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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I support the amendment. Its relevance can be succinctly established: are we about empowering these young people and children, enabling them to develop a sense of their own worth and personal significance, or are we, by a host of arrangements that are in place, doing the reverse and continuing a culture in which the child inevitably comes to see himself as a passive player in a system? I believe that the latter situation is why so many of these children and young people go on to difficult futures and too often end up in detention centres, in prison or whatever. If we really believe that the challenge is to develop the personality and feeling of significance of the individual concerned, we need to ensure that all these aspects of policy reflect that. The amendment picks one highly relevant issue.