Children in the frame

AS EVERY parent knows, there are few things more precious than a photograph of your child at one of the milestone moments in their early experience of school – appearing in the nursery nativity play, the first match for the primary school football team, the triumph in the egg-and-spoon race at sports day. The innocence and enthusiasm captured in pixels will be treasured for a lifetime. And it is not just for the benefit of doting parents and grandparents. When these children grow up, such photo

So this newspaper heartily welcomes the comments from Tam Baillie, Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People, who believes new clarity is needed on what is and isn't acceptable when it comes to taking photographs of young people in nurseries, schools and council-run sports facilities. As we report today, there have been examples of a mother being told she cannot take a picture of her toddler son in a leisure centre soft play area on his first birthday, and of parents being confronted by staff at swimming pools and forced to delete images they have just taken.

Of course, there are paedophiles in society who will seek to gain sexual gratification from pictures of children. This has always been the case. But we cannot allow them to fundamentally change the relationship between every parent and their child; those paedophiles cannot be allowed to shape our society.