Patrick Christy: ‘We cannot allow this government to write off an entire generation’

Last week saw the sentencing of the depraved, evil parents of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes who was terrorised, tortured and then murdered in one of the most sickening cases in history.

I’m sure we’re all haunted by the video footage of little Arthur, clearly badly hurt, struggling to drag his duvet across his living room floor, where he was forced to sleep. And the audio recordings of Arthur wailing, distraught at the fact that nobody loved him, and that nobody would feed him.

Ultimately, it was his parents who killed Arthur, and there is now an urgent review into the state of child protection services and indeed calls for them to serve full life sentences – it has even reignited a debate about the death penalty.

Where do you stand on that? Would you bring back the death penalty? I ask this because of the serious nature of the crime, but also for you to consider whether or not we did already bring back the death penalty when we introduced the lockdowns.

I think lockdowns signed a death warrant for many people in this country, and a delayed death warrant for many children and young people.

During the first lockdown, the NSPCC charity saw a 23% increase in calls to its helpline. Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, has said that lockdowns may have played a role in Arthur’s death by weakening child protection services.

ne of Arthur’s uncles sent photographs of the boy’s injuries to West Midlands Police, and it appears nothing was done. Meanwhile, people are getting fined for not wearing masks.

Priorities. Countless children, who are largely unaffected by the Coronavirus and more than likely had some form of natural immunity due to previous infection, were trapped by Coronavirus rules and regulations at home with abusive parents.

And this time, their parents didn’t have to worry about whether or not someone at school might see a cut, or a bruise, or a broken arm, or a black eye…or a fractured spine. Even now, abusive parents who knock their kid about will just have to call the school, say their child is going to be off for a week with Covid, and that’s that.

In fact, according to reports, around 200,000 children will be absent from school today. This is a massive red flag. We talk about lockdown causing job losses, we talk about lockdown damaging our economy, we talk about lockdown leading to NHS waiting times going through the roof. What about lockdown killing children?

And it’s not just the fact that kids have been imprisoned with their abusers, lockdown lit the fuse on the ticking time bomb of a child mental health catastrophe. 2,000 children are referred to mental health services each and every day.

The Children and Young People's Mental Health Coalition estimates 1.5 million will have new or worsening mental health conditions because of the pandemic. I read a report this morning from a parent, who said their child’s first word was ‘mask’.

As we front up to the inevitable reality that this government is going to extend coronavirus restrictions into the new year for a covid variant that, as yet, doesn’t appear to have killed anyone or be resistant to our existing vaccine, as we stare down the barrel of authoritarian Continental leaders in Europe normalising lockdowns yet again and we worry that one might come our way – we need to stand up for children.

Children need adults, children need people to go into bat for them, children need looking after. And that’s our job now, as the public.

We cannot allow this government to write off an entire generation.