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The “Think Fathers” campaign was launched at the end of 2008 to effect a change in attitudes and behaviour and to help deliver more father-friendly practice across the board, following the publication of research that showed that engagement and support for fathers from the DCSF and children’s services was patchy. We agree that a more focused approach to the issue is needed, and we are in the process of trying to achieve that.
My hon. Friend will be aware that the Welfare Reform Bill contains significant change on joint birth registration. The answer to his question whether an unmarried father’s name can appear on the birth certificate without his knowledge is no. That is crucial to the way the system works. A mother would, by law, have to name the father if she knew who it was, or she would be committing perjury. The father would then be contacted and asked to confirm that. The father’s name would then appear on the birth certificate. Yes, the birth certificate is only a piece of paper, but it is a legal piece of paper and it has huge ceremonial and cultural significance. We are clear that at the crucial moment when a father comes to terms with fatherhood and perhaps deep down wants to get involved, it is a little nudge in the right direction, rather than a barrier preventing him from doing so.
One aim of the joint birth registration provision is that an unmarried father who registers his child’s birth will acquire parental responsibility, whereas under the current system, if parents are not married to each other, a mother can prevent the father from registering, and he would need to apply for a court order. Also under the current system, an unmarried father may refuse to register, even if the mother wants him to do so. It would be illegal for him to refuse under the new system. I hope that that will be welcome.
Mr. Allen: Moving away from the slightly punitive aspect that my hon. Friend has been describing, is that not a fantastic opportunity to communicate with fathers? If the father’s name, and presumably his address, are known, it is open to the relevant agencies to inform him about parenting classes, and about how to use the right services to keep their family together, sustain relationships and so on. That moment is a great opportunity for early intervention that might bring a number of fathers back to the mother and child, help them to realise their responsibilities and equip them to do the job more effectively.
Kitty Ussher: We certainly need to find a way to make it easy to do that. There is an inherent tension between the role of registrars and wider social policy, because registrars are, by definition, very important clerks—they register. They do not have a wider social policy goal. I agree with what my hon. Friend is trying to achieve, but there may be other ways of doing that, which I shall come to.
I shall deal next with the extra dimension added by CMEC, which my hon. Friend has mentioned. From the outset, the difference between the commission and the CSA, which forms part of it, is that it has a wider role, which is extremely ambitious but cuts to the core of what my hon. Friend wants to achieve, which is to change the culture of society. The commission’s work in this area has not begun, but it has some exciting ideas
for creating a society where parents recognise their responsibilities towards children and the responsibilities that come from sexual relationships as part of that, rather than that being an add-on when events force people down that route.
The innovative work that my hon. Friend is doing in Nottingham will be watched carefully by staff at CMEC, as well as by officials in my Department, to see whether there are wider lessons that can be learned. My hon. Friend is ahead of the curve in many areas, which is extremely useful as policy develops.
The commission’s “Options” service is available to both parents to help them determine the best maintenance arrangement for their circumstances. The CSA’s role is to alleviate child poverty by ensuring that money flows to children. That is and should be its primary role, but the people who contact it may be in need of other sorts of help. That can be a means of keeping families together and/or involving absent parents with the upbringing of their children, regardless of the state of the relationship between the two parents. The “Options” service can signpost parents to other services, such as mediation and third-sector support, which can include mentoring and so on. The challenge is to ensure that, when there is a clear need, the “Options” service points people in the right direction. It can help parents to come to arrangements that may include support in kind and the transfer of objects rather than money, and it can encourage people to understand what a private arrangement looks and feels like. That is crucial to a relationship between separated parents that works in the interests of the child, and there is potential in those services.
Mr. Drew: The Minister will have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) talk about contact centres, and I should like to pay due regard to those people who organise them. It is the most difficult job for all sorts of reasons: people do not necessarily go there willingly, and they are certainly not there to talk to their former partner in the best of manners. However, the people who run the centres are amazingly important to our whole system, and I hope that the Minister agrees that they are worthy of comment.
Kitty Ussher: Indeed. I welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution and completely agree. Contact centres have an important role to play in the tapestry of policy in certain circumstances, and it is not easy to work there, so I pay tribute to the staff and, indeed, to everyone involved.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North raised the issue of lower socio-economic groups, to use his words, and how they respond to the options that the “Options” service presents. He made an extremely valid point about monitoring and, to ensure that people do not drop out of the system as the law changes, I have made it a top personal priority to monitor “Options” service usage and the number of people who go through formal or informal arrangements. He has put his finger on a crucial issue, but I should like to reassure him that we have no evidence of such activity—and we do have as much evidence as it is possible to have. As time goes on and more data become available, however, monitoring will certainly be our top priority.
My hon. Friend rightly pointed out that, from April 2010, child maintenance will be fully disregarded in the calculation of benefits. It will have a huge psychological impact on people’s desire to contribute but a very real financial impact on the families concerned. The commission is also carrying out research into why some parents choose not to make maintenance payments and how such behaviour may be changed. Once we have the results, we can take the appropriate policy action. Of course, in circumstances where behaviour does not change and the non-resident parent is liable to pay maintenance, which is means-tested, the commission has an enhanced range of enforcement powers, including the powers in the Welfare Reform Bill.
Cutting to a point that both my hon. Friends made, I should say that the commission is also involved in the development of the pilots that the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families announced in December 2008. They will test the impact of providing more accessible and better co-ordinated local services for separating and separated parents. It is a potentially exciting policy. The pilots will start later this year and include advice on child maintenance and child contact and residence as part of the same service, and advice on child care benefits and tax credits. They will enable us to see whether we can use holistic services along the lines of the Australian approach, which my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North mentioned, to provide a more effective service to support separated families. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions visited Australia last week specifically to look at how such centres work in practice.
It is worth touching on the question whether there should be a relationship between financial support and contact. I completely understand that some aggravation is often felt: there is no love lost between separating parents if someone pays maintenance but is not able to have contact. However, it is important to separate the two arrangements, and I do not think that people can pay for contact, which is perhaps what would follow. There is an important, softer point as well. If separated or separating parents of whatever age can come to a financial arrangement, which is often the hardest thing to negotiate, I see no reason why they should not take confidence from that and come to an arrangement about contact. We encourage people to start with the finances but not to see that as the end of the negotiation. That is one of the important reasons why people, even those on benefits, are able to opt out of compulsory CSA negotiation. If they are able and willing to come to their own private arrangements, the chances are that there will be a kernel of an opportunity for the parents to talk. That would help the children by helping an agreement on contact to be reached. If that fails, there is always the opportunity to go to court.
I am aware that we have the luxury of being able to talk for several hours, but I will not detain the House for much longer. I just want to touch on the issue of supporting children prior to parenthood and how best to provide them with the life skills to make mature decisions about their futures—including when to have children and how to break out of negative behaviours that they see around them. I am sure that we all share concerns about England’s high rates of teenage pregnancy compared with those of most other developed countries.
That is why we launched the 10-year teenage pregnancy strategy in 1999, following a detailed report from the social exclusion unit.
Since then, we have achieved a 10.7 per cent. fall in the conception rate among under-18s, and a 6.4 per cent. fall in that rate among under-16s, reversing a trend that had been going upwards. Within the overall reduction in teenage conceptions, teenage births have fallen by 23.3 per cent. Those falls are welcome, but we would not be having this debate if we did not recognise that the progress has not been fast enough.
I understand that there are particularly challenging circumstances in Nottingham; that is why we welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution and engagements. To accelerate progress, the Minister for Children, Young People and Families and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Dawn Primarolo), at the Department of Health, recently announced additional support to help local areas reduce their birth rates further. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North mentioned the £20.5 million extra that there has been to improve young people’s access to effective contraception, and support for parents so that they can talk to their children about sex and relationships. Of course we need to know how that money is being spent, and I shall pass on my hon. Friend’s questions to colleagues at the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
I can exclusively reveal that the money is broken down into £10 million for local health services to ensure that contraception is available in the right places and at the right times. I am thinking especially of long-acting, reversible contraceptive measures, which science dictates will be more likely to be focused on girls; that does not mean, however, that the same principle will not apply to boys. Another £7 million goes towards a new media campaign on contraceptive choices to raise awareness of the different options. Department of Health Ministers have not yet decided whether there will be a particular focus on boys, although I hope that this debate will encourage them to do so. Furthermore, £1 million is directed towards the further education sector for on-site contraception. That sector is proving a particularly useful channel for making an impact on young people’s views. There is also £2.5 million for the Healthy College programme. That follows the announcement last October that the Government intend to make personal, social and health education statutory in all schools, to ensure that young people have the knowledge and skills that they need to make safe and responsible choices.
I have already alluded to the issue, but my hon. Friend posed the question whether teenage pregnancy campaigns are too girl-centric and do not focus enough on boys. We know that boys tend to have fewer sources of information on sex and relationship issues and that they talk to their parents about them less. That is why, if done appropriately, the information that comes through teaching at schools is so crucial for boys. Department for Children, Schools and Families Ministers have commissioned Brook to produce revised guidance on contraception and sexual health services for boys and young men; that will be ready in autumn this year.
In many communities, including my own constituency, Brook provides a valuable and often credible service to boys and young men. We look forward to its advice. The whole issue of how sex education, including contraception,
and child maintenance issues should be taught in schools is being considered as part of the Macdonald review. We will have an opportunity to discuss the issue in the months ahead.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the offer of becoming myth-buster general; I will do my best. Much stigma needs to be overcome. Gingerbread, the lobby group for single parents—those of all ages and genders, obviously—provides an excellent starting point. It does research among its own client group showing that single parents feel that their needs are not properly understood by society, particularly by the media. We in Government, and hon. Members on both sides of the House, have a leadership role in debunking some of the myths, and I encourage colleagues to do so.
My hon. Friend raised several interesting points about housing, some of which we are considering as part of the review of how housing benefit rules treat separated
families. I would be interested in having his views on that when we have launched our consultation.
As for posters—yes, I am happy to consider those if we feel that they can have an effect. The changes to child maintenance may be a peg to hang that on, so let us keep talking about it.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving the House an opportunity to discuss such an important issue, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who is no longer in his place, for his engagement. I hope that my hon. Friend has been reassured that I and my ministerial colleagues across Whitehall take this issue very seriously. I am not alone in commending his deep personal commitment to changing the lives of teenage parents in his constituency. I hope that from the lessons that he is learning locally we can develop national solutions that will affect the lives of even more of them.
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