Scottish teenagers are being quizzed on their sexuality and gender identity when they apply for a free bus pass in latest ‘intrusive’ SNP scheme
- Youngsters aged over 16 are being asked if they are gay, straight or bisexual
- They are also quizzed about their gender as part of the detailed questionnaire
- SNP accused of being ‘obsessed’ with grilling children over sexual preferences
Teenagers are being questioned about their sexuality when they apply for free bus passes in the latest ‘intrusive’ SNP scheme.
Youngsters aged over 16 are being asked if they are gay, straight or bisexual in a survey – with the chance of winning up to £250 of shopping vouchers.
They are also quizzed about their gender, with an option to state that they are ‘non-binary’ as part of a detailed questionnaire.
The £132million scheme offers free travel to all people in Scotland aged 22 or under in a bid to encourage them to use public transport.
Youngsters aged over 16 are being asked if they are gay, straight or bisexual in a survey to get a Scottish bus pass. Pictured: Nicola Sturgeon on the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme
The disclosure comes amid a row over a schools survey that asked S4 to S6 pupils about their sexual experiences in a ‘census’ of their health and wellbeing.
The Transport Scotland survey has sparked a backlash from parents and campaigners.
Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute, which has almost 10,000 members in Scotland, said: ‘The Scottish Government seems obsessed with asking intrusive questions and collecting sensitive personal information.
‘Rather than hoovering up sensitive personal data and appealing to some special interest groups while ignoring others, surely they should just focus on ensuring everybody gets better public services?’
SNP ministers hope the scheme will prevent youngsters from having to turn down potential job opportunities or college places because of where they live.
Youngsters who complete the ‘short travel survey’ have ‘a chance to win’ up to £250 in shopping vouchers. The sexuality question asks: ‘Which of the following best describes your sexual orientation?’ Answers include: straight/heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual, other (please specify), or prefer not to say’.
On gender, recipients are asked: ‘What gender are you?’ The possible answers are: male, female, trans, non-binary, other, or ‘prefer not to say’.
The survey has been sent out by local authorities to people who applied for the bus pass. A link to it has also been widely distributed online, including on the website of youth organisation Young Scot.
In some cases, the email has been sent to parents who applied on behalf of their children.
A parent in Argyll and Bute, who forwarded the email to the Mail, said: ‘Why on earth are they interested in such intimate details – it’s just a bus pass. It is very sinister.’
The email says: ‘We would be grateful if parents/guardians of younger children (ie those aged five-15), or young people aged 12-21 themselves, could complete this short travel survey.’
Wellside Research and consultancy Stantec have been commissioned to conduct the survey.
The email states that ‘all data will be treated confidentially and anonymously’.
It adds: ‘To allow for changes to be identified, Transport Scotland may also share anonymised data with other research partners in the future.’
The row comes as schoolchildren are quizzed about their sexual habits under a separate scheme One of the school survey questions – aimed at pupils in S4 and S6 – asks: ‘People have varying degrees of sexual experience. How much, if any, sexual experience have you had?’
Commenting on the bus pass survey, Dr Stuart Waiton, a sociology lecturer at Abertay University in Dundee, said there was currently ‘a strange, almost fetish-like concern’ with LGBT issues within government.
A Catholic Church spokesman said: ‘It is surely time for the Government and its agencies to stop obsessing over young people’s sexuality.’
A Transport Scotland spokesman said: ‘The question on sexual orientation applies only to young people aged 16 and over and there is an option not to answer.
‘We want to understand if there are any barriers for young people from protected characteristics accessing public transport.
‘Our initial research identified LGBTQ+ young people might be less inclined to use the bus for fear of homophobic and transphobic harassment.’
Why DOES the SNP seem so obsessed with the sex lives of our teenagers?
Commentary by JO BISSET, parents’ campaigner
After the two years Scottish children have endured, you would think the SNP-Green Government might want to think about making things better for them.
That could involve a cast-iron guarantee that schools will never close again, the lifting of face mask rules in class or fresh investment in sport and arts facilities.
If our leaders were feeling ambitious, they could even aspire to restoring Scotland’s reputation as a world leader in education, an accolade that has been allowed to slip shamefully far in recent decades.
Instead, the issue this Government appears to want to be defined by is the grilling of children about their sexual preferences and experiences.
The deceptively dubbed ‘health and wellbeing’ survey has rightly been panned by parents and politicians across the board.
Even SNP-run local authorities are refusing to issue it to children in their area, in clear defiance of their national masters.
Now we learn that a seemingly innocuous survey on teenagers’ use of bus passes is being used to probe the private lives of our young people.
Parents are wondering why the Scottish Government has become so obsessed about this topic. They think it is sinister, unnecessary and haven’t been given anything resembling a reasonable explanation for why it is happening.
Having led a parents’ group during a period where Scotland’s children have been treated appallingly at the altar of corona-virus restrictions, I have seen a fair few upset and desperate families at the very end of their tether.
I didn’t think anything could match the anger which was caused by the cancellation of exams for two consecutive years, the sporadic and catastrophic closure of schools for months on end, or the treatment of disabled and deaf children for whom a compulsory face mask was humiliating and exclusionary.
But these needless sex-based quizzes have come pretty close. It’s not a political issue either – parents on every side of Scotland’s constitutional and political divide share equal levels of disdain for this peculiar development.
The official line that gay and lesbian young people may be put off using public transport seems insincere and unconvincing.
And as we’re seeing all too often with politicians through this pandemic, it’s clearly a ‘one rule for us, another one for everyone else’ approach.
After all, when challenged in a Freedom of Information request, senior government figures declined to answer the very questions being posed to youngsters.
Too sensitive for them, but seemingly fair game for schoolboys and girls across the country. The latest revelations merely mirror a wider trend which is troubling mums and dads across Scotland.
Even parents of children in the early stages of primary school have raised concerns that there is too much sexual education being injected into the curriculum at too young an age – although no one is saying there’s not a place for such lessons in the curriculum full stop.
Recently, the Scottish Government finally admitted that the closure of the country’s schools did more harm than good to young people.
Ministers conceded that the wider educational, developmental and social harms caused ‘are becoming more of a concern than the immediate health harms, particularly for children and young people’. Thousands of parents across Scotland could have told them this 18 months ago. We did, and were branded ‘cranks’ in the process.
Don’t be surprised if Scottish Government ministers belatedly reach the same conclusion about these intrusive and utterly unwanted sex surveys.
They should do us all a favour by withdrawing them right now and focusing instead on actual topics of education such as literacy, numeracy, sciences and languages. That’s an agenda we could all get behind, and one which will actually support our young people when they need and deserve it the most.
n Jo Bisset is an organiser for parents’ group UFT Scotland
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