a body such as the World Health Organization might devise a unified international standard of care, to give women the ability to make confident choices, because, most importantly, pregnant women and their partners need to know that they can trust what the professionals are telling them.

We also need a widespread, Government-led awareness campaign about the medical dangers facing both the pregnant woman and her child because of excess maternal weight in pregnancy and afterwards. There is also the role of school and the national curriculum in embedding these messages, together with advice on nutrition, physical activity and mental and emotional well-being. This should take place long before a pregnancy is even a remote possibility.

Can the Minister tell the House what plans the Government have to address the maternal obesity issue? Will they consider the recommendations in our report and meet us? As I said, childhood lasts a lifetime, so let us put children at the forefront of our minds when we make decisions and form policies, to help lay the foundation for a lasting legacy for future generations.