The Supreme Court has ruled today that the Scottish scheme for every child to have a “named person” cannot go ahead, as it breaches the ECHR right to a family life: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-36903513
I don’t live in Scotland, but I thought it seemed very much like big brother legislation and I couldn’t see how it would work. If you had three children, would you be likely to have three different named persons, who would be coming round to your house and reporting back to the authorities about your family life? Where would they find all these people and would they take time to get to know the family they were reporting on – which would be very intrusive - or would they just have short, infrequent contact and make snap decisions on the family? Would there be pressure to conform to what the named person considered to be the correct way to run your family life, even if your own ideas of parenting were very different?
This Scottish government is going to amend the legislation and try again. I haven’t seen anything on GN about this and wondered how Scots grandparents feel about it and whether it could cause more problems than it solves. Are we likely to be having threads in the future on GN (and, of course, Mumsnet) complaining about the named person causing trouble within the family?
