8 February 2007
Tony Blair has paid tribute to those who have helped raise more than £250 million to tackle child cruelty. The PM was speaking alongside the Duke of York at an event to mark the success of the NSPCC’s Full Stop campaign.
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
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Prime Minister:
Your Royal Highness, Sir Christopher, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a very great pleasure indeed to be here this morning and to celebrate what has been a remarkable achievement by the Full Stop Campaign. And when you, Sir, and I launched this some seven years ago, 8 years ago - time flies when you are having fun, and if I may say so I think you are wearing it slightly better than me - but when we launched the campaign then I remember thinking that it was an incredibly ambitious proposal, and to try to raise £250 million is an immense challenge and task. That it has been done is a tribute to you, Sir, and to all the staff at the NSPCC, but also to so many people here who have played such a critical role over these past few years.
And the purpose, as you rightly say, has really been threefold. It is first of all to raise the awareness of this as an issue because cruelty and abuse comes in many different forms, and for young people themselves very often they were hesitant and worried about coming forward, feeling that maybe they were stigmatising themselves or doing something that was wrong, or making open something that should remain secret, when actually the abuse of a child is something that should never remain secret or hidden. And one of the purposes therefore was to make people aware, and make young people aware that it was actually their job and their task to come forward and ensure that when they were being abused that something was done about it. And as you rightly say, there has been a big, big change in the attitudes of young people and in their confidence and ability to come forward and ensure that they get help.
But the second thing of course that the Full Stop Campaign did was that by raising money for the services that were provided then young people were able to come and gain access to proper advice and then get the treatment that they also required. And you know the figures speak for themselves in terms of the trebling of the amount of youngsters that can be helped, but it is when you actually think that each one of those statistics in their thousands represents a young person that has been through probably a deeply traumatic experience where if they are not given that help that experience can stay with them and possibly change and warp their lives for the rest of their lives, then each one of those numbers is a young person with a life that can be rebuilt rather than a life that is destroyed as a result of the experience that they have been through.
And that really brings me to the third thing that the campaign was supposed to do, which is to change the culture around this issue in the country. And obviously we have been immensely influenced in government by what has happened with the Full Stop Campaign, but really we have both had the same aim, which is to try and alter the culture around this. And the purpose of saying Full Stop was to say there are no circumstances in which this is justified, you know there is nothing that can ever justify harming a child.
And all the work and research that is done, not just in this country but around the world today, shows that the experiences that young people have, for better or for worse, of an emotional kind are the experiences that don’t just shape their character in a very profound way, but also shape their attitude to the rest of society as well. And a young person that has been traumatised by abuse as a young person is far more likely to go on to abuse themselves, and not merely in terms of their own lives but in the lives of those people around them, it can have a most dramatic and profound adverse impact.
So the purpose of this campaign was to ensure that young people themselves had the confidence to come forward; that we increased the amount of treatment that was available; and thirdly that we changed the culture around the issue. And I think that those aims have largely been achieved and that is a tremendous thing, but it is work that goes on, it is work that goes on day in, day out, week in, week out, because there are young people who still desperately need that help.
And so as we celebrate the fact that we have managed to attain the £250 million target, and we think back on those 8 years and think how much has been achieved, I think part of the purpose of today is to make it very clear that this work does not stop, that it has to continue and go on, and in a sense we should take heart and confidence from the fact that so much has been achieved in these years, but use that confidence to make sure that the work then continues in the years to come. And I personally was delighted to be associated with it 8 years ago and I am very proud and feel it a great honour and privilege to be here with you today to celebrate the campaign’s success.
Thank you very much.
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