Relationships and Sex Education

Chris Green Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon, and to contribute to this debate on the incredibly important right to remove children from relationships and sex education. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) made an incredibly powerful speech, capturing brilliantly so many of the feelings that my constituents and I have, and the concerns that many constituents have written to me about.

It is incredibly important that parents’ rights are respected. However, conversations I have had with headteachers since I was selected as an MP in 2015 have reinforced the concern that there is an imbalance of rights and responsibilities; and that there is a massive emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of schools, which undermines expectations of what parents ought to contribute. That manifests in a number of ways. I will not go on for any greater length than to say that if we give more and more rights and power to schools, and parents are unable to challenge schools’ decisions and the rights that they, or the state in one form or another, have accrued, the rights and authority of parents are undermined. A concern in civil society more broadly is that individual responsibility, whether that of school- children, their parents, or families as a whole, has been undermined, which then reduces people’s willingness to participate as full members of society.

The former Minister and former Member of Parliament for Crewe and Nantwich, Ed Timpson, said:

“We have committed to retain a right to withdraw from sex education in RSE, because parents should have the right, if they wish, to teach sex education themselves in a way that is consistent with their values.”—[Official Report, 7 March 2017; Vol. 622, c. 705.]

I believe that that is wholly right. It is a very good principle and approach. Religious schools have the right to teach RSE in accordance with their values and their guidance but children of the same religious or ethical perspective in a local authority school are not respected in the same way. It is incredibly important that that respect is universal and is not reserved for selective schools. It ought to be there for all schools.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

The Government’s response to the petition clearly states that primary schools are not required to teach sex education but that, where they do, they must consult parents and include that in their policy. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that gives parents an automatic right to withdraw their kids from sex education in primary schools?

[Chris Green]

There is huge concern about what that consultation means and what impact it has. Can a school still make an overriding decision regardless of the contribution produced by a consultation? That is key to this debate.

The hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) rightly highlighted that there is, especially in Catholic schools, a very low number of children being withdrawn from classes—that one in 7,800 figure—but if trust and confidence broke down more widely, would we see an increase in that number? One of the aids in ensuring that that confidence is there is parents’ right of withdrawal, and taking that away would enable schools to make decisions with less influence and guidance from the wider school community. That is fundamentally important.

That leads to a concern about increased parent-sanctioned truancy. If parents felt unable to withdraw their child for just that lesson, they would perhaps withdraw them for the whole school day, which would undermine the child’s education more widely. The approach is not a respectful one. In so many other areas we hear about diversity and respect, and celebration of that diversity, and it is curious that in this area those things do not exist; rather, what the state or the agencies of the state believe to be right is imposed.

I urge the Minister to treat relationships and sex education as an integrated subject and to respect parents’ rights to remove their children, because that is the best way to ensure that more children engage with the classes. The classes make an important contribution not only to children but to parents, who are often informed and educated by their children. What assessment has the Minister made of the likelihood of an increase in children being home-schooled? A number of concerns are related to that.