The all-seeing eye

The Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill, which has been going through public ­digestion via your columns, has very ­little to commend it but much to make those who cherish ­individual freedom shudder with fear. This bill gives the state the key to every door in Scotland and the right for its agents to manipulate the lives of our children up to the age of 18.

Of course there are many deprived families of one status or another who would benefit by the intervention of a “named person” from the NHS able to advise and assist children up to the age of five. So far so good.

However, there follows the duty on local authorities to ­allocate every child with a “named person” until they are 18. With sinister increase, all ­relevant authorities are to share information with the “named person” if it is necessary “to safeguard, support and promote the well-being of the child”.

This is the blatant morality of the speed-bump: because some drivers disregard the law, all ­innocent drivers must pay a penalty.

Because there are neglected and wayward children in our underclass, every family in Scotland is to be invigilated by a state inspector – doubtless ­selected because of his or her “political reliability” – and information passed to the collectivist authority.

If anything reminds one of the all-seeing eye of the vile ­Soviet, now happily extinguished elsewhere, this latest expression of Alex Salmond’s ­social engineering is spot on.

He is not alone. Just the other week in the collectivist web of the European Union, a French socialist senator gave vent to the same frightsome view that “children do not belong to parents, they belong to the state”.

Alastair Harper

Lathalmond

by Dunfermline