Martyn Jones

Labour Party | Clwyd South

Labour’s Campaign Includes The Children

Martyn Jones MP for Clwyd South believes it is the government’s job to support parents and help ease the burdens that arise during the challenging task of raising a child.

Labour has launched a policy campaign that focuses on the welfare of children.  From increasing the nutritional standard of school meals and protecting children from adverts for unhealthy food to tightening the sale of cigarettes to young people, Labour’s policy demands a government that is active in helping parents raise healthy children. 

Making more money available to schools will help improve the quality of school meals, tightening rules on broadcast advertising will control the types of food that children are exposed to, and implementing new penalties on shopkeepers will deter lenient keepers from selling cigarettes to those under age sixteen.    

This campaign, while being a mini-manifesto, has a giant goal to accomplish:  the eradication of child poverty by 2020.  Eradication efforts will proceed with education as a top priority.  Also to end child poverty are measures that include helping parents to better balance work and family by providing free part time nursery places, more affordable child care, an increased child benefit and increased Child Tax Credit.   

Where Labour sees that government does have a role to support parents the Tories have stuck by their ideology of minimal state intervention.  Yet, such a policy is what seems to have caused the Tories to oppose improving parental leave and to freeze child benefit.

Commenting on the policy. Mr. Jones said:

“As I well know, raising children is far from simple.  Parents are faced with a great challenge as they raise a child in an environment with so many factors that are beyond their individual control.  But government has the ability to improve that environment, and should stop no where short at providing the highest quality education, the most financial assistance, the best health protection, and the most aggressive measures to eliminate child poverty. 

“It is a parent’s responsibility to raise his or her child, but it is a government’s responsibility to provide the best environment for doing so.”