Margaret Hodge
Parenting
I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb)-I hope that I have pronounced that place correctly-on securing this important debate. We have only a bare half an hour to discuss the matter, but other hon. Members might seek to ignite the debate in another forum.
I reassure the hon. Gentleman that the Government's commitment to support parenting and families is a central part of our vision. Parenting is not probably the most important job that we do on this earth; it is the most important, and the most rewarding and difficult. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) that we are too often ill prepared to do it.
I hope that the hon. Member for Northavon accepts that the Government's commitment to parenting and families is underlined by the creation of the post that I currently have the privilege to hold. With the machinery of Government changes, we are trying to bring together in one place responsibility for all the policy and services for children, parents and families, so that we can respond more easily to their needs and make it easier for individuals and organisations to do business with us.
Much has come together under the remit of my Department-the Department for Education and Skills-but there are still boundaries in Government. We must make sure that they do not become barriers. We must work together throughout Government. That is central to many of my concerns, and to the way in which I have been working-the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that I have very regular meetings with Ministers from other Departments.
I am conscious of the shortage of time, so I will try to respond to some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. He said that parents are spending less time with their children. If we look at the history of parenting, it may be that in the past the tradition was for the woman to be in the home for longer, but it is questionable whether she spent more time in the home focused on the children than she does now. I would not make the easy assertions, which the hon. Gentleman talked about, that more time means better quality of parenting. One of the changes that I have seen in my adult life is that fathers are now much more readily engaged in parenting. My oldest child is now in his early 30s: when I used to pick him up at the school gates, it was rare to see a dad there, but that is no longer atypical. I often visit parents' and toddlers' groups in my present role, and it is apparent that fathers are much more strongly engaged in the parenting of their children than they used to be. Both parents matter, and that equality of engagement is a change for the better.
Things have not become worse. What has happened is that more women are in the work place. Is that a good or a bad thing? Do we give parents a choice? Choice underpins our policy. It underpinned it before my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equality made the statement that she made, but it helped to underline what has been a consistent policy throughout the term of the Government.
We are attempting to provide choice. The amount of choice that parents have is influenced by whether they have trust in the quality and safety of the child care that is available to them. That is why we are proud of being the first Government to launch a national child care strategy, of the progress we have made in that, and of introducing free early years education for children aged three and four.
I often meet lone parents who have been helped back into the work place by our welfare to work programme. That often works for the most disadvantaged parents: it is a terrific route out of poverty, because of the income that they get from it, and we help them with their child care costs through the child care tax credits system; it is also terrific because of the confidence and self-esteem that they gain from fulfilling a role in both the home and the work place. When parents, particularly lone parents, have that confidence and self-esteem, they make better parents, and I have received some very warming letters from children about their mums going back to work. There is no right or wrong answer. There must be choice, as the answer depends on the individual circumstances. However, for many lone parents, work is a route back to self-esteem, confidence and better parenting and out of poverty.
I have only five minutes to respond, and I want to talk about atypical hours. From talking to families and parents, I have found that women in work want their supermarket open and to be able to access their health service, GP or dentist at atypical hours. They also want to be able to talk to their children's teachers and school staff at atypical hours, so we are moving into a different world. Many parents who work atypical hours do so out of choice, because, in two-parent households, it often fits in well with parents' lifestyles and how they care for their children. They also want to enjoy the additional wealth that it brings. We should not see atypical hours working as a retrograde step; it can be positive for many people.
I agree with some of the points made about the long-working-hours culture, but statistics show that it is higher-level, better-off men who tend to work the longest hours and are more disengaged from their families, children and partners than those in lower income families. That is a terrible part of British culture, which we have taken from America more than Europe, and we should try to encourage greater engagement in the home.
I have spoken a lot to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) about the importance of parenting skills, which was raised by both him and my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough. Some research in my Department mirrors what was referred to. It demonstrates that good parenting in the home is more important for the child's outcome than the best teacher in the most excellent school. Armed with that knowledge, we need to do all that we can to support parents in developing their skills, and although I recognise that we have a long way to go, I am proud of what we have done so far. There is our sure start programme and its work on parenting, and we give support to voluntary projects such as home-start throughout the country. We want to spread that to make it a more universal service, as is detailed in our Green Paper "Every child matters". Those are important early interventions.
Parenting classes can also be appropriate, but I worry a lot about transition. As new mothers come home from hospital, and as children move from home to nursery, primary and then secondary school, support for parents is important, and we are trying to focus our energy on those transition stages. Our Green Paper includes many propositions to extend services, for example with a parenting phone line not dissimilar to NHS Direct that parents could ring up during a crisis with their three-year-old or 15-year-old to seek some support. We are taking many different steps.
The hon. Member for Northavon talked about choice, and that is what we are about. We are trying to provide an infrastructure that gives parents both choice and the opportunity to engage. Choices are often different if the children are under five, and we have done much to support people who stay at home as long as possible with our reforms of maternity pay and benefits. We could perhaps do more, but we have taken the agenda further. Choice is important, as is joint working throughout Government, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am firmly engaged in that.
We must ensure that high-quality child care supports good parenting in the home to give children the maximum opportunity to develop their potential and ensures that no child falls through the net. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having successfully secured this short debate.
