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Ms Jean Corston (Bristol, East): Does my hon. Friend agree that the measures that he suggests would benefit families and society as a whole? At the beginning of a conference in Sweden that I attended in 1988, a preliminary discussion of the agenda was held. People agreed happily to alter the agenda to allow a young man who was scheduled to speak late in the afternoon to leave early to pick up his children from kindergarten. That was accepted as completely normal and it showed that children were not just the responsibility of mothers.
Mr. MacShane: My hon. Friend makes a fundamental point. Fathers must accept their share of the responsibility for creating a stable family life. In this country, fathers are pressured into working long hours, bringing work home and doing excessive paid or unpaid overtime, so taking their share of the responsibility becomes extremely difficult. The institution of social partnership measures would help to introduce agreed flexible working time and would prevent unions from permitting excessive overtime. In many other European countries, works councils within firms must give permission for overtime above a certain limited amount each week.
We must alter the tax regime, so that the financial burden of bringing up children is no longer penalised fiscally. Our tax regime is one of the most anti-family and anti-marriage in Europe and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Family and working time law or arrangements should require public offices to be open at times that suit parents rather than bureaucrats. I welcome the flexible approach to shopping hours, but we need to go further so that other services, especially important public services, are available when people need them.
Ms Tessa Jowell (Dulwich):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) on securing this important debate, focusing parliamentary attention on a revolution that is taking place in households throughout the country.
Research published last week by the Equal Opportunities Commission found that the move towards flexible working has
The benefits of flexible working are becoming available to increasing numbers of people.
Opportunity 2000 reports that its 293 member companies now have, on average, eight "family-friendly" initiatives, and more than half offer flexible working hours. Other initiatives include job sharing, homeworking and paternity leave, subjects to which I shall return later.
The danger is that all the fine talk about flexible working can, as my hon. Friend made so clear, easily obscure the fact that attitudes in the workplace are not changing as quickly as they need to in order to enable parents to reconcile their roles as parents, carers and employees.
Juggling the demands of home and work is simply not an option for many people, who continue to be forced to make a straight choice between the two. An industrial tribunal recently heard how Sue Edwards, a woman tube driver, was told by her employer, London Transport, that she had no choice but to work the late shift. When she drew attention to the fact that she had a young son and would find it difficult, she was told that she could
She won her case, but it took her three years to do so.
Not every working parent is presented with such a stark choice between work and home, but nevertheless, many parents are realising that they must make that choice. The lack of affordable, reliable and sufficiently flexible child care and the inevitability of low pay and long working
hours all make it difficult for parents who would otherwise wish to work--especially working mothers-- to strike the right balance between home and work, to achieve their aim of being both good parents and conscientious and reliable employees. The fact that Britain lags behind the rest of Europe on all those things, as my hon. Friend made so clear, should be a source of the most serious concern, and indeed shame, to the Government.
We seek evidence that the Government are taking that seriously, and that they recognise that there is an important role for Government in starting to promote a proper partnership between the responsibilities of home and work and a proper partnership between employers and Government in order to achieve that important end.
The problem is that we hear too much about the Government's good intentions, especially overseas. At the Beijing conference, the Government signing up to the platform for action was a good example of the huge discrepancy between the rhetoric that we hear abroad and the actions that we witness at home. In practice, it leaves all Opposition Members sceptical that the Government have any real practical determination to deliver policies that would make a real difference to men and women's lives.
At the fourth world women's conference in Beijing, the Minister for Overseas Development, Baroness Chalker, said:
All Opposition Members would agree with that.
Why, one might ask, have the Government in which Baroness Chalker is a Minister so consistently blocked the measures that would make that possible? Affordable child care and the availability of parental and paternity leave would give families a genuine opportunity to bring about a more equal sharing of parental responsibilities. That more equal sharing is impossible if those sources of support are not in place.
Consistently, the Government have denied British families that opportunity. They blocked the directive on parental leave from the moment that it was introduced, and eventually opted out of it as part of the Maastricht protocol. They have allowed a position to develop in which the United Kingdom has the lowest level of publicly funded child care in Europe. They have constantly undermined efforts to introduce proper paternity leave.
As long ago as 1979, when I was chair of the staff committee in the London borough of Camden, I introduced the first paternity leave scheme in the country. That was 16 years ago, and we have made precious little consistent progress since that time.
It is hard to understand why the Government are so complacent. If proof were needed that women, who bear the principal responsibility for managing the conflicting demands of home and work, continue to bear the responsibilities for juggling home and work, one need look no further than the Institute of Management's 1995 survey, which revealed that women account for 11 per cent. of all managers and only 3 per cent. of directors. For women working in low-paid jobs, frequently doing more
than one part-time job to make ends meet, the problems of juggling the demands of home and work can be even more difficult.
The Government will no doubt be quick to proclaim the EOC's finding that flexible working has improved the opportunities for women as evidence of the success of the Government policy of deregulation of the labour force. Can we therefore presume that they will also take responsibility for the negative aspects of flexible working, which emerged from the EOC's survey?
Britain's unique long hours culture represents possibly the biggest threat to maintaining the right balance between work and family life. The EOC's report, "Flexible Employment in Britain", found that the long hours culture is having a destructive effect on the career development of women and on family life. It concluded:
British families are quickly finding out that there is little that is "family-friendly" about the Government's definition of "flexible". Flexibility is synonymous with insecurity in the workplace, and has increasingly come to mean being prepared to work all hours. As women continue to bear the main responsibility for caring for children and for elderly relatives, they are less able to put in the long hours that are increasingly being expected of them, or, when they do so, it is at great cost to themselves and their children.
There is no one reason for the emergence of the long hours culture, but there can be no doubt that the Government's mismanagement of the economy has played a large part. Low pay and job insecurity have led to people working longer hours to build up their pay packet to a reasonable level, or they do so because they fear for their job and do not want to appear less dedicated than their colleagues. The EOC's research concluded:
British families now find it harder than previously to combine the responsibilities of work and home. Until recently, it was widely believed that employees would continue to enjoy increasing leisure time. That is holding true for the rest of Europe, but not for the United Kingdom. In the past 10 years, while the average working week has been decreasing in many other European countries, it has increased by about two hours in the United Kingdom. Last week's conference on the long hours culture, which was organised by the Women's National Commission, heard how employees in the United Kingdom work, on average, far longer each week than their European counterparts. Almost 28 per cent. of full-time employees in the United Kingdom work more than 46 hours a week--that is roughly double the figure in any other European Union country.
By contrast, slightly more than 7 per cent. of French employees and 6.7 per cent. of German employees work longer than 46 hours a week. Some 3.5 million people in the United Kingdom--15 per cent. of the work force-- worked more than 48 hours a week in 1991. That was an increase of more than 12 per cent. over the figure for 1984.
The worst part is that the gap between the British and the European working week is widening. In 1993, British employees worked on average 1,952 hours a year--a rise
of 48 hours since 1983. By contrast, German workers worked 1,739 hours a year--69 hours fewer than in 1983. The long hours culture is made worse by the fact that the United Kingdom is the only country in the European Union where employees do not have a statutory entitlement to paid annual leave. One out of 10 employees in this country has no holiday entitlement.
Working mothers are hit hardest by the emergence of the long hours culture. Research by Opportunity 2000 found that long working hours are a significant factor in preventing women from reaching the top levels of management. The long hours culture is not only preventing women from breaking into higher positions, but beginning to take a very heavy toll on the life of their children and on family life in general.
Two surveys carried out by the organisation Parents at Work, to which my hon. Friend referred, examined the effects of the long hours culture and found that it is putting many people under intense pressure and affecting both their health and their relationships. One of the surveys by Parents at Work concentrated on the plight of working mothers with children under the age of four. Two thirds of respondents said that they felt that they spent too little time with their children and experienced continuing problems with child care. They spent, on average, between two and four hours with their children each day. Parents at Work said:
"improved the opportunities for some women to work."
"drive a train or be a mum".
"a more equal sharing, between women and men, of parental and household responsibilities, is fundamental for women's . . . access to education, jobs and politics".
"Even in higher status jobs, the 'long hours culture' stops women from getting promoted and in lower status jobs, women have to work long hours to make ends meet. British men work the longest hours in Europe and have less time to spend with their families."
"the restructuring of organisations, by 'downsizing' or 'delayering', has meant that more work is being done by fewer staff."
"A picture emerged of women doing a good job, taking little sick leave, working to give their families economic security and rushing home to care for children at the end of the day. Fathers who in general worked even longer hours than their partners were able to spend even less time with their children, putting extra pressure on mothers."
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