Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)

My Lords, at Second Reading, I said that a great sorrow for me and many others is that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, is not with us, because she would have been intimately involved in the Bill. In particular, she would have put her full weight behind these two amendments. She was a clarion call for the voice of the child to be heard. During the last five or six years in your Lordships’ House, we have had a succession of Bills—I include the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Victims and Prisoners Bill and the Online Safety Bill. In each case, a group of us across the Chamber has fought repeatedly to try to inject into the Bill as much as possible a recognition of the rights of children, and that children are not—and should not be treated in the same way as—adults. In each case, this has been necessary because it has become abundantly clear that this was not foremost in the minds of those drafting the Bill at that time. If that was embedded in the system, so that what is in the best interests of the child was automatically a major part of thinking behind drafting any part of a Bill, what a wonderful advance that would be. I have been involved for many years with a charity called Coram, particularly the part of it called Coram Life Education, the largest provider of health education in primary schools across the United Kingdom. One thing that we teach children, starting at age five and through to 11, is the meaning of mutual respect. Mutual respect is about respecting children of different ethnicities, faiths, backgrounds and beliefs, and doing so in a considered and thoughtful way.