Westminster Hall: Government Priorities for Parents and Family Policy

Speech delivered on Tue 7th Dec 2004

I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), especially on his desire to discuss matters of common interest, as we have done for the most part today. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) on his three-minute contribution. Nobody before him had mentioned the work-life balance and I concur with his point.

Having seen the title of this debate, I started wondering whether the Government should be concerned about parents and families and whether they have any role in determining priorities for parents. Many hon. Members have spoken about the enormous changes in our society. Should we simply accept those changes? It is hard to do that when we hear some of the statistics quoted today. I shall add one more to emphasise the picture drawn for us. ChildLine reports that 1,500 suicidal children phone its helpline every year, often citing problems of abuse, neglect and low self-esteem, which build up during childhood. We must accept that childhood, and therefore parenting, are much more complex now. We need to understand the needs and rights of parents of both sexes and of children, as well as the environment in which we live. I believe that we need to provide support mechanisms and have a positive agenda to promote social cohesion in our communities. Judging by today's debate, it seems that there is a consensus that support is needed from a variety of sources. The decisions on the how, why, what and who of that support are inevitably heavily value-laden.

We have touched on marriage versus unmarried partners versus single parents. Although I am a Christian and believe in marriage, I recognise that there are other forms of relationship that can be successful.

There is a certain amount of wishful thinking back to the good old days, but we should ask ourselves whether they were so good. Sometimes people stayed in bad relationships. On the other hand, many of us would look back to the strength of the extended family, and to the contribution made by grandmothers in particular.

Recognition of what constitutes legitimate state intervention has changed. We all accept that we should intervene in domestic violence and that there should be strong child protection measures. However, banning physical punishment of children was recently seen by the vast majority of MPs as a step too far. I certainly regard the state as an enabler, for example in helping important parent-child relationships to prosper.

I agree with Labour Members about the importance of reducing child poverty. However, concentrating predominantly on one tool—encouraging lone parents to return to work—concerns me. That has many good consequences, but it has other consequences for the child-parent relationship. Inevitably, some have more choices than others in the first instance. Some people are more able to create opportunities—for example, one parent may be able to work from home. However, choices are severely limited for others, and an important aspect of state intervention or enabling should be to create more choices for all.

Many things can be done, some of which have been outlined. There are many excellent projects, especially in the voluntary sector, which have enormous potential to support families and children, and to prevent things going wrong in the first place, but all too often they are grossly underfunded. There is a large cost to society of broken relationships and of children and young people being damaged in some way by broken or difficult home relationships, and perhaps even being taken into the care system. Looked-after children generally under perform and there is a high possibility of their ending up in a young offenders institution. The Government have done some wonderful things with quality protects and the concept of a corporate parent, but we cannot seem to be able to do enough to break through the problems. When a relationship has broken down, it is important that there be good foster carers to try to mend the situation for the children.

So many young people do not conform to the norms of our society, but when we talk about the problems we have to remember that only a minority of young people break the law. Many young people who experience difficult relationships in their early life go on to score tremendous achievements. However, the general point is that the cost of positive intervention is very small in comparison to the cost of breakdowns in the family and local community. Positive intervention might simplistically be compared to having a car regularly serviced and maintained, and responding quickly to any potential mechanical failures.

Nobody enters a relationship hoping that it will end miserably. I agree that there is evidence to show that children thrive best in families in which the parents care for each other and for them. However, that does not mean that there are not other situations in which single parents are successful. We must put greater emphasis on equipping people with opportunities to learn skills that will enable them to handle and manage their relationships as partners, parents and children. Such services need to be provided as mainstream support, rather than as rescue remedies for families labelled as problematic or dysfunctional. I was interested in comments made by two single parents in a recent radio broadcast: both felt that telling them how to bring up their children was extremely patronising. Offering people classes on parenting without being patronising, and getting everybody to participate, is difficult.

Middle-class parents would probably come very happily to parenting classes. About 15 years ago, I was involved in trying to run a course entitled, "It's hard being the parent of a teenager, and even harder being a teenager." Not all groups came that we would have liked to come. We sought funding for our initiative, and the one stream of funding that we got was for tackling teenage pregnancy; I suppose that that was good. People in our group came from all sorts of backgrounds, and our ideas stemmed from the fact that, traditionally—before everybody took their children to school by car — mums or dads would talk a great deal outside the school gate. We reckoned that school-gate support was rather important. Sure Start offers such support at children's centres. If they have time and are not dashing off to work, mums can stop and talk. Some of the best support is given by one parent to another or by a mentor or somebody in the community. The Church has an important role to play, because it is at the heart of communities. Our traditional communities have broken down and the Church seems to be reaching out and putting something back.

Parenting orders have been a great success. I thought that forcing parents to go to parenting classes would be impossible, but it is not. I should declare an interest: I am a founder member and trustee of Poole community family trust, which receives money from the Government and is of great interest to me. We started with what was perhaps a heavily biased Church background, but we recognise that our task is to strengthen relationships generally. One cannot emphasise enough how important it is that we prepare to enter relationships at adult level and with our children.

Society could do more by ensuring that both parents have an opportunity to participate. From a female perspective, I think that fathers should be far more involved right across the spectrum. They should be involved at the prenatal stage. Some fathers abandon children and do not want to see them, but I think that if they have a good opportunity to form important bonds at an early stage, that might lead to more amicable settlements and we might not end up with the tremendous stress and upset that we have now.

I support Sure Start and think that the Government have done a great deal of good in establishing good child care. I support extended maternity and paternity leave because it can only help. I endorse what so many hon. Members have said: there are important issues and we need to develop a culture of putting children and their interests first. We need to love and care for our children and value their great achievements, and realise that our children are precious beings who should be put above our own selfish interests.