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Lord Weatherill: My Lords, your Lordships will know that the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, has been the general secretary of the FDA--a sort of convenor, are you?--representing some 11,000 civil servants. I am somewhat of a convert to the Civil Service. In 1970 I was a Whip. We had a new government. I went to a briefing on Questions with Peter Walker at the Department of Industry and had what I then judged to be the complete truth when the permanent secretary leant forward and said, "Secretary of State, I think we can afford to be a little more evasive in answering that Question".
The noble Baroness's speech was far from evasive. It was a speech of great experience both as a civil servant and a commissioner in connection with equal opportunities. I know that the whole House will join me in congratulating her on a very fine maiden speech. We shall listen to her in the future with great respect.
In my alleged retirement I have been involved with a number of organisations concerned with younger people. Contrary to the view of some of your Lordships, and as a result of my experience, I have become a bit of an optimist. For instance, I am a member of the Scout
Council. There are 500,000 boys and girls in the Scout movement and more than 120,000 leaders. There are 82,000 people in the St. John Ambulance, 82,000 of whom are between the ages of 6 and 18. They give 10,000 hours of voluntary service every day. I am also patron of the Institute for Citizenship Studies, with which I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, is also associated. We were both due at a meeting today. The organisation is concerned with trying to fashion the kind of society that we would like to leave to our heirs and successors.It is against that background that I approach the subject with rather less gloom and doom than some. I believe that on balance the youth of this country is good and perhaps even better than it was in the so-called "good old days" when we were all much younger. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is right to point to the fact that previously the welfare state assumed many of the responsibilities of the family.
The good old days were certainly good for some but not so good for others. My father, who was born in 1883, contracted what was then called infantile paralysis at the age of six. His was a family of nine. There was no National Health Service in those days and food was very short. His father died some two years after he was born. Education was very sketchy. But his was a very loving family and he was put to the tailoring trade as being something that he could do. I bless him for that because although he believed in education he did not believe in higher education and I had to be apprenticed to the family business. I owe him a great debt of gratitude, and today I owe a great deal of gratitude to the National Health Service.
Nevertheless, the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, hinted that things may have gone a little too far. I often reflect on the fact that if there is a golden age it is possible that we are living in it now. I doubt very much whether future generations will have the kind of facilities enjoyed today; for instance, subsidised travel and many other things we take for granted.
The besetting sin is that we tend to look back to the past but not sufficiently forward to the future. Absolutely "must" reading for anyone interested in the subject is the latest Demos publication entitled Freedom's Children: Work, relationships and politics for the 18-34 year olds in Britain today. It is an analysis of the world as it really is rather than as we would like it, or believe it, to be. It states that there is no turning the clock back to the rigid family and the hierarchical work patterns of the past. In the section on renegotiating relationships and parenting it states that marriage as an institution is breaking down largely for three reasons. First, women, particularly women with degrees, no longer see themselves as just staying behind looking after the family. Secondly, a wedding is very expensive. Today it costs about £8,500. Thirdly, there is a lack of confidence in the reliability of marriage. Frank Field, the Member for Birkenhead, told me yesterday that this year in a Roman Catholic church in his constituency there have been 520 funerals and only three weddings.
What is to be done? It would take a long time to indicate all the things that ought to be done, but there should be fiscal encouragement, as the noble Baroness
said. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has supported the concept of the cooling off period in mediation and there should be some form of marriage preparation as advocated by Relate.The real problem arises where children are concerned. There is universal agreement that children need support and the love and protection of their parents. I believe that that is best ensured by a lifelong commitment to marriage. Some years ago in my constituency of Croydon I asked a young man aged about eight what he intended to do when he grew up. He replied, "I want to be like my dad". That is the role model which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Young.
In relation to this subject, we should not forget the wise words of Edmund Burke. He said:
- "Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other".
4.36 p.m.
Lord Coleridge: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for initiating this important debate. I thank too noble Lords, the officers of the House and the staff for their unfailing courtesy and support. The traditional role of the family is under considerable strain in these modern times. Working mothers are hard put to maintain their matriarchal role and many fathers face the additional stress of uncertainty in the workplace. The children of the family are also under strain from new influences and temptations.
In the light of this, the fulfilling of parental responsibilities is as important as ever. The role of parents must always be to take responsibility for the children whom they bring into this world. It is only by their example, the standards they set and the support they give that they can influence their children to take their place in what is a very competitive world.
Many families cope magnificently. But some have grave problems and need extra support from outside. This is particularly the case when there is a handicapped child in the family.
I have been for the past 12 years a governor of the Royal West of England Residential School for the Deaf. These children have to suffer for the most part not only deafness but other severe multiple handicaps caused in the main by the mother contracting any one of a number of viral infections during pregnancy; for instance, rubella, CMG, or meningitis. Anorexia and drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse can also be factors.
The courage and fortitude of the children is humbling, but they do cause enormous stress on their families where, I am sorry to say, the divorce rate is above the norm. We at the school for the deaf therefore become their extended family. We give them the love and attention they crave. The staff are quite wonderful, and the work is very rewarding. Watching the children sing carols using sign language, manfully coping with the Christmas pantomine and taking part in sports is very moving. They try so hard and are invariably good humoured and courageous.
It is my experience that children and young people who do not have the support of their family suffer because of it. The number of children who experience
social and emotional difficulties where families have separated or where there are problems is definitely higher than in the case of stable families.In the case of the deaf child, the issues surrounding communication have tremendous implications. The deaf child of "hearing parents" finds itself in an environment that, at the outset, is less than supportive. The parents are struggling to come to terms with their child's disability. They are probably involved in a range of medical appointments to establish the cause and severity of loss, all at a time when early communication needs to be developed. This is where the parents need good support. Clearly this is the responsibility of medics, social workers, health workers and possibly educationalists in the early stages.
At schools such as the school for the deaf in Exeter, great store is placed upon partnership with parents. The school seeks to support the parents and families in a number of ways. For instance, the parents are always made to feel welcome; they are invited regularly to come to school, particularly at times of review. Secondly, the school offers signing classes to parents, and, thirdly, staff are encouraged to maintain regular contact with parents by letter or telephone. Also, parents who live some distance away can use school accommodation so that they can attend meetings or just visit to talk with the staff and observe the school in action. Lastly, where difficulties exist, senior staff or the educational psychologist will meet parents to discuss matters and offer guidance.
Throughout, it is the aim of the school to support the parents, and to enable them to provide the support that their child needs within the family. Parents are generally very complimentary about the support they receive.
Our object is to support the family, not to take the place of it. It is interesting to note that the young people who have the greatest difficulty in terms of their social and emotional behaviour are those whose families have not been able to provide the right support. That this school has achieved the correct balance between teachers and families is illustrated by just some of its recent successes. For instance, one student has been accepted by Merton College, Oxford, two students have taken part in "Operation Raleigh" and another plays cricket for Devon.
Further experience that I have had where outside support of the family is of paramount importance is in the Armed Forces. I had the honour to serve in the Army for 22 years and took my turn as families officer. I believe that your Lordships may be interested in the military system which places great emphasis on encouraging the role of the family. In fact, the regiment is the family and fully realises the importance of its welfare. A man with problems in the home quickly loses his morale and his efficiency. This support is most needful when a soldier is serving in Bosnia or Northern Ireland or on some other unaccompanied posting.
The services are a very tight community. They are independent and very proud. All ranks share a common bond of loyalty, and a sense of responsibility to protect each other. In the family support role, the wives of the senior non-commissioned officers and officers are
always there to lean on. They are the unsung heroines and contribute considerably to the morale of the service family.The duties of a families officer are to look after the families with regard to housing, supporting services and welfare in order that all servicemen and women, and their families, are happy to serve. He is charged with the responsibilities of liaising with welfare agencies, the family association, the wives' club, the creche, and the kindergarten and with organising or assisting family activities with a view to creating a feeling of comradeship and unity within the regiment.
For families to fulfil their role is vital. That some families will need help is inevitable. It is to them that we must give our support.
4.43 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, it falls to me to congratulate our third maiden speaker today, and I do so with great warmth. Indeed, the noble Lord's understanding and most interesting speech will have been much appreciated by all of us. I looked up the noble Lord's career in Dod's Parliamentary Companion and saw that he has spent half of his life in the Army and half in business. I also noted that he was governor of the Royal West of England Residential School for the Deaf. I was particularly interested in that as I am very interested in children with special needs. The noble Lord has shown that he has a great interest in that area. I hope that he will join in many debates in the future, especially those concerning children with special needs. In fact, the noble Lord inherited his title some 12 years ago. I hope, therefore, that we shall not have to wait another 12 years before he makes another speech. We look forward to hearing from him. Finally, I, too, would like to congratulate the other maiden speakers on their excellent speeches.
The commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, to the family is well known in this House and he is to be congratulated on achieving a five-hour debate today. He has covered a very wide field. I explained to the noble Lord that I would have to leave the House at 5.30 today. I thoroughly disapprove of people missing the conclusion of a debate in which they have taken part. However, the noble Lord encouraged me to speak, so I am doing so. I apologise to all the other speakers whose speeches I shall not hear later today. Nevertheless, I shall read their speeches with great interest tomorrow.
I am sure that most of us support marriage and the two-parent family and that, in most cases, is best for the children--although it has to be admitted that there are all too many two-parent families, not suffering from any form of deprivation, who are not good parents and who do not make a good job of it. We give very little guidance on parenting and we do very little to help people acquire the skills of a competent parent, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said. We give learner drivers the Highway Code and a course of tuition before letting them loose on the roads, but we do not do the same for new parents who undertake what is really rather a harder job.
I think that we do have to be realistic. More and more couples set up house together, have children and lead a thoroughly happy and satisfactory life. It is a trend and it has to be recognised and accepted, as indeed did the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor when we were in the early stages of the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill.
Lone parents have a very much harder time. It may not be their fault that they are lone parents; they may be widowed or they may have been divorced or deserted. I do not believe that young women have children in order to qualify, as some critics say, for council houses. I am sure that that is very unusual. The point is the children and how they are to be brought up. To treat the parent badly, as Mr. Lilley has done in cutting benefit, is to deprive the children of a decent and tolerable background. The problem is that the concept of "family" these days includes more or less everybody. The sharper focus we need--both in Parliament and in government--is on children. Of course children need families, but too often the family agenda turns out to be an agenda of adult needs. There are also those who use rhetoric about "family values" to promote policies which could, possibly, make children's lives more difficult.
I want to speak today of a Gulbenkian Foundation inquiry into effective government structures for children in which the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and I have both been involved as members of the advisory group; indeed, the noble Lord mentioned it in his speech. The inquiry's report was published on Monday. It provides a prescription, worthy of detailed consideration by all political parties, for ensuring that government pay proper attention to the needs of children.
I do not believe that any government consciously set out to treble the proportion of children being brought up in poverty, or to escalate school exclusions, or to design a juvenile justice system now described by the Audit Commission as "wasteful and ineffective". But these things happen--indeed, they have happened--not because politicians do not care about children, but because government do not care effectively about children.
Children make up almost one quarter of the population, but, having no vote, they seem to be politically of no great relevance. In this country there is no overall strategy for children. There is a damaging lack of co-ordination among the 14 government departments--I repeat, 14--responsible for policies which deeply affect children. Children--the real lives of children--remain largely invisible to government. There is no requirement to assess the impact of government policies on children, no systematic collection of statistics or annual report on the state of UK children and no analysis of government budgets to assess the proportion spent on children.
The report of the Gulbenkian Foundation sets out the justification for a high political priority and special structures for children--the moral justification, and the practical one--and our growing knowledge of the huge costs of failing children. The report provides a list of key functions of government for children and a detailed
blueprint of structures within government to fulfil them, including a Cabinet Office children's unit led by a Minister for children, a standing cross-departmental committee on children--this is something for which I think the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, asked--and, outside government, an independent office of children's commissioner to act as a watchdog for children.The cost of implementing these proposals is infinitesimal compared with the continuing costs--economic and social--of failing children. It is the united view of the professionals and organisations that work with and for children that we must have more effective structures in government. Some 140 organisations recently signed a broadsheet addressed to all MPs and Peers calling for a Minister for children and an independent commissioner.
I shall now give a plug for the all-party group for children. That group is meeting next Wednesday and its agenda is the consideration of this new report. I hope very much that many of your Lordships who are here today will come to discuss it and to let your views on it be known.
4.51 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, I am grateful, as are other noble Lords, to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for introducing this subject at this particular time when we are about to celebrate--those of us who are Christians--the birth of Christ. To discuss children at this time is most opportune.
I take this opportunity to thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for all the work he did on the Family Law Bill. I was in hospital for two-and-a-half months at that time and was unable to take any part in the Bill. However, I followed its progress from my hospital bed. I thank the noble and learned Lord not only for the end product, but also for all the work that he put into that Bill.
We must declare an interest--if we have one--when we speak in your Lordships' Chamber. My interest is only that I was a small child at one time. I am now a step great great grandmother to three children. I am also an aunt.
Families all over the world are varied. However, I wish to speak primarily of those who are of the Christian faith; in other words, the majority of the people in this country. I am fortunate enough to be a Christian. I follow, as far as I can, what the Christian faith tells us to do. One of the laws--at times they are unwritten--laid down is that a man and a woman can marry and have a family. I refer especially to a man and a woman because I feel strongly that a father and a mother must be of two different sexes. In my view two people of one sex should never be allowed to bring up a child. I know that some noble Lords may not agree with me on that point; and I know that in America there is a growing tendency for two people of the same gender to live together and to be allowed to bring up a child.
However, I wish to concentrate on what constitutes a happy family. From what other speakers have said today and from our own experience, we know that, unfortunately, there are many unhappy families and
therefore unhappy children. However, there is a great number of happy children and happy families. What makes them happy? First, I suggest that the example set by parents will remain with their children throughout their lives. Whatever parents do--not through training, or through teaching, but by example--will be absorbed by their children. Secondly, there is the concept of love. Love is absolutely fundamental to a happy family. I refer to the showing of love and a child's knowledge that he has the love of the two people who gave him life. That is vitally important.Further, there is the concept of communication. Communication has not ceased but has deteriorated to such an extent that one wonders sometimes if parents talk to their children and discuss their children's lives and their own as much as my parents did when I was a child. I was fortunate enough to have that experience and I hope that other noble Lords were fortunate enough to be brought up in that sort of environment. If one does not communicate, how on earth can one tell one's children how to behave, what standards are expected and to tell them about anything that one has been brought up to believe in?
The concept of back-up is also vitally important to making children happy. By back-up I mean a home in which children are welcomed by their parents. If they do not have a happy home to which to return, they will not return to it and we shall lose them. A great many children are now lost and cannot be found. The tragedy of those children is well known to many of us who try to help them.
Another aspect of family life is sharing activities. I was fortunate in that respect because my father and my mother were good games players. They shared that activity with me. They were not good horse riders whereas I was, so I was one up on them in that regard. However, they took me to tennis matches and played tennis with me. They also included me in other activities such as playing tiddly-winks in the evenings, because of course in those days there was no television. In my view the lack of television was a great bonus.
The other day I found a newspaper cutting which featured an article by the late Roald Dahl, who knew so much about children. Some children may be fortunate enough to read his books. He wrote:
- "The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are
concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all".
I received today a helpful leaflet from the NSPCC. It recommends strongly that there should be a statutory requirement that the subject of family life should be taught as part of the national curriculum in all schools. It would be a large subject to include in the school curriculum, but I believe that it would be of enormous benefit to children when they grow up and have their own families.
Last, but by no means least, is the aim to bring children up as Christians. If children have the Christian faith as a basis, they will have that faith to turn to.
Unfortunately my papers have become entangled. However, I wish to conclude by saying that children are the future of our country. It behoves us to do unto them as we would have done unto us. The harder we work today at bringing up children, the better one hopes that the country will be in the future.
5.1 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, not for the first time, your Lordships have been put deeply in debt by my noble friend Lord Northbourne. He started, valuably in my respectful opinion, by concentrating on the family as a mini welfare state. Both Bakunin and Marx declared that the overriding principle should be: from each according to his capacity to each according to his need. That has proved a disastrous error when applied, as it has been sought to be applied, in the nation and empire state. It worked to a measure in the traditional village where the village idiot was as significant a figure as the village Hampden. But it works best of all in the nuclear family.
My noble friend emphasised the family's role as a nursery for children. That has been valuably developed in a number of speeches during the debate. I do not wish to say anything on that aspect because it has been so well said by others. However, I should like to draw attention to another role of the family, sociologically considered.
It is inevitable, it is fundamental, it is innate that men and women perform a different function in society in bringing up future citizens to full citizenship. It can be performed only in a family based on a monogamous lifelong union. It is grossly unfair to the married woman in particular if, without cause, she can be repudiated as soon as times become difficult and there is a prospect of their becoming easier in the future. That is an important aspect of the nuclear family as a monogamous lifelong commitment.
There has been a general intellectual movement this century doubting the value of the family. I suppose that it started with Butler's The Way of all Flesh, marked strongly by Shaw's preface to Getting Married, and in the life and literature of H.G. Wells. I feel that the tide is now turning. It went on strongly in the swinging sixties culminating in the Divorce Reform Act 1969. However, I believe that the tide may be turning.
Even during the Family Law Bill debate of last Session, although the Bill remained a provision whereby a spouse against whom nothing substantial could be alleged could be repudiated without cause, undoubtedly a number of provisions were proposed and accepted by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor which strengthen the family in the sense that I seek to indicate.
That is the first factor. The other factor is more recent. Party leaders are now vying against each other to proclaim their faith in family values. Rochefoucauld described hypocrisy as the tribute which vice pays to virtue. I do not accuse the party leaders of hypocrisy but
at this time, on the eve of a general election, politics tend to be populist. If the party leaders find it expedient to voice their faith in family values, I think it probable that the tide has started to turn.My noble friend Lord Northbourne begged us in the debate to be practical. I think that he will be pleased with the speeches made so far. We welcome with admiration the administrative measures that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor indicated. I believe that more needs to be done. We need to put legal sinews into the institution of the family. A crying scandal is the fact that a wife can only acquire a right in the matrimonial home, which is after all her sphere of living, either by becoming divorced or a widow. Virtually two decades ago the Law Commission drew attention to that anomaly, but nothing has been done. I hope that the noble Baroness who will reply to the debate will tell us that something will be done.
Undoubtedly, the property regime which best reflects the cohesion of the family is community of goods. I am sorry that my noble and learned friend cannot stay until the end of the debate. There is a large measure of community of goods in Scottish law. I do not know if the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, feels entitled to bear me out on that. But one need not go so far as that. For example, our law of testate succession gives unbridled testamentary licence. Scottish law is more reasonable in that respect and is geared to preserve what was formerly a feature of English law; namely, that the estate of the deceased was divided into three parts, one being the widow's part, the second being the bairns' part and only the third part being subject to testamentary disposition. Surely that reflects much better the concept of a family as a legal and social institution?
There is then the tax aspect, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Young, referred. I will not repeat what she said, but there is another fiscal aspect. There is a good deal of dissatisfaction at the moment with the inheritance tax. It is subject to the very grave fiscal disadvantage that it is not tapered. If we substituted a succession duty whereby members of the family could be benefited by being in a position of privilege compared to strangers, we should have a fiscal regime which very much better reflected the family as a social unit.
5.12 p.m.
Baroness Perry of Southwark: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for having introduced this very wide topic. The speeches we have heard so far have indicated how wide-ranging are the concerns of this House with regard to the role of the family. It has sparked three quite remarkable maiden speeches.
Within this wide range, I should like to address particularly the role of the family in their children's education, not so much in relation to children of school age but more in relation to children before they arrive at school, when they are wholly in the care of the family.
Most of us recognise that the role of the family in children's performance in educational and academic terms is absolutely crucial. I wonder how many of us
realise, as psychologists tell us, that the average child has completed 40 per cent. of its academic learning by the time it is five. In those first five years children learn language, the most complex of all skills; they learn numbers; they learn spatial awareness; they learn a very wide range of social skills. You only have to watch the average four year-old winding their parents around their fingers to realise how advanced those social skills have become and to realise how much learning goes on in those early years. Everything that children learn afterwards in school is only the remaining 60 per cent.But that is the average child. Ask any reception class teacher in an infant or primary school and she--and it usually will be she--will tell you what enormous ranges of learning those young five year-olds and rising fives bring with them into the classroom. The experience that they have had in their homes is the base on which all their future time in school will be built. That base can be very slim indeed. When I say "slim", I reflect on some of the children I have seen arriving in the reception classes of schools, who come from backgrounds so deprived that they have literally never heard, let alone taken part in, any sustained conversation. They are incapable of understanding whole sentences because they are very rarely spoken to at home in whole and rounded sentences. They come from homes where there are no books, so they have never seen books before. They have never taken part in travel and visits; they have never been taken to the theatre or to hear music. They have almost no experience of any place other than the very small area of their home.
A head teacher of a school in Penge, which most of us would consider a three-minute drive from this House, told me that the most exciting thing that they had done for the children was--as they called it--to take them up to London. The children, who had been on an expedition to the West End, said, "This is the first time we have been in London".
Those are children from extremely deprived backgrounds. I should like to reflect for a moment on how important it is to help those children by helping their families. I should like to say some positive things about some projects which try to help those families to help their children. There are, thank God, thousands of such projects. I believe passionately that the best way to help children is by helping their parents. I shall talk about three specific projects which help perhaps the most difficult families, some of them with only one parent.
One such project is the Partners Programme in the town of Andover, largely sponsored by the Mercers' Company. There are a range of partners. The parents themselves are crucially and centrally within this partnership. The school itself, an infant school, is a partner. Other partners are social workers, health workers and almost anyone concerned with the welfare of very young children. With the help of financing from the Mercers' Company, the school has reached out to the parents of children who will be coming to the school in three or four years' time, in some cases before they even reach the age of one. These are families from a very deprived council estate. The parents are brought
into the school and are given some exciting and interesting materials so that they and their children can play together, join together in learning, have some benchmarks for what a child should be able to do by the age of one, what one can reasonably expect at the age of 18 months, what one can be working towards at the age of two, and so on. The parents are brought in and helped from the very start, when the children are only a few months old. People work with them, they work through the materials, they give them materials to take home to enable rich play experience with their children. The difference in the performance of those children when they come to school is quite remarkable; they come with that 40 per cent. of their academic learning already firmly in place.A second project I should like to mention briefly is the WelCare Project, with which I am very proud to be associated. The patron of the project is the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. It is a south London project to help mainly single mothers, many of whom are themselves in extremely desperate circumstances. I have heard one of these very brave mothers stand up in a group which included some quite formidable patrons of the charity and admit that she herself had had a drugs problem and had been drawn into prostitution, and yet she said, with great emotion, "I love my child and I was determined I would make myself better in order to make my child different from me". The WelCare Project works with such mothers, mothers who have sunk almost as low as can be. But working on their love for their children and their determination to help them, they are brought into centres and given opportunities to play with their children, talk over their problems with counsellors and help their children learn to become different.
A third project which I shall mention briefly is called Home House. It is run by a further education college in Stockton and helps young children's fathers who are in prison. The further education college staff, again with some of their colleagues in other services--the Prison Service and the social services--once a week go into the prison with the small children. The fathers are brought into a play area or a playgroup situation and are helped to help their children, particularly with literacy skills. Fathers and children work together. The fathers say that the project means more to them than anything else, "because our children are not going to live the life that we have lived."
Finally, I pay tribute to the often much maligned pre-school playgroup movement, which helps right across the social spectrum--not only deprived parents but middle-class parents who are just as much in need of help in parenting skills. I am a great advocate of pre-school playgroups, not just because of what they do for young children before they go to school--I myself have seen the confidence with which a child who has had two years of playgroup enters the reception class--but also because they have much to do with parent education. The mothers who are involved in pre-school playgroups--which is a precondition of their children being in a playgroup--are themselves educated and
helped to see how children learn through play and how they may carry on the good work of the playgroup in their own home.So there is light on the horizon. There are projects and ways of breaking that awful cycle of parents and children not knowing how to speak to each other or to communicate being passed on from generation to generation. Intervention can be successful and it can work.
5.22 p.m.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton: My Lords, I wish to add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for introducing the debate today. I hope that he will forgive me if I follow the theme of his speech. In the words of Leo Tolstoy:
- "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way".
But it is not simply a matter of the presence or absence of one parent in the family which is significant in a child's life and in creating a happy family; it is the quality of parenting. Because of that, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who is just leaving the Chamber, was not implying that a single parent family did not deserve to be called a family. It is the relevance of parenting that is important. That has been recognised by the tremendous growth of interest in parenting, in the need for parent education and in the consequences of bad parenting. That view is supported by the Home Office study, Young People and Crime, which states:
- "It is the effects of relationships within the family that have a great bearing on whether an individual commits a criminal offence".
But turning the tide of delinquency means looking at the early years of people's lives, their upbringing, and the way that parental responsibilities are discharged. Being a parent can be more difficult than any other job. It brings joy, heartache and frustration. Children grow up and develop at an alarming rate. They are part of a culture which is often radically different from that of their parents and they grow up at a time when their parents' relationships are likely to come under stress. All those factors can cause communication problems and conflict, ultimately creating an atmosphere in which parents and children can drift apart. It can then become increasingly difficult to restore family relationships.
The 1989 Children Act acknowledges that the prime responsibility for children's upbringing lies with the parents. The legislation identifies a role for the state in helping parents meet that responsibility. It would, of course, be extremely difficult and probably wrong to prescribe all those responsibilities in the law. Family privacy has to be respected. But the breadth of the term produces its own problems in defining what is expected of parents.
Twenty years ago Mia Kellner Pringle, in her book The Needs of Children, said, and it is still applicable today, that,
- "modern parenthood is too demanding and complex a task to be performed merely because we have all once been children".
The level of support provided by local authorities is variable and dependent on local initiatives and the work of many voluntary organisations, such as Homestart UK, the Family Nurturing Network and Parentline, as well as the extremely valuable but small and varied mixture of parenting programmes. Those programmes vary in the tasks they undertake but they are all working to the same goals: to develop greater self-awareness; to improve parent-child communication; to make family life more enjoyable; and to provide useful information on child development. However, there is such a low level of investment in parenting skills in this country that, unfortunately, few parents in need benefit. The number is estimated at only 28,000 out of the 12 million parents in the UK with dependent children. That is at a time when there is an increasing amount of family breakdown, greater poverty and uncertainty concerning employment.
A recent Eurobarometer study found that in the United Kingdom only 24 per cent. of respondents saw "bringing up and educating children" as the most important purpose of the family, compared with six in 10 Portuguese, Italian, French and Spanish respondents. In the United States, where there have been parenting education programmes for some time, it is generally accepted that every dollar spent means six dollars saved on the costs of family breakdown, juvenile delinquency and criminal activity.
The National Children's Bureau in its Agenda for Action on parenting education, rightly called for government departments to develop a coherent national strategy; for parent education and support to be available to all who wish to take advantage of it; and for a more co-ordinated approach by local authorities, health authorities and voluntary organisations. Equally, young people--the nine out of 10 children who will become parents--have to be prepared and equipped to deal with the responsibilities that they will face in parenthood. That can start in schools.
Recognition of the problem has led to growing calls for the introduction of parenthood education in the school curriculum. Two years ago the Children's Society launched a teaching pack of materials entitled Education for Parenthood. The materials identified the basic components of a parenthood curriculum as including health and development; safety and security; financial and budgeting skills; and relationships. Early results show that the project which is under way in five schools in the Greater Manchester area is having a positive effect on young people's attitudes to parenting and that it would be a valuable addition to the mainstream curriculum. But we should not ignore the
valuable contribution of nursery education, which can give the best possible start to children and the best opportunity for successful parenting.Equally, we must make it easier to reconcile parental and work responsibilities. During the past decade there has been dramatic structural change in work patterns; continuing high unemployment, casualisation, loss of full-time jobs and the growth of part-time work for both men and women. Yet, overall, British men work the longest hours in Europe. One third of fathers work over 50 hours a week, compared with the EU average of about 10 per cent. One in three men work a six or seven-day week. And more than a million people have two or more jobs. Such long hours, accompanied by growing competitive pressures at work, place great strain on family life and are a real obstacle to equal parenting.
The interests of the family would be better served if more employers operated family-friendly employment structures, structures which would benefit fathers as well as mothers. That is essential if we genuinely believe in family values and the stability of the family. But it is not only up to employers. Government have a role in establishing a legislative framework for family life, a framework that provides for quality, flexible work, family leave, including parental leave, career breaks and a reduction in working hours. I am sure that there is no better argument for supporting the EU working time directive.
Unemployment, as well as over-employment, can also jeopardise men's involvement with their children. Time is not the problem. But loss of the role as the breadwinner can make it psychologically harder, not easier, for them to take part in the running of the family home.
The Family Policy Studies Centre, in its survey Parenting in the 1990s, illustrates the multiple disadvantages suffered by families where both parents are unemployed. Those parents would benefit enormously from the full implementation of Section 17 of the Children Act by providing a comprehensive network of family services in all areas.
In conclusion, successful parenting requires better co-ordination of resources. We need a labour market which is no longer an obstacle to parenting. We need sufficient childcare provision and parents equipped with the necessary life skills and knowledge to face the challenge and responsibility of parenting and with the time to meet the children's needs for emotional security, stability and affection. Good parenting is an investment for the future which society cannot afford to neglect. As the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, support for the family is the most important role any government can undertake.
5.30 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for initiating this debate and, moreover, at such an auspicious moment. I too have an interest to declare, like my noble friend Lady Macleod. I am a granddaughter, daughter, niece
and sister. I am also a wife, mother, aunt, great aunt and grandmother. I therefore have some experience of families.We have heard three splendid maiden speeches this afternoon and I should like briefly to congratulate the noble Baroness, the noble Viscount and my noble friend. I should also like to apologise that I may have to leave the House shortly before the end of the debate, though I may not.
The last time we discussed the family was in 1989, in a debate introduced by Lady Ewart-Biggs. We were then allowed 12 minutes to speak; today we have only nine. Lady Ewart-Biggs said:
- "It would be difficult--indeed impossible--to find a substitute for the family ... Marriage provides economic, social and psychological support of a kind which is difficult to substitute, acts as a first line of defence in times of crisis and provides a small society in which human values are preserved against the pressures of mass living".--[Official Report, 29/11/89; col. 426.]
There are several ways in which a government could help the family. They could, first, provide tax relief in order to make it more attractive to be married than to cohabit. Secondly, they could provide tax relief within the family for carers and an adequate income replacement scheme for them. Caring for the disabled, ill or frail relatives or friends is still a significant part of family life in Britain. There are an estimated 6.8 million carers in Britain, who save the state an estimated £34 billion a year through their caring responsibilities; 3.7 million adults bear the main caring responsibility for the care of someone; 30,000 young people under 18 care for someone else in their household--some can be as young as eight. Only around 4 per cent. of the frail elderly are looked after in institutional care. The main carers of older people, therefore, are families. Nearly one in three carers--29 per cent.--who care for sick, elderly or disabled people for more than 20 hours a week also have children under the age of 16. Some have given up work but there are over 3 million carers aged between 16 and 64 in paid employment. Thirdly, the Government could help widows who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in one-parent families.
I read through what I said eight years ago and everything I said then, I believe now. It is rather like the pelicans:
- "Plumpskin plushkin Pelican Jill. We think so then and we thought so still".
Now, with apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, I am going to do my "bleeding heart" bit. Which of your Lordships watched the Lawrence family on television on Sunday night and saw that brave little boy unveil the plaque "To my Daddy" without tears in their eyes or a lump in their throat? Certainly not me.
Christmas is, above all, the time to think about families. We pray together; we eat together; we share gifts together--and some of them are not wrapped up in fancy paper and sellotape, but are gifts of the spirit. I do not know if the lion quite lies down with the lamb--it always seems to me rather unfair to the lamb. But there is certainly an armistice. Angels sing in the trenches and we all sing carols.
We think back to that long-ago Christmas--that two millennium ago Christmas--when Mary, Joseph and the donkey were hastening towards Bethlehem to become a family (they were an "almost-family"). I am sure the night was cold. We know there were stars and the donkey was certainly thinking, as donkeys do, of a warm stable, of hay and thistles and perhaps even carrots. I am sure his feet were killing him because goodness knows what he was carrying on his back. But he was determined to get there because he wanted the shelter for Mary and Joseph and the coming baby as well as for himself. After all, they were his family.
5.37 p.m.
Lord Jakobovits: My Lords, I join in the acclamations directed towards my noble friend Lord Northbourne for his invaluable initiative. I regret that, due to having been confined to bed for the past six days with a feverish flu, I could not attend the opening speeches this afternoon and missed, above all, his own opening address, though I did see his preparatory notes, which I read with enormous interest.
I am sure that no one can quarrel with or fail to be impressed by my noble friend's argument that, as the cost of the welfare service escalates and demands continue to rise--particularly in an increasingly elderly population--there will be a growing reluctance or inability on the part of taxpayers to meet those spiralling costs and the need will become ever more urgent for the family to resume its traditional role in providing relief for its dependent members.
One statistical item will illustrate how intractable the problem has become. I am told that at the largest Jewish home for the elderly, Nightingale House, with over 400 residential places, the average age of admission is now 88 years. This means, with ever earlier retirement, that the reduced number of wage earners now have to take care of two generations of pensioners. Clearly the imbalance between givers and takers or contributors and beneficiaries is becoming ever more acute. It is absolutely right that we should expect the family to help to assume some of these extra burdens, but the truth is that the family itself is in a state of disintegration. Its fractured constituents are themselves often in need of social assistance by the state. We therefore come back to the fundamental question: how can we strengthen the family against further erosion?
No doubt the greatest piece of modern legislation in this sphere is the Family Law Act, which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor piloted through this House with such immaculate skill--perhaps I should say with such "Mackay-ed" skill. It is far too early to estimate how far the new law will stem the tide of marriage disintegration and its rising toll of human misery.
The greatest danger is that we shall take the current state for granted and no longer feel alarmed by it. Some efforts made to stem the tide of failed marriages were soon abandoned for the flimsiest of reasons. When the Prime Minister boldly initiated his "Back to Basics" campaign, he soon scuttled it because of a few moral offenders in high places. The whole moral climate today is a disincentive to the controls which are essential if marriages are to last. The common philosophy is: have a good time now and pay later--a kind of credit card mentality which is pernicious and blunts all responsibility.
On another subject of current concern, it is commonly believed that only minors have to be protected from the excesses of sex and violence in the media, and that after nine o'clock everything goes. You do not have to be under 16 to be corrupted by moral filth or to be rendered insensitive to the refinements of decency. The recent spate of mass murderers from Dunblane to Tasmania, possibly influenced by violence in the media, were not committed by children but by adults. If anything, adults are even more prone to be perverted than children, who have a certain natural defence against such perversion. What is not healthy for under-16s is not healthy for over-16s either.
In many ways we have lowered our natural defences against moral decay. One of the most powerful safeguards against unacceptable lapses used to be a deep sense of shame. Shame is to moral health what pain is to physical health. If physical pain did not alert us, we would never go to a doctor or a dentist to have some serious damage repaired. Without shame, moral decay passes unnoticed and becomes accepted. Our age wants to tell us that shame and guilt are unhealthy, when in fact they are indispensable conditions for moral health. We ought to encourage the cultivation of moral shame and disgrace in the face of deviant behaviour which is unacceptable.
I believe that the threat to the stability of the family is now real enough to warrant a proper in-depth inquiry into analysing the factors contributing to the catastrophic decline of the nuclear family as the bedrock of a healthy society. Perhaps we should consider a Royal Commission to study the present trends with expert witnesses, and to come up with practical proposals to reverse these trends.
The state, through Parliament, cannot abdicate its role as the guardian of our most cherished values--without which there will be no social security, no national stability, and no one left to care when we are too old or infirm to care for ourselves.
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