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My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) touched on the difficult and sensitive topic of maintenance and contact between parents and children. The former is administered by CMEC, the latter by the courts. In the light of his remarks, will the Minister consider working across departmental boundaries and try—again, in a couple of areas—to bring maintenance, contact and all other child-related issues together under the
same roof, as happens in Australia’s family centres? That might be one way of making progress in this country. Let us try it in a couple of areas that want to initiate it and see whether it works with organisations that are attempting to find some answers to these problems.
I now wish to deal with the myths. I hope that the Minister will take on the role—here is another burden for her—of myth-buster general in this area. She knows very well that although we can change things centrally, word of mouth locally can take a long while to catch up, and myths still persist. For example, let us consider the prevalent myth that benefits and offers of housing give incentives for young women to become lone parents. A study by the Minister’s Department this year concluded that there was no consistent evidence for that, but when I talk to single mums on the estates in my constituency—I am sure that other Members do the same in their constituencies—I find that the perception is very different. If we could have provision in supported housing with fewer limitations than at present—there is no space for couples with children—it would send a clear message to fathers in those areas with a concentration of teen pregnancies that they would be welcome. It could break down the matriarchal culture on some of our estates, where there is no adult male in the household, just grandmother, mother and young child. Housing is the responsibility of the Department for Communities and Local Government, which needs to be brought in on this matter because Whitehall needs to mesh on these issues.
I have also suggested to the Minister the need for a simple myth-busting series of posters to be spread throughout our poorer communities to underline the recent positive changes in the benefit regime and to kill off some of the more pernicious myths that stop people making progress.
Tackling teenage pregnancies and absentee fathers requires not only helping young parents to provide effective parenting, but also nurturing and supporting young people before pregnancy occurs, and encouraging them to make good life choices. Nottingham’s early intervention package therefore begins with the babies who will be tomorrow’s parents. We use the family-nurse partnership not only to give intensive help to new teen mothers through health visitors, but to instil the essential capabilities in infants that will enable them to become better parents later in life.
Nottingham’s Sure Start and children’s centres then pick up the baton and they aim to make children strong and resilient, through activities that encourage them to make their own decisions. That prepares them for making the really tough decisions later on—including those about sex and parenthood.
We then teach all primary school boys, as well as girls, the SEAL—or social and emotional aspects of learning—programme. This gives every child the intellectual equipment to develop effectively, which sadly all too many do not get at home because of the lack of parenting skills in their domestic situation. To complete the circle, in September we are taking this process to the next stage by starting to teach 11 to 16-year-olds life skills in every secondary school in Nottingham that volunteers for the programme—anticipating the Government’s initiative to make personal, health and social education, or PHSE, compulsory in two years’ time. This will enable boys as well as girls to understand how to parent, to sustain
relationships and to build and maintain families. We are happy to teach young people mathematics, English and a foreign language, but somehow we resile from teaching them how to be decent people and good parents to the next generation of young people to the highest possible standards.
Mr. Drew: In the early 1990s I took part in a review of this issue, and the one factor that we found to be symptomatic of teenage pregnancy was lack of self-esteem in both boys and girls. It is possible to foster self-esteem through education, and does my hon. Friend agree that we should build that aim into all our policies?
Mr. Allen: We sum it up in Nottingham in slightly different words, but to exactly the same effect—we talk about building the social and emotional bedrock for young people. If young people have the ability to interact, to learn and to resolve arguments without violence—the basic things that most middle-class parents teach their children—it is virtually impossible to fail in terms of educational attainment, aspiration to work and raising a decent family. That is why it is important that such things are built into provision from the earliest point, instead of chasing after the problem later, by which time it is all but intractable without the expenditure of massive amounts of money and person hours.
In addition to building young people’s social and emotional bedrock, in Nottingham we are working directly to address young potential fathers. We fund a specialist health development worker for young men and have commissioned research by Dr. Peter Gates at Nottingham university on how best to identify potential absentee fathers and communicate with them. That research builds on the work that we have done with young girls, and it will result in a hard-hitting DVD and appropriate sex education materials to accompany it.
I know that the Minister will agree that more needs to be done nationally to target teenage boys, through the benefits system, and in enabling them to make mature decisions about parenthood, and encouraging them to delay sexual activity. Nottingham could be an example of how to tackle the problem in both the immediate and the long term. It is not only about swatting the mosquito, but draining the swamp. We need to build for the future through a long-term programme of investment.
Any materials used need to be easy to follow, and not beyond the comprehension of teen parents who left school early—or even of the average MP. The Family Planning Association does good work in this sphere, with community projects targeted at young men. It made getting the message across to boys the theme for its annual contraception week last year.
The message may be getting through: according to NHS statistics, the number of men attending NHS contraception clinics leapt by 20 per cent. in 2006-07, and there was a huge 54 per cent. increase in those aged 15 and 16. These signs of improvement must be enhanced by further work to provide young men with the social and emotional basis for sensible decision making.
I was pleased to see that in February the Ministers with responsibility for public health and for young people announced an extra £20.5 million to support young people and help them to access contraception. Do the Government actually know what that money has been spent on? Do the Government know the extent to which it is being used to track real boys as well as real
girls? Otherwise, it could be business-as-usual syndrome instead of a sharp, systematic identification and face-to-face contact with those who need it before they even consider sexual activity. In other words, we should have outcomes with specific people rather than just allocating more money.
That is not as daunting as it might sound. Even in Nottingham, only 417 teenagers had babies last year. That is a perfectly manageable number when it comes to getting to know those people, their siblings and their associates as part of defining a broader at-risk group with whom we can then work very directly with some serious pre-emptive education. We will not do that unless we identify where money is going and what it is being spent on and get some real outcomes noted and reported to the centre so that they can be properly tracked.
Although improvements to the benefit system are an important step and the focus of tonight’s debate, it must be remembered that under-16s or under-18s who are full-time students or who are getting income support or income-based jobseeker’s allowance do not pay maintenance under the current rules. We need to find other ways to reach those fathers and to ensure that they are involved in their children’s lives.
I welcome another initiative of the Government’s, which is the requirement in the Welfare Reform Bill that a father’s name be recorded on the birth certificate. That might seem obvious to many people who read or listen to this debate, but it is not a current requirement. Four in 10 babies registered without a father are born to teenage mothers. This welcome change will not only make it easier to track down who owes maintenance, for example, but it will also enable the transmission of messages to the father to highlight the importance of that father’s being in the child’s life as that young person grows up.
Let us not forget that two out of three teen fathers are resident at a different address from the mother. Rebuilding that family unit with every possible assistance and support is clearly something that would be beneficial to the child when they were growing up. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister could tell us whether that provision will also entail a corresponding requirement to inform the father that he is named. That would not only be a safeguard against being falsely named but, for those who are truly and properly named as fathers, it could be a channel of communication to help deliver them from the status of outsider in their own child’s life. They can then undertake the responsibilities that fathering a child must entail.
I say that with some feeling. In some senses, I feel that I have come full circle in talking about this issue. Around 1989-90, I led for my party on social security on the first Child Support Agency Bill. Few things separated the parties on that Bill, but one thing that was very apparent was that we were not listening to anyone outside. We were not listening to Families Need Fathers or to battered wives. We did not have proper pre-legislative scrutiny. The result was that we reinvented that Bill—you can correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Deputy Speaker—on at least five subsequent occasions. How many broken families, how much misery and how many suicides did that oversight cost us?
We now have a chance to put the history right. We have created a new commission to oversee this area, which is not just about punitively chasing and tracking down teen fathers or any other fathers. It is about developing policy and bringing those young fathers back into the family in a literal sense so that we have a chance to rewrite some of the unfortunate history that there has been in this policy field.
I look forward to the Minister’s reply. I am not flattering her when I say that she has done a truly remarkable job in the short time that she has held this portfolio. Great progress has been made and I hope that she will confirm the Government’s commitment to a balance between carrots and sticks, to much better cross-departmental working and, above all, to committing to find ways to intervene early, which is cheaper and more effective, rather than late, which is both expensive and less effective. If she does that, there will be many teen fathers who will be part of a family rather than apart from their family. Above all, many babies and children being born today in our country will be raised with a father and a mother, and will be much more able as both individuals and citizens of our society. They will be among the foremost to be grateful for a Government who take that opportunity and challenge.
8.35 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Kitty Ussher): As is customary, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing the debate. I also thank him for his kind words and know that he speaks with considerable expertise—as he has mentioned, he chairs the board of the teenage pregnancy taskforce in his constituency. Moreover, I know that he shares my strong personal interest in getting the policy right. He has made a clear contribution locally in Nottingham, and as he has mentioned, he recently met senior officials from CMEC, as well as officials from the Department for Work and Pensions. We very much welcome that engagement, so I thank him for it.
As I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware, he raised several issues that cross a number of Departments and challenged us to be joined up in our response. He has mentioned policy areas that are the direct responsibility of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice, and my humble Department, the Department for Work and Pensions. I will attempt to give him a cross-departmental response, because he is absolutely right that we need to solve the issues by working together.
I want to start with my hon. Friend’s key insight: of course, all children have two parents, and over time, the widespread use of the phrase “single parent” or “lone parent” in the media has drawn attention away from the fact that there are almost always two parents around, as well as the child or children involved. My hon. Friend rightly reminds us that our policies need to encompass everyone in separated families. Often, parents, whatever their age, who do not live with their children have a genuine desire to be more involved. Our role in government is to remove any barriers to that across the gamut of Government policy.
I welcome my hon. Friend’s distinction between the separate issues of how we best support young people after they become parents, and how we best intervene so
that they can come to a mature decision about when is the best time to have children—that is, before they become parents. There is also a fundamental challenge across both issues: how do we help teenage girls and boys to break out of the pattern of behaviours that they see all around them—the very behaviours that have often led to child poverty being handed down from generation to generation? How do we break that cycle? How do we change the presumptions that society sometimes unfortunately makes?
I will address all the points that my hon. Friend made, starting with the issues that he raised about supporting fathers, particularly young fathers, into work, so that they can perhaps contribute from a more confident standpoint, and are, of course, more financially able to contribute. The cornerstone of our whole approach to welfare policy is a benefit and tax system that provides support for those who cannot work at the present time, but that provides every incentive for them to enter the world of work at the earliest possible opportunity. That might be full-time work, part-time work or preparing for work through training or education. In this debate, we have focused on young parents, but of course we want everybody in society to realise their potential.
The particular point about young parents is that if people’s ambitions become thwarted or dented, or are never realised, due to lack of confidence at a young age, it is much harder to recover a sense of drive. There is always a second or indeed a third chance, particularly under this Government, but it is important to try to get it right first time round. That has been a consistent theme of the Government, and the Welfare Reform Bill, which is being debated in the other place, builds on the foundations that we have put in place over the past decade.
The issue is particularly important in the current economic climate. I know from my experience as a constituency MP how heartbreaking it is when a young person enters the job market for the first time and cannot find what they want because of the macro-economic situation, which is beyond their control, and then does not have the confidence to come back to it later. They may perhaps take a different path in life, often involving setting up home and having children. If the Government, through their welfare-to-work policy, are not able to give that person the chance that they need when they want it, all too often the opportunity does not arise again.
All Jobcentre Plus advisers are trained to help people find out what they are entitled to—to find their way through the benefits maze—and can guide people through filling in a claim form. If the young person is 16 or 17, someone will call them back within four hours to discuss the situation. If they are 18 or over, an adviser will contact them within 24 hours, once they have made their initial claim. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has made it quite clear that by the turn of the year young people between 18 and 24 who are verging on becoming long-term unemployed as a result of the recession will be guaranteed jobs or training precisely to try to avoid a whole generation of young people being abandoned on the scrapheap, as happened in previous recessions under previous Governments.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of the “couple penalty”, as it is called in the jargon. Perhaps there is a perception
that by separating, families can get more from the system. We are ever vigilant to make sure that that is not a real economic effect, and I have no evidence to assume that it is more or less relevant to younger parents. However, if my hon. Friend does have such evidence, we would like to keep it under close review. We want to allocate resources according to need, and not to create perverse incentives.
My hon. Friend rightly raised the issue of complexity. The situation does remain complex, and the December 2008 White Paper on welfare reform argued that a system of benefits fit for the 21st century should be simple to understand, well targeted and empowering, and that is our motivation through the successive stages of welfare reform, which must provide clarity and certainty for people making the transition between benefits and work. The White Paper committed the Government to exploring whether, over the long term, a single benefit is the right approach to make things simpler. The desire to reduce complexity lies behind, for example, the review of housing benefit that I am leading and on which I hope to report soon. Regardless of people’s age, complexity is something that we must do our best to reduce.
My hon. Friend proposed a one-stop shop for young fathers. It is an interesting idea, but personally, I am not convinced at the moment. I think that it would be better if, in mainstream services, the entire government system can deal with young people’s demands. I would be interested to hear of examples in which that is not the case, so that we can make sure that we correct them. However, I will bear his suggestion in mind.
The Government recognise that families are more diverse than ever before, and the issue of teen families proves that very point. The role of mothers and fathers in modern families is changing, and public services and the workplace must reflect those changes not only in benefits policy but across all public services. My hon. Friend is quite right that the outcomes for children are better when their fathers are involved. Moving on to the territory of my hon. Friends in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, it is worth saying that guidance on supporting teenage pregnancies was published by the DCSF and the Department of Health in July 2007, setting out what local areas should have in place to improve outcomes for teenage parents, both mothers and fathers, and their children.
Fathers’ ability to become involved is, I agree with my hon. Friend, sometimes hindered by service providers who do not appreciate the role that they could, or do, play, particularly if they are not visible to the service provider, who consequently does not take their needs into account. If someone does not ask the question, “Are you a father?” when a young person comes into their sphere of influence, they might not realise the full extent of support that is required. We recommend that local services should take a much more proactive approach to identifying young fathers through the common assessment framework and targeted youth support arrangements. For example, young men who are not in education, employment or training should routinely be asked, as I have suggested, if they are a parent, so that we can build up a better picture of them and provide the support that they need as fathers. That includes the desire that we hope they will have to support their children and earn a wage sufficient to do so, regardless of whether they live with them.
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