The failure to consult parents about new regulations on Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) in the North has caused “massive anger,” according to Baroness Nuala O’Loan.

Writing in the Irish Catholic, the former Police Ombudsman said education is a devolved matter for the Assembly and when a law was introduced in Westminster in June without any prior consultation, providing that pupils must be made aware of abortion access, it provoked anger among the parents.

She described this as “typical of the contempt with which the government treats the people of the North now”.

Encouraging parents to participate in the Department for Education’s consultation on guidance and support material, Baroness O’Loan said that it “will give people an opportunity to challenge what has happened, to call for clear, unqualified parental rights to withdraw children and for the provision of information which really is clear, scientific and accurate”.