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Please, wont someone think of the children

Crimes against children, especially sexual crimes, are rightly a cause for great concern in society. In fact, the issue of child protection has been covered at least three times by the Scottish Parliament in less than a decade. In 2003 the Protection of Children (Scotland) Act allowed for the creation of a list of persons deemed unsuitable for working with children. This list process was replaced and improved with the implementation of the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007. Further issues to do with sexual contact with children formed parts of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009. Clearly, concern regarding sexual offences against children has been high in our legislators minds.

This legislation sets out the jobs that people should be barred from if they have been found guilty of a sexual offence against children (actually they go further than that but for the purposes of this post thats all I need to cover). For reasons unknown, all the groups interested in child protection (voluntary sector, social work bodies etc) neglected to ask the Scottish Government to include “famous” people, people in a “privileged” position, people in a “high profile” position, people who some (but not all) would call “role models”. Not a single person or group submitted evidence that these people should not be allowed to work with children if convicted of a sexual offence against them.

And quite rightly. After all, the legislation and the lists are not about being famous, being privileged or a role model. The lists are about protecting children. The lists seek to stop those who would harm children from working with children. I think that, as a society, we can agree that this is a good thing.

But recent events have shown that stopping offenders working with children is not enough for some. For some, if a person can be defined as famous to some, described by some as a role model and arbitrarily defined as working in a privileged job then there should be a further punishment. A punishment that goes beyond what anyone as asked for, provided evidence that is necessary for or even highlighted as important before. A punishment that is beyond what is asked for by law. What this punishment actually is I supposed what will depend on what some sections of society demand at any given point. The variables about fame, privilege and role model status mean that it will be impossible to predict what this extra-judicial punishment is but we can use a current situation as guidance.

Up until late last week I could not have told you who Craig Thomson was. I had never heard of him. It was only a brief story on the BBC News website about him pleading guilty to offences of a sexual nature towards children that told me he played for Hearts football club. I did have a passing thought wondering what Hearts would do but I concluded that if he received jail time then his career is over but if not then Hearts may keep him on as he can be well managed as a registered sex offender. As it turns out, Hearts have chosen the second option. A boy do to the Mrs Lovejoys out there have a problem with that.

Leading the charge has been Children 1st (previously Royal Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSSPCC)) who have appeared in a number of media outlets demanding that Hearts “look again” at their decision. Interestingly they have not actually come out and said that Hearts should sack Thomson. Asked several times today on BBC Radio Scotland Call Kaye programme, Children 1st Chief Executive Anne Houston was asked several times what Hearts should do about Thomson himself and she declined to give an answer.

I think I know why. Legally everything that needs to be done has been done. Hearts know that Thomson is a registered sex offender so will now ensure that they meet all of their child protection duties. There is not a single legal basis for Hearts to sack Thomson. The job title of Footballer is not a proscribed one when it comes to the legislation and various lists that are used to protect children. Thomson had previous contact with children in schools which will now stop and his contact with youth teams will end and contact with others like ball boys & girls can also be ended. Interestingly Children 1st have cited “indirect contact” with children as another source of concern but I cant actually find what that means. Pretty much every job has the chance of indirect contact with children so should all sex offenders be barred from employment?

Child protection procedures have been shown to work as designed in this case. Thomson was caught, he plead guilty and has been punished. He will be subject to monitoring, evaluation and risk assessment as he is on the sex offenders register. He will have no contact with children. The system has worked.

But a child protection system that works as designed is clearly not enough for some. More punishment is being sought. Yet it is being sought in a very obtuse manner. Rather than have the courage of their convictions and openly demand the sacking of Thomson the statement released today by Children 1st accuses Hearts of “Not taking action to protect children from the risk of sexual harm” and states “Allowing convicted sex offenders to continue working where they will have … contact with children goes against the purpose of the Sex Offenders Register”. Neither of these statements can be shown to be true. I cant work out why Children 1st have all but said that Hearts are allowing Thomson to abuse children in the future.

Children 1st, and others, have decided that due to interpretations of fame, privilege and role model status that there should be extra judicial punishment dished out to Craig Thomson and that makes me very uncomfortable. As a Liberal I am a firm believer in clear and transparent laws and that a free-from-influence judiciary are the mechanism through which those laws are, ultimately, applied. If the laws of the land are not enough then it is up to people to seek new clear and transparent legislation from our parliament as opposed to arbitrary applications of nebulous concepts like fame.

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Scottish Lib Dems Member Forum

On the 19th June the Scottish Lib Dems has arranged a Members’ Forum in Edinburgh where the principle topic will be a review of the 2011 Scottish Parliament Election. The booking form contains a section that seeks members views on the issues of “The Manifesto & Policies”, “Campaign Literature” and “Media Performance & Coverage”. Below is my response (bear in mind it is a small response as space on the form was limited):

The Manifesto & Policies

I was really enthused by the manifesto. The idea behind the changes to Scottish Water the ambitions to use that money for improvements across many areas in Scotland were new, ambitious and encouraging. The focus on jobs and economic growth was good as was the idea behind the Science Nation Fund. The ambitions for the renewables sector were realistic and focussed (although I was unclear as to why Aberdeen would be the global energy hub). In places we descended into jargon (like not explaining what a HEAT target was). Clearly not everyone reads the manifestos in detail but if jargon is allowed there, where else does it creep in? One of the key policies that was put forward was the effort to ‘save local policing’. Personally I am ambivalent on the issue but can see need for good local policing and have yet to see how that can really continue under the single police force idea. However, I am stunned at how big a centre piece that policy was when it came to pushing our policies. As was asked a number of times on Twitter and in blogs, did we have a number of focus groups where the only participants were police officers? Yes, the people of Scotland want more police on the street but we totally failed to show why a centralised police force would mean fewer police on the streets.

The Scottish Water change & benefits associated from that should have played a much greater role in any policy push. The Centre for Public Policy for Regions showed that the idea was sound and that should have been used more. I was disappointed that there was not an awful lot of thought in the manifesto about the fact that Scotland has an ageing population. Yes the Council Tax reduction is welcome but there was a lot of content for younger people but not a lot for older people, who tend to vote in greater numbers.

Since the Coalition was formed it was clear that this would be a hard campaign in Scotland. Even before the complete and utter failure of the Westminster party to deal with the tuition fees policy problem, the fact that we were in partnership with the Tories was an issue in Tory hating Scotland. In the middle of last year I was asking for a more clear definition of what it meant to be a Scottish Liberal Democrat where we agreed with some of the Coalition policies (income tax allowance) and disagreed with some of the others (tuition fees). I am a proponent of the coalition but we had to make ourselves more Scottish but nothing was done until we were well into the 2011 election campaign. The line of pro-Coalition, anti-Tory would have been good if used for the entirety of the last Parliamentary year rather than the two weeks prior to the election.

Furthermore, could we have not been more ambitious for the powers that Scotland has? I understand our support for the Calman proposals but a manifesto setting something more akin to the Steel Commission would have made us more distinctive from Westminster. I believe that it is party policy to support a Land Value Tax to replace business rates and this could have been a popular policy in a number of different ways economically, environmentally and socially. Why was this policy not included in the manifesto.

Finally, the position on not supporting a referendum was a shocking one. It was, and is, illiberal. Saying one is needed very soon due to the economic effects of uncertainty is fine. Saying we should not even ask the people of Scotland what there opinion is for a period of 9 years (2007 – 2016) flies in the face of the preamble to constitution of the Liberal Democrats.

Campaign Literature

We have to move on in many respects. The bar chart and “only the Lib Dems can win” line cant really be used again. Not only is it a source of mockery but after these results we are third and fourth in a number of seats. We cant use dodgy comparisons from one election to the next (like comparing Euro elections to council elections). The electorate have shown that they can vote differently depending on the election so we need to respect that. Many of the bar charts don’t. I am not a design expert but I think that there needs to be some overarching theme to all our literature which was lacking as well as some key important national issues included in each leaflet.

I think that the online & social media presence of the Scottish Lib Dems was a bit lacking. Our website is a bit dated and the facebook/twitter interaction was not as slick as it could have been. To be fair this is the first election where all of this did matter for many voters but that does include a whole cohort of 1st time voters. We need to have something better established and in place by the 2012 council elections which can then be built upon in the 2015 Westminster election.

Media Performance & Coverage

Due to the fact that we had not created a “different from Westminster” narrative prior to the election that was always going to be a focus of the media. Why should we be trusted? Nothing was made of the 1999-2007 period when we were in government in Scotland, where we did deliver Lib Dem manifesto commitments and didn’t breach any trust. And where we did reference the past it was a bit dishonest. Yes, we got rid of tuition fees but we brought in the student endowment. We were still looking for a graduate contribution and the SNP did easily attack that, again making us look a bit silly. The party needed to sign the NUS Scotland no fees pledge but in doing so it looked desperate. Being honest, two Newsnight Scotland interviews did a lot of damage. The first, Jeremy Purvis on the day of the manifesto launch, got bogged down on two areas where we should already have had different answers. The issue about the referendum being a coalition deal breaker and the lack of communication with Westminster colleagues regarding the changes to Scottish Water. As I have said, the referendum position was illiberal and the lack of a clear answer regarding any conversations with the Chief Secretary resulted in a poor performance. As a result our manifesto was not really covered.

Unfortunately this continued with a Tavish Scott interview where, for whatever reason, Tavish did really badly in the face of harsh and occasionally bizarre questioning. On occasion media coverage was lacking and unfairly brief. This was exemplified during the BBC Leader Debate in Perth where Tavish was spoken over and ignored by the moderator and the other party leaders. It is hard to deal with this and difficult interviews sometimes but we do need to improve in many respects.

The Members Forum will be one of the first of many steps back to a larger number of Scot Lib Dem MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. I hope my small contribution will help.