Poll: 64% of Scots think Named Person is '˜unacceptable intrusion'

Almost two-thirds of Scots believe the plan to introduce a named person for every child in the country is an 'unacceptable intrusion' into family life, according to a poll.

By The Newsroom Monday, 6th June 2016, 3:18 pm Updated Monday, 6th June 2016, 4:37 pm

Two thirds of Scots think the Named Person Scheme is intrusive.

The Survation poll of 1,024 adults for a national Scottish newspaper found 64 per cent thought the policy - which will assign a single point of contact such as a teacher or health visitor to look out for the welfare of children under 18 - was intrusive.

More than a third (34.3 per cent) “strongly” agreed with the statement “assigning a named person to every child, whether vulnerable or not, is an unacceptable intrusion into family life” while 29.8 per cent “somewhat” agreed and 18.5% disagreed.

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More than half (54 per cent) of those who voted SNP in last month’s Holyrood election thought the policy was intrusive, rising to 66 per cent among Labour supporters and 85 per cent of Tory voters.

Details of the survey, carried out between May 27 and June 2, were published in advance of MSPs debating the issue on Wednesday.

The Scottish Conservatives will use their parliamentary debating time to renew calls for a pause before the scheme comes into force across Scotland in August.

The party opposed the policy during the election campaign, describing it as an “unacceptable intrusion into family life” which spreads resources too thinly.

The debate was reignited last week following the convictions of Rachel Trelfa, or Fee, and her partner Nyomi Fee for the murder of Liam Fee.

Liam, two, was killed at the family’s home in Fife, one of the areas in Scotland which is piloting the initiative.

The No to Named Persons (NO2NP) campaign group, which is spearheading a legal challenge to the policy, questioned if “this universal scheme got in the way of the kind of targeted intervention we all wish had been used to save his life”.

Education Secretary John Swinney said that Liam’s death “has absolutely nothing to do with named person” and described attempts to establish a link as “atrocious”. Tory education spokeswoman Liz Smith said: “This is further proof that parents across Scotland do not want the involvement of a state guardian.