The moral principled case
against the Named Person scheme
by Jon Holbrook, SPIKED, 3 Aug 2016
These can be difficult times for well-intentioned campaigners who ask themselves: should illiberal public policies be challenged in the courts? The issue has been highlighted by last week’s ruling by the UK Supreme Court on the Scottish government’s illiberal named person scheme, whereby every Scottish child under 18 will have a state-appointed guardian. The court found the scheme to be fundamentally legitimate, but required the Scottish government to amend some detail about information-sharing within the next 42 days. The court’s ruling shows how political problems cannot be resolved in the courts...
Scotland’s named person scheme is a loathsome illiberal policy that fails entirely to understand human nature. It fails to understand that parental rights will be harmed by the imposition by the state of a named person who is given rights to meddle in the parent-child relationship. It fails to understand that the minority of children who may suffer serious harm at the hands of their parents will not be helped by the across-the-board approach of the named person scheme.
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