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9.17 pm
Ms Jean Corston (Bristol, East): I am delighted to take part in the debate and to speak in support of the motion.
At the heart of the motion is the assertion that children who live with two parents should feel that they have two parents. In far too many families, the father is a weekend guest celebrity, and that cannot be allowed to continue.
Today, I chaired a well-attended meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on parenting. We were privileged to be addressed by Mr. Gregor Hatt, a member of the Swedish Commission on the Role of Men and Parenting. It was set up in 1992 to assess the success or otherwise of the Swedish Government's parental leave requirements, which were introduced in 1974. The requirements are that there should be 10 days' paternity leave when a child is born. Nine out of 10 Swedish fathers take up the full 10 days. That is followed by 12 months of parental leave allocated between parents--for example, six months each or half time for 24 months. Parents can choose any combination, but the father must use one month of the parental leave and the leave must be used up before the child is eight.
It is important to stress that parental leave is seen as an individual right by the Swedish Conservative party, which has supported the proposals. In 1980, 22 per cent. of Swedish men used their parental leave entitlement. By 1992, the figure had grown to 38 per cent. and it is now 50 per cent.
In view of what the Minister said, it is important to stress that the parental leave package costs Sweden 0.1 per cent. of its gross national product, and that the proposals apply to all workers whatever the size of their company, and include the self-employed. The benefits to Swedish society and industry have been tremendous. Women workers are not isolated in pursuing family-friendly employment policies, and there have been tremendous benefits to men workers.
The chairman of Volvo, one of Sweden's most successful companies, recently said that, if he had to choose between two identically qualified men applying for a job, he would always choose the man who had taken parental leave. I suggest that this is because those who are responsible for bringing up children have to look after them throughout the day. They pick up many skills: conflict avoidance, dispute resolution, time management, critical path analysis and budgeting. People in commerce and industry spend a great deal of time and money trying to impart such skills to their managers.
No one ever looks back and says, "I wish that I had spent more time in the office." Too many men suddenly realise that their teenage children are strangers to them. It is obviously right that there should be a partnership between Government and employers and that the Government should set an example in the public sector.
In a recent speech in South Africa, President Mandela surprised his audience by saying that fathers should regularly collect their children from school; that they should share that responsibility, because it was important for them to be seen to have responsibility for their children. He was saying that absent fatherhood was not a good idea. He of all fathers had a good reason for being absent while his children were growing up, but that should not apply to other fathers.
I advise hon. Members to visit schools in their constituencies and ask the children, "How many of you have dads who earn more than your mum?" Most children will put up a hand. The next question should be, "How many of you have dads who are cleverer than your mum?"
In response to that very few children will put up their hands. As long as we continue to pursue employment policies that corral men into working long hours during which they are disengaged from their families, such men will pay a price through ill-health and through not knowing their children. The children will grow up in a world of women, which is not good for them and we shall weaken women in the employment market.
Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith):
I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Ms Corston), who recently took over from me as the chair of the all-party parenting group. I remind the Minister that, two years ago, in autumn 1994, the international year of the family, we produced a report which was sent to some Ministers, including the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. The majority of members of the group were Conservatives. That has changed slightly, in that one of its members joined the Liberal party, one joined the Labour party and another abandoned the Tory whip. Two are still in the group and one of them is a Minister.
The most important recommendation in that report was the one that in my view made the most serious criticism of the Government because it related to the Government's failure to have a coherent, overall policy on parenting, children or families. That is the problem and it was not just the Labour party that said that.
I had enormous respect, as had Conservative Members, for Baroness Lucy Faithfull, who died a short time ago. She came with me to see the then Secretary of State for Health to say that we needed co-ordination between Departments and between the Government, local authorities and the private sector to get a proper policy on families, parenting and children. She wanted such a policy as much as I did, and every organisation working in any of these spheres knows that the lack of such a policy is the problem. I cannot overstate the importance of having a policy. It is crucial to the social structure and fabric of this country.
We have, quite rightly, heard an awful lot in this debate about changing work patterns. Five or six years ago, I became aware of this issue and its implications for children and parenting when I discovered the amazing figure that, in south Wales, close to 50 per cent. of main carers of children at home are men.
What has happened in this country--although it is not unique to this country--in heavy-industry areas that have collapsed is that women go into part-time work. That is desirable and proper, but it leaves men in an increasingly uncertain position because they no longer have full-time jobs. The macho culture in which they were brought up has been taken away and they are no longer valued as parents. The role of father has been undermined.
We recently heard criticisms from a Conservative Member of the St. Mellon's estate in Cardiff because it had too many single mothers. One question that the Government and the country must take on board is: if we de-skill those men and give them no role as fathers, what
use will they be to women? They do not bring in an income and they cannot bring up children. So we wind up with those male macho figures without jobs and without hope.
The tragedy is that, when Conservative Members see some of those men in the street, they think that they are there to cause aggro and that they are yobbos. Talk to those men--scratch the surface--and one will very often find a very insecure and uncertain young man who has no hope in life. In that direction lies high crime, social breakdown and all the other problems that we find not only in this country--which I readily admit--but in other countries. But other countries are at least addressing the issue.
What are we doing about the problem in this country? Basically, we have moralised about it and made moral statements condemning single parents, people who are not married, or this group or that group. Moralising is insufficient. Of course there is room for moral statements, but we will have major difficulties if we do not have policies to underpin them.
I am sorry that the Minister who opened this debate is not in the Chamber. I should have liked to tell her that it is no good telling me that we have a policy designed to help families when the fact is that we still put children into bed-and-breakfast and emergency accommodation for anything up to three years, and when the Government still do not have a policy on it.
We tell schools that they must get tough on school misbehaviour and exclude children from school. Often, although not always, that is right. But if we do not then provide those children with at-home tuition or some alternative education--leaving them to wander the streets for much of the time--we should not be surprised if we create adults who have major problems themselves.
Let us consider the recent event at Dunblane. We greatly criticised--quite rightly--the man who committed the killings and who then killed himself. But who has forgotten that that man was brought up, as an adopted child, to believe that his mother was his sister? The two men who were recently sent to prison for gross abuse of children were abused as children. I would bet a pound to the penny that the man who took a machete to those children the other day either has a history of mental illness or has been abused in some way himself. The pattern is repeated over and over again.
The hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) said that there are no quick fixes for such problems, and he is right. But unless we start finding a fix for them, the problems will get worse. With changes in technology and in the economy, there are more people who are hopeless and helpless. We also have technology--witness the guns in Dunblane--that enables grossly disturbed people to kill or to do immense harm to other people. It is not merely a matter of banning guns but of examining the way in which family structures have broken down.
I again tell the Minister that co-ordination between Departments is vital. For example, about 25 per cent. of children aged under 12 in this country go home to an empty house or are at home in an empty house during the school holidays. Close to 2 million children are in that position, if I remember the figures correctly. The answer is not to change employment back to what it was in the 1940s and 1950s--no one is capable of doing that.
We must recognise that there is a need for good nursery care and for something like a kids' club approach that provides places for children out of normal school hours. The Government are boasting about more part-time jobs for women--something that I support. But they must recognise that, if the man is working as well, that often means that the child goes home to an empty house or has nowhere to go during the school holidays.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell) said that the House of Commons was one of the most appalling examples of bad child care practice. To the best of my knowledge, there is still only one high chair for feeding kids in the House, and there is nowhere to change a baby. I have wandered round the House trying to change a baby, and I can tell hon. Members that the Clerk's desk is about the right height but lacks the supporting facilities to do it effectively. The House of Commons does not take this matter seriously.
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