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Mr. Kirkwood: Not just the English.
Dr. Howells: I forgot that the hon. Gentleman is Scottish. In any event, he raised a number of important issues. I should like to congratulate him, on behalf of us all, on the Select Committee's report--it is terrific. It will be a great quarry for us as we construct policies in the future. I hope that everybody will take the opportunity to read it, as it is one of the best Select Committee reports to be published in a long time, on this or any subject.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the problems faced by those on difficult council estates and difficult projects in Scotland, a subject that is close to my heart. I want the
hon. Gentleman to know that the Government are co-ordinating a family friendly employment campaign to promote good working practices. A number of Departments are involved, led by the Department for Education and Employment. We are considering how to promote policies according to the different needs of employers and employees. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that those needs are very different.
The family friendly employment policies will help reduce pressure on families, especially at critical times--when a child is born, for example. I hope that the policies will strengthen family life, along with the other support that we are giving to all families.
As for supporting marriage, the Home Office is working on what it refers to as--I hate this expression--a marriage pack. I wish that someone had given me one in December 1967. Registrars will be able to give it to all couples getting married. It will include information about marriage support services, legal rights and marriage responsibilities. Perhaps we have taken too much for granted and assumed that people somehow know all that information. It is an interesting initiative.
The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire also drew attention to the work-home balance in the national health service. Few sectoral focuses can be more important; we need the NHS badly. There is a great deal of potential out there, and we need more nurses in the health service. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health launched "Working Together". It contains three strategic aims for the NHS--to have enough staff with the right skills in the right places, to improve staff's working lives and to develop the capacity and capability to deal more successfully with issues arising at home. Last month, Health Ministers announced a major campaign called "Improving Working Lives in the NHS". I think that due consideration has been given to this issue, and I hope that we can make some progress--there is a great deal of determination to do so.
I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Colman) has also had to leave. As the hon. Member for Meriden said, Fridays are difficult. My hon. Friend gave us the benefit of his knowledge on the important and interesting research being done on small and medium- sized enterprises, and the balance between home and work. He gave us a valuable personal insight into the difficulties faced by single parents--in his case, male. As someone with three children, I find the thought of caring for eight, as he has, mind-boggling.
Mr. Leigh:
The hon. Gentleman had several wives, though.
Dr. Howells:
However many wives, it is mind- boggling. I appreciated the helpful contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Putney.
The hon. Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley) has also had to leave. He said that he initiated the first debates on family friendly policies back in 1978, 1981 and 1982. Churlishly, I was about to say that we had not made much progress until now, but I know that he cares passionately about these issues. He made some interesting points. He often has a different way of looking at these things from most of us, to say the least. However, his views are always interesting.
The hon. Gentleman advocated the award of a lump sum to parents as a recognition that we have a new citizen among us when a child is born. He talked about £500 to
£1,000 being the right sum for the new citizen, but I was not sure whether he was saying that that should pay for time off to look after the new baby. Perhaps he could let us know later. He talked of the need for Parliament to view these matters with a life cycle perspective. He argued that we should not break up people's lives into segments that are convenient for us, but try to see them overall. He warned the Government not to be mean when money is needed most. I can remember us telling the previous Government that on I do not know how many occasions, but it is a good point. When we look back on our lives, there are times when we could have done with some extra money. Not all of us are fortunate enough to have had the salary of MPs. Any Government should examine that perspective carefully.
The hon. Member for Worthing, West said that we must be careful to view such policies and initiatives in as long a perspective as we can manage. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Lorna Fitzsimons) also stressed that perspective and reminded us that the great decisions taken in this Chamber must make sense to ordinary people in terms of how they affect their lives. She noted that that goes for our commercial enterprises as well, and that there is a hard economic cost to employers in not being family friendly. That was perhaps the most contentious issue, but I know how profligate employers in my area have been in taking on employees, male or female, making them into skilled productive workers and then sacking them for ludicrous reasons. The most shameful of them is sacking a female employee for having a child. Such employers are more profligate than the Government: someone learns a job and is moved on. It takes a long time to pick up such skills.
Mrs. Browning:
The hon. Gentleman is doing very well.
Dr. Howells:
I do not think that I can have made much of an impact if the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire can describe me as a Department for Education and Employment Minister. I must have visited his constituency in a former life.
I fully endorse the importance of the long-term perspective. We are trying to work with the grain on this one. We have consulted, and taken advice from, the best firms, large and small, on how they have gone about best business practice. We must listen carefully as we take the initiatives forward.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale also said that we must be careful with deadlines, particularly the rules that will apply to children born or adopted on or after 15 December, in line with the directive. We are considering that point carefully. It will ensure that the demand for parental leave builds up slowly, and that employers' good will is maximised. We must be extremely careful about the matter. We want the good will of employers; we want to bring them along with us. We do not want to impose the type of regulatory burden that some hon. Members have highlighted.
On that point, I turn to the contribution of the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady). Incidentally, I was not sure whether there was a Sale, West--when I went to play rugby in Sale, it did not seem that big, but I suppose there must be a west and an east. The hon. Gentleman quite properly drew attention to the
possibility of additional regulatory burdens. That matter must be taken seriously, and the Government do take it seriously. I do not know what occurred under the previous Government, but a type of inquisition descends on every Department--the regulatory impact assessment. There is no legislation and no regulations that are not tested against that rigorous assessment--believe me.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) expressed the aims at the heart of family friendly employment policies. Interestingly, he reminded us that we should consider mounting a powerful publicity campaign to ensure that everybody knew about those policies. I could not agree more. I shall give that message, loud and clear, to the DTI and the DFEE. We already publish a range of booklets on employment legislation, updating and so on, but that is not enough; we must go much further.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King) made it crystal clear that there are no certainties in human relationships. Nothing could be truer than that--I know that from personal experience. My hon. Friend added something else. The hon. Member for Gainsborough made the same point--I said that it was a thoughtful observation--that we should be careful not to have a rose-tinted image of what life might have been like at some time in history. Hon. Members seem to be getting younger, but I dare say that some them--like me--are old enough to remember well generations of women whose talent was stunted by lack of opportunity. There was no escape; there was no key--either voluntary or statutory--and we must remember that. I certainly cannot remember a golden age. I remember a time when there were fewer divorces--perhaps that was good--but there were also more battered wives, and potential never had a chance to express itself. Let us remember that along with any rose-tinted memories that we might have.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) gave us the benefit of his great experience in these matters. He reinforced a point made by many other hon. Members in the debate: as social mores and patterns of employment change, so we, in government, have a duty to ensure that legislation is appropriate and relevant, and that it will benefit society.
I do not want to add a sour note, but my hon. Friend highlighted the bankruptcy of the views of those sitting on the Opposition Front Bench. We asked for answers--we received none. I hope that, for all our sakes, the Opposition will come up with some answers. We need an Opposition, and they are likely to get wiped out at the next election with that type of policy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Mr. Fitzpatrick) properly highlighted the fact that families at the bottom of the earnings league will be helped by the national minimum wage, by the working families tax credit, by sure start and by all our other initiatives. He stressed the need--as did other hon. Members--to extend and encourage such examples of joined-up government. I make it clear to him and to all right hon. and hon. Members in the Chamber that all Departments are working hard to ensure that we have a joined-up approach to this matter. We realise its importance and hope that all Members of the House--whether Tories, Liberal Democrats or anyone else--will do so too, so that we can go forward constructively together.
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