Cameron Joins Willetts In Lost Childhood Campaign

The political battle between Gordon Brown and David Cameron will today shift from the budget to the quality of childhood when Mr Cameron announces a formal inquiry into lost childhood in Britain.

The inquiry will be led by David Willetts, the party’s cerebral shadow education secretary, and will look at how children are being raised in a newly hostile environment that prematurely blurs boundaries between childhood and adolescence.

The move comes as the Tories plan to vote against the government’s scheme for a super-casino in Manchester arguing the case has not been made. MPs and peers will vote on Manchester, and the location of 16 other smaller casinos, on Wednesday. Some MPs claim the casinos will not do enough to protect children.

The wider Cameron initiative on children follows a Unicef report that revealed British children suffer the lowest quality of life in the developed world.

Mr Brown in recent weeks has expressed his concern at the commercialisation of childhood, proposing measures to police the internet better.

In a speech this month he claimed children were being bombarded by images that sensationalise sex, drugs and violence. He has been looking at how to limit sales of some games. The Willetts group, due to report in the autumn, will look at measures of subjective wellbeing, behaviours and risks, and family and peer relationships.

Mr Willetts said: “Making friends, building relationships, experimenting, imagining, taking risks and making mistakes are important for the mental health and wellbeing of children. “We have long warned about the dangers of red tape on business; we now need to worry about the red tape on childhood. We need to allow children to have vivid lives and everyday adventures.”

The group is to be advised by Lord Best, former director of Rowntree Trust; Sir Richard Bowlby, president of the Centre for Child Mental Health; Tim Gill, director of the Children’s Play Council; Baroness Susan Greenfield, professor of pharmacology and director of the Institute for the Future of the Mind at the University of Oxford; Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood. and Bob Reitmeier of The Children’s Society. The group will look at the role of advertising, the slow decline of extended families, and the relationship between fathers and sons.

It will also examine what is known as growing up in a flat world in which children are given little chance to play unsupervised due to health and safety fears of teachers and the threat of litigation.

The inquiry will also examine the phenomenon of stranger danger – the belief that partly due to blanket media coverage of crime, parents and schools have taught children to fear daily contact with adults who are not from their family. The review will report in October 2007.