Q
73Helen
Jones (Warrington, North) (Lab): Mr. Nichols,
may I take you back to something you said earlier? You said that there
could be developmental issues, with children as I understood it, or
problems with teenagers, that prevent a parent of young children from
preparing for work. Will you elaborate on what those problems might
be? Tim
Nichols: For the earlier years, more and more is
being learned about the specific caring requirements of very young
children and the key developmental stages and neurological development
that they go through in terms of things that can have a potential
impact right into adult life. That makes it of great importance that
parents are able to provide a very high standard of care. If they
decide that providing care themselves is the best standard, they should
be left in a position to do that.
We are not
convinced that there is a capacity of very high quality child care for
younger children, where the ratio of carers to infants is of a
sufficient level to meet some of the concerns that are being expressed.
It is a difficult area, because the scientific evidence is still
emerging, but it is such that we would have concerns about entering
into a situation where parents did not have those
choices.
Q
74Helen
Jones: First, the scientific evidence is far from
conclusive, as I think you would agree. Secondly, we are talking about
single parents going to work when their children are seven. I have two
questions for you that follow from
that. First,
how are the issues you are raising different in developmental terms for
children with single parents as opposed to those who are fortunate
enough to have two parents present? Secondly, once children are at
school—at seven, they should be quite settled at primary school
because they will have been there for two years—how does a
parent not being at work affect their
development? Kate
Bell: May I come in here?
Q
75Helen
Jones: No, I want Mr. Nichols to answer first
if you do not mind. The question was to
him. Tim
Nichols: There are powers in the Bill that allow for
directions to be given on work-related
activity.
Q
76Helen
Jones: But not full-time
work. Tim
Nichols: But it is not clear to us how much time that
would take up, or what the conflict could be with what the parents feel
are their parental care needs at the time. It is one area that is
difficult because we have not seen draft regulations and do not know
exactly what the activities might
be.
Q
77Helen
Jones: Would you then argue that all women—all
single parents are not women, but most of them are—should stay
at home with young
children? Tim
Nichols:
No.
Q
78Helen
Jones: Why are you arguing that for single parents
then? Tim
Nichols: I am arguing for choice, and I would argue
for choice with couple families as
well.
Q
79Helen
Jones: Most do not have a choice. Firms that keep in touch
with staff who are on maternity or paternity leave, to keep them in
touch with the workplace until they are ready to go back to work, are
considered to be following good practice, are they not? So why do you
feel it is wrong to have a system that keeps single parents who are not
working in touch with the world of work until it is time for them to go
back to
work? Tim
Nichols: I feel as though I am being misinterpreted
as making an argument against contact with work and work-related
activity.
Helen
Jones: I do not think you
are. Tim
Nichols: That is not the argument that I am making.
My argument is about choice and about people not being put into a
regime whereby directions are given and people are subject to
sanctions. We support access to work-related activity for people whose
youngest children are down to that age level—or, indeed, any age
level; I do not think an age level is specified—and we would
support having much stronger entitlement that people can pursue to make
use of work-related activity, but we do not think that compulsion is
necessary or desirable.
Q
80Helen
Jones: What would you say to women in my constituency, of
whom there are quite a lot, who are holding down one or two jobs to
keep their family going, as to why single parents should not take steps
to make themselves ready for work at an appropriate time?
Tim
Nichols: I do not think I would make an argument that
they should not take steps. I would argue that, in terms of effectively
progressing people along the road back into work, this system of
compulsion is not the most effective. I would argue that some
programmes out there are working very successfully using outreach work,
for example. Instead of using compulsion to bring a parent into an
office, to give them directions about what they should be doing, they
take a friendlier approach—knocking on doors, but not using
compulsion, and talking about the whole range of challenges that people
face and when they would like to go back to work, as well as looking at
that whole
path.
Q
81Helen
Jones: The evidence that we were given earlier suggested
that most single parents would like to get back into work, and we all
accept that. The difficulty is with those who will not engage with the
system. What would be your answer about them? Should we leave them and
their children in workless families, with the effect that will have on
their children as they grow
up? Tim
Nichols: I think it is a mistake to believe, if
people are pushed through a bureaucratic system, and people are
checking things in a certain way and ticking boxes as they go through,
that those people have genuinely engaged with that system. You can give
all the appearances of doing that, and you can get reports that give
that appearance, which will go to politicians and Ministers, but my
experience of going through such a system is that the reality of
someone being engaged with it, even if they are sat there and all the
forms are being filled in and all the boxes are being ticked, is
something very different.
What we
generally see, in the whole direction of welfare reform, is an overall
idea about how people are motivated and how you work with
people’s psychology. That is very much about giving them pushes,
rather than nurturing their motivation. If you look into areas of
social research and social psychology, you will find that extrinsic
motivation, which comes from outside, which could be perceived as a
threat, is less successful than techniques that nurture intrinsic
motivation.
Helen
Jones: Well, the only thing I can say is that you may not
have liked it, but it clearly led you to a decent
career. Tim
Nichols: It did not lead me to my current work. It
delayed my getting to the career that I was interested
in.
Q
82Meg
Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op): I wanted to come
back to joint birth registration, about which the witnesses have not
had much to say. I want to explore it a bit more from the angle of the
rights of the child. It seems to me that regardless of the
father’s background, and even in situations where a father is
violent and it may not be desirable for him to have contact with his
child, it is a fundamental right for every person to know who their
biological parents are. Wherever possible, we should try to achieve
that. There is extensive research about the importance of such
knowledge; for example, research on people who were adopted, some of
whom want to find out who their parents were. Therefore, I am a little
surprised that you seem to be as hands-off as you are on the
question. Mark
Harper asked about the effectiveness of the legislation and whether it
would work, but I want to push this a little further. Is it
intrinsically important to children that they have written down
somewhere who their parents
are? Kate
Bell: Basically, our objections to the legislation
stem from the effectiveness principle. We do not think that the
legislation will be an effective way of achieving the laudable aim of
ensuring that all children know who their parents are, and of
safeguarding both parent and child—there may be real dangers to
both mother and child from contact with the father. We do not feel that
the legislative process will necessarily achieve the aim. It will have
an impact on parents and children but will be difficult to put into
practice, and that raises some concerns.
One thing that
we have been thinking about is a situation where the mother says,
“Yes, I would like the father’s name on the birth
certificate,” and the father is written to but makes no contact,
and that delays the joint birth registration. We do not know what will
happen to the child benefit application during that time, because a
birth certificate is needed to apply for child benefit. Our concerns
about this section of the Bill are pragmatic, but those pragmatic
concerns are what will impact on
families.
Q
83Meg
Munn: But you are not arguing with the principle that it
is desirable to have the name of both parents on a birth
certificate? Kate
Bell: No; absolutely not. We are keen to see both
parents involved in their children’s lives, wherever
possible.
Q
84Meg
Munn: I perfectly accept that you may want to say that a
convicted paedophile who has a child and is deemed to be extremely
dangerous to children should never have contact with the child while
they are a child. None the less, it does not mean that the name should
not appear on the birth certificate, however difficult that information
is. It is what follows that matters. I am somewhat surprised that there
is not a bit more thinking on some of these issues and how we might
achieve that desirable outcome while safeguarding
children. Kate
Bell: We are saying, yes, it is desirable for
children to know who their parents are—we absolutely recognise
that—but we are not entirely sure that this legislation will
achieve that
aim.
Q
85Meg
Munn: But you do not have any alternative
proposals. Kate
Bell: We are talking about evidence and the publicity
around the benefits of joint birth registration. We have been doing
some work with the Department for Children, Schools and Families on a
campaign called Kids in the Middle, in which we have looked at
programmes that promote better relationships between the parents of a
child, whether they are together or apart, and ensuring that they are
both involved in the child’s life. We think that those
programmes will make much more of a difference, and they are where we
would like to see investment and energy
going.
Q
86Meg
Munn: Do you not think that stating in legislation what we
should aim to achieve will begin to change the view in society? Instead
of saying that something is okay, that it does not matter, society will
say that it is important to have both the names on the
certificate. Kate
Bell: That is possible, but the problem with symbolic
legislation is that you then have to implement it, and we are raising
questions about the
implementation.
Q
87Meg
Munn: Does anyone else have a
view? Martin
Narey: Anything that will encourage fathers’
involvement with and responsibility for their children is to be
welcomed. I am afraid that I just do know enough detail and I am unable
to offer the Committee any advice about how it might be administered,
but we are certainly not opposed to the
principle.
Q
88The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Kitty
Ussher): I have a couple of questions for Mr.
Nichols, although some were covered by my colleague Helen. You said
that introducing any kind of conditionality for single parents of
children as young as three was at too young an age. Could you amplify
your reasons why?
Tim
Nichols: We do not think it is effective or
necessary. We would like access to work-related support and an offer of
entitlement to high-quality support, but it must be left to parents to
make the decision about the right time to begin the
process.
Q
89Kitty
Ussher: What was it about the age of three that you
thought was too young?
Tim
Nichols: It could interfere with choices on parental
care when directions are given that affect the time availability of the
parent and the availability to spend time caring for the
child.
Q
90Kitty
Ussher: But you understand that the directions would only
be to implement an action plan that the parent had already agreed to,
and that the White Paper makes it clear that there would never be a
direction that forced a parent to work if their child were under seven,
or to put the child into child care that they thought inappropriate? Do
you accept that?
Tim
Nichols: Is it clear that the directions will never
interfere with the time availability of the parent in any
way?
Q
91Kitty
Ussher: Have you read the White Paper? Are you and your
organisation aware that the directions would apply only to an agreed
action plan between the parent and the adviser and could never force a
parent to take up work or to put their child into inappropriate child
care? I am asking you whether your organisation is aware of
that.
Tim
Nichols: I have read the White Paper, yes. But, on
the question of how concrete those guarantees will be, we will want to
see the regulations. If we can see them ahead of the Committee stage
proper, and if they can have those
guarantees—
Q
92Kitty
Ussher: Do you think that there is a difference in the
neurological development of a child if their parent chooses to work or
not?
Tim
Nichols: That is too general a question. If I am
going to give a simple yes or no, I shall need to know the specific
circumstances. Scientific evidence details and outlines the pattern of
care, how many children are being cared for at one time and whether the
situation involves group care or parental care; scientists will look at
the pattern of that parental care. If I answer a question in that way,
I do not think that it can be meaningful in respect of the scientific
evidence that I have read.
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