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10.30 am
Ms Ruth Kelly (Bolton, West): Thank you for calling me so early in the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Unfortunately, I shall not be able to stay to the end of the debate because I have to go to my constituency for an important and long-standing engagement.
I welcome the Under-Secretary for Trade and Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, West and Hessle (Mr. Johnson) who opened the debate, to his well deserved Front-Bench post. I am pleased to be speaking in the first debate that the Government have held on family friendly employment. Drawing up policies to support family life will be a central challenge for the Government in the coming years. Those policies must support children financially, academically and emotionally, encourage parents to provide for their children and enable men and women to spend as much time as possible with their children, nurturing them. I recognise the importance of carers and caring responsibilities, highlighted by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), but I intend to focus on children.
Times have changed. The traditional family model, based on one breadwinner and a stay-at-home mother, is breaking down for financial and social reasons. Many families combine two earners, often two full-time workers. The Government have already recognised the changing pattern of family life. Their family policies so far have focused on making work pay and enabling families to have access to good quality and affordable child care. The Government's record is impressive. The working families tax credit tops up the income of low-wage households with children. The minimum wage sets a floor under earnings. The child care tax credit will subsidise child care places for the first two children on a sliding scale in low to middle-income families. Those policies and the record increase in child benefit will give mothers a choice on whether to go out to work or stay at home with their children.
The Government's proposals to make work pay have gone hand in hand with a strategy to encourage lone parents back to work, the primary motivation being to decrease dependency. Creating a working role model for children in such households will help to widen the horizons of the next generation.
It is time to move on. Policies to alleviate some of the pressures placed on relationships by long hours and heavy demands at the workplace for men and women must be central to our strategy, because those problems squeeze the number of hours that parents can spend at home with their children. The situation has been called a parenting deficit. The results can be severe, with insecure relationships and attachments between parents--particularly fathers--and their children. That has been increasingly associated with children's behavioural
problems later in life, as well as with juvenile crime. Research shows that boys who have no contact with their fathers are more likely to be violent, get hurt or get into trouble, and do less well at school. It is important for boys to have a good relationship with their parents, even if they are separated. Any strategy for the family has to address those pressures on parents' time and encourage men as well as women to spend more time with their children.
Mr. Brady:
I agree with much of what the hon. Lady says. Does she also believe that it is appropriate for the tax system to make it easier for married people to stay together and to promote marriage as a way of bringing up children?
Ms Kelly:
If the hon. Gentleman is alluding to the married couples allowance, perhaps he agrees that it was an anomaly in the tax system that had nothing to do with children, because people without children could still receive it. That policy is not the way forward, although we have to underpin families with children through policies that help them financially. I have spelled out how the Government are taking that issue forward.
The Government's fairness at work legislation is the start of an important process, helping men and women to combine work and family life. I welcome the regulations that my hon. Friend set out. For the first time, men and women are entitled to take up to 13 weeks off work over the first five years of a child's life without facing the sack. In addition, parents will be able to take time off in family emergencies, such as when their child is sick or a child minder is unexpectedly unavailable in the morning. Those are important milestones for the family. Just 3 per cent. of employers have any provision for parents to take time off. The new arrangements are a step forward, giving parents an opportunity to balance work and family life.
I found the comments of the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton astonishing. She cannot argue that eitherwe should have voluntary arrangements--or no arrangements--for parental leave or that parental leave should be paid. Surely if she believes in balancing work and family life, she should agree that the Government's policies are a step forward. I think that the Government should be going further, but the hon. Lady's comments struck me as absurd and I was astonished to hear them.
Who is likely to benefit from the regulations that have been introduced? Unpaid leave will be useful to workers in some contexts. For example, those with a child facing a crisis point may be forced to stay at home for a short period. They are likely to be lone mothers or mothers with working partners who are low paid and receive no annual leave beyond the statutory minimum. The right to return to work at the same rate of pay will give them job security during that time. In addition, a few wealthier working mothers with working partners who are able to save or whose income is genuinely marginal to the family income will also benefit from the opportunity to take spells of unpaid parental leave. However, that is only a small group of women.
I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Minister comment on the importance of fathers increasingly wanting to play a role in bringing up their children. However, fathers are unlikely to take any unpaid leave. A TUC survey shows that, among 130,000 employees at major financial institutions in the UK that currently offer
unpaid leave, over the past five years only 42 men have chosen to take it up. The Department of Trade and Industry has recognised that, pointing to the fact that 35 per cent. of women but only 2 per cent. of men are likely to take unpaid leave as the framework stands. The result will be that a whole tier of low and middle-income Britain, particularly fathers, will be unable or unwilling to benefit from unpaid leave.
I congratulate the Government on their decision to allow low-income parents to claim benefits during their periods of leave, something that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security announced in his speech to the Labour party conference. The Government estimate that about 1,000 people a year will take advantage of that new provision.
Parental leave from work has far greater potential to address many aspects of the Government's agenda for the family. By promoting responsible parenthood, it could enable mothers and fathers to share more equally in bringing up children and create greater opportunities for mothers to work if they wish, secure in the knowledge that they will be able to take time at home with the children if they are needed. It could also contribute to happier, more stable families with better-adjusted children. However, for those goals to be met, parental leave would need to be paid at a high enough rate for men in the work force not to feel under too great a financial strain if they take it. As the Social Security Committee report on parental leave, which was published this week, says:
A suggestion that I have made, which has the advantage of simplicity, is to pay parents taking leave a flat rate of about £100 a week. The idea of flat-rate payments has now been backed by the Social Security Committee in its report. On reasonable assumptions--15 per cent. of men and 50 per cent. of women taking their full 13-week entitlement--the Treasury has estimated that the total cost of providing such a flat-rate payment at that level would be £285 million a year. That might be a building block for a more generous entitlement in future; or, if finances were really strained, the payments could be limited to the first eight weeks.
If the payment were set at around that level, or perhaps in line with the minimum wage, lower-paid workers could spend time with their children with little financial penalty, while wealthier couples could save and top up their income so they would not be financially penalised too greatly by taking parental leave. Employers could enter into arrangements with their employees to top up the flat-rate payment.
As well as payment for parental leave, flexibility is important. I welcome the Government's suggestion that there might be work force or collective agreements on
how to implement the parental leave directive, provided that they meet the basic requirements. The Government's consultation paper suggests that such agreements might allow parents to take parental leave by working a shorter working week for a number of weeks.
Such flexibility seems to be the ideal, and the most likely to help employees and employers. Therefore, I was slightly disappointed to find that the Government's model contract, which will operate where there is no union and no collective agreements, and where people are probably on lower incomes--they may be agency and temporary workers--will require workers to take parental leave in blocks of at least a week, with at least four weeks notice. I do not believe that to be ideal, as parents in such employment are likely to find it extremely difficult to meet those requirements and take full advantage of the leave.
I make two further pleas to the Government. The first is to consider extending the upper age limit from five, as parents need to take time off to look after their children even after they have started school. As the scheme limits the total time to three months, I doubt whether employers will find it too much of a burden to allow that leave to be spread over a longer period.
"It is clear to us that if parental leave is unpaid take-up among fathers will particularly low."
Any attempt to meet those goals rules out limiting payments to the poorest families, such as those in receipt of the working families tax credit, which will be introduced in the autumn. According to the Treasury, about 1.4 million families are likely to receive the new tax credit, but almost half of them are single parents, mainly mothers. A low-income payment might help those children, but it will do much less to promote stable relationships or bonding between fathers and children, which is also important.
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