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In its document, "Family Change and Future Policy" the Family Policies Study Centre predicts that, by the year 2000, only one out of every two children will grow up in what it describes as a conventional family. The number of single parents abandoned and left to shoulder all the responsibility for rearing a child has risen inexorably, with one in 10 children in single parent families in 1979, compared with one in four now.Not everyone decides to marry or to live in a family, but at some time in most people's lives the family provides love, companionship and security. When family life breaks down the community should do all in its power to protect and care for the casualties. I am well aware, as is probably every other hon. Member, of the bitter sequels to family breakdown--the bitterness and recriminations which have far-reaching and catastrophic effects on estranged partners and children alike. Rarely does a week go by without constituents consulting me about maintenance payments which have not been honoured, access arrangements which have broken down and legal battles which sometimes go on for years.
A few weeks ago I met a woman who told me how her husband had walked out on her when she was four months pregnant. He has never bothered to show the slightest interest in his six-months-old daughter, although he wants access to his 12-year-old son, who does not want to see his father. She contested his attempt to divorce, but was told by a court official in the Liverpool Crown court that her attempts to fight for her marriage represented attitudes from "the dark ages". Subsequently, she was rebuked by a judge who told her that her feelings did not "enter into it".
I took up that case with the Lord Chancellor's Office and was told it was a matter entirely for the local courts. Surely that is an example of how far the pendulum has swung away from the safeguarding of marriage and the family as our most basic community.
Many argue that families are irrelevant in modern society and that marriage should not be regarded as a permanent institution. A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research--the Labour party's source of new ideas--argues that two years is too long for couples to wait for a fault- free divorce. The institute also argues for more publicly funded child care rather than tax relief, to help parents who prefer to stay at home. The same view is held by many Conservative Members and within my own party. Instead of making it earlier to divorce, policy should concentrate on strengthening family life and on making it easier for families to stay together.
Ms. Jo Richardson (Barking) : Although there are no statistics, a large number of women are trapped in their homes with violent partners and cannot leave because they have nowhere else to go. Will the hon. Gentleman comment on women who are forced to live in a violent situation of that kind?
Mr. Alton : I will comment later on violence--and on pornography, which I believe helps to fuel it. I accept that the cases that the hon. Lady mentions are among the most painful of all. They should not be considered from a judgmental point of view. Instead, we must do all that we can to help the single parent to cease being an isolated element in society and to be a fully integrated part of the community, enjoying all the support that we can give. It is not a question of simply apportioning blame when acknowledging that families sometimes break up.
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Even in cases where families want to stay together, often courts and court officials tend to shift the emphasis in the direction of favouring divorce which accounts for the massive increase in marriage breakdowns. People too often view the institution of marriage as a temporary commitment into which they can enter on a trial and error basis.The Government can help the pendulum to swing back in the other direction in a number of ways. I should like every Government Department to produce an assessment of the effects of its policies on family life. If such an indicator and impact statement were built into every Government policy, that would be one way of entrenching the family. Also, taxation should not penalise marriage but ought to recognise the work of the spouse who undertakes the rearing of the children. Tax legislation ought to take into account the real costs of family life--particularly of caring for children. The state should encourage and enable family life, but--and in this I agree with the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South--it should never attempt to substitute for it.
In the case of the elderly, for example, Government policy could take account of changing demographic patterns. The hon. Gentleman mentioned grandparents. One in four of the population of the city that I represent are over retirement age. The fastest-growing group are the over-80s. Families ought to be given improvement grants for the purpose of providing granny flats, so that aged relatives can be accommodated in the family home, if they wish.
In many areas--including my own--planners have been the culprits in destroying the community and family life. Aged people are left in isolated tenements while their former home and the community are ripped apart, with their former residents being shanghaied to places miles away, often to be left in the most dehumanising conditions. Young families are often separated from their grandparents who, in former times, might have been able to give support and help. The child should, from the moment of its conception, be at the centre of a family-based policy. Its life and its integrity must be protected. Once a child is born, it should, wherever possible, be provided for by both parents. When a parent walks out on his or her child, there should be an automatic attachment of earnings, so that the child can be properly cared for and supported. Children deserve a world that can offer them the best chance for development. Their good is the responsibility of parents and of the wider community. A glimpse of the statistics shows how much we are failing our country's children. Last year, 184,000 unborn children had their lives ended in the womb and only four out of five pregnancies now go full term. Child abuse continues after birth. Barely a day passes without a new report about attacks on children. Child protection registers were established in 1974, but it was not until 1989 that the information they contained was first published. It revealed that 40,700 children were registered and that 41 per cent. were the cause of grave concern, as being at significant risk of abuse. Also, 4.8 per cent. of those children had been subjected to emotional ill-treatment or rejection ; 14 per cent. had been sexually abused, 23 per cent. physically injured, and 12 per cent. persistently neglected, while 3 per cent. fell into a mixture of those categories. Such violence often stems from the spurious libertarian argument about choice that says, "It is my right
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to do whatever I want--even to take another person's life--because it is my right to choose." That is a form of modern heresy.The free distribution of pornography is also defended on the grounds of choice. Pornography degrades families and homes throughout a country where it is so easily accessible. No hon. Member could be unaware of the effects and linkage that exist between the free availability of pornography, and violence against women and children. Despite the recent reports submitted to the Home Office claiming that there is no link, I am convinced that such links exist.
Our lack of concern for the young and the environment in which they are reared is reflected in many ways, for example in the number of runaways. The Children's Society estimates that last year 98,000 children ran away from their homes, but we do not even keep a national computerised register. I hope that the Minister will touch on that issue when she replies. The society estimates that 150,000 young people aged 16 to 19 are homeless each year--often lured away into a life of drugs and prostitution on the streets of London. It is estimated that 100,000 young people take drugs. In addition, alcohol abuse and gambling by young people in amusement arcades deeply corrode family life.
Poverty is another corrosive influence and I was sorry that the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South did not say more about the issue. In 1989, the Child Poverty Action Group highlighted 20 examples of the underside of life in Britain. More than 15 million people in the mid-1980s were defined as living in poverty or on its margins, with more than 2 million children living in families with poverty. While tax allowances have increased, the value of child benefits has fallen since 1979. The value of tax allowance has gone up by 22 per cent. for married men and 19 per cent. for single people, but the value of child benefit has gone down by 12 per cent.
Babies with fathers in unskilled jobs run twice the risk of still birth and death under one year old of that faced by babies of professional fathers. Although two families in every three own their own home, homelessness is on the increase and has doubled in the past decade, with 30,000 homeless families sleeping in hostels. In 1989, a total of 70,480 households were in mortgage arrears for six months or more. If poverty, drugs, pornography, homelessness, abortion and divorce are corrosive of family life, so too is consumerism. Last week in answer to questions that I tabled in the House, the Economic Secretary confirmed that, this year, 3 per cent. of all households--560,000--have serious debts. At the end of the third quarter of 1990, consumer debt stood at £49.6 billion. When broken down into categories, consumer debt is divided up as follows : bank credit cards, which have multiplied massively in the past decade, account for £7.6 billion ; retail accounts amount to £2.3 billion ; bank loans on personal accounts account for £17 billion ; finance houses and other specialist credit granters, which are often loan sharks, account for £20 billion. That places massive pressure on families and we should not underestimate the effect on them. Where is our nation of savers? We have become a nation that is in pawn and in debt, with many families being hit by debts that they cannot meet. Some 560,000 households are in serious debt.
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Last year, 23,000 households had their gas supplies cut off and 73, 000 households had their electricity supplies cut off, 13,780 homes were repossessed and there were 70,000 households in mortgage arrears of six months or more.A genuine family policy would have the child and related considerations at the heart of its approach. It must be balanced when addressing all forms of pressure, economic and social.
The family can be a school of more abundant humanity. It can be the community's basic building block. It is uniquely suited to teach and to transmit cultural, ethical, social, spiritual and religious values. The House should therefore do everything possible to protect it and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South for giving us the chance to debate such a crucially important question. 4.29 pm
Mrs. Marion Roe (Broxbourne) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin) on winning the ballot. This subject touches many of us, and I agree with much of what he said. The family is perhaps the most enduring institution known to mankind. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) observed, it is a basic building block for society itself. Without the family, society would be impossibly atomised, and relationships transient and unsatisfactory.
Like almost all institutions, the family has undergone rapid change over the past 25 years. The statistics for illegitimacy, divorce, cohabitation and abortion certainly bear witness to the pace of that change. It is almost conventional wisdom nowadays to speak of the family as if it were an anachronism : it seems to be fashionable to talk of a tidal wave of divorce and cohabitation sweeping away what left-wing intellectuals derisively call the traditional family. Media pundits often claim that the family is really an institution of the past, and that the 21st century will see its demise. I believe, however, that the resilience of the family structure is probably greatly underestimated. During the second world war, for instance, many families were broken up as service men and women were lost in battle and civilians were killed, but the family remained as strong as ever in the 1950s. Ask school children whether they want to marry and have children, and the overwhelming majority will say yes. Most people spend most of their lives in a household headed by a married couple, most people believe adultery to be very wrong, and the great majority believe that children are best reared by both their natural parents.
It is not so much that traditional values have collapsed, for they patently have not. Most people continue to aspire to a basically traditional lifestyle involving marriage and the raising of children within that union. The problem is that we are increasingly finding it hard to live up to that ideal--in large part because we have far higher expectations of the degree of happiness that marriage will secure, and, conversely, because we are far less tolerant of unhappiness and disappointment.
What is indisputably clear is that marriage remains overwhelmingly popular, because individuals find that it works. For all the well-chronicled problems and
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unhappiness that can exist within human relationships, we would do well to remember that most people find the greatest happiness and fulfilment within marriage.I believe that there is a great deal of agreement across the political spectrum about the importance of the family ; yet there is no consensus about how policy-makers should try to support the family. An area of particular disagreement is the role of the mother. One of the most worrying developments that I have witnessed in the past decade or so is the devaluation of the status of women who choose to stay at home to bring up their children. Increasingly, it seems that an individual's identity is determined by his or her job, rather than by the role that he or she plays in society.
The housewife's role, rather than being scorned as unfulfilled or untested, should be recognised for the important position that it is. What more valuable job could one do than to mould a future generation? I spent 15 years as an unpaid housewife and mother raising three children before, in middle age, taking up a new career in politics. I become irritated when I hear politicians and business men telling women why, for a thousand and one reasons, from demography to self-fulfilment, they should go out to work.
Mr. Ian McCartney (Makerfield) : I am closely following the hon. Lady's argument and I understand her points. Does she agree that over the last decade many women in the United Kingdom have been forced to work because of changing family and financial circumstances? They usually have to take low-paid unskilled work, so it is not a matter of career prospects. They would much rather work in a fulfilled atmosphere at home, but necessity drives them to the market place where they have to find work in order to make ends meet. We need to enhance the role of women in society. Necessity should not interfere in the family by forcing women to work.
Mrs. Roe : Not all women return to work because of financial necessity. The hon. Member for Mossley Hill drew our attention to the high divorce rate. Many women feel that they have to return to work early because they fear that in middle age they may well find themselves divorced and with no career structure to which to return. Many young women are returning to the workplace in order to create a base for themselves in the unhappy event of divorce. I assure the House that the woman who stays at home looking after her family works just as hard running her home as she would running a business outside.
It is not the Government's role to encourage or discourage women from taking paid employment. Today married women certainly have far greater freedom of choice than ever before about whether to have a career outside the home. Opportunities through education, which their mothers or grandmothers never had, are now available to them. The Government should not campaign to get mothers into the workplace. Mothers should decide for themselves about whether to do that. I would not wish to see British women subjected to the social and cultural tyranny which, for example, exists in Sweden where women who choose to stay at home to bring up children are derided as inadequate failures. As my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South has said, choice is the key factor. Whether and how much a mother works outside the home is an intensely personal decision for wives and, of course, for their husbands.
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Increasingly, women are deciding to work outside the home. In 1931, only 10 per cent. of married women were employed, while in 1987 the figure had risen to 60 per cent. It should be noted that most of that increase was due to the increase in part-time work. I suspect that it is despite the direction of Government or zealous feminists that women are managing to combine work with having a family.By 1987, more than half of married couples with children consisted of two working partners. As the age of the youngest child rises, the number of mothers who choose to re-enter the work force rises as well. Among families in which the youngest child is under two years of age, 70 per cent. of mothers do not work outside the home. Among families in which the youngest child is over 10 years, the figure falls to 26 per cent.
We have begun to see a substantial rise in job sharing, part-time work, at- home work and flexitime, as a result of which working mothers can choose the hours that they work. Certainly, demographic and social changes have made it easier for women to enter the work force. As fewer and fewer teenagers are available, more and more companies will seek out mothers to fill vital positions. Firms that want to recruit and train mothers will increasingly have to offer attractive child care facilities and opportunities for part-time work. I see no reason why women should not be able to combine work and family.
I have no time for grandiose state-sponsored schemes to get women back to work--schemes operating through taxation or through the benefits system. Such schemes would only redistribute income from the poor to the affluent. By and large, two-earner households are wealthier than single-earner households where the mother stays at home to look after the children. What good could possibly be done by a regressive redistribution of income from the needy to the affluent? We must be careful to ensure that Government intervention does not distort. No Government should try to deny mothers the option to stay at home, yet that would be the effect of offering tax hand- outs or benefits to people who put their children into nurseries or creches. Encouraging one form of behaviour discourages or penalises another. Today, couples have much higher expectations of marriage. One of the prime factors motivating women to work is the extra income, as well as the self-esteem, that it can bring. People want more for themselves and more for their children : a stable home, a car and holidays. Surely there is nothing wrong in looking for a better quality of life. That, quite simply, is a natural human impulse. Between 1979 and 1985, real household income rose by 8.8 per cent. overall. All family groups saw increases in real income, and couples with children saw their real income rise by 9 per cent.
But with higher expectations come also greater opportunities to fail. As the hon. Member for Mossley Hill has outlined, divorce is now much more prevalent. In 1951 2.6 marriages in 1,000 ended in divorce ; by 1987, the rate had risen to 12.7 per 1,000. However, while the divorce rate doubled during the 1970s, it appears that it remained fairly level throughout the 1980s.
Over the last few decades we have seen many changes in the structure of the family. Some trends, such as the rise in illegitimacy, are very worrying, while others, such as the rise in living standards that most families have enjoyed, are very encouraging. What is clear is that the family will continue to endure and adapt. I suggest that, at least in part, the chance of it doing so successfully will depend on
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the Government ensuring that the woman who chooses to stay at home is not disadvantaged or pressurised in any way. As a housewife, she should not be made to feel that she is at the bottom of the career ladder. She should be provided with opportunities to retrain or to learn new skills if or when she wishes to resume paid employment as her children grow older.4.44 pm
Miss Joan Lestor (Eccles) : I congratulate the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin) on having chosen this subject for debate. I think that I am right in saying that the previous time we debated anything connected with children and the family was the occasion on which I chose the subject for a motion. My only reason for mentioning that--and it may turn out to be the only point of agreement between the hon. Gentleman and myself--is that only when individual Members take the initiative does the House take seriously, or bother to discuss, the subject. Yet a large proportion of the population is involved, and whatever action is taken will determine to a very large extent the sort of adults that children will become. The hon. Gentleman, despite the best will in the world, is rather ill-informed about what is actually happening to children and to family life in this country. It is very easy to say, as he said, that people ought to look forward rather than backward, that these are policies for the future. Some of the problems facing many children today have been mentioned, and I shall talk about others later. Those problems have arisen because of the policies that the Government have enacted during the past 11 years.
I asked a question about housing, and the hon. Gentleman replied that the Labour party believes in the right to buy. That is not the point that I was making. We have never said that people should not have the right to buy ; what we have said--this is the point that I was making--is that if local authorities, irrespective of the housing situation in their areas, are told that they must allow people to buy their council houses and, at the same time, are deprived of the ability to replace those houses, a housing problem will arise. Obviously, there will always be people who cannot afford to buy houses. Why are so many local authorities, such as the one in my area, under enormous pressure to rehouse families? Why do we not have accommodation for them? The reason is that the best houses have been sold, and Government policy dictates that we cannot replace those that have been lost. That is why we are in this vicious circle. It is also why the number of children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and the number of children who have run away have increased, and why a host of other calamities have arisen. Thus there is a direct connection with Government policy.
In that regard, I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton). Indeed, his remarks made me think that he had probably read some of the policy documents that I, in my capacity as Labour party spokesperson on children, have written. I agree entirely that, before introducing legislation, any Government ought to look at the effects it will have on children. That is very rarely done. Indeed, in this respect, the last Labour Government were guilty. Had such effects been taken into account, we should not have built high-rise flats in the
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1950s. We should not have expected kids to thrive and flourish in such homes, and we should not have expected women not to be bored and miserable and to become dependent on Valium because there was no escape for them.No, we do not relate our policies to the needs of children. I could talk about this in the context of transport and a host of other things, but I do not have time to do so. I repeat that when we are passing legislation it is important that we consider its effects on children--its effects now, in 10 years' time and in 20 years' time. The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South, by way of giving evidence that the Conservative Government have done a great deal for children, highlighted the Children Act 1989. I was a member of the Standing Committee that considered that Act. The hon. Gentleman-- indeed, the whole House--will know that one of the reasons for our having achieved legislation in the shape of the Children Act arose from the Cleveland report's appalling disclosures of child abuse, which came as a shock to many hon. Members. Indeed, there are very few people who were not appalled by those disclosures. The Government were right to wait for the publication of that report before introducing legislation. In that way they were able to provide greater protection for children. I was happy to support the legislation.
However, there is no money to implement the provisions of the Act. We have heard about the large number of children on at-risk registers who are not attached to any social worker. In the light of what we know about child abuse in this country, that is absolutely disgraceful. Indeed, it is unbelievable and inexcusable. The purpose of the Children Act was to protect children, yet in London and all other large cities there are increasing numbers of children on at-risk registers. That is not because people are treating their children worse ; it is because we are beginning to find out how badly people have always treated their children. Of course, it is a minority who abuse children, but people are disclosing abuse, children are coming forward and social workers are trained to recognise the signs. This is all useful and desirable, but we need the money to implement the legislation.
The local authority in my area has said that employing the extra staff needed to do that job would cost £400,000 or £500,000 a year. That local authority, like all others, has to consider its poll tax bill. It is ridulous that, in order to ensure that we are not poll tax capped, we have to cut services that are needed to avoid damage to children and to the fabric of society. I urge Conservative Members in particular, who put themselves forward as members of the party of the family, to look at what the Government have done to families. They should not say, "I am not concerned about the past, let us look to the future", because we are picking up the pieces of the past for the minority--sadly an increasing one --of our children who face appalling problems.
The Government frequently hide their inactivity behind a mask of ignorance. The figures about the number of children who go missing have rightly been read out. There are about 98,000 on the books of the Children's Society, but the Government say that they do not collect those figures nationally. I have asked about the number of children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, but the Government do not have figures on that. I have been referred to some other agency. I have asked about the
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number of children who play truant and about the number who work illegally--some for pocket money, but some because their parents are unemployed and they have to be a contributory factor in breadwinning for the family--and the Government do not have the figures. When the Government enact their policy, they should know about all these problems and about why they exist. No party can claim to be the party of the family when it knows so little about children and family life. We know that 2 million or more children are living in poverty and of the increase in the number of reported cases of child abuse and of violence within families. I do not know whether the incidence of such crimes has gone up, but I know that there are many more reported cases. We should be devising policies and making it easier for women and children who experience violence to be offered the means of escape.This is where I part company with those who hold up their hands in horror over the divorce rate. One has to take into account why people get divorced. People do not opt for divorce lightly, but many have taken advantage of easier divorce laws to get out of a situation that they can stand no longer. They know that they can escape from such situations. One should not say that divorce is wrong, or should be discouraged, or that people should stay together for the sake of the children. Ask the adults whose parents stayed together in an atmosphere of violence and misery for the sake of the children that they then were, and see what they say.
Mr. Burns : Does the hon. Lady accept that, in many cases, it is more harmful to the children if parents stay together rather than seeking divorce? Divorce is not an easy option.
Miss Lestor : I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Our society lacks the proper structure to deal with divorces, with children of divorces once separation has taken place, and with the changing pattern of family life in which both parents remarry and have children in the new relationships. Few organisations help children and other families to relate to that and to organise their lives. I do not believe that the family has collapsed or is disappearing. It has fundamentally changed and will continue to change. We have to devise structures and ways to help people, particularly children, to cope with those changes, and to take away the guilt associated with the break-up of marriage.
Within our definition of families, we should have more than the narrow concept of mother and father and Janet and John in a two or three-bedroomed house with a dog. A family is what the children perceive it to be. It can be a one-parent family with all the love and care of a two-parent family. It can be a grandmother who cares for the children because things have gone wrong. We do children who are not in the accepted pattern of family life but are in offshoots of it a disservice to present to them the ideal of the family to which many hon. Members feel we should aspire. Many children never can and never will have such a family life, but they should not be deprived of family support or of what is available to families.
Mr. Alton : I agree with some of what the hon. Lady is saying and I do not elevate the idea of the nuclear family to an ideal because things can go badly wrong. However, does she accept that, all other things being equal, the best interests of the child are served where there can be two
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parents in a stable relationship that does not change? When a child loses one or other of its parents, for whatever reason, it may suffer enormous emotional trauma.Miss Lestor : The hon. Gentleman and I agree on many points. He is saying that if a family is loving, that is the best thing for the child. That is true, if people are prepared to work at it and if their irritations, antagonisms and personalities are such that they can work at it. However, that is not the case for a growing minority of our children. My plea is only that we take these people with us when we present our ideas about what is desirable and preferable in family life.
The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) said that women who stay at home to look after their children are made to feel guilty. I do not agree with that. It is up to people to make a choice. The trouble is that many women do not have that choice. Many are forced to go out to work, for a wide variety of reasons. One of the worst suggestions that the Government made, which seems to have got lost somewhere, is that if a woman refuses to name the father of her child, for whatever reason, she should be penalised by the loss of 20 per cent. of her income support. There may be good reasons why a woman makes such a refusal, but, even if the Government feel that they must take punitive measures, why must they take it out on the kids? That is what they are doing. They are saying, "Right, we are not giving you much anyway, but if you won't tell us who the scoundrel who fathered your child is, we shall take 20 per cent. from your income support and push you deeper into poverty."
Women's rights are tied up with their right to work, or not to work, as they choose. It is up to people to decide how they run their lives. The terrible dilemma for many one-parent families is that the cost of child care is so great that women in such a situation would have to earn between £50 and £70 a week more than most women to pay for the child care that enables them to work. Furthermore, by working they lose many of the benefits that they would otherwise have. If we believe in freedom for people to please themselves, and for women in such a situation to please themselves, the Government should look closely at child care arrangements, which represent one of the biggest barriers to work for many single women. If they want to stay at home looking after their children, it should be made easier for them to do so. Sometimes, social security offices do not make it easy for mothers to stay at home to look after their children when that is what they would like to do.
As the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South said, child care is a complex issue. Nursery education has always been free--the problem is that there has never been much of it. If one is lucky enough to live in the area of a local authority that offers nursery education--most likely Labour--one can send one's child there. Mostly, it would be part-time provision. Apart from that facility, there is a variety of other child care, most of which is expensive and some of which is for only a few hours a day, which does not help the working mother. It can be a workplace nursery. For the good of family life and of children, mothers and fathers, whatever child care policies are developed, we should be talking about child care facilities for all children, not just for those of working mothers. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Ms. Richardson) will say more about this later. Whatever the cost of child care facilities, if they are available only for working
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mothers, whenever a Government decide that such women are not needed in the work force any longer, they will stop them. In whatever form it comes, child care is an essential part of bringing up children. After they are two or three, because of their essential curiosity, most children want more than can be provided in the best of homes. At that age, they learn more than at any other time in their lives and as most of us cannot provide enough stimulus in our homes, we look to outside agencies. My plea is, as it always has been, that such a facility should be available for all our children. If we are to have priorities and to move step by step, we must ensure that poverty does not deny children access to such facilities while we allow those with money access to better facilities.An example has been provided by Warwickshire county council, which has recently decided to close its nursery schools--as they come under the Department of Education and Science, children can attend them free of charge--and then to let them out on a commercial basis. That means that the poorer people in the area for which the county council is responsible will not be able to afford the nursery education that was available to their children free of charge, and there is much poverty within the area. If we push private provision too far, many children will be unable to participate in pre-school activity because it will be far too expensive for their parents.
Many of the Government policies and many of the attitudes that have been developed have contributed to a denial of access to nursery education for many children. I believe that this will contribute to a breakdown in family life, which the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South claims that the Government have enhanced. The freezing of child benefit, the removal of income support for 16 to 20-year-olds, the introduction of poll tax, the shortage of housing and a host of other things have all been contributory factors in breaking down family life. Life has been made harder for families.
I was appalled to receive a letter from a woman who had taken on her murdered sister's two children. She had taken them into her home alongside her own two children. No money is involved. The children are not in the care of the local authority. As she is hard up--the family is not rich--she applied to the Department of Social Security for the extra £1 for that group of siblings as well as for her own. She argued, "I have taken on another family and there are two first-born children." The Department said, "You cannot have the money. You can have it only for one, because you are a unit. You can apply only in respect of the older child in the situation in which you find yourself." I could not believe it. Equally, I could not believe the letter I received from the Department. I was confident when I wrote that it would accept that a mistake had been made. After all, what is £1?
That sort of application of a rigid rule undermines what we understand by family life. It undermines also what the woman is doing in bringing up the children of her murdered sister.
The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South talked about what he would like to see in future. We would not need to have so many dreams, hopes and ideas about and for the future if the past 11 years had not been so bad for our children. Things have become worse for a minority of our
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children. For a growing minority of our children, things continue to become worse. Until the Government grasp that nettle and understand what family poverty is, what child abuse is and how some families depend on child benefit and the uprating of it, we shall face year in and year out the problems that we are discussing. At the same time, more of our children and more families will suffer. 5.3 pmMr. Peter Viggers (Gosport) : There have been some wide-ranging and thoughtful contributions to an intersting debate. I do not propose to add to the wide-ranging nature of it. Instead, I shall concentrate on one narrow issue about which I feel strongly, and on which I know that I am right, and that is the remarriage of widows.
I shall spell out the background. As people become healthier and live longer, and as their old age is healthier, it is possible for more and more people to contemplate remarriage later in their lives. My mother remarried at 74, and the last five years of her life were as happy as any other part of it. I shall concentrate on widows because the longevity of women is greater than that of men, and pension schemes are normally based on male contributions rather than those made by females. Increasingly, widows are in receipt of pensions because of the contributions that their first husbands made at their places of work. Those pensions will cease, however, if the widows remarry. Some of these pensions are quite generous. I represent a considerable number of service men and their families including many service widows who are living on naval pensions. If one of those widows wants to remarry, she has to face the agonising choice of remarrying and forfeiting the pension--it would fall on remarriage--or remaining alone when it might be her inclination, and that of the man she has met, to remarry. It is an agonising choice and it should not have to be faced by anyone.
In many instances the widow will decide that she wishes to remarry. Her second husband--I am talking mainly of elderly people--will probably be already retired. If that is the position, the women will have no pension rights associated with her second husband. It will be a post-service marriage. If she should be widowed again, for a second time, she will be left without the first pension that she received by virtue of her first husband's service. She will have no pension by virtue of her second husband's service because it was a post-service marriage. People should not be placed in that position.
I have spent years trying to explain to Ministers that there is a real problem. Unfortunately, I am getting nowhere. I have been told consistently that if a woman decides to remarry it is only right that she should cast her lot in with her second husband and look to him for a pension arrangement. As I have said, that is impossible if the second husband has already retired and it is a post-service marriage.
I shall deal specifically with examples that concern the Ministry of Defence because many of my constituents are service personnel, but my argument can be applied generally throughout the public and private sectors. I greatly welcome the introduction by the Ministry of Defence of a discretionary right. The widow who marries a second time can ask for her pension from her first husband to be reinstated. The rule is that if she is significantly worse off as a result of the second marriage and losing the first pension, the Ministry, in its wisdom,
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will contemplate and grant a pension that goes back to the one that was paid to the widow by virtue of her first husband's service. I ask hon. Members to put themselves in the position of a widow who is contemplating remarriage who does not know whether she will have her first pension restored as of right. Discretionary restoration is not good enough. No sensible woman with a significant pension that enables her to live in some comfort in retirement will cast that pension aside with only the hope that the pension fund trustees will restore her first husband's pension if she should be left a widow for a second time.A most respectable elderly couple who are known to me--I hasten to say that they are not constituents of mine--went away for a weekend and returned to tell their friends that they had married in their absence. They told me privately that they had done nothing of the sort. If they had remarried, the woman would have lost her first pension and would, perhaps, have been left without a pension on second widowhood. As I have said, this is a serious problem. Unlike many of the other submissions that are made to the Treasury and rejected by it, I am delighted that what I am suggesting would not cost anything. I know that there are a significant number of widows who would like to remarry but who cannot do so. As a result, their pension from their first husband continues. If we were to introduce a rule that had the effect that if a widow remarried and was left a widow for a second time her pension from the first marriage would be restored automatically, more widows would enter second marriages. Socially that would be desirable. It is my own family experience that it would make for a great deal of happiness in the community, and it would not cost anything. We would be suspending the first pension only during the second marriage. If a widow were not left a widow for a second time, nothing would happen. If she were to find herself in that position, the first pension would be restored.
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham) : My hon. Friend makes an important point that applies to a significant number of people. Perhaps we should ask the Ministry of Defence how many letters from Members of Parliament it has answered. Two leading members of my association are in this position. I suspect that the Ministry of Defence may have been dealing with this in an atomistic way. Perhaps we should combine.
Mr. Viggers : I am grateful to my hon. Friend.
Mr. David Martin : Join the club.
Mr. Viggers : My hon. Friend asks me to join. Perhaps we should table a joint parliamentary question.
I am not picking out the Ministry of Defence as a bad employer, but my experience is based on it and on service personnel. I am considering public and private sector pension schemes generally. I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister to consider this issue carefully ; it is of great importance to a few people. The change that I have suggested would be the best one. Others say that changes should be made to the pension arrangements of the second husband and that his pension scheme should bear the burden of the post-service marriage. For technical reasons, I do not think that that is as good as the right to restoration of the first pension. I am grateful for the opportunity to make that small point.
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5.10 pmMr. Ian McCartney (Makerfield) : I congratulate the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin) on securing this debate. Since coming to the House nearly four years ago, he and I have tried to maintain as reasonable a working relationship as possible, bearing in mind our views on politics. I give a genuine welcome to the debate and to the issues that he has raised.
The debate is a bit of a pot-pourri on the issues of the family. I am the youngest grandfather in the House ; I have two grandchildren. I believe in marriage as an institution, as I have now tried it twice. There is no such thing as an easy divorce. We must try, not only in legal but emotional terms, to provide resources to enable families to remain together or, if that is not possible, to disengage in such a way that it damages neither the partners nor, more important, the children. That disengagement is more traumatic for children than the final outcome of a divorce and separation, and that trauma can remain with the children for many years and affect many aspects of their lives.
We should discuss this matter not in a pious way but by recognising that every statistic is a human being in a complex relationship. Our constituents come to see us about the housing, economic and social consequences of the breakdown of marriage.
An on-going problem for women is violence in the home, which leads them to seek refuge in order to protect themselves and their children. When women cannot find refuge, they remain in marriage and in those violent circumstances. Insufficient resources are made available for local authorities to provide refuges for women who are suffering from violence. In many parts of the United Kingdom this evening, women will suffer, not for the first time, from the violence of a partner but will be unable to take themselves to a place of refuge either because none exists or because the police are unwilling to take action.
The problems that we are discussing are complex, and we shall be unable to resolve them by 7 pm. If we are committed to the concept of the family, its role must be maintained and developed. For the majority of people, there must be genuine choice in employment, training, health care, housing, personal social services and pensions. Access to those services must be consistent with the needs of the family either as a group or individually. I want to concentrate not on the generality of family policies but on the suffering of families because of a breakdown in personal relationships, which affects the behaviour of children.
By the time that this House adjourns on Friday afternoon, two mothers in Britain will have lost a child because of solvent abuse. Solvent abuse knows no social barriers. It can affect a family who are well off, on middle income, on benefit or who have no social problems. It is a growing problem. Resolve is a national charity that works with the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Health and the Home Office to establish the nature of solvent abuse and to introduce measures to protect individuals. Between June and December 1990, there were 725 reports of solvent abuse. There were 230 reported deaths of young people because of solvent abuse, and a further 215 were involved in criminal activities because of it. The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trotter) has campaigned long and vigorously on the issue of solvent
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abuse, which has led to changes in the law and to growing recognition by the Home Office of the need for special measures to take care of those involved in solvent abuse. Despite those changes in the law, an escalating number of children are becoming involved for a short or a longer period. It can make someone a chronic abuser or a social abuser. Social abusers are mainly those who come under peer pressure at school not to "chicken out". A child may abuse solvents only once, but such is the toxicity of the materials used that one sniff is sufficient to kill. I am aware of two cases of the so-called chicken syndrome, whereby a friend was saying, "Come on, try it ; it gives you a bit of a high, but there are no problems, we have done it before"--and those children are now dead.Society must see what it can do to identify children who are at risk, why they become involved and what we can do about it. The House has rightly turned its back on criminalising those who are involved in solvent abuse, and has looked to social changes to try to tackle the problem. Forty-six per cent. of children who die from solvent abuse are found at home. Children under 17 are most at risk, and single parents in particular need support.
Many of those who died were under the influence of other people--older children or their peers. It is important that the House should make a commitment to give resources and to work with Resolve in the voluntary sector and with local education departments to develop special projects to bring to the attention of children at school the damage that can result from solvent abuse and to enable teachers to identify children at risk.
We must deal at local level with those who sell solvents. Often, shopkeepers sell solvents because they are ignorant of the use to which they will be put. Following legislation, it is now a criminal offence to sell solvents to children but, tragically, a small hard core of retailers are prepared to sell solvents to schoolchildren knowing that they will not be used for the stated purpose. That is not just my view ; it is shown in surveys conducted earlier this year by Resolve and local authorities in Cheshire and Newcastle. Industry and the Government should give additional financial resources to assist Resolve to run training schemes at local level for retailing employees who sell these dangerous solvents.
School practices should be changed. There is no need to use Tippex when water-based solutions do the job just as adequately and pose no danger to schoolchildren. Resources are not always needed--all it takes is a common- sense approach by the Government and retailers to remove from shop shelves those solvents which are readily available to schoolchildren and which, if sniffed, may kill them. Any Government who are concerned about the family, particularly children, can take that reasonable approach on board.
Amusement arcades are another source of child exploitation. Since 1987, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. Dunnachie) has twice tried to change the law to regulate the amusement arcade industry. The Minister may reply by saying that the Home Office is satisfied with self-regulation. My experience as a Member of Parliament who has been involved with groups of children addicted to amusement arcade gambling is that self-regulation does not work. Few amusement arcade owners do anything practical to prevent children under 16
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from using their premises. Indeed, were it not for the under-16s using those arcades, the clientele would be significantly reduced. I know of cases of young people who became involved in car thefts organised by adults who had hung about amusement arcades, first giving the young people money to feed their habit and then using them to steal, while the adult criminals got away with the booty. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) spoke eloquently about problems in inner-city areas. He will know of the large-scale inquiry into prostitution rackets involving female and young male teenagers who are recruited from amusement arcades because they are vulnerable and because their gambling can be exploited.Mr. Alton : I welcome the hon. Gentleman's comments about the acute problems in the centre of Liverpool. Is he aware that one in five of those who visit the amusement arcades are estimated to be under nine?
Mr. McCartney : The hon. Gentleman is right. That happens in my area as well. When local authorities have attempted, through their planning and other regulations, to prevent such premises from opening, their decisions have been overturned on appeal by the Department of the Environment, and the Home Office has been unwilling to replace self-regulation with a regulatory system.
Why should the industry be worried about the loss of
self-regulation? Arcade owners who do not allow children on their premises have nothing to fear from legislation. Only those who exploit young children and those who allow their premises to be used by criminals who exploit children have something to fear. Every day, tens of thousands of young people are involved with amusement arcades. Some take part in criminal activities ; some steal from their parents ; some leave school at lunchtime to go to an amusement arcade and use the money that they have been given for food to feed their gambling habits. Many of the problems that relate to children being out of school can be traced back to local amusement arcades.
If we are serious about dealing with this social problem, Government assistance is needed, as well as involvement by parents and local authorities. If we do not tackle that problem, a small percentage of the young generation will be involved in a gambling tradition which is exploited by criminals and others involved in prostitution. I am sure that the House would not like that to continue without doing something about it.
5.26 pm
Mr. Simon Burns (Chelmsford) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin) on his success in the ballot and I thank him for enabling us to debate this important issue. We live in an age when practice may have changed but, sadly, all too often attitudes have not. The prevailing attitude among many people is that a wife should stay at home, looking after the children, or locked to the kitchen sink preparing her husband's tea or evening meal. I do not in any way downgrade those mothers and wives who wish to stay at home. It is a noble profession to look after the house and bring up children and it should on no account be criticised. We live in a different era when many women prefer to go out to work or have to go to work from financial
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necessity. There are two sides to the coin. Everyone should have the right to choose to stay at home and should not be criticised for doing so or be considered dull, miserable or old-fashioned for following that course. Equally, everyone should have the right to choose to go out to work, earn a living and receive the stimuli of a working profession and career.It is utterly wrong to think that, as soon as one has a child, one must give up the career that one enjoyed in order to stay at home. The trouble is that, all too often, people look down their noses at working mothers and think that they are worse mothers for going out to work or they think that the children are deprived of love and affection and the security of a home.
I speak from a little personal experience. In the light of some of the suggestions that I shall make, perhaps I should declare an interest. My wife is a working wife and we have a young daughter who is just over three. From the day my daughter was born, I knew that my wife would continue her career as soon as that was feasible and that that would entail someone else looking after our daughter during the day. Perhaps foolishly, but for the first 12 months after my wife returned to work, I was embarrassed when the inevitable question came : "What do you do with your daughter during the day?" I fell into the old trap. I thought that people would think that we were less good parents because one of us did not stay at home to look after that child. I used to hum and ha but finally, with many justifications and explanations, I would confess that our daughter went to a creche during the day. I explained how wonderful it was for her, how she enjoyed the company of other children, how she was learning to share more and get on with other children at an earlier age than she would otherwise have done.
After about 12 months I thought about the way in which I had behaved and realised that there was no reason why I should attempt to justify what we were doing or feel embarrassed about it. There was nothing wrong with it. Certain children enjoy the company of other children all day. They enjoy the stimuli that they get from each other, the constant attention given by the people looking after them, and the love that they receive--provided that they return in the late-afternoon or early evening and at the weekend to a secure and loving family home.
I make no apology for my view that everyone who wishes to take that decision should be able to do so. Sadly, some people have that decision forced upon them for economic reasons, and we must consider the awful cost of child care for people who wish to return to work. The problem affects not only those families on low incomes or single-parent families, although it is obviously greater for them. In many parts of the country it is virtually impossible to break out of the poverty trap. It is a vicious circle which traps them at home when they would dearly like to have the choice of working. Their weekly income is simply not sufficient to enable them to afford a child minder or place their child in a creche and still provide a reasonable standard of living for themselves and their families. Facilities range from child minding, which is a relatively inexpensive option--although I choose my words carefully--to the kind of creche in which I place my daughter. That costs £500 a month which, over a year, is more than it costs to send children and young people to many of our public schools.
Child care can be an expensive business and it is out of far too many people's range. There is a range of options
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