SAY NO TO THE NAMED PERSON SCHEME

1. It undermines families: Introducing a state employed Named Person for every child in Scotland – by definition – undermines the role of parents and carers, the vast majority of whom do an excellent job raising their own children and have no need or desire for third party involvement of this sort.
2. It wastes resources and jeopardises child safety: It is almost inevitable that by stretching resources to police the wellbeing of all children, attention will be diverted away from genuine cases of child neglect or abuse.
3. There is a serious risk of the powers being mis-used: By granting the Named Person sweeping legal responsibility to monitor the wellbeing of all children, there is a very real danger of families being needlessly embroiled in ‘the system’ because a Named Person takes issue with a particular parent.
4. It may be in breach of European Convention rights to privacy and family life: Leading QC Aidan O’Neill says the policy: “may not be lawful on the basis that the blanket nature of this provision constitutes a disproportionate and unjustified interference with the right to respect for individual families’ private and family life and home.”
5. It may breach EU law on data confidentiality: The Named Person legislation lowers the threshold to make it easier for officials to pass around confidential data like children’s medical reports. This may breach EU law on data sharing.
6. A broad coalition of organisations, individuals and newspapers have raised very serious concerns about the Named Person including: The Scottish Parent Teacher Council, The Christian Institute, CARE for Scotland, The Tymes Trust (for young ME sufferers), Schoolhouse (representing families who home-school), The Faculty of Advocates, The Law Society of Scotland, The Scotsman, The Press & Journal, The Daily Mail and The Daily Express.