Imagine..............

Imagine you lived in a country where the government controlled every aspect of your life.

Imagine that extended into your family life too.

Imagine that the government introduced a person with the slightly sinister sounding title, The Named Person, who had more control over the life of your children than you did.

Imagine that the The Named Person, for the first 10 days after birth, will be the midwife.  Their view on medical maters counts for more than yours.

Then imagine that until the child goes to school, the role will be undertaken by a health visitor.  Again, you don’t even need to be told what your health visitor is thinking, or reporting back to others.

And imagine that from the age of five till the child reaches 18, the head teacher or a dedicated guidance teacher will be appointed as The Named Person.  Again, you don’t need to be involved or told anything.

North Korea?  Saudi Arabia?  Iran?  Cuba?  Nope, try again.  Scotland.

The key element in the Scottish government’s Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) social-engineering programme, was introduced under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act. Although it will not formally be in place until August 2016, it is already being implemented across Scotland.

Let’s look at some detail.  Take the health visitors.  They are required to visit the child eight times during its first 12 months of life and are empowered (yes, that means you and I have to answer the questions) to ask intrusive questions about intimate matters such as “family finances” and even “contraceptive choices”.  Later they can investigate issues such as “sun safety” (in Scotland!) and “screen time”.   Indeed, it really doesn’t take much to stretch the imagination of their involvement in other areas of life.

If for example, the state decided that a parent should not teach children ideas at home that contradicted the official state educational programme, would they seek to remove the children from the parents or implement some legal constraints?

Actually, like so much coming out of the increasingly totalitarian SNP, it won’t work anyway.  Unless the government can stump up the extra £40m required to recruit all the additional heath works required, it won’t happen.  But in its usual style the SNP looks like resorting to shovelling taxpayers’ money at a problem it has created out of thin air, and is using your money and mine to recruit 500 extra health visitors – to do a job other than health visiting.  You can’t make this sort of stuff up.

So basically, Scottish parents are now a subordinate influences in their children’s lives, with a state-appointed guardian having ultimate authority.  Is that the kind of nation you really want to see?

If tomorrow’s appeal by those against the imposition by the SNP government in the UK Supreme Court is unsuccessful it seems likely that those resisting this totalitarian imposition by the SNP will take the case to the European courts.  

As Gerald Warner, a political commentator, said “European law is as much on trial as the authoritarian aspirations of the Scottish government: if it cannot protect families from the effective nationalisation of children and systematic spying on parents it is not fit for purpose”. 

It is a badly thought through bit of legislation about an important issue.  Devoid of foresight and dismissive of the unintended consequences, it is the kind of sloppy legislation not untypical of a unicameral legislature.  (Pity Latin isn’t on most people educational cv these days).