Westminster Hall
Thursday 10th September 2026
Skip to latest contribution
This debate has concluded
(began 17 hours, 54 minutes ago)
Watch LiveSkip to latest contribution
This debate has concluded
13:30
13:30
Speaker 2
-
Speaker 2
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I beg to move that this House has considered the potential merits of reform of the vascular sector. Your chair, Madam Chair. Last night you were doing the adjournment debate. Today you're chairing in Westminster Hall. Your talents, Madam Chair, are incredible. Well done to you. And we appreciate all the efforts that you make for us in this House in all lines. It's a real pleasure as well to introduce this debate.
That's something I'm particularly interested in. And we have a number of people in the audience today in the gallery. There are people with much more medical talent than I have. I'm interested in the subject. These people in the audience today, Madam Chair, are some of those who carry out some of the operations and who have a deep interest. I want to pay a special thanks, if I can, to to Roger Greer, who is the admin for the Appg for vascular health and venous health.
Health that I'm involved with and chair of that and declare that interest because that gentleman and others with him make the effort to make this a subject matter that I'm interested in. I've had the opportunity back home to visit the Royal Victoria Hospital where vascular health. Unfortunately, I will mention some of the stats for Northern Ireland and they are worrying, Madam Chair, and I think that will illustrate. I suspect, where we are in Northern Ireland.
But I think what's happening in Northern Ireland is probably murdered here in the mainland as well. A real pleasure to see the minister in this place. We had a wee chat beforehand. I think this is a debate which we were all I'm not a prophet or a son of a prophet, but I believe that we will all be agreeing on the subject matter that we're putting forward. And I look very, very much forward to what the minister will respond to and give us that encouragement and some of the the responses that we need to to help us as we move forward.
I rise today to speak on an issue of vital importance to thousands of families across our great nation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, yet one that too often remains hidden in the shadows of our health service. I just said that to the minister before. It's one of the ones that's slightly hidden. We maybe don't always know all the things about it unless we have a particular interest, and I know the other members who are here and I thank them for coming.
We'll have a particular interest. The pressing need for comprehensive reform and lower limb vascular care. This debate, I believe, gives this House and Westminster Hall today the opportunity to highlight an often forgotten health issue. Vascular disease affects a very network of life within us. As we stand here, as I stand here, the arteries and veins that carry blood around our bodies and encompasses the. The peripheral arterial disease, the chronic limb lengthening ischaemia venous disease, devastating diabetes related foot complications.
And I declare an interest as a type two diabetic, although I think maybe Richard might say, well, after that kick the other day, maybe you're not as careful as you should be with your diabetes. But I do try to be careful and look after them. They're not mere clinical terms. They represent real human suffering, unbearable pain, non-healing wounds, severe loss of mobility, and in far too many cases, Madam Chair, major limb amputation and premature death.
And I'm going to put a bit of focus on that for us in Northern Ireland. Some of the figures for amputations in Northern Ireland are scary. I think they're probably scary for here as well. Whilst we have seen inspiring progress in cardiac and stroke care, and this is very much welcome, outcomes for vascular patients have simply failed to keep pace. And that's the issue we want to highlight today if I can. The risk of developing in Pad is four times higher among smokers than non-smokers, and the 2 to 4 times higher amongst people with diabetes than people without diabetes.
Again, that's the reason why we're bringing this particular debate forward today and the importance of where we are today. Madam chair, 1 in 5 people over the age of 60 is affected by Pad. More than 80% 80% of amputations amongst people with diabetes are preceded by a foot ulcer. You say a foot ulcer? Well, that's not too bad, but it can well be and often is. The precipitation of a disorder in your blood and ultimately could lead to amputation.
A statistic that clearly demonstrates, I believe, the enormous opportunity we have for prevention and for early intervention. Again, the sole thrust of not the sole thrust, but one of my main thrust of my comments today, Madam Chair, will be about early intervention. And how do we do that? We have many experts in this chamber who are going to speak, and I thank them all for coming, honourable members, for coming along to make their contribution approximately, madam chair, 4200 major lower limb amputations are performed every single year due to pad, each representing, I believe, a personal tragedy and an average cost of £28,000 to the NHS.
And we have to consider the cost because the costs are part of where the NHS have to have to look at and manage and CLTI alone costs our health service an estimated £244 million annually, while the overall bill. Madam chair for NHS Wound Care reached a staggering £8.3 billion in 2017 2018, and that included some 5.6 billion spent on wounds that failed to heal. So that gives a perhaps a clinical look at where we are.
The human toll. Of course, Madam Chair is tragic. Patients suffering from CLTI with the rest. Pain or tissue loss face a 60% risk of death within five years, a prognosis that is worse than many end stage cancers . Following an above knee amputation, a quarter of patients die within 90 days, and median survival amongst diabetic patients is just 1.68 years. Stats. Stats illustrate the the issue of the problem, and I believe, confirm the importance of where we are.
And very happy to announce.
That's something I'm particularly interested in. And we have a number of people in the audience today in the gallery. There are people with much more medical talent than I have. I'm interested in the subject. These people in the audience today, Madam Chair, are some of those who carry out some of the operations and who have a deep interest. I want to pay a special thanks, if I can, to to Roger Greer, who is the admin for the Appg for vascular health and venous health.
Health that I'm involved with and chair of that and declare that interest because that gentleman and others with him make the effort to make this a subject matter that I'm interested in. I've had the opportunity back home to visit the Royal Victoria Hospital where vascular health. Unfortunately, I will mention some of the stats for Northern Ireland and they are worrying, Madam Chair, and I think that will illustrate. I suspect, where we are in Northern Ireland.
But I think what's happening in Northern Ireland is probably murdered here in the mainland as well. A real pleasure to see the minister in this place. We had a wee chat beforehand. I think this is a debate which we were all I'm not a prophet or a son of a prophet, but I believe that we will all be agreeing on the subject matter that we're putting forward. And I look very, very much forward to what the minister will respond to and give us that encouragement and some of the the responses that we need to to help us as we move forward.
I rise today to speak on an issue of vital importance to thousands of families across our great nation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, yet one that too often remains hidden in the shadows of our health service. I just said that to the minister before. It's one of the ones that's slightly hidden. We maybe don't always know all the things about it unless we have a particular interest, and I know the other members who are here and I thank them for coming.
We'll have a particular interest. The pressing need for comprehensive reform and lower limb vascular care. This debate, I believe, gives this House and Westminster Hall today the opportunity to highlight an often forgotten health issue. Vascular disease affects a very network of life within us. As we stand here, as I stand here, the arteries and veins that carry blood around our bodies and encompasses the. The peripheral arterial disease, the chronic limb lengthening ischaemia venous disease, devastating diabetes related foot complications.
And I declare an interest as a type two diabetic, although I think maybe Richard might say, well, after that kick the other day, maybe you're not as careful as you should be with your diabetes. But I do try to be careful and look after them. They're not mere clinical terms. They represent real human suffering, unbearable pain, non-healing wounds, severe loss of mobility, and in far too many cases, Madam Chair, major limb amputation and premature death.
And I'm going to put a bit of focus on that for us in Northern Ireland. Some of the figures for amputations in Northern Ireland are scary. I think they're probably scary for here as well. Whilst we have seen inspiring progress in cardiac and stroke care, and this is very much welcome, outcomes for vascular patients have simply failed to keep pace. And that's the issue we want to highlight today if I can. The risk of developing in Pad is four times higher among smokers than non-smokers, and the 2 to 4 times higher amongst people with diabetes than people without diabetes.
Again, that's the reason why we're bringing this particular debate forward today and the importance of where we are today. Madam chair, 1 in 5 people over the age of 60 is affected by Pad. More than 80% 80% of amputations amongst people with diabetes are preceded by a foot ulcer. You say a foot ulcer? Well, that's not too bad, but it can well be and often is. The precipitation of a disorder in your blood and ultimately could lead to amputation.
A statistic that clearly demonstrates, I believe, the enormous opportunity we have for prevention and for early intervention. Again, the sole thrust of not the sole thrust, but one of my main thrust of my comments today, Madam Chair, will be about early intervention. And how do we do that? We have many experts in this chamber who are going to speak, and I thank them all for coming, honourable members, for coming along to make their contribution approximately, madam chair, 4200 major lower limb amputations are performed every single year due to pad, each representing, I believe, a personal tragedy and an average cost of £28,000 to the NHS.
And we have to consider the cost because the costs are part of where the NHS have to have to look at and manage and CLTI alone costs our health service an estimated £244 million annually, while the overall bill. Madam chair for NHS Wound Care reached a staggering £8.3 billion in 2017 2018, and that included some 5.6 billion spent on wounds that failed to heal. So that gives a perhaps a clinical look at where we are.
The human toll. Of course, Madam Chair is tragic. Patients suffering from CLTI with the rest. Pain or tissue loss face a 60% risk of death within five years, a prognosis that is worse than many end stage cancers . Following an above knee amputation, a quarter of patients die within 90 days, and median survival amongst diabetic patients is just 1.68 years. Stats. Stats illustrate the the issue of the problem, and I believe, confirm the importance of where we are.
And very happy to announce.
13:36
Speaker 3
-
Speaker 3
I'm really grateful to the honourable gentleman giving me on that point. And the statistics that he highlights should shock us all, because if they were the same statistics, dealing with any cancer would simply find it unacceptable. And does he agree with me that vascular disease, because it is not treated like a cancer, does in some cases end up being treated as a second class disease? And we should be mindful of that.
13:36
Speaker 2
-
Speaker 2
Yeah. Can I thank the honourable gentleman for that intervention? And he has rightly said that when it comes to vascular disease, while it's equal in its severity, it's equal in the numbers who lose their lives along with cancer. It's not treated the same. And I think today's debate gives us a chance, perhaps to illustrate that. And I am hopeful that the minister , who has the responsibility to answer, can give us some encouragement in relation to that.
Furthermore, this crisis starkly reinforces health inequalities amongst individuals aged 45 to 54. Just as an example, those in our most deprived communities face an above knee amputation rates nearly five times higher than those in the least deprived areas. And and and the I think the library, by the way, as always, for the information that they made available to us, it referred to and I quote it says here, it said that gaps in vascular care are resulting in, in avoidable, avoidable harm for patients.
And particularly, the report highlighted delayed diagnosis and consistent referral pathways and variable access to specialist care, where people with pad venous disease and diabetes related foot complications. It said that these problems are resulting in thousands and thousands of avoidable lower limb amputations each year. If we were to achieve something from this debate today, it would be to ensure that there was improvement in vascular health, number one, but secondly, that the issue of amputations could be taken in an early diagnosis and looked at much more significantly and strongly than it has.
Mr. chairman, as a member for Strangford in Northern Ireland, I feel a particular responsibility to shine a light on how this national crisis presents itself in Northern Ireland. I do that because I think it will help to to add to the debate, number one, but ever mindful that the minister here today has responsibility for the United Kingdom and has the responsibility directly for Northern Ireland. I understand that, but this debate, what I use the figures in the stats and the information from Northern Ireland as an illustration of the of the issue.
What I want to see, and I think the Minister will want to see as well, is an improvement in this in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. My job is to shine a light on how the national crisis present itself in Northern Ireland. While the briefing outlines a systematic , systemic, sorry challenges across the UK, the reality on the ground in our region underscores an even more acute urgency. Across Northern Ireland, hundreds of patients undergo limb amputations each year due to vascular complications and diabetes related foot ulcers.
In fact, diabetes prevalence in Northern Ireland continues to rise steadily, with local health trusts treating thousands of individuals at high risk of developing developing severe foot complications. I think in many occasions, Madam Chair, the issue of of, of diabetes, some people think of diabetes maybe isn't as serious. I used to be almost 17 stone and realized when the doctor was confirmed to have diabetes nearly 18 years ago, now that I had to lose weight and I lost four stone and I've kept the four stone off.
But you have to work hard to ensure that you don't develop any other complications, which quite often can happen in Northern Ireland, I believe reflects dark, unacceptable regional inequalities and they. There. I understand from the facts and stats and the figures I've got from the mainland here. Healthcare inequality patients in our most socially socio economically deprived communities in Northern Ireland pay a significantly higher amputation rates, mirroring the alarming national trend here in the mainland, where deprivation increases the likelihood of a major amputation nearly fivefold.
Hopefully, when the minister responds, he will tell us how the issue of of higher levels and deprivation can can be addressed because it has to be done . Also, hospital bed capacity, the lack of dedicated rapid access, community foot protection, foot protection services forces that vascular patients into prolonged acute hospital stays, managing severe vascular conditions and non-healing wounds accounts for millions of pounds annually across our health and social care trusts. Resources that could be saved through early preventative community intervention.
Again, early diagnosis, early community intervention and the savings to the NHS, which can then be used for for other parts of the health service survival rates. Just as across the UK, a patient in Northern Ireland undergoes a major lower limb amputation, faces a staggering mortality risk within the first year of post-surgery. And that's the same here in the UK. Preventative care is quite literally a matter of life and death. It can be expressed anyhow.
The intervention of the honourable gentleman referred to that, and he underlines by his intervention the strength of the life and death of this tissue. If we are to relieve pressure on the local hospitals in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and ultimately in Northern Ireland, and protect our most vulnerable citizens, we must ensure that any national reform framework, including the national foot attack pathway and standardised waiting times, are fully integrated across all HSC trusts and we can't allow cannot allow.
Madam chair postcode lotteries dictate whether a patient keeps their limb or loses their limb, depending on where you live. And again, Minister, hopefully at the end the issue of the postcode lotteries and and how that seems to happen with unfortunately with regularity. I know the minister will be keen to change that and be very, very keen in this House will be keen to hear what the honourable gentleman says in relation to that. The CVD modern service framework rightly focuses on shared risk factors and acknowledges the Pad.
However, its immediate priorities lack the explicit, detailed pathways. Treatment standards and outcome measures urgently required for lower limb vascular care to close this gap, because that's what we're trying to do. Clinicians, patient representatives, professional bodies and NHS leaders across the vascular sector are coming together to publish a definitive best practice document this autumn, and I'm sure the the document will be made available to to the minister, hopefully in advance. And I think that would be helpful.
And to let the minister, who wants to make some changes as well, and others in this debate. The Appg on vascular and venous disease have highlighted a practical programme for reform, which I endorse because I'm the chair of it, of the Appg, but I endorse it because it's a it's a positive, focused vision for the future, which, if delivered, can make a difference. The national foot attack pathway backed by public awareness on same day or next day triage for urgent foot issues and a multidisciplinary foot protection service in every integrated care system linked directly to specialist artillery centres.
I know when I go for my diabetes test every year, twice a year, sometimes I go for one next Wednesday and and a bit. Johnson they they do that we prick of your of your foot with your eyes closed to know if you've if you're if your foot can react to feel the prick in your toe or the touch in your toe. I'm glad to say that that I always do. But the point is, if you don't, then we have a serious problem.
And that's where the issue for diabetic diabetics in particular is really important, that they're checked regularly and especially their feet. Thirdly, the national excuse me, maximum waiting times , enforcing urgent vascular assessment within five days for inpatients and two weeks for outpatients. Setting a standard, setting a target to be achieved. A clear focus on outcomes that reward early diagnosis, fast healing and reduced amputations. Because ultimately, it's about having a better quality of life, a more normal life without your health deterioration and faster adoption of innovation, including community diagnostics, compression therapies, and digital wound wound monitoring.
And when it comes to to the research and development as well, Madam Chair, Minister will always very keen to know how the advancements are going on when it comes to vascular health and and what government are helping to do that. I know Northern Ireland and one of the with us today from one of the hospitals back home and and Northern Ireland and and she's aware of this these issues very, very clearly. And there's some great work being done in our hospitals in the Royal Victoria Hospital back home, but in the Northern Ireland Health Service.
And we thank the the honourable lady for that. Madam chair, through you, I asked the Minister today, will the government ensure the CVD modern service framework that includes distinct pathways, outcome measures for vascular conditions? Will ministers support a national foot attack pathway and clear waiting time standards? Madam chair, standard rhetoric and warm words with respect will not stop a failing wound, nor will they save a limb. We're talking about thousands of our fellow citizens facing devastating, life altering amputations, tragedies that are, in many cases, so many cases entirely preventable if caught early enough.
As a type two diabetic myself, I know the personal anxiety that comes with these risks, but I also know that early intervention for myself, losing that four stone, doing the medication, being careful with the meeting, that's a treat, by the way. That's a once a week treat and we're allowed to have a wee treat now and again. So my doctor told me I'm allowed to have a Friday or Saturday morning. That's my retreat as well. But the rest of the week you abstain and you don't take any of those things.
But I know that early intervention, proper community pathways and timely care work, because I've worked with me and I know they work with many others. Government is rightly pledged to shift the NHS focus from sickness to prevention, from treatment to early intervention. Today I'm asking government and the minister to bring about a clear, actionable blueprint to do precisely that. The vascular sector, and I conclude with this, Madam Chair, the vascular sector is coming forward this autumn with clear solutions.
I'm very impressed by what they put forward as their ideas. These are ideas and suggestions of a strategy that the they they particular sector in the vascular health sector have brought forward as they see ways to make it better. A national foot attack pathway, dedicated foot protection services and enforceable maximum waiting times because we need to make sure that the waiting times reflect the needs in this assay of those who need help. So the real test for the minister today is will the department can step up, can grab this opportunity with both hands, and deliver the system wide reform that our patients deserve? Can I thank all the right, honourable and honourable members for coming along to participate and thank those of the audience for being part of this and thank them as well in the audience for their expertise and for their input into this strategy, which I think the minister will see as one that can bring about the change that he wishes to see and the change which we, as MPs want to see as well.
Thank you so much.
Furthermore, this crisis starkly reinforces health inequalities amongst individuals aged 45 to 54. Just as an example, those in our most deprived communities face an above knee amputation rates nearly five times higher than those in the least deprived areas. And and and the I think the library, by the way, as always, for the information that they made available to us, it referred to and I quote it says here, it said that gaps in vascular care are resulting in, in avoidable, avoidable harm for patients.
And particularly, the report highlighted delayed diagnosis and consistent referral pathways and variable access to specialist care, where people with pad venous disease and diabetes related foot complications. It said that these problems are resulting in thousands and thousands of avoidable lower limb amputations each year. If we were to achieve something from this debate today, it would be to ensure that there was improvement in vascular health, number one, but secondly, that the issue of amputations could be taken in an early diagnosis and looked at much more significantly and strongly than it has.
Mr. chairman, as a member for Strangford in Northern Ireland, I feel a particular responsibility to shine a light on how this national crisis presents itself in Northern Ireland. I do that because I think it will help to to add to the debate, number one, but ever mindful that the minister here today has responsibility for the United Kingdom and has the responsibility directly for Northern Ireland. I understand that, but this debate, what I use the figures in the stats and the information from Northern Ireland as an illustration of the of the issue.
What I want to see, and I think the Minister will want to see as well, is an improvement in this in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. My job is to shine a light on how the national crisis present itself in Northern Ireland. While the briefing outlines a systematic , systemic, sorry challenges across the UK, the reality on the ground in our region underscores an even more acute urgency. Across Northern Ireland, hundreds of patients undergo limb amputations each year due to vascular complications and diabetes related foot ulcers.
In fact, diabetes prevalence in Northern Ireland continues to rise steadily, with local health trusts treating thousands of individuals at high risk of developing developing severe foot complications. I think in many occasions, Madam Chair, the issue of of, of diabetes, some people think of diabetes maybe isn't as serious. I used to be almost 17 stone and realized when the doctor was confirmed to have diabetes nearly 18 years ago, now that I had to lose weight and I lost four stone and I've kept the four stone off.
But you have to work hard to ensure that you don't develop any other complications, which quite often can happen in Northern Ireland, I believe reflects dark, unacceptable regional inequalities and they. There. I understand from the facts and stats and the figures I've got from the mainland here. Healthcare inequality patients in our most socially socio economically deprived communities in Northern Ireland pay a significantly higher amputation rates, mirroring the alarming national trend here in the mainland, where deprivation increases the likelihood of a major amputation nearly fivefold.
Hopefully, when the minister responds, he will tell us how the issue of of higher levels and deprivation can can be addressed because it has to be done . Also, hospital bed capacity, the lack of dedicated rapid access, community foot protection, foot protection services forces that vascular patients into prolonged acute hospital stays, managing severe vascular conditions and non-healing wounds accounts for millions of pounds annually across our health and social care trusts. Resources that could be saved through early preventative community intervention.
Again, early diagnosis, early community intervention and the savings to the NHS, which can then be used for for other parts of the health service survival rates. Just as across the UK, a patient in Northern Ireland undergoes a major lower limb amputation, faces a staggering mortality risk within the first year of post-surgery. And that's the same here in the UK. Preventative care is quite literally a matter of life and death. It can be expressed anyhow.
The intervention of the honourable gentleman referred to that, and he underlines by his intervention the strength of the life and death of this tissue. If we are to relieve pressure on the local hospitals in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and ultimately in Northern Ireland, and protect our most vulnerable citizens, we must ensure that any national reform framework, including the national foot attack pathway and standardised waiting times, are fully integrated across all HSC trusts and we can't allow cannot allow.
Madam chair postcode lotteries dictate whether a patient keeps their limb or loses their limb, depending on where you live. And again, Minister, hopefully at the end the issue of the postcode lotteries and and how that seems to happen with unfortunately with regularity. I know the minister will be keen to change that and be very, very keen in this House will be keen to hear what the honourable gentleman says in relation to that. The CVD modern service framework rightly focuses on shared risk factors and acknowledges the Pad.
However, its immediate priorities lack the explicit, detailed pathways. Treatment standards and outcome measures urgently required for lower limb vascular care to close this gap, because that's what we're trying to do. Clinicians, patient representatives, professional bodies and NHS leaders across the vascular sector are coming together to publish a definitive best practice document this autumn, and I'm sure the the document will be made available to to the minister, hopefully in advance. And I think that would be helpful.
And to let the minister, who wants to make some changes as well, and others in this debate. The Appg on vascular and venous disease have highlighted a practical programme for reform, which I endorse because I'm the chair of it, of the Appg, but I endorse it because it's a it's a positive, focused vision for the future, which, if delivered, can make a difference. The national foot attack pathway backed by public awareness on same day or next day triage for urgent foot issues and a multidisciplinary foot protection service in every integrated care system linked directly to specialist artillery centres.
I know when I go for my diabetes test every year, twice a year, sometimes I go for one next Wednesday and and a bit. Johnson they they do that we prick of your of your foot with your eyes closed to know if you've if you're if your foot can react to feel the prick in your toe or the touch in your toe. I'm glad to say that that I always do. But the point is, if you don't, then we have a serious problem.
And that's where the issue for diabetic diabetics in particular is really important, that they're checked regularly and especially their feet. Thirdly, the national excuse me, maximum waiting times , enforcing urgent vascular assessment within five days for inpatients and two weeks for outpatients. Setting a standard, setting a target to be achieved. A clear focus on outcomes that reward early diagnosis, fast healing and reduced amputations. Because ultimately, it's about having a better quality of life, a more normal life without your health deterioration and faster adoption of innovation, including community diagnostics, compression therapies, and digital wound wound monitoring.
And when it comes to to the research and development as well, Madam Chair, Minister will always very keen to know how the advancements are going on when it comes to vascular health and and what government are helping to do that. I know Northern Ireland and one of the with us today from one of the hospitals back home and and Northern Ireland and and she's aware of this these issues very, very clearly. And there's some great work being done in our hospitals in the Royal Victoria Hospital back home, but in the Northern Ireland Health Service.
And we thank the the honourable lady for that. Madam chair, through you, I asked the Minister today, will the government ensure the CVD modern service framework that includes distinct pathways, outcome measures for vascular conditions? Will ministers support a national foot attack pathway and clear waiting time standards? Madam chair, standard rhetoric and warm words with respect will not stop a failing wound, nor will they save a limb. We're talking about thousands of our fellow citizens facing devastating, life altering amputations, tragedies that are, in many cases, so many cases entirely preventable if caught early enough.
As a type two diabetic myself, I know the personal anxiety that comes with these risks, but I also know that early intervention for myself, losing that four stone, doing the medication, being careful with the meeting, that's a treat, by the way. That's a once a week treat and we're allowed to have a wee treat now and again. So my doctor told me I'm allowed to have a Friday or Saturday morning. That's my retreat as well. But the rest of the week you abstain and you don't take any of those things.
But I know that early intervention, proper community pathways and timely care work, because I've worked with me and I know they work with many others. Government is rightly pledged to shift the NHS focus from sickness to prevention, from treatment to early intervention. Today I'm asking government and the minister to bring about a clear, actionable blueprint to do precisely that. The vascular sector, and I conclude with this, Madam Chair, the vascular sector is coming forward this autumn with clear solutions.
I'm very impressed by what they put forward as their ideas. These are ideas and suggestions of a strategy that the they they particular sector in the vascular health sector have brought forward as they see ways to make it better. A national foot attack pathway, dedicated foot protection services and enforceable maximum waiting times because we need to make sure that the waiting times reflect the needs in this assay of those who need help. So the real test for the minister today is will the department can step up, can grab this opportunity with both hands, and deliver the system wide reform that our patients deserve? Can I thank all the right, honourable and honourable members for coming along to participate and thank those of the audience for being part of this and thank them as well in the audience for their expertise and for their input into this strategy, which I think the minister will see as one that can bring about the change that he wishes to see and the change which we, as MPs want to see as well.
Thank you so much.
13:48
13:48
Speaker 4
-
Speaker 4
Thank you, Madam Chair, and it's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today. And I'd like to thank the member for Strangford for bringing this debate forward. Chair, the publication of the 2026 Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework is a is a welcome step towards a commitment to a more preventative, community focused health service. It rightly seeks to move care away from expensive and reactive hospital treatment towards earlier diagnosis and joined up cardiovascular care in our communities.
However, as we consider the future of vascular services, we should take this opportunity to go further and give attention to heart failure. Where many of these conditions end, heart failure places a significant burden on patients, families and the NHS and the. And the impacts on more than 1 million people in the UK and is the most common cause of hospital admissions among those over 65. And the number of people living with heart failure is set to double by 2040.
Early intervention on that cardiovascular journey can do more than treat established diseases and its associated life changing impacts that the honourable member spoke about earlier. But it can also prevent more people from reaching heart failure in the first place. Evidence based treatment can improve symptoms and extend life and reduce hospital admission. However, this can only benefit patients if the condition is recognized, diagnosed and treated without delay. In my constituency of Broxtowe, towns like Eastwood and areas like Ingham knock, the rates of heart failure are more than double than the national average.
Here, people are four times more likely to die from heart failure, because access to diagnosis and specialist care varies from area to area, no one's postcode should determine how quickly they are diagnosed when they see a specialist or receive treatment that could keep them well and out of hospital. The framework must establish consistent national standards with targeted support for deprived rural and high risk communities. More than 1 million people are living in the UK with heart failure, with around 200,000 diagnosed each year.
80% of those diagnosed in England. Those diagnoses are made in hospital, despite 40% of those patients having previously experienced symptoms. This clearly demonstrates the urgent need to move from crisis driven care to early diagnosis and planned treatment. The modern service framework acknowledges that NHS health checks do not include the NT Pro BNP blood test. This test identifies when the walls of the heart are stretched or if there is pressure, if there is a pressure overload on the heart.
So although the framework proposes new testing models, valuable opportunities for early diagnosis such as this test can be missed. Heart failure must be explicitly mentioned in the modern service framework, and supporting measures must be made clear, funded and measurable. We also need stronger links between primary care and community services, hospitals and specialist centres. These pathways need to be supported by specialist workforce, as reform cannot simply mean reorganising structures. We need diagnostic capacity, specialist staff and community services.
Otherwise, pressure will only move from one part of NHS to another. So I ask the minister to make heart failure an explicit and measurable national priority within the modern service framework. This should include a guaranteed access to testing, diagnosis, evidence based treatment and multidisciplinary multidisciplinary heart failure care, which would support which will be supported by investment in specialist staff, increased diagnostic capacity and community services. I hope the Minister will ensure that he goes further than considering reform of the vascular services and makes heart failure a national priority.
However, as we consider the future of vascular services, we should take this opportunity to go further and give attention to heart failure. Where many of these conditions end, heart failure places a significant burden on patients, families and the NHS and the. And the impacts on more than 1 million people in the UK and is the most common cause of hospital admissions among those over 65. And the number of people living with heart failure is set to double by 2040.
Early intervention on that cardiovascular journey can do more than treat established diseases and its associated life changing impacts that the honourable member spoke about earlier. But it can also prevent more people from reaching heart failure in the first place. Evidence based treatment can improve symptoms and extend life and reduce hospital admission. However, this can only benefit patients if the condition is recognized, diagnosed and treated without delay. In my constituency of Broxtowe, towns like Eastwood and areas like Ingham knock, the rates of heart failure are more than double than the national average.
Here, people are four times more likely to die from heart failure, because access to diagnosis and specialist care varies from area to area, no one's postcode should determine how quickly they are diagnosed when they see a specialist or receive treatment that could keep them well and out of hospital. The framework must establish consistent national standards with targeted support for deprived rural and high risk communities. More than 1 million people are living in the UK with heart failure, with around 200,000 diagnosed each year.
80% of those diagnosed in England. Those diagnoses are made in hospital, despite 40% of those patients having previously experienced symptoms. This clearly demonstrates the urgent need to move from crisis driven care to early diagnosis and planned treatment. The modern service framework acknowledges that NHS health checks do not include the NT Pro BNP blood test. This test identifies when the walls of the heart are stretched or if there is pressure, if there is a pressure overload on the heart.
So although the framework proposes new testing models, valuable opportunities for early diagnosis such as this test can be missed. Heart failure must be explicitly mentioned in the modern service framework, and supporting measures must be made clear, funded and measurable. We also need stronger links between primary care and community services, hospitals and specialist centres. These pathways need to be supported by specialist workforce, as reform cannot simply mean reorganising structures. We need diagnostic capacity, specialist staff and community services.
Otherwise, pressure will only move from one part of NHS to another. So I ask the minister to make heart failure an explicit and measurable national priority within the modern service framework. This should include a guaranteed access to testing, diagnosis, evidence based treatment and multidisciplinary multidisciplinary heart failure care, which would support which will be supported by investment in specialist staff, increased diagnostic capacity and community services. I hope the Minister will ensure that he goes further than considering reform of the vascular services and makes heart failure a national priority.
13:52
13:52
Speaker 3
-
Speaker 3
, doctor, it's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. And can I start by welcoming the minister that my honourable friend the member for Bury North to his to his place. He knows I was in his place not too long ago, and I will be kind to him in my in my asks, and also to welcome the Opposition spokesperson, my hon. Friend the member for Solihull and West Shirley, who is a former orthopaedic surgeon, so he does know a thing or two about the blood vessels that run around the bones of the body doctor hook.
It feels a very unique privilege for me to stand here today in front of honourable members as a Member of Parliament for Glasgow South West, where we have one of the largest hospitals in the country, as a trained vascular surgeon and a former minister who was partly involved in bringing forward the cardiovascular modern service framework. When I was in post, if you would indulge me for a moment, Doctor Hook vascular surgery was my bread and butter when I was a surgeon, and there is no greater feeling for a surgeon than when they're presented with a patient with critical limb ischemia to be able, through surgery and with with one's team, to return blood flow into someone's limb, usually a lower limb, and prevent them from undergoing near-certain amputation, and then watch them walk out of hospital.
It's usually a culmination of many years of surgical training. And therefore, I would just like to take this opportunity because I may never get it again as a parliamentarian, to thank those that trained me and many like me in the west of Scotland, to acquire those skills and then practice those skills so people like George Welsh, Wesley Stewart, Keith Hussey, David Kingsmore, David Wallace, Stephen Boom and also colleagues that are in the audience today, such as my good friend Tamim Siddiqui, who is a consultant vascular surgeon in the West of Scotland.
I do believe, and I am biased, that the west of Scotland vascular surgery is a cut above the rest, but other vascular surgeons are also available in the in the audience today. And if we can get on to the substance of the debate, I would just say that one of the reasons I think the west of Scotland, vascular surgeons are cut above the rest is because, unfortunately, we suffer from some of the highest burdens of vascular disease in the country, and that is reflected in the statistics more widely in Scotland, life expectancy is going down, healthy life expectancy is going down, having been on a steady increase from 1980 until about 2012, we have some of the lowest life expectancy rates anywhere in Western Europe.
And I think as part of this debate, we do have to reflect upon why that may be, because Scotland, relative to the rest of the country, spends more on its NHS, has more staff, more resource, yet its productivity is lower. Scottish hospitals are treating fewer patients now than before the pandemic. Unlike in England, under the Labour government, which has surpassed pre-pandemic activity levels. And we have to reflect upon where the political failure lies.
And I think also it is important for me and only responsible on behalf of my constituents in Glasgow South West, to also reference the fact that the SNP government has proposed a massive restructuring of Scotland's NHS without. It seems, any detailed consultation with anyone. A structural change that. It is not clear who it serves, how much it costs and how we can judge its success or failure. And I think, therefore one ask of the Minister in relation to that would be because I know he also holds responsibility for four.
Nation engagement is that I would urge him to have conversations with the Scottish Government and ask them where we can help to reverse that trend, to impart some of our wisdom and our experience that we have learned over the last couple of years in turning around waiting lists, in optimizing clinical pathways that where we can lend a hand. And also we have become habituated with the with an idea that there is a border between Scotland and England, a physical border that cannot be transcended, whereas I believe we can cooperate.
And instead of point score, we can problem solve. And I again urge the Minister to lend the weight of his office so that we can cooperate in a way that patients near the border with England can benefit from services each way. And people don't have to travel 80 or 100 miles to receive services simply for a lack of political will, and I'd be very grateful if he is able to do that and write to me with with the with the outcome.
On the specifics of today, I would just ask the Minister to consider some of the asks from the Circulation Foundation and the Appg, with whom I have done some work recently and. And in the past. Diabetes, as we all know, is a disease, unfortunately, which is on the rise and synonymous with diabetes is the diabetic foot, which is the primary cause of limb loss now in this country. And it really requires, I think, a concerted effort, because if you intervene early with a with a diabetic foot, you can you can prevent major limb amputation.
And so I would ask him that we think about the national foot attack pathway, which is a same day or next day triage service for urgent cases where we can have much quicker treatment in into diabetic foot and diabetic foot sepsis. And I think the model of stroke care that we have established, particularly in England with thrombectomy services, which is going to become near-universal, I understand, in only a few months. And again in Scotland, it is far from that is a good model to follow when it comes to diabetic foot care and the national foot attack services, and leading on from that community food protection services in every single integrated care board.
Multidisciplinary hubs linked to specialist centres so that we can offer more care not in hospital but in community, which is a linchpin of our ten year health plan here in England to implement national waiting time standards, five days for inpatients, two weeks for outpatients with transparent reporting. Because if we do this, we will save money and also save limbs and lives. And on that point of commissioning, I think we have all become too habituated for paying for activity, paying for input.
It is about time we started changing the dial and paid for an outcome. And I think in many ways, vascular disease and diabetic foot disease offers an early, early win and an early exemplar of how we can change the dial on commissioning services from input to output. And alongside that, it is really important we think about how we again, it is in the honourable gentleman's title, how we support innovation. I know for a fact first hand there are so many innovative vascular scientists, specialists, surgeons out there doing things very differently to.
We were doing only five years ago. They need the government's support. The government will be pushing at an open door if they come forward with new ideas of how to innovate. So patients directly benefit from effective technologies, digital technologies, how we can even optimise the NHS app to produce end to end digital pathways for these patients. And I know that my hon. Friend for Bury North , take these takes these matters very, very seriously, and Will will consider them as a matter in his response of this debate.
And I would just end Doctor Huck where I began, which is to thank everyone that attended today, particularly colleagues from the vascular community, to once again reiterate my honour and privilege to be part of this debate as a parliamentarian serving a constituency with diverse community which does suffer from diabetes and vascular disease, but also a member and a proud member of the vascular surgical community to thank you.
It feels a very unique privilege for me to stand here today in front of honourable members as a Member of Parliament for Glasgow South West, where we have one of the largest hospitals in the country, as a trained vascular surgeon and a former minister who was partly involved in bringing forward the cardiovascular modern service framework. When I was in post, if you would indulge me for a moment, Doctor Hook vascular surgery was my bread and butter when I was a surgeon, and there is no greater feeling for a surgeon than when they're presented with a patient with critical limb ischemia to be able, through surgery and with with one's team, to return blood flow into someone's limb, usually a lower limb, and prevent them from undergoing near-certain amputation, and then watch them walk out of hospital.
It's usually a culmination of many years of surgical training. And therefore, I would just like to take this opportunity because I may never get it again as a parliamentarian, to thank those that trained me and many like me in the west of Scotland, to acquire those skills and then practice those skills so people like George Welsh, Wesley Stewart, Keith Hussey, David Kingsmore, David Wallace, Stephen Boom and also colleagues that are in the audience today, such as my good friend Tamim Siddiqui, who is a consultant vascular surgeon in the West of Scotland.
I do believe, and I am biased, that the west of Scotland vascular surgery is a cut above the rest, but other vascular surgeons are also available in the in the audience today. And if we can get on to the substance of the debate, I would just say that one of the reasons I think the west of Scotland, vascular surgeons are cut above the rest is because, unfortunately, we suffer from some of the highest burdens of vascular disease in the country, and that is reflected in the statistics more widely in Scotland, life expectancy is going down, healthy life expectancy is going down, having been on a steady increase from 1980 until about 2012, we have some of the lowest life expectancy rates anywhere in Western Europe.
And I think as part of this debate, we do have to reflect upon why that may be, because Scotland, relative to the rest of the country, spends more on its NHS, has more staff, more resource, yet its productivity is lower. Scottish hospitals are treating fewer patients now than before the pandemic. Unlike in England, under the Labour government, which has surpassed pre-pandemic activity levels. And we have to reflect upon where the political failure lies.
And I think also it is important for me and only responsible on behalf of my constituents in Glasgow South West, to also reference the fact that the SNP government has proposed a massive restructuring of Scotland's NHS without. It seems, any detailed consultation with anyone. A structural change that. It is not clear who it serves, how much it costs and how we can judge its success or failure. And I think, therefore one ask of the Minister in relation to that would be because I know he also holds responsibility for four.
Nation engagement is that I would urge him to have conversations with the Scottish Government and ask them where we can help to reverse that trend, to impart some of our wisdom and our experience that we have learned over the last couple of years in turning around waiting lists, in optimizing clinical pathways that where we can lend a hand. And also we have become habituated with the with an idea that there is a border between Scotland and England, a physical border that cannot be transcended, whereas I believe we can cooperate.
And instead of point score, we can problem solve. And I again urge the Minister to lend the weight of his office so that we can cooperate in a way that patients near the border with England can benefit from services each way. And people don't have to travel 80 or 100 miles to receive services simply for a lack of political will, and I'd be very grateful if he is able to do that and write to me with with the with the outcome.
On the specifics of today, I would just ask the Minister to consider some of the asks from the Circulation Foundation and the Appg, with whom I have done some work recently and. And in the past. Diabetes, as we all know, is a disease, unfortunately, which is on the rise and synonymous with diabetes is the diabetic foot, which is the primary cause of limb loss now in this country. And it really requires, I think, a concerted effort, because if you intervene early with a with a diabetic foot, you can you can prevent major limb amputation.
And so I would ask him that we think about the national foot attack pathway, which is a same day or next day triage service for urgent cases where we can have much quicker treatment in into diabetic foot and diabetic foot sepsis. And I think the model of stroke care that we have established, particularly in England with thrombectomy services, which is going to become near-universal, I understand, in only a few months. And again in Scotland, it is far from that is a good model to follow when it comes to diabetic foot care and the national foot attack services, and leading on from that community food protection services in every single integrated care board.
Multidisciplinary hubs linked to specialist centres so that we can offer more care not in hospital but in community, which is a linchpin of our ten year health plan here in England to implement national waiting time standards, five days for inpatients, two weeks for outpatients with transparent reporting. Because if we do this, we will save money and also save limbs and lives. And on that point of commissioning, I think we have all become too habituated for paying for activity, paying for input.
It is about time we started changing the dial and paid for an outcome. And I think in many ways, vascular disease and diabetic foot disease offers an early, early win and an early exemplar of how we can change the dial on commissioning services from input to output. And alongside that, it is really important we think about how we again, it is in the honourable gentleman's title, how we support innovation. I know for a fact first hand there are so many innovative vascular scientists, specialists, surgeons out there doing things very differently to.
We were doing only five years ago. They need the government's support. The government will be pushing at an open door if they come forward with new ideas of how to innovate. So patients directly benefit from effective technologies, digital technologies, how we can even optimise the NHS app to produce end to end digital pathways for these patients. And I know that my hon. Friend for Bury North , take these takes these matters very, very seriously, and Will will consider them as a matter in his response of this debate.
And I would just end Doctor Huck where I began, which is to thank everyone that attended today, particularly colleagues from the vascular community, to once again reiterate my honour and privilege to be part of this debate as a parliamentarian serving a constituency with diverse community which does suffer from diabetes and vascular disease, but also a member and a proud member of the vascular surgical community to thank you.
14:01
14:01
Speaker 5
-
Speaker 5
Very much, doctor, it's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. And may I also take the opportunity to welcome the Minister and the Shadow Minister to their places. But thank you most of all to the honourable member for Strangford for securing this important debate. And I think he outlined the issues comprehensively in his opening speech, as we would expect. And it is an important debate, isn't it? Because according to Circulation Foundation, vascular disease is as common as cancer and heart disease and accounts for 40% of deaths in the UK.
This represents a huge disease burden on individuals and on the NHS, and yet it's one we seem rarely to discuss in this place. It's a leading cause of preventable disability, with associated complications being worsened by the fragmented nature of care available to patients. Living with vascular disease means living with chronic pain, reduced mobility and often, often an isolating loss of independence. Many patients are left with a sense of powerlessness and a huge impact on their mental health and wellbeing as a result.
Sadly, the issues in the vascular sector are ones we are all too familiar with inconsistent standards and access to care. The dreaded postcode lottery in services pathways and referral routes which disproportionately , disproportionately negatively impact deprived communities and underinvestment in prevention. It seems to be yet another area of the NHS where, as we've been arguing this week in the health Bill, too much time and money is being spent responding to failure rather than improving the quality of services for patients and preventing and delaying deterioration in the first place.
We must do better for these families, for people with vascular disease and for their families. I've dealt with a harrowing case from my constituent around the lack of care, around the medical risks and implications of vascular disease, and it can spiral out of control, leading in the worst cases to the premature death of a family member. And it's incredibly upsetting when that happens. I can't begin to imagine how devastating this experience must have been.
The vascular and venous disease all party group's report highlighted the avoidable harm that gaps in vascular care can cause to patients. It confirmed that gaps in vascular care are resulting in avoidable harm, the report highlighted, and I'm quoting , delayed diagnosis, inconsistent referral pathways and variable access to specialist care for people with peripheral artery disease, venous disease and diabetes related foot complications. It said that these problems are resulting in thousands of avoidable lower limb amputations each year.
Discussions with the primary care network in North Shropshire, my own constituency, have revealed that our county has one of the highest rates of lower limb amputations. Because of these gaps in care, I can't imagine the trauma this causes to those who have lost a limb, particularly when they have the knowledge that it might have been avoided. It's time we aspired to ensuring that there is a consistent level of care across the country. I've been contacted by companies in the pharmaceutical sector who have highlighted the following, that there is a disconnect between acknowledgement and action.
Pad is named as a neglected CVD risk factor, but lacks priority status, funding mechanisms or performance standards given to other conditions. But the need for new surgical and intervention techniques is acknowledged but not operationalized with delivery time, ways or resource allocation, and that there are no metrics for Pad. The absence of Pad standards or metrics in main performance monitoring tables means progress cannot be tracked, and local icbs cannot be held to account if they are falling behind.
Now, the modern surface framework is obviously a welcome step forward, but the government should also, I think, take a look at the all party group's calls for a national foot attack pathway, a community foot protection service, national maximum waiting times for patients, reform of commissioning to reward outcomes, and the acceleration of proven innovation which must be rolled out more widely. Beyond this, the care that the NHS provides at its front door must be strengthened so that symptoms are caught and treated early.
The all party group's report highlights how prevention led community first care is needed to transform the vascular sector, diagnose conditions earlier and relieve pressure on acute services. Liberal Democrats want everyone with vascular disease to have a named GP to ensure continuity of care, which has been shown to improve outcomes and quality of life for those with long term conditions. Fixing the back door of the NHS is just as crucial for us, and we have long been pressing for better social care, including free personal care and more support for family carers.
And obviously we welcome the steps that the Prime Minister took over the summer recess to ensure that there is movement on the social care issue. Our proposed package makes it easier for people to access with long term conditions and disabled people to access flexible working. It would support those suffering from vascular disease to access the world of work wherever possible, and hopefully transform their mental health and independence to. Given the prevalence and severity of these conditions, I urge the government to develop a strategy to transform the vascular sector, to give patients the timely support and treatment that they need.
I look forward to hearing from the minister the steps that he'll be taking to address this issue. Thank you.
This represents a huge disease burden on individuals and on the NHS, and yet it's one we seem rarely to discuss in this place. It's a leading cause of preventable disability, with associated complications being worsened by the fragmented nature of care available to patients. Living with vascular disease means living with chronic pain, reduced mobility and often, often an isolating loss of independence. Many patients are left with a sense of powerlessness and a huge impact on their mental health and wellbeing as a result.
Sadly, the issues in the vascular sector are ones we are all too familiar with inconsistent standards and access to care. The dreaded postcode lottery in services pathways and referral routes which disproportionately , disproportionately negatively impact deprived communities and underinvestment in prevention. It seems to be yet another area of the NHS where, as we've been arguing this week in the health Bill, too much time and money is being spent responding to failure rather than improving the quality of services for patients and preventing and delaying deterioration in the first place.
We must do better for these families, for people with vascular disease and for their families. I've dealt with a harrowing case from my constituent around the lack of care, around the medical risks and implications of vascular disease, and it can spiral out of control, leading in the worst cases to the premature death of a family member. And it's incredibly upsetting when that happens. I can't begin to imagine how devastating this experience must have been.
The vascular and venous disease all party group's report highlighted the avoidable harm that gaps in vascular care can cause to patients. It confirmed that gaps in vascular care are resulting in avoidable harm, the report highlighted, and I'm quoting , delayed diagnosis, inconsistent referral pathways and variable access to specialist care for people with peripheral artery disease, venous disease and diabetes related foot complications. It said that these problems are resulting in thousands of avoidable lower limb amputations each year.
Discussions with the primary care network in North Shropshire, my own constituency, have revealed that our county has one of the highest rates of lower limb amputations. Because of these gaps in care, I can't imagine the trauma this causes to those who have lost a limb, particularly when they have the knowledge that it might have been avoided. It's time we aspired to ensuring that there is a consistent level of care across the country. I've been contacted by companies in the pharmaceutical sector who have highlighted the following, that there is a disconnect between acknowledgement and action.
Pad is named as a neglected CVD risk factor, but lacks priority status, funding mechanisms or performance standards given to other conditions. But the need for new surgical and intervention techniques is acknowledged but not operationalized with delivery time, ways or resource allocation, and that there are no metrics for Pad. The absence of Pad standards or metrics in main performance monitoring tables means progress cannot be tracked, and local icbs cannot be held to account if they are falling behind.
Now, the modern surface framework is obviously a welcome step forward, but the government should also, I think, take a look at the all party group's calls for a national foot attack pathway, a community foot protection service, national maximum waiting times for patients, reform of commissioning to reward outcomes, and the acceleration of proven innovation which must be rolled out more widely. Beyond this, the care that the NHS provides at its front door must be strengthened so that symptoms are caught and treated early.
The all party group's report highlights how prevention led community first care is needed to transform the vascular sector, diagnose conditions earlier and relieve pressure on acute services. Liberal Democrats want everyone with vascular disease to have a named GP to ensure continuity of care, which has been shown to improve outcomes and quality of life for those with long term conditions. Fixing the back door of the NHS is just as crucial for us, and we have long been pressing for better social care, including free personal care and more support for family carers.
And obviously we welcome the steps that the Prime Minister took over the summer recess to ensure that there is movement on the social care issue. Our proposed package makes it easier for people to access with long term conditions and disabled people to access flexible working. It would support those suffering from vascular disease to access the world of work wherever possible, and hopefully transform their mental health and independence to. Given the prevalence and severity of these conditions, I urge the government to develop a strategy to transform the vascular sector, to give patients the timely support and treatment that they need.
I look forward to hearing from the minister the steps that he'll be taking to address this issue. Thank you.
14:06
Speaker 6
-
Speaker 6
Thank you very much, Doctor Harkin. It's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. And as my I'm going to say, my honourable friend the member for Glasgow South West pointed out, I do have a particular interest in this subject. It's a number of years since I held a licence to practice, but it did take me back to clinical days and. And even worse, it took me back to Vivas for the Royal College, examinations of which I'm still a member and proud to be supporting that community.
May I start by thanking the honourable gentleman, the member for Strangford, for securing this debate, and I congratulate him and the Appg on vascular and venous disease for its work. And as has been noted during the course of today, vascular disease is perhaps a subject that doesn't attract quite the same attention as cancer or heart disease. However, that doesn't make it any less serious. The consequences for patients can be extreme. We've heard about pain, loss of mobility, prolonged hospital stays and in the worst cases, amputation.
And I think what makes this particularly frustrating is that there are that a great deal of this harm is avoidable. The problems identified by the Appg are not especially complicated. There are delays in diagnosis and treatment. Referral pathways are inconsistent, access to specialist care varies and services are fragmented. And the result of that is that patients who might have retained their limb and their independence do not always do so. And therefore, the Appg report makes five fairly practical recommendations.
The the National foot attack pathway with same day or next day triage the community based foot protection services in every integrated care system, maximum waiting times for vascular assessment and revascularisation with national reporting commissioning which rewards outcomes rather than simply activity and faster adoption of proven innovation. And I think none of those propositions strikes me as particularly revolutionary. Indeed, much of the thinking behind them is not new. They're getting it first right, getting it right.
First time programme established under the previous conservative government produced a vascular surgery report in 2018, which recommended a hub and spoke model to improve early diagnostics, specialist decision making and timely intervention. The NHS Long Term Plan, subsequently committed to universal access to multidisciplinary foot care teams, and in 2022, NHS England introduced a two year sequence scheme intended to encourage timely revascularization for patients with chronic limb threatening ischemia. The government, and it's welcome, has said that it welcomes the Appg report.
It said that the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have engaged with stakeholders, and that recommendations would be considered as part of the Cardiovascular Disease Model Service framework, and that that all sounds very encouraging, but there is a rather obvious difficulty with that. The Modern service framework was published in July. It contains a considerable amount of material around cardiovascular disease. And again, that's welcome, but it contains no specific reference to vascular or venous disease. And if the government accepts that vascular disease is an important part of the cardiovascular picture, why does its new modern service framework not specifically address it? And if the answer is that the framework is intended to cover vascular disease through its wider approach to cardiovascular risk, that poses a second question.
Where precisely, are the specific standards against which vascular services are to be judged? The Appg has given the government some quite specific proposals. It would be helpful if the Minister will tell us today which of those five recommendations the government accepts, and, perhaps more importantly, which of them it rejects. There is then the question of who is going to deliver these services. The government has embarked upon a major reorganisation of the NHS, including the abolition of NHS England and a substantial reduction in the size and cost of integrated care boards.
The government said that ICB budgets are to be reduced by 50%, and so that creates an obvious question how does the Minister expect ICB to deliver these additional responsibilities at precisely the point at which their budgets and staffing are being substantially reduced? And has his department actually assessed the effect of those reductions on the commissioning of vascular services for both care and foot protection services as well? I'm not opposed to reducing bureaucracy in the health service.
I you know, far from it. But I think the test of any NHS reform has to come down to outcome for patients. There's another question which I hope the minister will be able to address, and that's around clinical leadership in this area. There is currently no national clinical director specifically responsible for vascular and venous disease. There are, of course, clinicians with huge experience and expertise in the field, including vascular clinical leads for girth.
But the government has previously said that national clinical directors play an important role in policy development and implementation. That is right. We also know that the future role and responsibilities of national clinical directors are being reconsidered. As part of that NHS reconstruction. Could the minister set out the government's position on the future clinical leadership for vascular and venous disease? Once NHS England is abolished, will there continue to be a clearly identified senior clinical voice responsible for this important area , and if not, who will have responsibility for ensuring that the specific recommendations on vascular care are actually implemented.
We already have the National Vascular Registry, which collects data on major vascular procedures, including bypass surgery and major lower limb amputations. That is really helpful. There has also been some improvement in the proportion of vascular providers meeting the relevant Sequin framework. But again, we need to be careful about confusing the mere collection of data with improvement in care. Will the government therefore introduce a national maximum waiting times for vascular assessment and revascularisation? And if they're not proposing to do that, can they set out? Why not? If it does intend to do so, when will that take place? I'd also like to return to the proposal for a national foot attack pathway, and the principle to that seems difficult to argue with where a patient presents with a potentially serious foot problem, particularly in the context of diabetes or vascular disease.
As we've heard today, there should be a clear route into appropriate specialist assessment. Will the government commit to establishing such a pathway nationally, and will the Minister ensure that performance against it is published? The same principle, of course, applies to innovation. There is no shortage of good ideas in the NHS, but what it has traditionally lacked is a reliable mechanism for taking something that works in one hospital and making it available elsewhere.
The Apg's recommendations to make greater use of of mechanisms such as the NHS innovator passport is therefore a sensible one, but I'd ask the Minister what happens at the other end if a technology is demonstrated to be clinically effective and cost effective, what obligation does an NHS organisation have to consider adopting it? How will the government prevent another postcode lottery in which an effective treatment is available to patients in one part of the country, but not another? This is a debate where I don't think there is much disagreement on the broad objectives.
I think we all want to see earlier diagnosis, faster treatment and fewer amputations, and we all want to see better use of NHS resources if there is any disagreement, I think it's about whether the government has sufficiently set out a specific plan for achieving those objectives. It is easy to welcome a report. It's easy to publish a framework, it's much harder to deliver it. And I think that's where the government does have a genuine opportunity.
It can take the practical recommendations of the Appg and turn them into measurable outcomes. And that's the test. Will it do that , or will it just continue to allow vascular services and vascular disease to remain a subsidiary issue within a much broader context of cardiovascular disease, and hope that local services are just able to deal with it?
May I start by thanking the honourable gentleman, the member for Strangford, for securing this debate, and I congratulate him and the Appg on vascular and venous disease for its work. And as has been noted during the course of today, vascular disease is perhaps a subject that doesn't attract quite the same attention as cancer or heart disease. However, that doesn't make it any less serious. The consequences for patients can be extreme. We've heard about pain, loss of mobility, prolonged hospital stays and in the worst cases, amputation.
And I think what makes this particularly frustrating is that there are that a great deal of this harm is avoidable. The problems identified by the Appg are not especially complicated. There are delays in diagnosis and treatment. Referral pathways are inconsistent, access to specialist care varies and services are fragmented. And the result of that is that patients who might have retained their limb and their independence do not always do so. And therefore, the Appg report makes five fairly practical recommendations.
The the National foot attack pathway with same day or next day triage the community based foot protection services in every integrated care system, maximum waiting times for vascular assessment and revascularisation with national reporting commissioning which rewards outcomes rather than simply activity and faster adoption of proven innovation. And I think none of those propositions strikes me as particularly revolutionary. Indeed, much of the thinking behind them is not new. They're getting it first right, getting it right.
First time programme established under the previous conservative government produced a vascular surgery report in 2018, which recommended a hub and spoke model to improve early diagnostics, specialist decision making and timely intervention. The NHS Long Term Plan, subsequently committed to universal access to multidisciplinary foot care teams, and in 2022, NHS England introduced a two year sequence scheme intended to encourage timely revascularization for patients with chronic limb threatening ischemia. The government, and it's welcome, has said that it welcomes the Appg report.
It said that the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have engaged with stakeholders, and that recommendations would be considered as part of the Cardiovascular Disease Model Service framework, and that that all sounds very encouraging, but there is a rather obvious difficulty with that. The Modern service framework was published in July. It contains a considerable amount of material around cardiovascular disease. And again, that's welcome, but it contains no specific reference to vascular or venous disease. And if the government accepts that vascular disease is an important part of the cardiovascular picture, why does its new modern service framework not specifically address it? And if the answer is that the framework is intended to cover vascular disease through its wider approach to cardiovascular risk, that poses a second question.
Where precisely, are the specific standards against which vascular services are to be judged? The Appg has given the government some quite specific proposals. It would be helpful if the Minister will tell us today which of those five recommendations the government accepts, and, perhaps more importantly, which of them it rejects. There is then the question of who is going to deliver these services. The government has embarked upon a major reorganisation of the NHS, including the abolition of NHS England and a substantial reduction in the size and cost of integrated care boards.
The government said that ICB budgets are to be reduced by 50%, and so that creates an obvious question how does the Minister expect ICB to deliver these additional responsibilities at precisely the point at which their budgets and staffing are being substantially reduced? And has his department actually assessed the effect of those reductions on the commissioning of vascular services for both care and foot protection services as well? I'm not opposed to reducing bureaucracy in the health service.
I you know, far from it. But I think the test of any NHS reform has to come down to outcome for patients. There's another question which I hope the minister will be able to address, and that's around clinical leadership in this area. There is currently no national clinical director specifically responsible for vascular and venous disease. There are, of course, clinicians with huge experience and expertise in the field, including vascular clinical leads for girth.
But the government has previously said that national clinical directors play an important role in policy development and implementation. That is right. We also know that the future role and responsibilities of national clinical directors are being reconsidered. As part of that NHS reconstruction. Could the minister set out the government's position on the future clinical leadership for vascular and venous disease? Once NHS England is abolished, will there continue to be a clearly identified senior clinical voice responsible for this important area , and if not, who will have responsibility for ensuring that the specific recommendations on vascular care are actually implemented.
We already have the National Vascular Registry, which collects data on major vascular procedures, including bypass surgery and major lower limb amputations. That is really helpful. There has also been some improvement in the proportion of vascular providers meeting the relevant Sequin framework. But again, we need to be careful about confusing the mere collection of data with improvement in care. Will the government therefore introduce a national maximum waiting times for vascular assessment and revascularisation? And if they're not proposing to do that, can they set out? Why not? If it does intend to do so, when will that take place? I'd also like to return to the proposal for a national foot attack pathway, and the principle to that seems difficult to argue with where a patient presents with a potentially serious foot problem, particularly in the context of diabetes or vascular disease.
As we've heard today, there should be a clear route into appropriate specialist assessment. Will the government commit to establishing such a pathway nationally, and will the Minister ensure that performance against it is published? The same principle, of course, applies to innovation. There is no shortage of good ideas in the NHS, but what it has traditionally lacked is a reliable mechanism for taking something that works in one hospital and making it available elsewhere.
The Apg's recommendations to make greater use of of mechanisms such as the NHS innovator passport is therefore a sensible one, but I'd ask the Minister what happens at the other end if a technology is demonstrated to be clinically effective and cost effective, what obligation does an NHS organisation have to consider adopting it? How will the government prevent another postcode lottery in which an effective treatment is available to patients in one part of the country, but not another? This is a debate where I don't think there is much disagreement on the broad objectives.
I think we all want to see earlier diagnosis, faster treatment and fewer amputations, and we all want to see better use of NHS resources if there is any disagreement, I think it's about whether the government has sufficiently set out a specific plan for achieving those objectives. It is easy to welcome a report. It's easy to publish a framework, it's much harder to deliver it. And I think that's where the government does have a genuine opportunity.
It can take the practical recommendations of the Appg and turn them into measurable outcomes. And that's the test. Will it do that , or will it just continue to allow vascular services and vascular disease to remain a subsidiary issue within a much broader context of cardiovascular disease, and hope that local services are just able to deal with it?
14:15
14:15
Speaker 7
-
Speaker 7
Thank you, Doctor Huck. It is a genuine pleasure to be here, serving under your chair and to join you again in Parliament as we have worked together before. It's an honour to be here today. Thank you. I also, as is customary, would like to thank the honourable gentleman, the member for Strangford, for bringing this debate, this important debate and the insights that he brings. Some of us were wondering whether he would, in fact, write one of his famous letters of congratulations and courtesy to himself.
And in fact, we hope that somebody else will step up and do the same courtesy that he affords us all. When being so generous in his support of his colleagues across the House. Can I also thank my hon. Friend the member for Glasgow South West, who spoke so well with such insight, but in particular for the leadership and expertise that he showed in pulling together and playing his part in the government's ambitions for not just the ten year plan, but has been mentioned today.
The framework, the vascular cardiovascular framework that has been mentioned today. I am, of course, minded to listen to anything further, he says. On the point of Scotland, he is right. I have responsibility also for the devolved nations in a seemingly ever growing brief that he will have solidarity with, in or sympathy with. I'll be very happy to have those conversations to ensure that we are learning from the Scots and what we are doing well here.
The successes here can be transported and travelled north of the border. That . He refers rightly to. The report, published by the Appg earlier this year, sets out suggested actions for improving vascular care and my honourable friend the honourable member, the spokesperson for the opposition is right. There is much in this debate. There is much in this space in which we agree. These actions, these call to actions include reducing waiting times, reforming, commissioning, accelerating innovation, the establishment of a national foot care pathway, and community based foot protection services in every local system.
Can I commend the Appg for focusing their challenges on structural reforms and system changes and challenges, and not simply the idea that it's about requesting for new funding? We can all agree with the improvements the actions intend to deliver earlier diagnosis, reduced travel access barriers for patients, and relieving pressure on acute services by preventing deterioration, deterioration and, crucially, the avoidable hospital admissions, as well as promising a shift and immediate attention on the biggest killers.
I was pleased to stand at the election for a party that wanted in government to bring its power, its might, to bear on these biggest killers, and these are improvements that the government very much intends to deliver through the core shifts set out in the ten year plan for the NHS. For patients with vascular disease, this will mean fewer trips to hospital as we shift care closer to home and into the community. Better use of digital technology.
My honourable friend refers to innovation in my very title, more of which to come to identify vascular disease and monitor progression, and finally prevent vascular disease from developing or worsening. I want to briefly cover. I've been encouraged to do so. Mercifully, I am pleased to say , in preparation, I have asked for my remarks to reflect the call to action from the Appg. Before I begin that I give.
And in fact, we hope that somebody else will step up and do the same courtesy that he affords us all. When being so generous in his support of his colleagues across the House. Can I also thank my hon. Friend the member for Glasgow South West, who spoke so well with such insight, but in particular for the leadership and expertise that he showed in pulling together and playing his part in the government's ambitions for not just the ten year plan, but has been mentioned today.
The framework, the vascular cardiovascular framework that has been mentioned today. I am, of course, minded to listen to anything further, he says. On the point of Scotland, he is right. I have responsibility also for the devolved nations in a seemingly ever growing brief that he will have solidarity with, in or sympathy with. I'll be very happy to have those conversations to ensure that we are learning from the Scots and what we are doing well here.
The successes here can be transported and travelled north of the border. That . He refers rightly to. The report, published by the Appg earlier this year, sets out suggested actions for improving vascular care and my honourable friend the honourable member, the spokesperson for the opposition is right. There is much in this debate. There is much in this space in which we agree. These actions, these call to actions include reducing waiting times, reforming, commissioning, accelerating innovation, the establishment of a national foot care pathway, and community based foot protection services in every local system.
Can I commend the Appg for focusing their challenges on structural reforms and system changes and challenges, and not simply the idea that it's about requesting for new funding? We can all agree with the improvements the actions intend to deliver earlier diagnosis, reduced travel access barriers for patients, and relieving pressure on acute services by preventing deterioration, deterioration and, crucially, the avoidable hospital admissions, as well as promising a shift and immediate attention on the biggest killers.
I was pleased to stand at the election for a party that wanted in government to bring its power, its might, to bear on these biggest killers, and these are improvements that the government very much intends to deliver through the core shifts set out in the ten year plan for the NHS. For patients with vascular disease, this will mean fewer trips to hospital as we shift care closer to home and into the community. Better use of digital technology.
My honourable friend refers to innovation in my very title, more of which to come to identify vascular disease and monitor progression, and finally prevent vascular disease from developing or worsening. I want to briefly cover. I've been encouraged to do so. Mercifully, I am pleased to say , in preparation, I have asked for my remarks to reflect the call to action from the Appg. Before I begin that I give.
14:19
Speaker 3
-
Speaker 3
Why I'm very grateful to my honourable friend and the Minister for giving way. He's making such a powerful case about to. Governance is to make decisions and. Will he agree with me that while we talk a lot when it comes to the NHS, about money, about input, about investment, ultimately the things that he is talking about and we are talking about today is about reform, taking different decisions and showing leadership. I will not agree with me that when you have a situation like we do in Scotland and in Glasgow, South West, in my constituency, where there is more money and more staff, it is quite obvious that it is ultimately political will that makes the difference.
14:19
14:19
Speaker 7
-
Speaker 7
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I concur fully with the point he makes. I made a note of one of his earlier remarks as to the commissioning of outcomes, and I think actually one of the developing themes in not just my own thinking, but what adjoins the brief that I have is this need to get better at commissioning outcomes, to consider whole population, whole community, whole places, and determine how we spend our money based on outcomes and not just activity.
And he makes a very powerful point questioning in his question. And I know the honourable member and members of the Appg feel strongly about the establishment of a national foot attack pathway, the government's ambition for integrated care boards as strategic commissioners focused on the needs of local populations, are very much determined to assist this. The prevalence of vascular disease is not evenly distributed. As has been mentioned in the debate by my.
The honourable member, the spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, member for North Yorkshire. Sorry, Shropshire. The Icbs are expected to use their local commissioning power. The local data and intelligence, including user feedback and outcomes data, nationally supported to develop a deep understanding of local need, as well as the local plans to develop and deliver.
And he makes a very powerful point questioning in his question. And I know the honourable member and members of the Appg feel strongly about the establishment of a national foot attack pathway, the government's ambition for integrated care boards as strategic commissioners focused on the needs of local populations, are very much determined to assist this. The prevalence of vascular disease is not evenly distributed. As has been mentioned in the debate by my.
The honourable member, the spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, member for North Yorkshire. Sorry, Shropshire. The Icbs are expected to use their local commissioning power. The local data and intelligence, including user feedback and outcomes data, nationally supported to develop a deep understanding of local need, as well as the local plans to develop and deliver.
14:21
Speaker 2
-
Speaker 2
Please can I thank the Minister very much for for for that response and it's been incredibly helpful. Does the minister feel that the policy that he's putting forward will ensure that the postcode lottery, that there seems to be, when those who are needing care get it in some places, don't get it in others? Does he feel does the minister feel that that will ensure there will be deliverability right across all postcodes and not just single places?
14:21
14:21
Speaker 7
-
Speaker 7
It is a very fair and right challenge. This is not about endorsing patchwork provision. This is about ensuring that understanding the whether it's the physiological or social or environmental or behavioural differences that exist, we know now that it is not evenly distributed, but we should have standards which we expect nationally, but we should also commission and empower local icbs to commission and hold them accountable through the frameworks and the work that we would do in the department.
Please.
Please.
14:22
Speaker 5
-
Speaker 5
I'm grateful to him for giving way. I agree with him that services should be locally commissioned, particularly where there's a high prevalence of the of a certain type of disease or condition, because it allows the shaping of those local services to the local circumstances. But there is a there is evidence, isn't there, that across the country, local commissioning hasn't given us a consistent level of service. What steps is the government taking to ensure that that doesn't become more entrenched as we empower local icbs even more through the through the health bill?
14:23
14:23
Speaker 7
-
Speaker 7
I thank the honourable member for her question. I hope in my further remarks, I will address that very point and happy to pick up with her in due course. If it doesn't satisfy, Icbs will use national service frameworks set by the government and guidance to create the right services for their areas. This means local systems coming together to create neighbourhood services, reforming the health care, health and care system rooted in the needs of people and communities.
On the issue of maximum waiting times for vascular disease, this government recognises it is imperative that any patient requiring a vascular assessment receives this in a time frame that reflects their condition and enables the best possible health outcome. The government is committed to making progress on NHS waiting times, including returning to the NHS constitutional standard. By March 29th of 92% of elective care patients waiting time, from referral to treatment being within 18 weeks.
This, of course, includes those patients waiting for vascular services. The NHS met the first interim target of 65% Interim target of 65% in March 26th, and we are now focused on driving improvements towards achieving our second interim target of 70% by 2027. To help support this commitment to reduce waiting times, the Podiatry workforce pipeline is currently being strengthened through NHS England's programme for small and vulnerable professions, with the NHS workforce plan to be published shortly.
The health service also has clear guidance on what is required in delivering services for people with vascular disease, or at risk of developing it. In March 26th, NHS England published guidance on standardising community health services. This guidance identifies podiatry, podiatry, diabetes and tissue viability and wound care as core components of ICB funded community provision and people who need urgent wound assessment. For example, suspected infection rapid deterioration diabetic foot ulcer should be seen within 24 hours.
The guidance also makes clear that routine assessments should occur within 5 to 7 working days, with collected data on healing and complications. The purpose and goal of community health services must be to support people and avoid them needing to be admitted to hospital with and critically, amputations. It. Please.
On the issue of maximum waiting times for vascular disease, this government recognises it is imperative that any patient requiring a vascular assessment receives this in a time frame that reflects their condition and enables the best possible health outcome. The government is committed to making progress on NHS waiting times, including returning to the NHS constitutional standard. By March 29th of 92% of elective care patients waiting time, from referral to treatment being within 18 weeks.
This, of course, includes those patients waiting for vascular services. The NHS met the first interim target of 65% Interim target of 65% in March 26th, and we are now focused on driving improvements towards achieving our second interim target of 70% by 2027. To help support this commitment to reduce waiting times, the Podiatry workforce pipeline is currently being strengthened through NHS England's programme for small and vulnerable professions, with the NHS workforce plan to be published shortly.
The health service also has clear guidance on what is required in delivering services for people with vascular disease, or at risk of developing it. In March 26th, NHS England published guidance on standardising community health services. This guidance identifies podiatry, podiatry, diabetes and tissue viability and wound care as core components of ICB funded community provision and people who need urgent wound assessment. For example, suspected infection rapid deterioration diabetic foot ulcer should be seen within 24 hours.
The guidance also makes clear that routine assessments should occur within 5 to 7 working days, with collected data on healing and complications. The purpose and goal of community health services must be to support people and avoid them needing to be admitted to hospital with and critically, amputations. It. Please.
14:25
Speaker 2
-
Speaker 2
Thank you for your generosity and for giving us a chance to to ask questions and your contribution. One of the areas that the Appg and as an elected representative, have identified that there's areas of deprivation where the levels of of vascular health and amputations is higher, and what can be done to reduce that in areas of deprivation, which I think we all wish to see. I know I have them in my area. I'm sure the honourable gentleman has some very much in Glasgow, South West and others.
Just to get a focus, please, if you don't mind. Thank you.
Just to get a focus, please, if you don't mind. Thank you.
14:26
Speaker 7
-
Speaker 7
We. I thank my honourable the honourable member for his intervention. He's absolutely right. We've got to keep Icbs accountable to their local jurisdiction, to the to the commission powers that they have their accountability to local. And I'll say a bit more on that in due course, but we are on the same page in order to facilitate faster assessments. We also need to speed up and make earlier diagnoses, which is why the government plans to open four new community diagnostic diagnostic centres during 2627 as part of this expanding capacity.
This will help meet our March 29th target. With no more than 1% of patients waiting over six weeks for a diagnostic test. On reform commissioning to reward outcomes as set out in the ten year health plan, we want to develop new ways to pay healthcare providers based on clinical practice that maximizes productivity and outcome. As my honourable friend has referenced, under best practice tariffs, providers receive payment when they follow agreed standards of care.
On the adoption of proven innovation, the Appg report rightly identifies the importance of the NHS being able to quickly adopt new innovations. Doctor Haq, in part of my responsibility to oversee the development of further development and enhancement and use and usability of the NHS app. The development coming through the House at the moment, the creation of the single patient record and the future developments and the exciting developments of NHS online or digital. Doctor, as I might yet call it, is about the digitisation of our NHS service, embracing innovation, personalising healthcare, responsive to individual need as well as the innovator passport, delivered through a phased approach to accelerate access and adoption of technologies.
Prevention, preventing vascular disease and preventing its deterioration is an issue the Appg report says should be at the centre of the system and I agree. Identifying people with vascular diseases and providing care centred on their needs is critical to ensuring vascular disease does not progress to the point where somebody needs incredibly serious interventions, such as a leg needing to be amputated. In this modern era, such amputations are wholly avoidable and should be prevented.
As has been mentioned, the distinction between the Appg report and the government's most recent announcement of the MSF. I was delighted to join the Heart Foundation yesterday at the celebration event of the MSF for ahead of the delivery plan and later in the year, and I think it's a reasonable challenge to ensure that we do distinguish the difference that the honourable member, the spokesperson for His Majesty's Opposition, has made. And it was a point made to me, and in fact, it was a point I raised as a likely to be raised with me by stroke and diabetes charities at the event yesterday.
We're on the same page on that, I think. I think he makes an excellent point and challenge on on that distinction. That is that is needed. As honourable members will know, prevention is at the very heart of the government's health agenda, the prevention of health conditions and the prevention of them getting worse. The Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework, published in July, sets a clear direction for how health and care systems should accelerate progress on the government's ambition to reduce premature mortality from heart disease and stroke by a quarter within a decade.
And as my hon. Friend the member for Broxtowe talked about this this irregularity of areas having different levels of heart failure. I think my honourable friend referred to four times more likely in the area represents be very happy to have conversations about how we embrace that insight and that into and how we intervene. But it is fundamental as to the government's efforts around an annual heart failure review. Improving access to rapid diagnosis, embedding heart failure support within any cardiac rehabilitation, as well as a government goal.
The wider goal to reduce premature mortality by a quarter within this next decade. So as I begin to close, Doctor Huck, central to the cardiovascular disease modern framework is a holistic approach with a strong focus on reducing inequalities. The principles apply here to the missing millions, the need for healthy intervention, the need to understand the difference between the physiological and the behavioural and the environmental and the social. An appreciation that standards, that standard of living and the cost of living have impact on this as much as any knowledge of what to eat and when, and looking after each other.
It is about commissioning for outputs and not just diktat, and this means recognising several conditions and risk factors that share common causes, contribute to the most serious of heart attacks and strokes. These factors we know they're rehearsed in today's speeches high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol, unhealthy diet, lack of exercise. At its core, the framework is about a fundamental shift towards proactive, whole person preventative care located in communities and neighborhoods, making better use of hybrid, traditional in-person digital models to increase uptake and treatment.
Podiatry and related foot health services align with this shift towards local community hub delivery. The approach of this framework is backed by wider action from the government, from this government, including the creation of the first smoke free generation, something that began under my honourable friends, the previous government. Well, the one before the previous government. Please.
This will help meet our March 29th target. With no more than 1% of patients waiting over six weeks for a diagnostic test. On reform commissioning to reward outcomes as set out in the ten year health plan, we want to develop new ways to pay healthcare providers based on clinical practice that maximizes productivity and outcome. As my honourable friend has referenced, under best practice tariffs, providers receive payment when they follow agreed standards of care.
On the adoption of proven innovation, the Appg report rightly identifies the importance of the NHS being able to quickly adopt new innovations. Doctor Haq, in part of my responsibility to oversee the development of further development and enhancement and use and usability of the NHS app. The development coming through the House at the moment, the creation of the single patient record and the future developments and the exciting developments of NHS online or digital. Doctor, as I might yet call it, is about the digitisation of our NHS service, embracing innovation, personalising healthcare, responsive to individual need as well as the innovator passport, delivered through a phased approach to accelerate access and adoption of technologies.
Prevention, preventing vascular disease and preventing its deterioration is an issue the Appg report says should be at the centre of the system and I agree. Identifying people with vascular diseases and providing care centred on their needs is critical to ensuring vascular disease does not progress to the point where somebody needs incredibly serious interventions, such as a leg needing to be amputated. In this modern era, such amputations are wholly avoidable and should be prevented.
As has been mentioned, the distinction between the Appg report and the government's most recent announcement of the MSF. I was delighted to join the Heart Foundation yesterday at the celebration event of the MSF for ahead of the delivery plan and later in the year, and I think it's a reasonable challenge to ensure that we do distinguish the difference that the honourable member, the spokesperson for His Majesty's Opposition, has made. And it was a point made to me, and in fact, it was a point I raised as a likely to be raised with me by stroke and diabetes charities at the event yesterday.
We're on the same page on that, I think. I think he makes an excellent point and challenge on on that distinction. That is that is needed. As honourable members will know, prevention is at the very heart of the government's health agenda, the prevention of health conditions and the prevention of them getting worse. The Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework, published in July, sets a clear direction for how health and care systems should accelerate progress on the government's ambition to reduce premature mortality from heart disease and stroke by a quarter within a decade.
And as my hon. Friend the member for Broxtowe talked about this this irregularity of areas having different levels of heart failure. I think my honourable friend referred to four times more likely in the area represents be very happy to have conversations about how we embrace that insight and that into and how we intervene. But it is fundamental as to the government's efforts around an annual heart failure review. Improving access to rapid diagnosis, embedding heart failure support within any cardiac rehabilitation, as well as a government goal.
The wider goal to reduce premature mortality by a quarter within this next decade. So as I begin to close, Doctor Huck, central to the cardiovascular disease modern framework is a holistic approach with a strong focus on reducing inequalities. The principles apply here to the missing millions, the need for healthy intervention, the need to understand the difference between the physiological and the behavioural and the environmental and the social. An appreciation that standards, that standard of living and the cost of living have impact on this as much as any knowledge of what to eat and when, and looking after each other.
It is about commissioning for outputs and not just diktat, and this means recognising several conditions and risk factors that share common causes, contribute to the most serious of heart attacks and strokes. These factors we know they're rehearsed in today's speeches high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol, unhealthy diet, lack of exercise. At its core, the framework is about a fundamental shift towards proactive, whole person preventative care located in communities and neighborhoods, making better use of hybrid, traditional in-person digital models to increase uptake and treatment.
Podiatry and related foot health services align with this shift towards local community hub delivery. The approach of this framework is backed by wider action from the government, from this government, including the creation of the first smoke free generation, something that began under my honourable friends, the previous government. Well, the one before the previous government. Please.
14:32
Speaker 3
-
Speaker 3
I'll be very quick because I know the minister wants to wind up, and I'm sure he's got plenty of things to do. He's talking really powerfully about the digital offering that the Labour government is providing here in England to patients today, and, more importantly, what our ambitions are for that digital offering in the future. This will seem like science fiction to many of my constituents in Glasgow South West, where we have no NHS app, very little connectivity digitally with the healthcare system there.
So will he please use the learning and the markers of quality that he is describing in this modern service framework, particularly the digital quality markers, and take that to our friends and colleagues in the Scottish Government, because my constituents in Glasgow South West cannot wait any longer.
So will he please use the learning and the markers of quality that he is describing in this modern service framework, particularly the digital quality markers, and take that to our friends and colleagues in the Scottish Government, because my constituents in Glasgow South West cannot wait any longer.
14:33
14:33
Speaker 7
-
Speaker 7
thank my honourable friend for his intervention and in the humblest of terms, I would be very happy to visit and speak to my Scottish counterparts to ensure that they take the opportunity and any development, whether it's compatibility, whether it's on operability, whether it's on the learnings that we have from the NHS app, in how we then develop what is known as NHS online, which feels to me a bit too like a building a website. We've got to get a bit more ambitious with what we're calling it.
We've got to describe it as what it is, which is the digitalisation of our NHS, and to ensure that our brothers and sisters in Scotland get the same level of digital access that we're expecting to deliver across our NHS in England as well. I thank him for his for his intervention. Yes.
We've got to describe it as what it is, which is the digitalisation of our NHS, and to ensure that our brothers and sisters in Scotland get the same level of digital access that we're expecting to deliver across our NHS in England as well. I thank him for his for his intervention. Yes.
14:34
Speaker 2
-
Speaker 2
For Glasgow South West as anatomy ahead of the my request. But the same request. The honourable gentleman. It's not a big green cheese by the way Minister, obviously the the kindness that you've extended to the honourable gentleman and the Scottish Health Service would be extended to us in Northern Ireland, just simply because expertise gained here can be shared and shared, then we can all benefit from it. That's really what the request would be.
Thank you Minister.
Thank you Minister.
14:34
Speaker 7
-
Speaker 7
I would love I will take any excuse I can to come to Northern Ireland, and I hope my private office has noted that in my dispatch. Thank you very much for your intervention for the honourable gentleman's intervention. So in conclusion, in closing, Doctor Hook, our approach for improving the treatment of vascular disease is closely aligned with the reforms in the Appg report and their ambitions. I know, of course, that there will be other areas that the Appg and my honourable the honourable member for Strangford will rightly continue to push for further progress.
Can I thank honourable members for their contribution this afternoon and the important work of this Appg and its report. I look forward to continue dialogue on this issue to improve the NHS and especially services for vascular disease.
Can I thank honourable members for their contribution this afternoon and the important work of this Appg and its report. I look forward to continue dialogue on this issue to improve the NHS and especially services for vascular disease.
14:35
14:35
Speaker 2
-
Speaker 2
First of all, can I thank everyone for their contribution? Can I thank the honourable lady for for for contribution? It is perhaps disquieting to understand that the honourable lady has four times the the numbers of others who have vascular health. Again, indicates that the privation that there are in certain areas of my constituency and across Northern Ireland and Glasgow, South West as well, and I thank her for for outlining those issues. The honourable leader also referred to.
Investment needs to go further and. And the honourable Lady was very kind to share the experiences of our own constituency. We're very pleased to have the the the honourable member for Glasgow South West. It brings a vast knowledge. That's a great thing about these debates. If I can say, Madam Chair, is that those who everybody brings their their, their their expertise to debates. And the honourable gentleman has done that. We're very pleased to have that.
He shared with us some of his lifetime of knowledge that he has, and also was able to resonate with some of those in the in the audience were honourable gentleman, learned the business, so to speak, and then he's now able to, to, to contribute to others along this way. And that's, that's incredibly helpful. Also, one of the largest hospitals in Glasgow tuned in to, to ensure that the that some of the the highest stats in Scotland are addressed lower life expectation, diabetic foot protection service, vascular community waiting times, improvements and pay for output and outcome.
So all of those things were were incredibly focused for this debate. And we thank him for that. Honourable lady. The the the member for North Shropshire, the spokesperson for the Lib Dems, again, in all the subjects in health, the Honourable Lady, the last two days in the chamber has proven herself to be an expert when it comes to the health Bill and has made valuable contributions. She also referred to the vascular disease being as common as cancer but preventable disability.
A postcode lottery of care delayed diagnosis the largest numbers of lower limb amputations . Excuse me and the waiting times as well. Long term diseases, mental health impact would be something that maybe we don't always think about it. The the the impact that it has upon the person's anxiety, depression, ability to cope with life. All of a sudden, if you're, if you're able to walk about and do things and then a sudden something happens and you lose a limb, then the your mental health will be affected by that.
The honourable gentleman, the shadow spokesperson for for the conservatives from Solihull West and Shirley again also brings is interesting. And we did speak this morning and spoke the other in the other day about it as well. He refers to the treatment, the access for the services. It refers to the five recommendations from the Appg, getting it right first time, the foot care teams and all of those things that are icbs budgets are to be reduced.
Just how will the vascular and venous strategy be be delivered? I think the minister did give us some indication of how that was going to happen. There's certainly a commitment to it. We appreciate that. National waiting times for the question mark. When will they be addressed? When will they the national foot attack pathway needed to be in place? Again, better use of NHS resources. Very pleased, Madam Chair, to have a minister who responds to us and and takes the issue of the subject matter and board , and then gives us the reassurance that we seek.
And in relation to that, it is very much focused upon the Appg report. Report, the commitment to the National Foot Tack Pathway, the Icbs and Neighborhood Services Accountability Government are on the same page with the. The reply that the Minister made and I wrote down here to reply to it the patient access, because I think we all see that there's an issue when it comes to people who just seem to be in one area, and getting the treatment that they need seems to be even harder than others.
I also welcome the four new diagnostic centres that the honourable gentleman, the Minister, has referred to further development and enhancement . That will become a common phrase. Now, digital doctor, I suspect that we'll be hearing that very often. I might even use it the odd time myself as we go forward. But again, in that reply from the ministry is in is in embracing the innovation, which I think we've all got to do, and move with that prevention policy, accelerate the progress targets set by government, holistic approach the.
The. Sorting out the the outputs and ensure that the the facts and the risk factors all come forward as part of that. I wrote down here a sentence at the end reform of system and leadership. I thank the honourable gentleman for Glasgow South West used that. I think it's really important that the Appg are focusing on that. Comment on the end manager. They can ask the Minister if he would be agreeable. I think he will be.
I'm not going to judge him and. But the Appg would be very, very pleased if we were able to have a meeting with the Minister and some of the. And the members here who bring their expertise, I think I'd be. It'd be a beneficial meeting, Minister, because we're all on the same page trying to achieve the same goals. And if we can help them to do that, then we'd be very, very pleased to take that forward.
Madam chair, again, thank you to everyone for taking part. And thank you to you, Madam Chair, for your patience with the fella. I only have two minutes. I think you've given me five. Thank you.
Investment needs to go further and. And the honourable Lady was very kind to share the experiences of our own constituency. We're very pleased to have the the the honourable member for Glasgow South West. It brings a vast knowledge. That's a great thing about these debates. If I can say, Madam Chair, is that those who everybody brings their their, their their expertise to debates. And the honourable gentleman has done that. We're very pleased to have that.
He shared with us some of his lifetime of knowledge that he has, and also was able to resonate with some of those in the in the audience were honourable gentleman, learned the business, so to speak, and then he's now able to, to, to contribute to others along this way. And that's, that's incredibly helpful. Also, one of the largest hospitals in Glasgow tuned in to, to ensure that the that some of the the highest stats in Scotland are addressed lower life expectation, diabetic foot protection service, vascular community waiting times, improvements and pay for output and outcome.
So all of those things were were incredibly focused for this debate. And we thank him for that. Honourable lady. The the the member for North Shropshire, the spokesperson for the Lib Dems, again, in all the subjects in health, the Honourable Lady, the last two days in the chamber has proven herself to be an expert when it comes to the health Bill and has made valuable contributions. She also referred to the vascular disease being as common as cancer but preventable disability.
A postcode lottery of care delayed diagnosis the largest numbers of lower limb amputations . Excuse me and the waiting times as well. Long term diseases, mental health impact would be something that maybe we don't always think about it. The the the impact that it has upon the person's anxiety, depression, ability to cope with life. All of a sudden, if you're, if you're able to walk about and do things and then a sudden something happens and you lose a limb, then the your mental health will be affected by that.
The honourable gentleman, the shadow spokesperson for for the conservatives from Solihull West and Shirley again also brings is interesting. And we did speak this morning and spoke the other in the other day about it as well. He refers to the treatment, the access for the services. It refers to the five recommendations from the Appg, getting it right first time, the foot care teams and all of those things that are icbs budgets are to be reduced.
Just how will the vascular and venous strategy be be delivered? I think the minister did give us some indication of how that was going to happen. There's certainly a commitment to it. We appreciate that. National waiting times for the question mark. When will they be addressed? When will they the national foot attack pathway needed to be in place? Again, better use of NHS resources. Very pleased, Madam Chair, to have a minister who responds to us and and takes the issue of the subject matter and board , and then gives us the reassurance that we seek.
And in relation to that, it is very much focused upon the Appg report. Report, the commitment to the National Foot Tack Pathway, the Icbs and Neighborhood Services Accountability Government are on the same page with the. The reply that the Minister made and I wrote down here to reply to it the patient access, because I think we all see that there's an issue when it comes to people who just seem to be in one area, and getting the treatment that they need seems to be even harder than others.
I also welcome the four new diagnostic centres that the honourable gentleman, the Minister, has referred to further development and enhancement . That will become a common phrase. Now, digital doctor, I suspect that we'll be hearing that very often. I might even use it the odd time myself as we go forward. But again, in that reply from the ministry is in is in embracing the innovation, which I think we've all got to do, and move with that prevention policy, accelerate the progress targets set by government, holistic approach the.
The. Sorting out the the outputs and ensure that the the facts and the risk factors all come forward as part of that. I wrote down here a sentence at the end reform of system and leadership. I thank the honourable gentleman for Glasgow South West used that. I think it's really important that the Appg are focusing on that. Comment on the end manager. They can ask the Minister if he would be agreeable. I think he will be.
I'm not going to judge him and. But the Appg would be very, very pleased if we were able to have a meeting with the Minister and some of the. And the members here who bring their expertise, I think I'd be. It'd be a beneficial meeting, Minister, because we're all on the same page trying to achieve the same goals. And if we can help them to do that, then we'd be very, very pleased to take that forward.
Madam chair, again, thank you to everyone for taking part. And thank you to you, Madam Chair, for your patience with the fella. I only have two minutes. I think you've given me five. Thank you.
14:41
14:59
14:59
15:00
Speaker 10
-
Speaker 10
Thank you, thank you, Miss Hobhouse and everybody here. But it is indeed a privilege to serve under your chairmanship as I lead this debate on the contribution of fathers and positive male role models to families and society. And can I thank members from across the House for supporting this debate? In my mind's eye, as I prepared for today, were the children and young people who I represent across the Bishop Auckland constituency, who need active fathers and male role models in their lives, as well as the men who do their best to nurture, to guide, teach, protect, provide for, entertain and love as they raise children, often while juggling multiple other responsibilities and worries.
In the time I have, I want to make three points. Firstly, that fathers and positive male role models are essential for addressing the challenges we face as a nation. Secondly, the active fatherhood is good for men's mental health and well-being, and thirdly, that good public policy should support active fatherhood and the presence of positive male role models in young people's lives. The importance of fathers and positive male role models cannot be understated.
In 2015, Pope Francis observed that we are not living through an era of change, but through the change of an era. Today's children and youth are growing up in an uncertain world, very different to the one that I grew up in in the 80s and 90s , our country faces profound challenges that have increased people's sense of insecurity and worry. Tomorrow marks 25 years since nine over 11 and the start of the war on terror, which has never really ended.
Next came a global financial crash and a fall in living standards, from which households in our communities have not recovered. We face a new cold war with Russia, economic uncertainty, extreme weather, AI accelerating at such a pace, we do not know what the world will look like in five years from now, and our rising generation, the first to grow up in the era of social media, are experiencing a mental health crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, and even an identity crisis.
But what's consistent in this world of uncertainty? It's the love and security offered by familial bonds, the unique deep connections of love, trust, and mutual support that tie family members. Important in this is the role of fathers. And now, I must add a caveat. Implicit within my definition of fatherhood is a positive, supportive, and loving individual, and I know that there are, sadly, children who suffer under the scrutiny and abuse of the men in their family unit.
And if I may be so bold, these men are not fathers. Hence I also speak of positive male role models from whom young people can receive caregiving and mentorship outside of the home. And the evidence is compelling that having active fathers and positive male role models is strongly associated with positive outcomes in young people. While the absence of such is also linked to bad outcomes and distress.
A 2021 literature review by the University of Kent, commissioned by the former government, found that fathers increased involvement with their children positively affected their emotional, psychological and educational development, their future careers and the future division of housework. Kamara and others 2017 found greater adolescent father closeness was linked to a lower likelihood of a person self-harming. Fleury 2008 found higher levels of involvement by fathers and father figures, correlated with higher levels of prosocial behavior, self-esteem and happiness in adolescents of both sexes.
I would thank you.
In the time I have, I want to make three points. Firstly, that fathers and positive male role models are essential for addressing the challenges we face as a nation. Secondly, the active fatherhood is good for men's mental health and well-being, and thirdly, that good public policy should support active fatherhood and the presence of positive male role models in young people's lives. The importance of fathers and positive male role models cannot be understated.
In 2015, Pope Francis observed that we are not living through an era of change, but through the change of an era. Today's children and youth are growing up in an uncertain world, very different to the one that I grew up in in the 80s and 90s , our country faces profound challenges that have increased people's sense of insecurity and worry. Tomorrow marks 25 years since nine over 11 and the start of the war on terror, which has never really ended.
Next came a global financial crash and a fall in living standards, from which households in our communities have not recovered. We face a new cold war with Russia, economic uncertainty, extreme weather, AI accelerating at such a pace, we do not know what the world will look like in five years from now, and our rising generation, the first to grow up in the era of social media, are experiencing a mental health crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, and even an identity crisis.
But what's consistent in this world of uncertainty? It's the love and security offered by familial bonds, the unique deep connections of love, trust, and mutual support that tie family members. Important in this is the role of fathers. And now, I must add a caveat. Implicit within my definition of fatherhood is a positive, supportive, and loving individual, and I know that there are, sadly, children who suffer under the scrutiny and abuse of the men in their family unit.
And if I may be so bold, these men are not fathers. Hence I also speak of positive male role models from whom young people can receive caregiving and mentorship outside of the home. And the evidence is compelling that having active fathers and positive male role models is strongly associated with positive outcomes in young people. While the absence of such is also linked to bad outcomes and distress.
A 2021 literature review by the University of Kent, commissioned by the former government, found that fathers increased involvement with their children positively affected their emotional, psychological and educational development, their future careers and the future division of housework. Kamara and others 2017 found greater adolescent father closeness was linked to a lower likelihood of a person self-harming. Fleury 2008 found higher levels of involvement by fathers and father figures, correlated with higher levels of prosocial behavior, self-esteem and happiness in adolescents of both sexes.
I would thank you.
15:04
Speaker 11
-
Speaker 11
Thank you for giving way to making incredibly powerful speech. I speak. I should declare that I speak as the dad of two young boys with a third on the way in November. And so I do have a vested interest when I say that. What better way to make sure fathers are as involved as possible, as early on as possible, than to extend paternity and maternity leave as well. And that's why it's so important that when the government responds to its review into both of those things, paternity leave in particular is extended to six weeks.
15:05
Speaker 10
-
Speaker 10
I want to thank him for that intervention. I fully agree, and this is setting out the evidence base for that. Tracey et al. 222 must be 2018 2028. My sheep found higher levels of father involvement in children aged 9 to 10 associated with lower self-reported violent perpetration of both boys and girls when they reach 18 to 20. Kung and Reece 2010 found how often young people talked about talk to their father about the things that mattered to them, was positively associated with higher well-being and self-esteem.
On the other hand, the centre for Social Justice has warned that the disappearance of male role models is creating a generation of unhappy young boys. It's report Lost Boys found fatherlessness, and a lack of mentorship is deeply harming young men's mental health, education and life path. These are all things that I know from my own personal experience. We have this sort of culture in politics, particularly those of us in the Labour Party, of everyone needing a backstory to prove how working class they are.
But while there are probably not many members in this place whose family struggled financially like mine did, I want to be honest with you about how absolutely privileged I am. You see, I grew up in a stable, loving home with a mum and dad who made raising us children their world early. Memories of my dad include being taken on hikes through the countryside and dragged around old cathedrals and art galleries if they were free. He was from Yorkshire and taught to appreciate history and culture.
We didn't have a car in my early childhood, but mum and dad insisted I was a member of the Strong Legs Brigade as I learned to walk everywhere. Rain no problem. We had cagoules. Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs, but dad insisted on buying me Clarks shoes because he thought they were better for my growing feet, even though I noticed that his own shoes were often falling apart because he always gave us the best. As a lay church leader, dad would take me to visit older people and do acts of service for them, and at Christmas we spend our pocket money on gifts from B&M, bargains for kids less fortunate than us that we drop off on their doorsteps on Christmas Eve.
Dad taught me to think of others sometimes that was explicit. We had a program encouraged by our church. We call it family home evening, where one night a week was set aside for family time. It would include some sort of instruction. I remember being taught words like integrity and kindness, some fun game or activity, and always a homemade dessert. As a junior civil servant in in the auditing department, dad used to travel away from home, and when others were at the bar, he would always phone home to talk to us all.
Wherever he went, he would get us a postcard with information about the place, expressions of love, and some bad attempt at humour. I've kept them in a folder to this day. And another thing my dad taught me and still teaches me today, is that the kindest thing I can do for my children is to love their mother. He taught me respect for women and womanhood. So active fatherhood is not only good for children and youth, it's good for dads, too.
The Fatherhood Institute reports that more active and involved fathers report lower levels of depression and higher relationship satisfaction than less involved fathers. That's certainly true for me. I'm never happier than spending time with Siobhan and the kids at home. Whenever I face disappointments or setbacks in my career, financial setbacks, or times of stress and anxiety. If I've questioned my worth, I've always known I could walk through my front door and find my biggest fan club to welcome me back.
They put my life in perspective, and I think my dad jokes are rubbing off on them too, because the other day, my 16 year old daughter Jessie said to me, dad, do you know you shouldn't brush your teeth with your right hand? And I said, no. Why is that? She said, you're supposed to use a toothbrush, but we have to be honest and also recognise that fatherhood is tough. The Men's Health report, commissioned by the former Health secretary, Right Honourable member for Ilford North, notes that the transition to fatherhood can be a stressful and isolating experience.
Men may turn in, may turn towards unhealthy coping mechanisms such as alcohol and drugs, or neglect their own health and well-being by prioritising supporting their family. It goes on that estimates suggest 5 to 15% of fathers experience anxiety during the perinatal period, and 5 to 10% of fathers experience depression. The mental health of fathers during this period is not routinely assessed, which can result in fathers missing out on opportunities for diagnosis, support and interventions.
Fathers frequently report feeling ignored or considered unimportant by healthcare professionals during the perinatal period. Additionally, fathers often question the legitimacy of their own mental health challenges and entitlement to support, emphasising their partner's needs over their own. And that brings me to my final point that good public policy can be pivotal in making fatherhood a positive experience for dads and children. While bad policy or the absence of support can limit fathers potential positive impacts.
I want to very quickly highlight two ways where I think that that matters, and I won't go into great detail on them, because I imagine that other people will in their speeches, I will.
On the other hand, the centre for Social Justice has warned that the disappearance of male role models is creating a generation of unhappy young boys. It's report Lost Boys found fatherlessness, and a lack of mentorship is deeply harming young men's mental health, education and life path. These are all things that I know from my own personal experience. We have this sort of culture in politics, particularly those of us in the Labour Party, of everyone needing a backstory to prove how working class they are.
But while there are probably not many members in this place whose family struggled financially like mine did, I want to be honest with you about how absolutely privileged I am. You see, I grew up in a stable, loving home with a mum and dad who made raising us children their world early. Memories of my dad include being taken on hikes through the countryside and dragged around old cathedrals and art galleries if they were free. He was from Yorkshire and taught to appreciate history and culture.
We didn't have a car in my early childhood, but mum and dad insisted I was a member of the Strong Legs Brigade as I learned to walk everywhere. Rain no problem. We had cagoules. Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs, but dad insisted on buying me Clarks shoes because he thought they were better for my growing feet, even though I noticed that his own shoes were often falling apart because he always gave us the best. As a lay church leader, dad would take me to visit older people and do acts of service for them, and at Christmas we spend our pocket money on gifts from B&M, bargains for kids less fortunate than us that we drop off on their doorsteps on Christmas Eve.
Dad taught me to think of others sometimes that was explicit. We had a program encouraged by our church. We call it family home evening, where one night a week was set aside for family time. It would include some sort of instruction. I remember being taught words like integrity and kindness, some fun game or activity, and always a homemade dessert. As a junior civil servant in in the auditing department, dad used to travel away from home, and when others were at the bar, he would always phone home to talk to us all.
Wherever he went, he would get us a postcard with information about the place, expressions of love, and some bad attempt at humour. I've kept them in a folder to this day. And another thing my dad taught me and still teaches me today, is that the kindest thing I can do for my children is to love their mother. He taught me respect for women and womanhood. So active fatherhood is not only good for children and youth, it's good for dads, too.
The Fatherhood Institute reports that more active and involved fathers report lower levels of depression and higher relationship satisfaction than less involved fathers. That's certainly true for me. I'm never happier than spending time with Siobhan and the kids at home. Whenever I face disappointments or setbacks in my career, financial setbacks, or times of stress and anxiety. If I've questioned my worth, I've always known I could walk through my front door and find my biggest fan club to welcome me back.
They put my life in perspective, and I think my dad jokes are rubbing off on them too, because the other day, my 16 year old daughter Jessie said to me, dad, do you know you shouldn't brush your teeth with your right hand? And I said, no. Why is that? She said, you're supposed to use a toothbrush, but we have to be honest and also recognise that fatherhood is tough. The Men's Health report, commissioned by the former Health secretary, Right Honourable member for Ilford North, notes that the transition to fatherhood can be a stressful and isolating experience.
Men may turn in, may turn towards unhealthy coping mechanisms such as alcohol and drugs, or neglect their own health and well-being by prioritising supporting their family. It goes on that estimates suggest 5 to 15% of fathers experience anxiety during the perinatal period, and 5 to 10% of fathers experience depression. The mental health of fathers during this period is not routinely assessed, which can result in fathers missing out on opportunities for diagnosis, support and interventions.
Fathers frequently report feeling ignored or considered unimportant by healthcare professionals during the perinatal period. Additionally, fathers often question the legitimacy of their own mental health challenges and entitlement to support, emphasising their partner's needs over their own. And that brings me to my final point that good public policy can be pivotal in making fatherhood a positive experience for dads and children. While bad policy or the absence of support can limit fathers potential positive impacts.
I want to very quickly highlight two ways where I think that that matters, and I won't go into great detail on them, because I imagine that other people will in their speeches, I will.
15:10
Speaker 12
-
Speaker 12
I'm very grateful. And can I applaud him for raising this topic as he and I. While different parties have long been on the same chapter about how important it is to have male role models and the role of men and boys, we were making progress under the last leadership with the Men and Boys summit that was due to take place this summer. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened. I'm keen to see that the government may well bring that forward, and I hope that he would share my ambition that this does happen because of all the reasons he's talked about.
It's an imperative that the new leadership and the new administration do keep hold of this, grasp this nettle and take it forward. Does he agree?
It's an imperative that the new leadership and the new administration do keep hold of this, grasp this nettle and take it forward. Does he agree?
15:11
Speaker 10
-
Speaker 10
Yeah. Thank him for that intervention. And as I suspected, I do agree with everything that he said. And and I really think that there will be cross-party consensus in much of this debate. And I'm sure that the minister was listening as well and may want to comment on that in his remarks. The first weeks of a newborn child's life can be both stressful but also a beautiful bonding experience. But where mothers, typically a full time nurturing and feeding newborn babies, fathers are often immediately back to work.
And so one of the calls in this debate, debate today is to support the dads shifts campaign for six weeks paternity leave at 90% of pay. Too often, the dads that miss out on that tend to be working class men. They tend to be people who are self-employed, people who work on the tools. Paternity leave should not be a preserve of the middle classes and. And yet that's too often the case.
And the evidence for what that supports in terms of that early bonding with the child is, is immense. But it's not just about those those early years. It's also about rewarding employers who, who introduce flexible and family friendly working practices. This is one of the reasons I supported Usdaw campaign to keep Sunday special and to limit those who want to extend Sunday trading hours, because it's important that there is at least a day where parents know they can be with their children.
It's why I also won't shop late on Christmas Eve. I don't think shops should be open on Christmas Eve. I think parents should be with their families and able to enjoy that time . I will.
And so one of the calls in this debate, debate today is to support the dads shifts campaign for six weeks paternity leave at 90% of pay. Too often, the dads that miss out on that tend to be working class men. They tend to be people who are self-employed, people who work on the tools. Paternity leave should not be a preserve of the middle classes and. And yet that's too often the case.
And the evidence for what that supports in terms of that early bonding with the child is, is immense. But it's not just about those those early years. It's also about rewarding employers who, who introduce flexible and family friendly working practices. This is one of the reasons I supported Usdaw campaign to keep Sunday special and to limit those who want to extend Sunday trading hours, because it's important that there is at least a day where parents know they can be with their children.
It's why I also won't shop late on Christmas Eve. I don't think shops should be open on Christmas Eve. I think parents should be with their families and able to enjoy that time . I will.
15:12
Speaker 13
-
Speaker 13
Thank the honourable member recognise that it can be particularly difficult for men in the armed forces who are often away and aren't around. So even if there was a willingness for that 90%, sometimes they simply can't get the time. So that is another thing that we really need to consider when we're talking about male role models. Men who work away.
15:13
15:13
Speaker 10
-
Speaker 10
Thank you. Yeah, I do recognise that. And I think that that's an important thing that for the armed forces to consider as well. And we need to make sure that that all careers are as family friendly as possible and also take a moment really to, to pay respect to, to those people who, who do make that sacrifice for us. The final point I wanted to put on record is around family hubs and, and even parenting classes.
This is slightly taboo. People sort of get easily offended by the suggestion that they may need support in being a parent, as though as though somehow we all just sort of born knowing these things. There are things where I know that I would be a better parent if I could wind back the clock 19 years. I would be a better parent to my first born than than I have been because of the things that I've learned along the journey through, through, through being a parent, but also through, through academic study of childhood.
And the government is rolling out best start family hubs, but not at the not at the rate that we really need. And this should be a statutory provision. I remember attending antenatal classes. I learned with my wife about what those first few few weeks of having a baby would be like, but after that, you're on your own. And there's so many important things about childhood development that parents want to learn and to do better. I just want to finish where I started really by, by saying that a government that is supporting fatherhood is a government that is supporting fathers to to join mothers in doing about the most important thing that we can do, which is to raise the next generation during times of trouble and uncertainty and build that resilience that we need in that generation.
Thank you.
This is slightly taboo. People sort of get easily offended by the suggestion that they may need support in being a parent, as though as though somehow we all just sort of born knowing these things. There are things where I know that I would be a better parent if I could wind back the clock 19 years. I would be a better parent to my first born than than I have been because of the things that I've learned along the journey through, through, through being a parent, but also through, through academic study of childhood.
And the government is rolling out best start family hubs, but not at the not at the rate that we really need. And this should be a statutory provision. I remember attending antenatal classes. I learned with my wife about what those first few few weeks of having a baby would be like, but after that, you're on your own. And there's so many important things about childhood development that parents want to learn and to do better. I just want to finish where I started really by, by saying that a government that is supporting fatherhood is a government that is supporting fathers to to join mothers in doing about the most important thing that we can do, which is to raise the next generation during times of trouble and uncertainty and build that resilience that we need in that generation.
Thank you.
15:15
Speaker 9
-
Speaker 9
May I remind members that they should, if they wish to be called in this debate, I am intending to call the front benches just before 4:00, and we have got ten people speaking in this debate, if I call a count that correctly anyway, I'll I'll think it's about four and a half, five minutes in informal speech limit, and that should get us all in equally. The question is that this House has considered the contribution of fathers and positive male role models to families and society.
And I call Jim Shannon chair.
And I call Jim Shannon chair.
15:15
Speaker 2
-
Speaker 2
It's always a pleasure to serve on your big. Thank you to the honourable gentleman for Bishop Auckland for raising this debate and for sharing some of his childhood experiences. I think he's turned out all right, by the way. I think we probably all think that. So we congratulate him on that. I deeply value the opportunity to have a very positive moral role model in myself and my role as both a father and a grandfather.
I'm a grandfather to six grandchildren, three girls, three boys. It's different being a grandfather, by the way, as a dad, you have a probably a more stronger role, but a grandfather, you can enjoy all the good times. And the great thing about being a grandfather at 7:00 at night, you can give them back. And this is a stage where they're getting stroppy and they want things that maybe their grandfather can't give. But I'm very pleased and very privileged to have a good relationship with my three sons that I had.
I'm also very thankful to have a. And a good wife who is seems to have stuck me rightly over these 39 years of of married life, but I'm also very thankful for a godly father who believed in loving his son, expecting good things, but also giving grace and love. Now my dad's dead some 11 years, but not a day passes, to be honest with you that I don't miss him, and I can only hope to have a similar relationship with my three sons and indeed with my my grandchildren.
One of the titles for the for the House of Commons library was lads need dads and they do. But I want to talk about. Many young men today find themselves facing what can only be described as a real crisis of value and purpose, and whilst personal testimony of this alone is powerful, the research backs us up. Fatherlessness has been found to be proven to have profound consequences for young men's mental health, educational achievements and their futures.
This is a an issue which is powerfully termed not as lads need dads, but as a lost boys crisis. In Northern Ireland alone, there are specific education and employment challenges facing working class men, with male working class pupils continuing to experience some of the poorest educational outcomes. This, combined with the decline of traditionally male dominated skills based manufacturing industries, has removed many of the employment opportunities which were once accessible to these young men, and especially to their dads.
This has led to concerning levels of economic inactivity amongst young men, creating a worrying cycle in which young men are left without a clear sense of purpose or belonging. And the Lost Boys report of 2025 shockingly highlighted , the boys in the United Kingdom are more likely to own a smartphone than to live with their father. And what difference does that make to young boys growing up today, at the presence or the presence of a positive role model is increasingly removed.
These boys turn lost to other things and or people. People like. Controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate. He promotes harmful ideologies and reinforces damaging attitudes towards women, and the honourable gentleman in his introduction referred to that we should be respectful. I was brought up to be respectful to women and that's what we do. We should certainly not, under Mr.. Devastating consequences that this can have. As Northern Ireland's male suicide rates remain consistently higher than that of England and Wales.
That's not my constituency. The people that I represent, I know it real because it's happening and this should make every one of us stop and think about what we can do to ensure these young men have the support that they need. So does the minister and played the same in his place. Therefore, agree that more needs to be done to support positive male role models, perhaps through mentorship programs, which will ensure the well-being of our young men for the future.
This is not suggesting that a child must grow up in a certain type of family. A positive role model can be a father, a teacher, a youth worker, a sports coach, or an employer . In a world where children have access to so many voices, what matters is that they see men who demonstrate responsibility, integrity, kindness, and respect for others. Those four things. If you can do that, you can inspire young people for tomorrow. These. There are those whose mums take on the both roles and we know that.
And these women are to be admired. And we are so thankful for all that they do. But there is a place for men , and we need to encourage men to understand that whilst your relationship with others may. Sir, your children are yours to help, guide and love for life and this is an honour that should be cherished by us all. Thank you.
I'm a grandfather to six grandchildren, three girls, three boys. It's different being a grandfather, by the way, as a dad, you have a probably a more stronger role, but a grandfather, you can enjoy all the good times. And the great thing about being a grandfather at 7:00 at night, you can give them back. And this is a stage where they're getting stroppy and they want things that maybe their grandfather can't give. But I'm very pleased and very privileged to have a good relationship with my three sons that I had.
I'm also very thankful to have a. And a good wife who is seems to have stuck me rightly over these 39 years of of married life, but I'm also very thankful for a godly father who believed in loving his son, expecting good things, but also giving grace and love. Now my dad's dead some 11 years, but not a day passes, to be honest with you that I don't miss him, and I can only hope to have a similar relationship with my three sons and indeed with my my grandchildren.
One of the titles for the for the House of Commons library was lads need dads and they do. But I want to talk about. Many young men today find themselves facing what can only be described as a real crisis of value and purpose, and whilst personal testimony of this alone is powerful, the research backs us up. Fatherlessness has been found to be proven to have profound consequences for young men's mental health, educational achievements and their futures.
This is a an issue which is powerfully termed not as lads need dads, but as a lost boys crisis. In Northern Ireland alone, there are specific education and employment challenges facing working class men, with male working class pupils continuing to experience some of the poorest educational outcomes. This, combined with the decline of traditionally male dominated skills based manufacturing industries, has removed many of the employment opportunities which were once accessible to these young men, and especially to their dads.
This has led to concerning levels of economic inactivity amongst young men, creating a worrying cycle in which young men are left without a clear sense of purpose or belonging. And the Lost Boys report of 2025 shockingly highlighted , the boys in the United Kingdom are more likely to own a smartphone than to live with their father. And what difference does that make to young boys growing up today, at the presence or the presence of a positive role model is increasingly removed.
These boys turn lost to other things and or people. People like. Controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate. He promotes harmful ideologies and reinforces damaging attitudes towards women, and the honourable gentleman in his introduction referred to that we should be respectful. I was brought up to be respectful to women and that's what we do. We should certainly not, under Mr.. Devastating consequences that this can have. As Northern Ireland's male suicide rates remain consistently higher than that of England and Wales.
That's not my constituency. The people that I represent, I know it real because it's happening and this should make every one of us stop and think about what we can do to ensure these young men have the support that they need. So does the minister and played the same in his place. Therefore, agree that more needs to be done to support positive male role models, perhaps through mentorship programs, which will ensure the well-being of our young men for the future.
This is not suggesting that a child must grow up in a certain type of family. A positive role model can be a father, a teacher, a youth worker, a sports coach, or an employer . In a world where children have access to so many voices, what matters is that they see men who demonstrate responsibility, integrity, kindness, and respect for others. Those four things. If you can do that, you can inspire young people for tomorrow. These. There are those whose mums take on the both roles and we know that.
And these women are to be admired. And we are so thankful for all that they do. But there is a place for men , and we need to encourage men to understand that whilst your relationship with others may. Sir, your children are yours to help, guide and love for life and this is an honour that should be cherished by us all. Thank you.
15:20
15:20
Speaker 8
-
Speaker 8
Thank you. Pleasure to speak and to your chair. And I would also like to thank my hon. Friend the member for Bishop Auckland for leading this debate so brilliantly and, of course, for securing it. I'm sure that every dad in this room has at some point been asked, are you so-and-so's dad? I have, and it's one of my favourite things to hear. I'm immensely proud when I'm asked if I'm the father of my daughter or son even being beats being asked are you the MP? I think there are two core aspects, though to this conversation practical side, supporting fathers to be active parents and the cultural side the role models and pride that we instill in young men, starting with the practical.
Recently, we welcomed a new member of my team who's just coming back from maternity leave and whose partner is self-employed. He had to work six or even seven day weeks for months before the birth of their daughter to build up enough of a financial buffer to simply be able to spend time with his partner and their newborn. She told me that in situations like that, resentment can creep in as you begin to feel almost like a single parent. That's awful for both parents, as the lack of support that others take for granted throws up so many financial and emotional challenges, it's hardly surprising many fathers feel that they don't have a choice.
We currently, as we've heard, have two weeks of paternity leave on less than £200 a week for employees. Meanwhile, Spanish dads get 16 weeks leave on full pay rights for employed British parents are miles behind our European neighbours and self-employed dads don't even get those two weeks. As my friend said, the dad shifts campaign for six weeks of paternity leave for all dads doesn't only make sense for families, but for our economy too. That takes me on to what happens when families separate.
The fathers who I've spoken to want to support their children most, want more time with their kids, but feel that the system still views them first and foremost as a financial provider rather than as an equal parent. Take my constituent Matthew, who in June had heart surgery and was signed off sick for a month when sending over his child maintenance due to a typo he underpaid by £0.05. That resulted in him being moved on to collect and pay, where a 20% collection charge is added to his payments.
And he's not alone. Many constituents have described stress and anxiety linked to CM's disputes and separation from their children. Fathers have got a responsibility to provide, but the current system seems out of step with where we're now at as a society. We've rightly moved on from outdated concepts that mother's contributions are defined to childcare and homemaking. Therefore, our systems must dare to imagine that fathers are capable of more than just breadwinning. And that brings me to my second point the role of role models for boys and young men.
In decades gone by, our role models were often fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, uncles, teachers, coaches, scout leaders. These influence. These influences mattered. But the world is now a much larger place, and the number of voices reaching or even targeting young men has exploded. The stories we tell about men matter. They shape how young people see themselves in a world bristling with thousands of narratives. Young men are all too often bombarded with negativity, whether that's about their role in society or about the whole concept of masculinity.
We hear a lot about so-called toxic masculinity. I don't think any of us doubt that there are behaviours that must be challenged, but rather than leaving a void, we need positivity around what it means to be a man and a dad to rush in. I want my son growing up knowing that being a man means looking after the people you love, being a dependable friend, showing courage and treating others with respect. The answer, of course, is not to abandon masculinity.
It's to reclaim the best parts of it. And that means giving boys somewhere to go and something to work towards. If a teenager sees no apprenticeship, no sports provision and no trusted adult, if, like in Staffordshire, there's a total lack of youth provision, we shouldn't be surprised if young men look elsewhere for belonging. Now I realize I'm short for time now, so I'll finish back where I started, Miss Hobhouse. One day my children will be old enough that people won't stop me in the street and say, are you so-and-so's dad? And that's something that I will profoundly miss when I get to that point.
But what I want for more fathers is to have the chance to feel the immense pride of being at the centre of their children's world, and for more men and boys to feel proud of their masculinity in all of its complexity, let's make sure that that is the message that radiates out from this House. Thank
Recently, we welcomed a new member of my team who's just coming back from maternity leave and whose partner is self-employed. He had to work six or even seven day weeks for months before the birth of their daughter to build up enough of a financial buffer to simply be able to spend time with his partner and their newborn. She told me that in situations like that, resentment can creep in as you begin to feel almost like a single parent. That's awful for both parents, as the lack of support that others take for granted throws up so many financial and emotional challenges, it's hardly surprising many fathers feel that they don't have a choice.
We currently, as we've heard, have two weeks of paternity leave on less than £200 a week for employees. Meanwhile, Spanish dads get 16 weeks leave on full pay rights for employed British parents are miles behind our European neighbours and self-employed dads don't even get those two weeks. As my friend said, the dad shifts campaign for six weeks of paternity leave for all dads doesn't only make sense for families, but for our economy too. That takes me on to what happens when families separate.
The fathers who I've spoken to want to support their children most, want more time with their kids, but feel that the system still views them first and foremost as a financial provider rather than as an equal parent. Take my constituent Matthew, who in June had heart surgery and was signed off sick for a month when sending over his child maintenance due to a typo he underpaid by £0.05. That resulted in him being moved on to collect and pay, where a 20% collection charge is added to his payments.
And he's not alone. Many constituents have described stress and anxiety linked to CM's disputes and separation from their children. Fathers have got a responsibility to provide, but the current system seems out of step with where we're now at as a society. We've rightly moved on from outdated concepts that mother's contributions are defined to childcare and homemaking. Therefore, our systems must dare to imagine that fathers are capable of more than just breadwinning. And that brings me to my second point the role of role models for boys and young men.
In decades gone by, our role models were often fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, uncles, teachers, coaches, scout leaders. These influence. These influences mattered. But the world is now a much larger place, and the number of voices reaching or even targeting young men has exploded. The stories we tell about men matter. They shape how young people see themselves in a world bristling with thousands of narratives. Young men are all too often bombarded with negativity, whether that's about their role in society or about the whole concept of masculinity.
We hear a lot about so-called toxic masculinity. I don't think any of us doubt that there are behaviours that must be challenged, but rather than leaving a void, we need positivity around what it means to be a man and a dad to rush in. I want my son growing up knowing that being a man means looking after the people you love, being a dependable friend, showing courage and treating others with respect. The answer, of course, is not to abandon masculinity.
It's to reclaim the best parts of it. And that means giving boys somewhere to go and something to work towards. If a teenager sees no apprenticeship, no sports provision and no trusted adult, if, like in Staffordshire, there's a total lack of youth provision, we shouldn't be surprised if young men look elsewhere for belonging. Now I realize I'm short for time now, so I'll finish back where I started, Miss Hobhouse. One day my children will be old enough that people won't stop me in the street and say, are you so-and-so's dad? And that's something that I will profoundly miss when I get to that point.
But what I want for more fathers is to have the chance to feel the immense pride of being at the centre of their children's world, and for more men and boys to feel proud of their masculinity in all of its complexity, let's make sure that that is the message that radiates out from this House. Thank
15:24
15:24
15:24
Speaker 16
-
Speaker 16
Pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. And I'm chuffed that we're having this debate. As reportedly, I'm the youngest parent in Parliament. I was actually the first dad to take extended parental leave as an MP by appointing an MP representative, but of course we want a similar opportunity for all dads across the country. But since post-war Britain that was rebuilt by working class families who frankly deserved more time with their kids, the fact is they never really got it.
And that continued into the 60s and 70s, where my dad was actually someone who came from that generation from a council house to become a joiner. But it was his dad who went down the pit, and it was my mum's dad who worked on the floor of a bacon factory. One powered the nation, one fed it, and my dad helped build it. And you know what? I'll never shy away from telling their stories because I'm proud of them.
But for their generation, work came first because they felt it had to. The role of a dad in society has shifted and it continues to evolve, to evolve. Fathers rightly taught important lessons about graft and grit and hard work, but the roles changing. And now, as society shifts, the greatest contribution a man can make to society is by being a present father. The challenge, though, is that the biggest barrier to that is the fact that Britain's paternity leave remains among the weakest in Western Europe, and I'm proud that this Labour government is committed to ending that injustice.
We've been lagging behind because Sweden began normalising hands on fatherhood in the 70s. The image was simple the latter Papa's a dad with a toddler, a pram and a coffee, spending time with their children alongside their friends. But Norway went further in 1993, introducing four weeks paid reserved for fathers with full wage compensation. Yes, it was a Labour government that introduced snap in the noughties, but the fact of the matter is , right here, right now in Britain, we're 40 years behind Norway and Denmark and we know that research from the University of Copenhagen links longer parental leave with better wellbeing, better emotional stability and behaviour later in life.
But swap Stockholm's pastries for Yorkshire puddings and Copenhagen's Lego and follow the shared Viking heritage. And we see that York today is leading on advocacy for greater parental rights. Whether it's the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that's headquartered in my constituency that have published research that shows that six weeks of statutory paternity leave at 90% of earnings could deliver a net economic gain of 2.7 billion a year to the UK economy. Whether it's the University of York's Equal parenting Project.
My constituent Julie Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed York, is firmly put in parental rights firmly on the national agenda. But look, I try to balance my job whilst being a present father, including bringing my boys here in Parliament. That might mean explosive nappies before votes, running around in the family room, or even sneaking them into the tea room for jelly and toast. My boys, they've become two little mascots who've joined me everywhere of the steps of my campaign for better paternity leave for dad, and I remember being at Movember head office, where I was talking to the legendary dad shift and motherfucker.
And I'll never forget the kindness of Amy O'Connor at Movember, who made Robin my son, some slices of toast. But by putting my kids first, it doesn't make me a worst MP. It makes me a better, more grounded one. Yeah, and when my boys are here with me in Parliament, we make happy memories together as a family. But Miss Hobhouse, when they're not here, we miss each other. And this week we all cried at the end of a face time call.
And even at three, Robin understands that when his dad is away, he's out there maybe fighting for other families as well. And Miss Hobhouse, I'll just end by saying this. And I really believe that a world powered by a parent's love of their children is just a world better for all of us.
And that continued into the 60s and 70s, where my dad was actually someone who came from that generation from a council house to become a joiner. But it was his dad who went down the pit, and it was my mum's dad who worked on the floor of a bacon factory. One powered the nation, one fed it, and my dad helped build it. And you know what? I'll never shy away from telling their stories because I'm proud of them.
But for their generation, work came first because they felt it had to. The role of a dad in society has shifted and it continues to evolve, to evolve. Fathers rightly taught important lessons about graft and grit and hard work, but the roles changing. And now, as society shifts, the greatest contribution a man can make to society is by being a present father. The challenge, though, is that the biggest barrier to that is the fact that Britain's paternity leave remains among the weakest in Western Europe, and I'm proud that this Labour government is committed to ending that injustice.
We've been lagging behind because Sweden began normalising hands on fatherhood in the 70s. The image was simple the latter Papa's a dad with a toddler, a pram and a coffee, spending time with their children alongside their friends. But Norway went further in 1993, introducing four weeks paid reserved for fathers with full wage compensation. Yes, it was a Labour government that introduced snap in the noughties, but the fact of the matter is , right here, right now in Britain, we're 40 years behind Norway and Denmark and we know that research from the University of Copenhagen links longer parental leave with better wellbeing, better emotional stability and behaviour later in life.
But swap Stockholm's pastries for Yorkshire puddings and Copenhagen's Lego and follow the shared Viking heritage. And we see that York today is leading on advocacy for greater parental rights. Whether it's the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that's headquartered in my constituency that have published research that shows that six weeks of statutory paternity leave at 90% of earnings could deliver a net economic gain of 2.7 billion a year to the UK economy. Whether it's the University of York's Equal parenting Project.
My constituent Julie Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed York, is firmly put in parental rights firmly on the national agenda. But look, I try to balance my job whilst being a present father, including bringing my boys here in Parliament. That might mean explosive nappies before votes, running around in the family room, or even sneaking them into the tea room for jelly and toast. My boys, they've become two little mascots who've joined me everywhere of the steps of my campaign for better paternity leave for dad, and I remember being at Movember head office, where I was talking to the legendary dad shift and motherfucker.
And I'll never forget the kindness of Amy O'Connor at Movember, who made Robin my son, some slices of toast. But by putting my kids first, it doesn't make me a worst MP. It makes me a better, more grounded one. Yeah, and when my boys are here with me in Parliament, we make happy memories together as a family. But Miss Hobhouse, when they're not here, we miss each other. And this week we all cried at the end of a face time call.
And even at three, Robin understands that when his dad is away, he's out there maybe fighting for other families as well. And Miss Hobhouse, I'll just end by saying this. And I really believe that a world powered by a parent's love of their children is just a world better for all of us.
15:28
15:29
15:29
15:29
15:29
15:29
Speaker 17
-
Speaker 17
Thank my honourable friend for for that insight. And I wish you and your family the very best. And you really are a champion for dads across the country, including your constituents. Thank you to the honourable, my honourable friend as well for securing this debate. So when I ask young people what springs to mind when they hear the term masculinity, it's quickly followed by words that we've heard here toxic manosphere and names of influencers that I choose not to mention in this place.
I then dig a little bit deeper and I ask what they think a good dad, a good son, a brother, a cousin, a mate. And we hear very different words. We hear words like kindness, caring, protective, loyal, supportive, hard working, loving, respectful, and someone you can rely on. And that contrast is incredibly important because masculinity is not the problem. The problem is the version of masculinity that young men are being sold and who is selling it to them.
And I use those terms because there is a monetary value that's driving this. Alarmingly, young people are encountering online characters who tell them that being a man is about dominance. We see the aggression, money, status controlling others, but those messages should not define what masculinity is. We're here to debate. Thanks to my honourable friend from Bishop Auckland. The contribution that positive role models make in everyday society.
So I took a moment to consider my constituency of Wolverhampton North East, and I actually considered what has taken place during this summer holiday. And there are so many men in Wolverhampton north East that may not even realise how important they are to so many boys and young men in our communities. So in Wolverhampton North East, I am proud of the role models that we have, such as the guys from Westfield, men walking and talking, Joel Jackson and the coaches from New Park Village Football Academy, Raj and the team from Wolverhampton Wrestling Club Mac and the coaches from Wolverhampton Judo Club.
Nigel at Willenhall Lock Stock, who has long supported local talent . Ben and Ryan, who run a truly community centred pub called The Milestone in New Invention. We have James at The Hub at Ashmore Park. We have so many wonderful teachers and pastoral staff who regularly go above and beyond. We have those involved in cadets, in scouts, so many others that we just have not got the time for me to mention everybody, but they give their time to mentor young people, to spend time with other people's families, sometimes at the cost of their own.
So I just want to put on my record, my thanks to them all. Now, not one of them are selling a lifestyle. They're not telling young men how to behave. They're simply showing what they believe, their values through their actions, and what it means to be a good man, to be there, to listen, to encourage others, to take responsibility for also to give something back. We have to challenge these harmful messages around masculinity.
And we all government MPs, all responsible people, part of the community must take responsibility to tell young men to give your positive examples of what they can be. So I ask the minister to look at what more the government can do to support mentors, to support youth services, sport clubs and community organisations are already doing this work and make sure that they have the funding and support to ensure that they reach as many young people, to give them positive role models and something better to look to, rather than the toxic voices that we are seeing online.
I then dig a little bit deeper and I ask what they think a good dad, a good son, a brother, a cousin, a mate. And we hear very different words. We hear words like kindness, caring, protective, loyal, supportive, hard working, loving, respectful, and someone you can rely on. And that contrast is incredibly important because masculinity is not the problem. The problem is the version of masculinity that young men are being sold and who is selling it to them.
And I use those terms because there is a monetary value that's driving this. Alarmingly, young people are encountering online characters who tell them that being a man is about dominance. We see the aggression, money, status controlling others, but those messages should not define what masculinity is. We're here to debate. Thanks to my honourable friend from Bishop Auckland. The contribution that positive role models make in everyday society.
So I took a moment to consider my constituency of Wolverhampton North East, and I actually considered what has taken place during this summer holiday. And there are so many men in Wolverhampton north East that may not even realise how important they are to so many boys and young men in our communities. So in Wolverhampton North East, I am proud of the role models that we have, such as the guys from Westfield, men walking and talking, Joel Jackson and the coaches from New Park Village Football Academy, Raj and the team from Wolverhampton Wrestling Club Mac and the coaches from Wolverhampton Judo Club.
Nigel at Willenhall Lock Stock, who has long supported local talent . Ben and Ryan, who run a truly community centred pub called The Milestone in New Invention. We have James at The Hub at Ashmore Park. We have so many wonderful teachers and pastoral staff who regularly go above and beyond. We have those involved in cadets, in scouts, so many others that we just have not got the time for me to mention everybody, but they give their time to mentor young people, to spend time with other people's families, sometimes at the cost of their own.
So I just want to put on my record, my thanks to them all. Now, not one of them are selling a lifestyle. They're not telling young men how to behave. They're simply showing what they believe, their values through their actions, and what it means to be a good man, to be there, to listen, to encourage others, to take responsibility for also to give something back. We have to challenge these harmful messages around masculinity.
And we all government MPs, all responsible people, part of the community must take responsibility to tell young men to give your positive examples of what they can be. So I ask the minister to look at what more the government can do to support mentors, to support youth services, sport clubs and community organisations are already doing this work and make sure that they have the funding and support to ensure that they reach as many young people, to give them positive role models and something better to look to, rather than the toxic voices that we are seeing online.
15:34
15:34
Speaker 5
-
Speaker 5
Thank you, Miss Hobhouse. It's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and I congratulate the honourable member for Bishop Auckland for securing this debate, which has been fascinating so far. The centre for Social Justice recent report, which a number of people have talked about, revealed that 76% of people surveyed believe teenagers today lack proper role models in popular culture, and the opportunity for young men to find positive male role models is limited.
We've talked about there being 1000 fewer youth clubs today than there were 15 years ago, and the number of youth workers has fallen by over a third. For example, when young men feel disconnected and lack representations of positive masculinity and empty space can open up. And unfortunately, some of the loudest and most harmful voices are all too keen to fill it. This disconnection can carry real world consequences. Between April and June 26th, 530 000 young men aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training and that was 13.7% compared to 12.3% of young women.
The Csj highlights this proportion of young men who are Neet is climbing and this can of course snowball into strain on health relationships, tip over into the criminal justice system and when it gets really bad, we have very high suicide rates in Cornwall, particularly for men. There are, however, examples of community led interventions that help young men to find those positive male role models. And I see them across my constituency particularly. We also have a men walking and talking group, which brings men together to talk openly and support each other, often walking side by side.
It's much easier to talk than face to face. They've been meeting for over 75 weeks now with good turnout. We also have a band of brothers who mentor young men aged 18 to 25, who were caught up in or at risk of getting into the criminal justice system. They're paired with older men who act as mentors, who are volunteers, and they get outside, they talk to each other, and they offer a community based opportunity to strengthen that cohesion and support those young men who are trying to navigate complexities of growing up, often with who have had very chaotic lives to start with.
Having a supportive foundation, as many people have said, is really important when young men become dads themselves. And that was the goal for Dad Pad, created in 2012 by Julian Boase from Truro. Having personal experience of the lack of guidance for expectant fathers, he developed a guide to support men navigating that transition himself. We need to reach boys far earlier to avoid the formation of that empty space in the first place. Across Cornwall, we've got holiday and sports programmes like football camps run by Plymouth Argyle Community Trust that give those young people healthy environments and men to look up to outside of home and school.
And those community led initiatives are, of course, important, but they can't fill the gap on their own. The men's Health Strategy, published by the government last November, provides a policy framework to tackle this empty space by addressing the physical and mental health inequalities facing boys and men. Early on. We create the structural conditions when young men can succeed. For the last three years I've tried to be both dad and mum.
Obviously I can't, but I'm very lucky because there are uncles, teachers, sports people, godparents, grandparents, cousins who can all provide effective examples. For my son and other young men in Cornwall, we have great examples of groups providing those opportunities. And when that national policy and those local initiatives align, we can ensure that young men have so many of those positive examples where they can build their aspirations, grow into their masculinity and benefit themselves, their future families and society as a whole.
We've talked about there being 1000 fewer youth clubs today than there were 15 years ago, and the number of youth workers has fallen by over a third. For example, when young men feel disconnected and lack representations of positive masculinity and empty space can open up. And unfortunately, some of the loudest and most harmful voices are all too keen to fill it. This disconnection can carry real world consequences. Between April and June 26th, 530 000 young men aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training and that was 13.7% compared to 12.3% of young women.
The Csj highlights this proportion of young men who are Neet is climbing and this can of course snowball into strain on health relationships, tip over into the criminal justice system and when it gets really bad, we have very high suicide rates in Cornwall, particularly for men. There are, however, examples of community led interventions that help young men to find those positive male role models. And I see them across my constituency particularly. We also have a men walking and talking group, which brings men together to talk openly and support each other, often walking side by side.
It's much easier to talk than face to face. They've been meeting for over 75 weeks now with good turnout. We also have a band of brothers who mentor young men aged 18 to 25, who were caught up in or at risk of getting into the criminal justice system. They're paired with older men who act as mentors, who are volunteers, and they get outside, they talk to each other, and they offer a community based opportunity to strengthen that cohesion and support those young men who are trying to navigate complexities of growing up, often with who have had very chaotic lives to start with.
Having a supportive foundation, as many people have said, is really important when young men become dads themselves. And that was the goal for Dad Pad, created in 2012 by Julian Boase from Truro. Having personal experience of the lack of guidance for expectant fathers, he developed a guide to support men navigating that transition himself. We need to reach boys far earlier to avoid the formation of that empty space in the first place. Across Cornwall, we've got holiday and sports programmes like football camps run by Plymouth Argyle Community Trust that give those young people healthy environments and men to look up to outside of home and school.
And those community led initiatives are, of course, important, but they can't fill the gap on their own. The men's Health Strategy, published by the government last November, provides a policy framework to tackle this empty space by addressing the physical and mental health inequalities facing boys and men. Early on. We create the structural conditions when young men can succeed. For the last three years I've tried to be both dad and mum.
Obviously I can't, but I'm very lucky because there are uncles, teachers, sports people, godparents, grandparents, cousins who can all provide effective examples. For my son and other young men in Cornwall, we have great examples of groups providing those opportunities. And when that national policy and those local initiatives align, we can ensure that young men have so many of those positive examples where they can build their aspirations, grow into their masculinity and benefit themselves, their future families and society as a whole.
15:38
15:38
Speaker 18
-
Speaker 18
Thank you, Miss Hobhouse. It's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. And thank you also to the member for Bishop Auckland for bringing this important debate. There are so many positive role models, male role models in my constituency, high peak and across the country that I could talk about. But I want to focus on one particular group, which I think is hugely important, and that's dads. I was lucky with my first child that my job that I had then allowed me to be to be present, not just to lend a hand, not just to spend time with my baby, but to parent, to co-parent.
With this job, I've noticed the difference. I'm often back too late for school and nursery pickups. Indeed, I'm going to achieve that. Today. I find myself asking when I get home, what do they like to eat? What's the toy that they should be playing with in the bath? What bedtime story are they into at the moment? These little things. But parenthood is all about the little things.
Miss those moments and you risk missing the bigger picture. For most children, their first, most important male role model isn't an influencer or a celebrity. It's dad. The alternative the toxic masculinity offered by the likes of the brothers Tate , is not worth thinking about. That is not the society I want my girls to grow up in. Real strength is having the character to step up for those that need you, not standing alone, flexing your muscles in front of the mirror.
Real resilience is getting up tired night after night. Rocking a baby with no end in sight. And I can tell you that does more for your biceps than going to the gym. We should be doing everything we can to support dads to be there. But we have a real socioeconomic divide. In Britain, 90% of claimed paternity leave goes to the highest earners. A right you cannot afford is no right at all.
And if you're self-employed, our farmers, our plumbers, our delivery drivers, you have no right to paternity leave at all. What message are we sending to the dads that keep Britain working? That matters, particularly in rural constituencies like mine in High Peak? From my own experience, after a caesarean section which my wife had, mothers are advised not to drive for six weeks in rural constituencies. Not being able to drive can mean isolation.
If dad goes back to work after two weeks, who picks the other children up from school? Who takes them to nursery? Who nips to the supermarket to get those nappies that have run out in those first few weeks? Just being there is priceless. But the economic evidence is compelling. New research from King shows that six weeks of paternity leave, paid at 90% of earnings, could deliver 2.6 billion net boost to the UK economy every year.
That's because when fathers are properly have proper paid leave, mothers are better able to remain in work and to increase their hours. And there is also good evidence that better paternity leave reduces relationship breakdowns, keeping more male role models in the home, and with huge savings for the state in terms of housing and benefits, extending paternity leave should not be seen as a cost. It is an investment. In Britain.
We have the worst paternity leave in Europe and it's time we called time on it. Six weeks at 90% of earnings reserved for fathers and second parents, with the equivalent entitlement to self-employed and insecure workers. If we want boys to see caring, responsibility and kindness as strengths, we need to help the men in their lives to be there. I have been the father who was there for the little things, but I've also been the father who has missed them.
And I can tell you, chair, a little change. Paternity leave could make a big difference to the lives of men, women and their children.
With this job, I've noticed the difference. I'm often back too late for school and nursery pickups. Indeed, I'm going to achieve that. Today. I find myself asking when I get home, what do they like to eat? What's the toy that they should be playing with in the bath? What bedtime story are they into at the moment? These little things. But parenthood is all about the little things.
Miss those moments and you risk missing the bigger picture. For most children, their first, most important male role model isn't an influencer or a celebrity. It's dad. The alternative the toxic masculinity offered by the likes of the brothers Tate , is not worth thinking about. That is not the society I want my girls to grow up in. Real strength is having the character to step up for those that need you, not standing alone, flexing your muscles in front of the mirror.
Real resilience is getting up tired night after night. Rocking a baby with no end in sight. And I can tell you that does more for your biceps than going to the gym. We should be doing everything we can to support dads to be there. But we have a real socioeconomic divide. In Britain, 90% of claimed paternity leave goes to the highest earners. A right you cannot afford is no right at all.
And if you're self-employed, our farmers, our plumbers, our delivery drivers, you have no right to paternity leave at all. What message are we sending to the dads that keep Britain working? That matters, particularly in rural constituencies like mine in High Peak? From my own experience, after a caesarean section which my wife had, mothers are advised not to drive for six weeks in rural constituencies. Not being able to drive can mean isolation.
If dad goes back to work after two weeks, who picks the other children up from school? Who takes them to nursery? Who nips to the supermarket to get those nappies that have run out in those first few weeks? Just being there is priceless. But the economic evidence is compelling. New research from King shows that six weeks of paternity leave, paid at 90% of earnings, could deliver 2.6 billion net boost to the UK economy every year.
That's because when fathers are properly have proper paid leave, mothers are better able to remain in work and to increase their hours. And there is also good evidence that better paternity leave reduces relationship breakdowns, keeping more male role models in the home, and with huge savings for the state in terms of housing and benefits, extending paternity leave should not be seen as a cost. It is an investment. In Britain.
We have the worst paternity leave in Europe and it's time we called time on it. Six weeks at 90% of earnings reserved for fathers and second parents, with the equivalent entitlement to self-employed and insecure workers. If we want boys to see caring, responsibility and kindness as strengths, we need to help the men in their lives to be there. I have been the father who was there for the little things, but I've also been the father who has missed them.
And I can tell you, chair, a little change. Paternity leave could make a big difference to the lives of men, women and their children.
15:43
15:43
Speaker 19
-
Speaker 19
It's a real pleasure to serve under your Chairship. And massive congratulations to my hon. Friend the member for Bishop Auckland for securing this debate. It's very, very timely. This is a topic that I know lights up the attentions of many, many members of this House. But for me in particular, all of this discussion about fatherhood and paternity leave really has brought home to me recollections of, well, not really recollections.
I don't remember the first few weeks of my life, but my father, who died last year and his death, of course, has put me in a particularly reflective cast of mind was so important at getting me through those first few weeks. I was born with a cleft palate, like about 700 children a year in the United Kingdom. Obviously, this was a big shock to both my father and my mother, and it puts an additional strain on parents because I was unable to swallow.
Feeding was very difficult , and I did fail to thrive in the first couple of weeks as a baby, I was losing weight quite rapidly. The support for the medical team were insisting on one particular mode of feeding implements to try and get me to take food in. My mum knew that wasn't working. My dad saw it wasn't working. They couldn't get the help they needed. Thankfully, in the end, one of the nurses on the on the in the hospital where I was, you know, sidled up to my dad and said, look, the doctors won't tell you this, but this old fashioned device works so much better just to implement that went on the top of the of the bottle.
And then my dad bent, put his feet right to the floor to try and find this somewhere. Went all over London, all the way from the Kent south east London borders, eventually winding up in Camden Town to a pharmacist there that had this in stock. Now that was a huge amount of support that he had to do that. It took him away from his work because this is we're talking 1974. It wasn't like paternity leave was a thing back then.
And the expectations on men were so different. It's just a sign of how much so many fathers have to put in to support their families through those early, first few precious days of a child's life, and it's replicated across the country. Dads doing so much for their children, so much for their partners, so much for their wives and their girlfriends and the mothers of their children. And it's something that we have to facilitate. So not everyone's going to have a situation like that, but every father, every , every mother, every, every parent of newborn children are going to face big challenges.
And I'm sure particularly for the first child, it always feels like the biggest challenge you've ever faced in your life up to that point. And it really matters because that inspiration that my father showed, the caring he showed then that reflected through his whole life is the things that gave me the confidence to move into a caring profession. As a nurse, it gave me the confidence to have a particular take on masculinity that isn't as bound by the conventions of society and the sort of manosphere problems we're talking about, but I see versions of this all over.
So in my constituency, there's an inspirational boxing club, Apex Boxing in Sheerness, which absolutely it's a boxing club. It's about . It's about young people learning how to channel their aggressive impulses into discipline. There are the dads that support there, as volunteers have also built in not just the practical support and the and the and the boxing, but also counselling and making sure that there's mental health support for young people, for the boys and girls that are there learning to box, really showing how, how masculinity and fatherhood and just being a man in the world doesn't have to fit any preconceived box of either being this aggro, toxic masculinity or indeed, you know, some other form of masculinity that maybe people don't feel so confident buying into because it's a very complicated world that we live in.
All of that's inspirational to me. It's why I strongly support this push for six fully paid weeks of paternity leave for fathers. The Women and Equalities Select Committee already published a report last year pushing for this. I was very, very lucky to go to Spain this year with the Women and Equalities Select Committee to see how this is working in Spain. It's brilliant. It's been transformational. You talk to people in my constituency.
If we followed the Spanish example, there would be 880 dads a year. That would absolutely take this up. That would be incredible change to people in Sittingbourne and Sheppey. Strongly commend that to the minister.
I don't remember the first few weeks of my life, but my father, who died last year and his death, of course, has put me in a particularly reflective cast of mind was so important at getting me through those first few weeks. I was born with a cleft palate, like about 700 children a year in the United Kingdom. Obviously, this was a big shock to both my father and my mother, and it puts an additional strain on parents because I was unable to swallow.
Feeding was very difficult , and I did fail to thrive in the first couple of weeks as a baby, I was losing weight quite rapidly. The support for the medical team were insisting on one particular mode of feeding implements to try and get me to take food in. My mum knew that wasn't working. My dad saw it wasn't working. They couldn't get the help they needed. Thankfully, in the end, one of the nurses on the on the in the hospital where I was, you know, sidled up to my dad and said, look, the doctors won't tell you this, but this old fashioned device works so much better just to implement that went on the top of the of the bottle.
And then my dad bent, put his feet right to the floor to try and find this somewhere. Went all over London, all the way from the Kent south east London borders, eventually winding up in Camden Town to a pharmacist there that had this in stock. Now that was a huge amount of support that he had to do that. It took him away from his work because this is we're talking 1974. It wasn't like paternity leave was a thing back then.
And the expectations on men were so different. It's just a sign of how much so many fathers have to put in to support their families through those early, first few precious days of a child's life, and it's replicated across the country. Dads doing so much for their children, so much for their partners, so much for their wives and their girlfriends and the mothers of their children. And it's something that we have to facilitate. So not everyone's going to have a situation like that, but every father, every , every mother, every, every parent of newborn children are going to face big challenges.
And I'm sure particularly for the first child, it always feels like the biggest challenge you've ever faced in your life up to that point. And it really matters because that inspiration that my father showed, the caring he showed then that reflected through his whole life is the things that gave me the confidence to move into a caring profession. As a nurse, it gave me the confidence to have a particular take on masculinity that isn't as bound by the conventions of society and the sort of manosphere problems we're talking about, but I see versions of this all over.
So in my constituency, there's an inspirational boxing club, Apex Boxing in Sheerness, which absolutely it's a boxing club. It's about . It's about young people learning how to channel their aggressive impulses into discipline. There are the dads that support there, as volunteers have also built in not just the practical support and the and the and the boxing, but also counselling and making sure that there's mental health support for young people, for the boys and girls that are there learning to box, really showing how, how masculinity and fatherhood and just being a man in the world doesn't have to fit any preconceived box of either being this aggro, toxic masculinity or indeed, you know, some other form of masculinity that maybe people don't feel so confident buying into because it's a very complicated world that we live in.
All of that's inspirational to me. It's why I strongly support this push for six fully paid weeks of paternity leave for fathers. The Women and Equalities Select Committee already published a report last year pushing for this. I was very, very lucky to go to Spain this year with the Women and Equalities Select Committee to see how this is working in Spain. It's brilliant. It's been transformational. You talk to people in my constituency.
If we followed the Spanish example, there would be 880 dads a year. That would absolutely take this up. That would be incredible change to people in Sittingbourne and Sheppey. Strongly commend that to the minister.
15:48
15:48
15:48
Speaker 18
-
Speaker 18
Thank you, chair. I want to start by asking all of us to think of a positive male role model from our youth. If you are lucky, you now have a face in your mind and a smile in your heart. If you do not. We as a society owe you. Our apologies and our promise to do better for those who will come next. I have been very lucky in the positive male role models that I have had throughout my life.
My dad was the first. He ran his own electrical business in Stirling. He wasn't then and he still isn't particularly good at talking about emotional connection. He taught mainly by example work hard, treat people properly and earn their trust. I helped out in his shop from a young age alongside characters like Colin, Keith, Andy and Bill, and I doubt any of them ever went to work thinking they were going to be positive male role models.
But I was watching. Of course, when we talk about positive male role models, there is one relationship at the heart of this debate fathers and their children. When my wife and I brought our daughter home from the hospital, we carried the car seat, unclipped it, and carried it into the house. We sat on the couch, the car seat was on the carpet in front of us, and we stared at this tiny baby. And I looked at my wife and I said, what the hell do we do now? And we both burst out laughing.
I think it was laughter. It may have been hyperventilating, but we worked it out, as parents do, and I can look back now and admit that I wasn't as supportive in those first weeks as Anne would have wanted me to be. I felt a huge pressure to get back to work. I was self-employed at the time, so when I read that financial pressure is the biggest barrier fathers identified to taking more leave, I recognize something of my own experience in that when our children were young, I presented a radio show Monday to Friday, and Anne worked as a radio journalist Saturday and Sunday.
That was how we kept two careers going, raising a family and paying the bills for my parents generation. Many families could be supported by one salary for my generation. Perhaps you could manage it at a stretch. For my children's generation, two salaries are not a choice but a necessity. If we are content with this economic model, then we have to make it easier for fathers to take their share of the parenting responsibility.
That means looking seriously at paternity leave, including the financial barriers to taking it and the position of self-employed fathers. This isn't simply about fathers. If we want mothers and fathers to have equal opportunities in the workplace, we need to make it possible for them to take a more equal share at home. The two go together. That connection between fathers taking on more care and tackling the motherhood penalty is an important one. I would go further.
We need to look at the wider economics of family life too. And for me that means housing, building more council houses and reducing the cost of putting a roof over a family's head is a key family policy. Because the less pressure there is on the family budget, the more choices parents have about work, child care and that most precious commodity their time. But there is something else I think we should say in this debate, not just about positive male role models, but to those who might be thinking about doing something a little more formal, such as volunteering with a charity or a group, it is hugely rewarding.
We all want a sense of belonging. We all want to feel that we are getting something from and giving something to our families and to our communities. There is something profoundly rewarding about watching a child develop, find their confidence, form their own views and gradually become the next generation. So perhaps we should get better at asking men to step forward and making it easier for them to do so. I hope my children would say I have been a present, approachable and loving dad, but I haven't asked them today just in case.
Although I do know my place in the family hierarchy. When my daughter was about four, she asked me who my favourite child was. Was it her or was it her younger brother? I said I love you both equally. That's like me asking who your favourite parent is. She went very quiet and I asked what was wrong. She said, I can't tell you dad. I don't want to make you sad.
So if I could give my 30 year old self starting out as a father one piece of advice about fatherhood, it would be do your best. Accept that you're human. I'm going to start crying here and you'll get things wrong. Try again and try to do better, because that approach in itself is a valuable lesson to show all children.
My dad was the first. He ran his own electrical business in Stirling. He wasn't then and he still isn't particularly good at talking about emotional connection. He taught mainly by example work hard, treat people properly and earn their trust. I helped out in his shop from a young age alongside characters like Colin, Keith, Andy and Bill, and I doubt any of them ever went to work thinking they were going to be positive male role models.
But I was watching. Of course, when we talk about positive male role models, there is one relationship at the heart of this debate fathers and their children. When my wife and I brought our daughter home from the hospital, we carried the car seat, unclipped it, and carried it into the house. We sat on the couch, the car seat was on the carpet in front of us, and we stared at this tiny baby. And I looked at my wife and I said, what the hell do we do now? And we both burst out laughing.
I think it was laughter. It may have been hyperventilating, but we worked it out, as parents do, and I can look back now and admit that I wasn't as supportive in those first weeks as Anne would have wanted me to be. I felt a huge pressure to get back to work. I was self-employed at the time, so when I read that financial pressure is the biggest barrier fathers identified to taking more leave, I recognize something of my own experience in that when our children were young, I presented a radio show Monday to Friday, and Anne worked as a radio journalist Saturday and Sunday.
That was how we kept two careers going, raising a family and paying the bills for my parents generation. Many families could be supported by one salary for my generation. Perhaps you could manage it at a stretch. For my children's generation, two salaries are not a choice but a necessity. If we are content with this economic model, then we have to make it easier for fathers to take their share of the parenting responsibility.
That means looking seriously at paternity leave, including the financial barriers to taking it and the position of self-employed fathers. This isn't simply about fathers. If we want mothers and fathers to have equal opportunities in the workplace, we need to make it possible for them to take a more equal share at home. The two go together. That connection between fathers taking on more care and tackling the motherhood penalty is an important one. I would go further.
We need to look at the wider economics of family life too. And for me that means housing, building more council houses and reducing the cost of putting a roof over a family's head is a key family policy. Because the less pressure there is on the family budget, the more choices parents have about work, child care and that most precious commodity their time. But there is something else I think we should say in this debate, not just about positive male role models, but to those who might be thinking about doing something a little more formal, such as volunteering with a charity or a group, it is hugely rewarding.
We all want a sense of belonging. We all want to feel that we are getting something from and giving something to our families and to our communities. There is something profoundly rewarding about watching a child develop, find their confidence, form their own views and gradually become the next generation. So perhaps we should get better at asking men to step forward and making it easier for them to do so. I hope my children would say I have been a present, approachable and loving dad, but I haven't asked them today just in case.
Although I do know my place in the family hierarchy. When my daughter was about four, she asked me who my favourite child was. Was it her or was it her younger brother? I said I love you both equally. That's like me asking who your favourite parent is. She went very quiet and I asked what was wrong. She said, I can't tell you dad. I don't want to make you sad.
So if I could give my 30 year old self starting out as a father one piece of advice about fatherhood, it would be do your best. Accept that you're human. I'm going to start crying here and you'll get things wrong. Try again and try to do better, because that approach in itself is a valuable lesson to show all children.
15:52
15:52
Speaker 20
-
Speaker 20
Thank you, Miss Hobhouse, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the member for Bishop Auckland on securing this important debate, and those who have spoken so far with such meaningful and touching speeches that we've been listening to the role of fathers and positive role models is more important than ever in our society today. Our country has so many things better than it used to years ago, with better housing, physical health care, and quality of life than previous generations.
However, it is also a country in which old certainties are being eroded. Amongst those challenges include, of course, social media and the toxic constant of online harms. It is also feature the challenge to young people of finding secure, meaningful work and somewhere to live, and good mental health. How these societal developments impact our children clearly demonstrates the need for positive male role models and parenting provision in Britain and around the world. So what can we do to help make fathers more engaged and present in the lives of our children? Better paternity pay would undoubtedly feature.
This week has seen the publication of the report Economic and Social Benefits of Enhanced Paternity Leave. The UK statutory paternity leave is the worst in Europe, as we have heard, with two weeks leave paid at less than half the minimum wage. And this is truly shocking. The evidence is mounting that substantial, well-paid paternity leave is the key to unlocking better outcomes in the UK. Better paternity leave reduces postpartum depression rates, reduces the gender pay gap in the workplace, improves children's performance at schools and enhances fathers wellbeing.
British parents deserve to be accommodated and supported in the workplace, and to have the opportunity to equally share parenthood between them, leading to a more prosperous country for us all. We cannot discuss the importance of role models and present fathers if we do not discuss the measures that we can take to facilitate this. Improving paternity leave is the first step towards recognising fathers as equally important parents. The challenge to our young people and the risk of becoming Neet, not in education, employment or training, has become ever more worrying for young fathers and those they parent.
Alan Milburn has recently published a report diagnosing the problem and it makes for very concerning reading. Chair, the centre for Social Justice, reported back in April that a lack of male role models is in part responsible for teenage boys collapsing happiness and well-being. The report found that male volunteers in sports and leisure clubs are falling, and there are now 1000 fewer youth clubs today than there were 15 years ago. Something that I have seen in my own constituency of Watford.
The report also found that, tragically, more young boys grow up in the UK today with a smartphone than a father figure in the home. Is it any wonder that young boys are turning to alternative male role models online and falling down the toxic manosphere rabbit hole? We cannot rescue this generation from online extreme hate and declining school performance without filling the gaps that have been created in their lives. We must be investing in more clubs, sports teams and youth centres so that our boys get the same socialisation and learning opportunities as previous generations.
In conclusion, chair fathers and positive role models have a vital part to play in ensuring the physical and mental health of our children and the ability for them to experience high quality education and find meaningful work.
However, it is also a country in which old certainties are being eroded. Amongst those challenges include, of course, social media and the toxic constant of online harms. It is also feature the challenge to young people of finding secure, meaningful work and somewhere to live, and good mental health. How these societal developments impact our children clearly demonstrates the need for positive male role models and parenting provision in Britain and around the world. So what can we do to help make fathers more engaged and present in the lives of our children? Better paternity pay would undoubtedly feature.
This week has seen the publication of the report Economic and Social Benefits of Enhanced Paternity Leave. The UK statutory paternity leave is the worst in Europe, as we have heard, with two weeks leave paid at less than half the minimum wage. And this is truly shocking. The evidence is mounting that substantial, well-paid paternity leave is the key to unlocking better outcomes in the UK. Better paternity leave reduces postpartum depression rates, reduces the gender pay gap in the workplace, improves children's performance at schools and enhances fathers wellbeing.
British parents deserve to be accommodated and supported in the workplace, and to have the opportunity to equally share parenthood between them, leading to a more prosperous country for us all. We cannot discuss the importance of role models and present fathers if we do not discuss the measures that we can take to facilitate this. Improving paternity leave is the first step towards recognising fathers as equally important parents. The challenge to our young people and the risk of becoming Neet, not in education, employment or training, has become ever more worrying for young fathers and those they parent.
Alan Milburn has recently published a report diagnosing the problem and it makes for very concerning reading. Chair, the centre for Social Justice, reported back in April that a lack of male role models is in part responsible for teenage boys collapsing happiness and well-being. The report found that male volunteers in sports and leisure clubs are falling, and there are now 1000 fewer youth clubs today than there were 15 years ago. Something that I have seen in my own constituency of Watford.
The report also found that, tragically, more young boys grow up in the UK today with a smartphone than a father figure in the home. Is it any wonder that young boys are turning to alternative male role models online and falling down the toxic manosphere rabbit hole? We cannot rescue this generation from online extreme hate and declining school performance without filling the gaps that have been created in their lives. We must be investing in more clubs, sports teams and youth centres so that our boys get the same socialisation and learning opportunities as previous generations.
In conclusion, chair fathers and positive role models have a vital part to play in ensuring the physical and mental health of our children and the ability for them to experience high quality education and find meaningful work.
15:56
15:56
15:56
Speaker 21
-
Speaker 21
Thank you, Miss Hobhouse. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the chair today. And I congratulate the honourable member for Bishop Auckland for bringing this really important debate. There is a contradiction between the widely shared agreement, and certainly in this room, of the vital importance of a positive male role model in shaping young lives, and the lack of support, services and policy to support that. But let me say something equally important at the outset a child does not need a father in the house to flourish.
Children raised by single mothers by two mothers, by grandmothers or kinship carers are not children with something missing. I represent many such families and we have heard powerful testimony on that today. They are doing an extraordinary job, often with less support than they deserve. What children benefit from is care, stability and good examples of how to be in the world. It is whether every child has adults around them modelling something worth copying.
But a good role model has to first be a present one. And presence is not simply a question of character, it is also a question of how we structure our society. If we want fathers to be there in the earliest weeks and years, we have to build a society that fosters this through policies including paternity leave. And the evidence on why this matters is strong. Research led by the University of Leeds, found that children whose fathers regularly drew play, played and read with them at the age of three did better at school by age five and that fathers involvement at five improved key stage assessment scores at age seven.
That effect held regardless of the child's gender, ethnicity, age in the school year or household income. And we know that couples separate. So for separating couples, we can reduce conflict with better early support, perhaps by via family hubs. On the Women and Equalities Select Committee, we have examined the impacts of paternity and shared parental leave. We recommended raising paternity pay to the level of maternity pay for the first six weeks.
That's 90% of average earnings and setting out a pathway to six weeks of paid statutory paternity leave over this Parliament. Unfortunately, the government did not commit to taking up this recommendation as a select committee. We visited Iceland last year and had the opportunity to learn from and hear about one of the most progressive parental leave policies in the world. Iceland's parental leave is framed explicitly around ensuring children can receive care from both parents or carers, and enabling both women and men to combine family life with work.
It is grounded in both gender equality and children's rights. Countries that provide fathers and co-parents with substantial, well-paid leave generally have better gender pay gaps, around four percentage points smaller than those that offer less than six weeks of leave, increasing women's workforce participation and earnings while reducing pay inequality should be a long term priority, and it goes hand in hand with providing good male role models. I wonder if that phrase was less awkward. We might talk about it a bit more.
Role modelling does not stop, of course, at the front door. Only around 24% of teachers in England are men. In primary schools it's 14%, and in early years it is only 3%. These are the professions built around care, patience and emotional literacy, and we have allowed them to become, in practice, women's work. That says something to every child at school. It teaches boys that caring is not for them, and it means that children who most need a steady male adult in their lives are even less likely to find one.
Patriarchal values upheld by society have taught boys that care is weakness, that what is associated with women or femininity is worth less, and that asking for help is failure. Before I came to this place, I worked in a domestic abuse refuge. I saw what happens when the male role model in a child's life is a violent one. Many children in that refuge had witnessed violence at home, usually directed by a father or a mother's partner at her.
That is role modelling too. And in order to prevent the trauma from those circumstances affecting the next generation, we need to ensure young boys in particular have at least one stable, secure, positive male role model in their life . And we need to enable a system that keeps children safe from violence in the home. We have spent as a society over a century examining what it means to be a woman. We have barely begun the equivalent conversation about being a man, and so others have stepped in with a much uglier answer.
We tell girls that feelings are okay and it's good to talk. We tell boys the opposite that strength is silence, and the only acceptable emotion is anger. Talking is what girls do, and what girls do is weak. So when a boy has a question he's too embarrassed to ask his dad. He doesn't ask anyone. He types it into a search bar. November's research, surveying over 3000 young men, found nearly two thirds regularly engage with men and masculinity influencers, and those who did reported worse mental health, less willingness to prioritise their mental health, and higher rates of risk taking behaviour such as steroid use.
As a society, we have grown accustomed to male violence in pornography, on television, in the street. This content part of the manosphere is landing because often men and boys sorry, because it offers men and boys a story about themselves. And still 1 in 10 girls aged 11 to 16 have missed or avoided school to escape sexual harassment. And it is more likely still for girls who are neurodivergent, disabled or LGBTQ. Plus, the manosphere results in worse outcomes for everyone.
When we build a country where men can be present, caring and visible in the home, in the nursery, in the classroom, in the youth club, we give boys something better to become. And as a result, we all gain.
Children raised by single mothers by two mothers, by grandmothers or kinship carers are not children with something missing. I represent many such families and we have heard powerful testimony on that today. They are doing an extraordinary job, often with less support than they deserve. What children benefit from is care, stability and good examples of how to be in the world. It is whether every child has adults around them modelling something worth copying.
But a good role model has to first be a present one. And presence is not simply a question of character, it is also a question of how we structure our society. If we want fathers to be there in the earliest weeks and years, we have to build a society that fosters this through policies including paternity leave. And the evidence on why this matters is strong. Research led by the University of Leeds, found that children whose fathers regularly drew play, played and read with them at the age of three did better at school by age five and that fathers involvement at five improved key stage assessment scores at age seven.
That effect held regardless of the child's gender, ethnicity, age in the school year or household income. And we know that couples separate. So for separating couples, we can reduce conflict with better early support, perhaps by via family hubs. On the Women and Equalities Select Committee, we have examined the impacts of paternity and shared parental leave. We recommended raising paternity pay to the level of maternity pay for the first six weeks.
That's 90% of average earnings and setting out a pathway to six weeks of paid statutory paternity leave over this Parliament. Unfortunately, the government did not commit to taking up this recommendation as a select committee. We visited Iceland last year and had the opportunity to learn from and hear about one of the most progressive parental leave policies in the world. Iceland's parental leave is framed explicitly around ensuring children can receive care from both parents or carers, and enabling both women and men to combine family life with work.
It is grounded in both gender equality and children's rights. Countries that provide fathers and co-parents with substantial, well-paid leave generally have better gender pay gaps, around four percentage points smaller than those that offer less than six weeks of leave, increasing women's workforce participation and earnings while reducing pay inequality should be a long term priority, and it goes hand in hand with providing good male role models. I wonder if that phrase was less awkward. We might talk about it a bit more.
Role modelling does not stop, of course, at the front door. Only around 24% of teachers in England are men. In primary schools it's 14%, and in early years it is only 3%. These are the professions built around care, patience and emotional literacy, and we have allowed them to become, in practice, women's work. That says something to every child at school. It teaches boys that caring is not for them, and it means that children who most need a steady male adult in their lives are even less likely to find one.
Patriarchal values upheld by society have taught boys that care is weakness, that what is associated with women or femininity is worth less, and that asking for help is failure. Before I came to this place, I worked in a domestic abuse refuge. I saw what happens when the male role model in a child's life is a violent one. Many children in that refuge had witnessed violence at home, usually directed by a father or a mother's partner at her.
That is role modelling too. And in order to prevent the trauma from those circumstances affecting the next generation, we need to ensure young boys in particular have at least one stable, secure, positive male role model in their life . And we need to enable a system that keeps children safe from violence in the home. We have spent as a society over a century examining what it means to be a woman. We have barely begun the equivalent conversation about being a man, and so others have stepped in with a much uglier answer.
We tell girls that feelings are okay and it's good to talk. We tell boys the opposite that strength is silence, and the only acceptable emotion is anger. Talking is what girls do, and what girls do is weak. So when a boy has a question he's too embarrassed to ask his dad. He doesn't ask anyone. He types it into a search bar. November's research, surveying over 3000 young men, found nearly two thirds regularly engage with men and masculinity influencers, and those who did reported worse mental health, less willingness to prioritise their mental health, and higher rates of risk taking behaviour such as steroid use.
As a society, we have grown accustomed to male violence in pornography, on television, in the street. This content part of the manosphere is landing because often men and boys sorry, because it offers men and boys a story about themselves. And still 1 in 10 girls aged 11 to 16 have missed or avoided school to escape sexual harassment. And it is more likely still for girls who are neurodivergent, disabled or LGBTQ. Plus, the manosphere results in worse outcomes for everyone.
When we build a country where men can be present, caring and visible in the home, in the nursery, in the classroom, in the youth club, we give boys something better to become. And as a result, we all gain.
16:03
16:03
16:03
Speaker 22
-
Speaker 22
a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. And like other speakers before me, I congratulate the honourable member for Bishop Auckland for securing this backbench debate, which I was very pleased to be able to support several months ago, and I'm glad to be able to take the front bench role in responding as well. We need to be honest about what the evidence tells us. Good fathers make an overwhelmingly positive contribution to their children's lives. Yet around 2.5 million children in this country have no father figure at home.
By the age of 17, 47% of young people are no longer living with both parents at the same address. The relationship, though, between a child and their father matters. For sons. A father can demonstrate how to be a man, how to behave around women, how to raise a family of their own one day. For daughters, a father can embody the positive attributes that she looks for in a man when she is older, making her less vulnerable to those who would exploit or mistreat her children with secure relationships with their fathers are less likely to experience depression, anxiety, low self esteem or self-harm.
Now, I'm very fortunate to have grown up with a strong father figure. My dad, Mike, and I have to say I do slightly disagree with the honourable member for Bishop Auckland about Christmas Eve, because Christmas Eve is the day that since I was a four year old, my dad and I would go shopping together to buy the presents for my mum. He bought them. I then, like a bit of a silly girl, would go home and wrap them all for him.
Which I have to admit, at the age of 46, I still do. But it's part of that story and that bond I have with my dad, knowing that each Christmas Eve, whether it's lunch and as we've got older and alcoholic drink or two, we'd go out together and do that shopping and then head home. And my little sister never gets to do it. So that's definitely my little relationship with my dad. However, unfortunately, not everybody gets to have that experience.
And one UK study found that 14 year old girls who did not have a close relationship with their father or a father figure, were at significantly greater risk of mental health difficulties. Research has also linked secure father daughter relationships with better educational and career outcomes, stronger social skills and better mental health for sons. Close relationships with fathers are associated with a reduced risk of antisocial and criminal behaviour, along with other risky behaviours, and these are lifelong outcomes which impact lives long after the child has turned 18.
When we look at the wider challenges facing boys and men, this topic becomes even harder to ignore. The Missing Men report tells us that over 450,000 young men, aged 16 to 24 in England were not in education, employment or training in the final quarter of 2025. That's nearly 1 in 7 at school, just 61% of boys reached a good level of development by age 5 in 20 24 to 25, compared with 75% of girls. Three quarters of children in custody have also reported having an absent father.
None of this means that an absent father automatically causes poor outcomes. We must stress that this afternoon there are many factors involved, but it should make us ask a straightforward question are we doing enough to support fathers to be involved in their children's lives? Too often, fathers seem to be an afterthought. That needs to change. We need to look at what happens when relationships break down. There is a widespread perception that the family courts make it difficult for fathers to maintain a meaningful relationship with their children.
There is a presumption that it will always be the mother who takes custody of the children, with a father permitted to see them once a fortnight if he is fortunate. Meanwhile, that same child has easy access to content from harmful male online influences, starting as soon as they get their first smartphone, if not before. We are replacing a positive male role model with an inherently negative one and then claiming to be shocked by the results.
Where there are safeguarding concerns, though, the child's welfare must come first. But where there is a safe, loving and willing father, the starting point should be meaningful involvement and contact as much as possible. The government's current position, through clause 17 of the Courts and Tribunals Bill, is to repeal the statutory presumption that a child's welfare is generally furthered by the involvement of both parents. Existing law already allows courts to restrict unsafe contact, however, revealing the presumption without a suitable replacement, such as a child centered parental relationship test, could lead to greater inconsistency and conflict.
It may also weaken children's relationships with safe parents. A child should have real men in their lives. Fathers, grandfathers, teachers, coaches and mentors can show them what responsibility and good character look like. Which brings me to the language we use. I believe we need to ditch the worst excesses of identity politics when it comes to boys and men. For too long, the phrase toxic masculinity has been used in a way that blurs the distinction between masculinity and genuinely harmful behaviour.
Let me be clear, though violence is wrong. Abuse is wrong, cruelty is wrong, misogyny is wrong. But masculinity is not wrong. Masculinity should be an extremely positive force for good. There is nothing toxic about being strong, courageous, ambitious, competitive, protective , or determined when combined with responsibility, self-control and respect. These are exactly the attributes which enable society to flourish. Now, in Plymouth, where I am a Member of Parliament, there is a great network called Man Culture which puts these principles into practice.
Man culture organises workshops for men right across the city, tackling issues such as masculinity and preventing male violence against women and girls. It seeks to address issues identified by the Plymouth Violence Against Women and Girls Commission, which I chaired just a few years ago. This work came about as a direct response to two tragedies in the city the incel inspired Killem shootings, where five people and the shooter died, and the brutal murder of a young woman who was abducted from a bus stop a few months later.
The report recommended work with young boys, too. If we want to challenge harmful behaviors, we need to be having honest conversations and that starts young. We should be teaching boys how to use strength responsibly, not teaching them to be ashamed of having strength in the first place. We should be teaching boys. They can use their strength to build things rather than use it to tear things down. The answer is not to tell boys that masculinity is the problem.
The answer is to give them examples of worth men worth becoming. And fathers are one of those most important sources of that example. A good father can show a son that strength does not mean aggression, that confidence does not mean arrogance. And that responsibility means keeping your word and looking after the people you love. We should also recognise that positive male role models are needed beyond the home.
As has already been mentioned, only 14% of nursery and primary teachers in England are men. I'm very proud that my brother is one of those 14%, but that's not high enough. We need these young men, these men as teachers in those early years and primary settings. These problems will not be solved by another strategy document alone. Prevention starts earlier. It starts with families, fathers and communities, and with giving boys a sense of purpose, responsibility and belonging.
I want to briefly pay tribute to the men right across my constituency who volunteer in scouting groups and uniform groups. I think they are some of those men that we need to be recognising and being grateful for, but it's not enough and we need to make sure that we do even more. But this whole conversation does not mean turning this into a competition between men and women. It means supporting mothers and fathers, working together to create something greater than the sum of its individual parts.
It means ensuring family services properly involve fathers where they can safely contribute. It means making sure children can maintain meaningful relationships with both parents, wherever that is safe and appropriate. So, Miss Hobhouse, this debate is not about pretending fathers are the answers to every problem, but they are an important part, the absence of which makes everything else more difficult. And government policy policy should recognise that if we want stronger families, better outcomes for children and boys who grow into responsible men, we need to stop treating fathers as an optional extra.
Fathers matter. Masculinity matters, male role models matter, and it's time our politics treated them that way. Now, before I sit down, I just want to ask the minister two quick questions. My hon. Friend from Bosworth mentioned what the former prime minister, Keir Starmer, had asked the previous deputy prime minister, the Right Honourable member for Tottenham, to take on in terms of a national men and boys summit, and both he and I would be very grateful to hear what has happened since.
Is it still going ahead and when will we hear some more information about it?
By the age of 17, 47% of young people are no longer living with both parents at the same address. The relationship, though, between a child and their father matters. For sons. A father can demonstrate how to be a man, how to behave around women, how to raise a family of their own one day. For daughters, a father can embody the positive attributes that she looks for in a man when she is older, making her less vulnerable to those who would exploit or mistreat her children with secure relationships with their fathers are less likely to experience depression, anxiety, low self esteem or self-harm.
Now, I'm very fortunate to have grown up with a strong father figure. My dad, Mike, and I have to say I do slightly disagree with the honourable member for Bishop Auckland about Christmas Eve, because Christmas Eve is the day that since I was a four year old, my dad and I would go shopping together to buy the presents for my mum. He bought them. I then, like a bit of a silly girl, would go home and wrap them all for him.
Which I have to admit, at the age of 46, I still do. But it's part of that story and that bond I have with my dad, knowing that each Christmas Eve, whether it's lunch and as we've got older and alcoholic drink or two, we'd go out together and do that shopping and then head home. And my little sister never gets to do it. So that's definitely my little relationship with my dad. However, unfortunately, not everybody gets to have that experience.
And one UK study found that 14 year old girls who did not have a close relationship with their father or a father figure, were at significantly greater risk of mental health difficulties. Research has also linked secure father daughter relationships with better educational and career outcomes, stronger social skills and better mental health for sons. Close relationships with fathers are associated with a reduced risk of antisocial and criminal behaviour, along with other risky behaviours, and these are lifelong outcomes which impact lives long after the child has turned 18.
When we look at the wider challenges facing boys and men, this topic becomes even harder to ignore. The Missing Men report tells us that over 450,000 young men, aged 16 to 24 in England were not in education, employment or training in the final quarter of 2025. That's nearly 1 in 7 at school, just 61% of boys reached a good level of development by age 5 in 20 24 to 25, compared with 75% of girls. Three quarters of children in custody have also reported having an absent father.
None of this means that an absent father automatically causes poor outcomes. We must stress that this afternoon there are many factors involved, but it should make us ask a straightforward question are we doing enough to support fathers to be involved in their children's lives? Too often, fathers seem to be an afterthought. That needs to change. We need to look at what happens when relationships break down. There is a widespread perception that the family courts make it difficult for fathers to maintain a meaningful relationship with their children.
There is a presumption that it will always be the mother who takes custody of the children, with a father permitted to see them once a fortnight if he is fortunate. Meanwhile, that same child has easy access to content from harmful male online influences, starting as soon as they get their first smartphone, if not before. We are replacing a positive male role model with an inherently negative one and then claiming to be shocked by the results.
Where there are safeguarding concerns, though, the child's welfare must come first. But where there is a safe, loving and willing father, the starting point should be meaningful involvement and contact as much as possible. The government's current position, through clause 17 of the Courts and Tribunals Bill, is to repeal the statutory presumption that a child's welfare is generally furthered by the involvement of both parents. Existing law already allows courts to restrict unsafe contact, however, revealing the presumption without a suitable replacement, such as a child centered parental relationship test, could lead to greater inconsistency and conflict.
It may also weaken children's relationships with safe parents. A child should have real men in their lives. Fathers, grandfathers, teachers, coaches and mentors can show them what responsibility and good character look like. Which brings me to the language we use. I believe we need to ditch the worst excesses of identity politics when it comes to boys and men. For too long, the phrase toxic masculinity has been used in a way that blurs the distinction between masculinity and genuinely harmful behaviour.
Let me be clear, though violence is wrong. Abuse is wrong, cruelty is wrong, misogyny is wrong. But masculinity is not wrong. Masculinity should be an extremely positive force for good. There is nothing toxic about being strong, courageous, ambitious, competitive, protective , or determined when combined with responsibility, self-control and respect. These are exactly the attributes which enable society to flourish. Now, in Plymouth, where I am a Member of Parliament, there is a great network called Man Culture which puts these principles into practice.
Man culture organises workshops for men right across the city, tackling issues such as masculinity and preventing male violence against women and girls. It seeks to address issues identified by the Plymouth Violence Against Women and Girls Commission, which I chaired just a few years ago. This work came about as a direct response to two tragedies in the city the incel inspired Killem shootings, where five people and the shooter died, and the brutal murder of a young woman who was abducted from a bus stop a few months later.
The report recommended work with young boys, too. If we want to challenge harmful behaviors, we need to be having honest conversations and that starts young. We should be teaching boys how to use strength responsibly, not teaching them to be ashamed of having strength in the first place. We should be teaching boys. They can use their strength to build things rather than use it to tear things down. The answer is not to tell boys that masculinity is the problem.
The answer is to give them examples of worth men worth becoming. And fathers are one of those most important sources of that example. A good father can show a son that strength does not mean aggression, that confidence does not mean arrogance. And that responsibility means keeping your word and looking after the people you love. We should also recognise that positive male role models are needed beyond the home.
As has already been mentioned, only 14% of nursery and primary teachers in England are men. I'm very proud that my brother is one of those 14%, but that's not high enough. We need these young men, these men as teachers in those early years and primary settings. These problems will not be solved by another strategy document alone. Prevention starts earlier. It starts with families, fathers and communities, and with giving boys a sense of purpose, responsibility and belonging.
I want to briefly pay tribute to the men right across my constituency who volunteer in scouting groups and uniform groups. I think they are some of those men that we need to be recognising and being grateful for, but it's not enough and we need to make sure that we do even more. But this whole conversation does not mean turning this into a competition between men and women. It means supporting mothers and fathers, working together to create something greater than the sum of its individual parts.
It means ensuring family services properly involve fathers where they can safely contribute. It means making sure children can maintain meaningful relationships with both parents, wherever that is safe and appropriate. So, Miss Hobhouse, this debate is not about pretending fathers are the answers to every problem, but they are an important part, the absence of which makes everything else more difficult. And government policy policy should recognise that if we want stronger families, better outcomes for children and boys who grow into responsible men, we need to stop treating fathers as an optional extra.
Fathers matter. Masculinity matters, male role models matter, and it's time our politics treated them that way. Now, before I sit down, I just want to ask the minister two quick questions. My hon. Friend from Bosworth mentioned what the former prime minister, Keir Starmer, had asked the previous deputy prime minister, the Right Honourable member for Tottenham, to take on in terms of a national men and boys summit, and both he and I would be very grateful to hear what has happened since.
Is it still going ahead and when will we hear some more information about it?
16:12
16:12
16:12
Speaker 23
-
Speaker 23
Thank you. And it's an honour to serve under your chairmanship. I'm grateful to the honourable member for Bishop Auckland for bringing this issue in this debate to the House, and I'm cheered by the fact that since the general election, when I entered Parliament, I think nearly everyone on at least this side of the House and perhaps over there as well, entered Parliament. This issue has repeatedly been raised both here and in the main chamber, and I think that's something that we should be, on a cross-party basis, heartened that we're talking about these issues and making sure they have the prominence that they deserve.
And we've had a number of really thoughtful and important contributions. But if I may, I was particularly moved by my hon. Friend the member for Stirling and Strath, Alan, for what he said about being a father, being a parent. And actually, sometimes, as we all do, feeling like you're failing as a father and a parent. And that's actually incredibly important emotion that we as public servants have to consider when we think about public policy, because so often fathers feel that they are perhaps unable to provide for their children, whether that materially or emotionally.
And we have to think about how we can, as a society and as a government, try and support men through that difficult period and parents through that difficult period. And I think it's a very important point that is not often made. So I'm very grateful to him for that. I want to answer directly my humble the honourable member for South West Devon and indeed the member for Hinckley and Bosworth in his question that when I was reappointed to my role, it was made explicitly clear by the Prime Minister that this men and boys cross-government agenda was going to be right at the heart of his government.
And indeed, the conversations I've had with him, both prior to him entering Downing Street and Post, have only cemented that we will be undertaking a summit in due course at the right moment, and actually a change in Prime Minister and the new government gives us an opportunity to work out what the best mechanism for that is, because holding a meeting, holding a summit, whether in Downing Street or somewhere else, is one thing. But actually, could we be more collaborative? Could we be more interactive across the country? So we're looking at different mechanisms by to make that a real moment for the country to talk about these issues, and would be genuinely very open to suggestions on a cross-party basis about how we can get that conversation going out of this building and in the country, and perhaps not just in Westminster, but also around the country as well.
So that's an ongoing discussion, and no doubt we'll be able to update the House. And look, it's a great honour to be speaking in this debate. Personally. I'm a father of a three year old girl. She turned three just yesterday. And I think I speak for all parents at the moment. You find out you're going to become one, your life is never quite the same again. And and that's a, that's a correct feeling that you have because it never is.
But also on a professional level, every day since I've become a member of Parliament, I've struck by the incredible work that organisations and groups do to support men in my constituency better. Today in Kiveton Park, Andys Man Club, which operates across the country. I know we have a lot of Andy's Man Club supporters in the chamber today that operate in Maltby and Bramley and Kiveton Park and Dinnington Boxing Club. Sport is such a big part of this conversation about reaching men, supporting men, and they do brilliant work in my constituency as well and as everyone, all members have said, fathers clearly matter and where a father is not present, another male role model can make an extraordinary difference to a grandad, a stepdad, an uncle, a teacher, a youth worker, a football or rugby coach and a mentor.
And indeed, the honourable member for South West Devon raised the issue of teaching, and it struck. It always strikes me that 1 in 3 primary schools doesn't have a male teacher, and that is a massive problem that I know colleagues in the Department for education are trying to. Change, but I think we all have a role as as parliamentarians, indeed society to try and change perhaps attitudes to teaching in particularly early years, because it's absolutely vital.
And in terms of mentorship, my hon. Friend the member for Wolverhampton North East talked about the importance of mentors. Absolutely, and I'm having discussions. There's a lot of good work happening already, which you touched upon in your constituency. My hon. Friend touched upon in her constituency, but indeed, we know that Gareth Southgate, many of us, would have seen the documentary as working on a mentorship scheme. Other great organisations like Football Beyond Borders, and indeed are looking at working and seeing what's happening internationally.
We know that in California, brilliant work is doing to recruit 10,000 new mentors to mentor young men and boys. So I think there's a big opportunity there because there's already good work happening. What can we do as a government to turbocharge that, make sure it's happening across the country, and watch the space on that one, because I'm looking forward to developing it further. And we know, as has been touched upon in this debate, that that that men are are sometimes being bombarded with competing ideas about what it means to be a man.
And the government has recently issued new guidance, which schools are following from this month that rightly talks about young people developing positive conceptions of masculinity and femininity, and learn from positive male role models. And we won't counter the kind of toxic masculinity which we've spoken about in this debate by simply wagging our fingers at teenage boys, or telling them just to get off their phone, or suggesting all men are evil or all masculine traits are wrong, we have to offer something positive and something better, something in the real world, to get them away from that narrow online space and to participating again in society.
Because if we cannot give boys a convincing idea of masculinity built on confidence and kindness, responsibility and respect, and a sense of purpose, the algorithm will only be too eager to provide one instead. And there is a wider challenge, and this is fuelled by a really difficult backdrop for men and boys in our country, and public policy must be made through that lens. We know that boys fall behind girls at every single stage of education, from early years through to GCSE and beyond.
Boys are more than twice as likely to be excluded from school. They make up a far larger proportion of the population, an issue that is, of course, being prioritised by this government. We heard that my hon. Friend the member for Watford spoke about that and actually the pay gap, the gender pay gap, which is a huge systemic issue in our country and the Treasury is doing good work to try and narrow that more generally is in reverse for those aged 18 to 24.
Now, that doesn't mean that we take our foot off the pedal in trying to get equality for women, but it does mean that we have to consider that age group and what is happening for young men in our labour market. And I know that this government will. We know that men continue to have a lower life expectancy than women, and we know that suicide is still one of the leading causes of death for men under 50, a fact that is particularly poignant today.
It's World Suicide Prevention Day, and again, that was mentioned by my hon. Friend the member for Truro and Falmouth. The fact that we lose so many men to suicide, 75% of suicides are men. And so we need to look when we think about mental health provision again, it doesn't mean that we ignore women by any means, but we have to look at the facts and the data, what we're being told. This is a particular issue and it should inform policy.
So across a lot of areas health, education, employment, family life and more, men and boys are experiencing poorer outcomes, all part of a broader pattern that requires a broader and cross-government response. And that's why my role as the minister, working across government for men and boys is a cross-government one. And we also know that many of the industries which once provided generations of men with secure work and identity have declined, and actually work and working class communities in particular, was mentioned by my hon.
Friend the member for York outer, and I see that in my own constituency. I'm hugely proud to represent many towns, former mining towns built on the craft of working class communities and often working class men. And we shouldn't, of course, romanticize the past. Many of the gender expectations of previous generations were highly restrictive, particularly for women, and nobody would want to turn the clock back completely. But we do have to understand what disappeared when those industries and that post-industrial period occurred, routes into skilled work institutions, social connection and status, and for many men, a sense that they had an almost automatic, useful role to play in society, in our economy.
Where do boys and young men find that purpose? Today? When I speak to men and to organisations working with them, three things come up again a need for purpose, belonging and connection, and the decline of our industrial base in this country has greatly challenged that. And we've got to look for new mechanisms. We can't just turn back the clock. And again, that's partly economic policy, but no doubt social policy as well. And it all goes back to this theme of this debate, why fathers and role models are so important, not as a social ideal, but as people who are present in young men's lives to set an example, provide stability, and who can help anchor them when life becomes difficult.
It's also why supporting fathers is preventative, strengthening relationships early on, stopping problems from taking root and always with an eye on the longer term prize. Because the boys we support today will become the fathers, partners and role models of tomorrow. And this government is doing that in several ways, and I'm proud to be part of a pro-family government, something that I'm very pleased to say explicitly. We're supporting families from the very beginning.
We want family services to be accessible and welcoming to all parents, and for fathers to feel that support is for them, too. That includes recognising that the transition to fatherhood itself can be really challenging and challenging, and make sure fathers are supported during those critical months around birth. We've mentioned Best Start family hubs and our wider family support services that no doubt my friend the Bishop, the member for Bishop Auckland will be pushing us to go further and faster. And he mentioned parenting courses.
I'm a big fan of parenting courses. There's really good evidence in Australia at the use of parenting courses, online parenting courses, and actually it's less about telling parents how to parent, and it's more about giving them the opportunity just to take stock, have a moment, consider how they are parenting, whether their routine and their life is is building a healthy family environment. I think we could all do with that every now and again. So I think those parenting courses is sometimes the wrong term, but some moment for families to have a consideration as to how they are raising their children and that the best Start Family Hubs agenda is reaching men in ways that hopefully work for them, including flexible weekend provision, dedicated groups and outreach through trusted community settings.
And we are no doubt members will be on this side of the House. Will be pleased to hear. Reviewing parental leave, looking carefully at how the system can better support working families and allow parents to play an active role during those crucial months. And we heard how important that was from my hon. Friend the member for High Peak and for Sittingbourne and Sheppey. Again, really powerful advocacy for that change. They'll know that the government are reviewing it and will return to Parliament early next year.
But no doubt the Chancellor will hear your cries even if he's not here today and will be noted. And we're also actively recognising the importance of positive role models and strong support networks more generally. And just yesterday I held a round table in Downing Street with a number of men's mental health charities on this issue of suicide prevention, to try and look at how we as a government can work with partners in the communities as part of our new agenda or developing agenda on devolution in place, because there's no point us in Whitehall saying things.
We've got to work with the organisations that actually deliver it, and too often public policy doesn't work for them. Yes.
And we've had a number of really thoughtful and important contributions. But if I may, I was particularly moved by my hon. Friend the member for Stirling and Strath, Alan, for what he said about being a father, being a parent. And actually, sometimes, as we all do, feeling like you're failing as a father and a parent. And that's actually incredibly important emotion that we as public servants have to consider when we think about public policy, because so often fathers feel that they are perhaps unable to provide for their children, whether that materially or emotionally.
And we have to think about how we can, as a society and as a government, try and support men through that difficult period and parents through that difficult period. And I think it's a very important point that is not often made. So I'm very grateful to him for that. I want to answer directly my humble the honourable member for South West Devon and indeed the member for Hinckley and Bosworth in his question that when I was reappointed to my role, it was made explicitly clear by the Prime Minister that this men and boys cross-government agenda was going to be right at the heart of his government.
And indeed, the conversations I've had with him, both prior to him entering Downing Street and Post, have only cemented that we will be undertaking a summit in due course at the right moment, and actually a change in Prime Minister and the new government gives us an opportunity to work out what the best mechanism for that is, because holding a meeting, holding a summit, whether in Downing Street or somewhere else, is one thing. But actually, could we be more collaborative? Could we be more interactive across the country? So we're looking at different mechanisms by to make that a real moment for the country to talk about these issues, and would be genuinely very open to suggestions on a cross-party basis about how we can get that conversation going out of this building and in the country, and perhaps not just in Westminster, but also around the country as well.
So that's an ongoing discussion, and no doubt we'll be able to update the House. And look, it's a great honour to be speaking in this debate. Personally. I'm a father of a three year old girl. She turned three just yesterday. And I think I speak for all parents at the moment. You find out you're going to become one, your life is never quite the same again. And and that's a, that's a correct feeling that you have because it never is.
But also on a professional level, every day since I've become a member of Parliament, I've struck by the incredible work that organisations and groups do to support men in my constituency better. Today in Kiveton Park, Andys Man Club, which operates across the country. I know we have a lot of Andy's Man Club supporters in the chamber today that operate in Maltby and Bramley and Kiveton Park and Dinnington Boxing Club. Sport is such a big part of this conversation about reaching men, supporting men, and they do brilliant work in my constituency as well and as everyone, all members have said, fathers clearly matter and where a father is not present, another male role model can make an extraordinary difference to a grandad, a stepdad, an uncle, a teacher, a youth worker, a football or rugby coach and a mentor.
And indeed, the honourable member for South West Devon raised the issue of teaching, and it struck. It always strikes me that 1 in 3 primary schools doesn't have a male teacher, and that is a massive problem that I know colleagues in the Department for education are trying to. Change, but I think we all have a role as as parliamentarians, indeed society to try and change perhaps attitudes to teaching in particularly early years, because it's absolutely vital.
And in terms of mentorship, my hon. Friend the member for Wolverhampton North East talked about the importance of mentors. Absolutely, and I'm having discussions. There's a lot of good work happening already, which you touched upon in your constituency. My hon. Friend touched upon in her constituency, but indeed, we know that Gareth Southgate, many of us, would have seen the documentary as working on a mentorship scheme. Other great organisations like Football Beyond Borders, and indeed are looking at working and seeing what's happening internationally.
We know that in California, brilliant work is doing to recruit 10,000 new mentors to mentor young men and boys. So I think there's a big opportunity there because there's already good work happening. What can we do as a government to turbocharge that, make sure it's happening across the country, and watch the space on that one, because I'm looking forward to developing it further. And we know, as has been touched upon in this debate, that that that men are are sometimes being bombarded with competing ideas about what it means to be a man.
And the government has recently issued new guidance, which schools are following from this month that rightly talks about young people developing positive conceptions of masculinity and femininity, and learn from positive male role models. And we won't counter the kind of toxic masculinity which we've spoken about in this debate by simply wagging our fingers at teenage boys, or telling them just to get off their phone, or suggesting all men are evil or all masculine traits are wrong, we have to offer something positive and something better, something in the real world, to get them away from that narrow online space and to participating again in society.
Because if we cannot give boys a convincing idea of masculinity built on confidence and kindness, responsibility and respect, and a sense of purpose, the algorithm will only be too eager to provide one instead. And there is a wider challenge, and this is fuelled by a really difficult backdrop for men and boys in our country, and public policy must be made through that lens. We know that boys fall behind girls at every single stage of education, from early years through to GCSE and beyond.
Boys are more than twice as likely to be excluded from school. They make up a far larger proportion of the population, an issue that is, of course, being prioritised by this government. We heard that my hon. Friend the member for Watford spoke about that and actually the pay gap, the gender pay gap, which is a huge systemic issue in our country and the Treasury is doing good work to try and narrow that more generally is in reverse for those aged 18 to 24.
Now, that doesn't mean that we take our foot off the pedal in trying to get equality for women, but it does mean that we have to consider that age group and what is happening for young men in our labour market. And I know that this government will. We know that men continue to have a lower life expectancy than women, and we know that suicide is still one of the leading causes of death for men under 50, a fact that is particularly poignant today.
It's World Suicide Prevention Day, and again, that was mentioned by my hon. Friend the member for Truro and Falmouth. The fact that we lose so many men to suicide, 75% of suicides are men. And so we need to look when we think about mental health provision again, it doesn't mean that we ignore women by any means, but we have to look at the facts and the data, what we're being told. This is a particular issue and it should inform policy.
So across a lot of areas health, education, employment, family life and more, men and boys are experiencing poorer outcomes, all part of a broader pattern that requires a broader and cross-government response. And that's why my role as the minister, working across government for men and boys is a cross-government one. And we also know that many of the industries which once provided generations of men with secure work and identity have declined, and actually work and working class communities in particular, was mentioned by my hon.
Friend the member for York outer, and I see that in my own constituency. I'm hugely proud to represent many towns, former mining towns built on the craft of working class communities and often working class men. And we shouldn't, of course, romanticize the past. Many of the gender expectations of previous generations were highly restrictive, particularly for women, and nobody would want to turn the clock back completely. But we do have to understand what disappeared when those industries and that post-industrial period occurred, routes into skilled work institutions, social connection and status, and for many men, a sense that they had an almost automatic, useful role to play in society, in our economy.
Where do boys and young men find that purpose? Today? When I speak to men and to organisations working with them, three things come up again a need for purpose, belonging and connection, and the decline of our industrial base in this country has greatly challenged that. And we've got to look for new mechanisms. We can't just turn back the clock. And again, that's partly economic policy, but no doubt social policy as well. And it all goes back to this theme of this debate, why fathers and role models are so important, not as a social ideal, but as people who are present in young men's lives to set an example, provide stability, and who can help anchor them when life becomes difficult.
It's also why supporting fathers is preventative, strengthening relationships early on, stopping problems from taking root and always with an eye on the longer term prize. Because the boys we support today will become the fathers, partners and role models of tomorrow. And this government is doing that in several ways, and I'm proud to be part of a pro-family government, something that I'm very pleased to say explicitly. We're supporting families from the very beginning.
We want family services to be accessible and welcoming to all parents, and for fathers to feel that support is for them, too. That includes recognising that the transition to fatherhood itself can be really challenging and challenging, and make sure fathers are supported during those critical months around birth. We've mentioned Best Start family hubs and our wider family support services that no doubt my friend the Bishop, the member for Bishop Auckland will be pushing us to go further and faster. And he mentioned parenting courses.
I'm a big fan of parenting courses. There's really good evidence in Australia at the use of parenting courses, online parenting courses, and actually it's less about telling parents how to parent, and it's more about giving them the opportunity just to take stock, have a moment, consider how they are parenting, whether their routine and their life is is building a healthy family environment. I think we could all do with that every now and again. So I think those parenting courses is sometimes the wrong term, but some moment for families to have a consideration as to how they are raising their children and that the best Start Family Hubs agenda is reaching men in ways that hopefully work for them, including flexible weekend provision, dedicated groups and outreach through trusted community settings.
And we are no doubt members will be on this side of the House. Will be pleased to hear. Reviewing parental leave, looking carefully at how the system can better support working families and allow parents to play an active role during those crucial months. And we heard how important that was from my hon. Friend the member for High Peak and for Sittingbourne and Sheppey. Again, really powerful advocacy for that change. They'll know that the government are reviewing it and will return to Parliament early next year.
But no doubt the Chancellor will hear your cries even if he's not here today and will be noted. And we're also actively recognising the importance of positive role models and strong support networks more generally. And just yesterday I held a round table in Downing Street with a number of men's mental health charities on this issue of suicide prevention, to try and look at how we as a government can work with partners in the communities as part of our new agenda or developing agenda on devolution in place, because there's no point us in Whitehall saying things.
We've got to work with the organisations that actually deliver it, and too often public policy doesn't work for them. Yes.
16:24
Speaker 9
-
Speaker 9
In my contribution I referred to the stats, which unfortunately are true, that the levels of male suicides in Northern Ireland are the highest in the whole of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland and Wales higher in England. Would the Minister share his thoughts as the Minister responsible for that with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland, which would be Robbie Butler, the Health Minister, just to ensure that the good things that the minister and government are doing here can be shared and we can take advantage of what you've learned.
Thank
Thank
16:24
16:24
Speaker 23
-
Speaker 23
Yes, absolutely. This agenda has to include the devolved our devolved countries as well. And I'll make sure that we do that. It is really striking the disparities in suicide rates across the country, in the North East in particular, has far, far, far higher suicide rates than London. And it is those areas more generally that are more isolated from other areas where perhaps people therefore become more isolated. There is also a link to economic factors and deprivation and unemployment, unemployment being perhaps the main.
Metric that most aligns with those that data, because we know that work is not just about financial support, it's about purpose, routine, structure and connection. And that's so important. So all this work feeds into our wider agenda. And that means tackling health inequalities. And we've launched the England's first men's health strategy. It's also about opportunity, ensuring boys and young men can succeed in education. And we've heard about the Milburn Report and all the work that is happening and is going to be happening over the coming weeks and months.
And third, about connection and belonging, which is fundamental. It means supporting healthy relationships, positive understandings of masculinities and strong community ties. So, chair, I want to thank once again my hon. Friend for this debate, and I can reassure him and all members, as we develop the government's work on men and boys, fatherhood, mentoring and positive male role models and they will absolutely remain a very at the heart of this conversation, I want this to be a collaborative process across government, but with parliamentarians from all sides of the House, because this is an issue which is clearly vital to all our communities, that we are here to represent you very briefly.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Metric that most aligns with those that data, because we know that work is not just about financial support, it's about purpose, routine, structure and connection. And that's so important. So all this work feeds into our wider agenda. And that means tackling health inequalities. And we've launched the England's first men's health strategy. It's also about opportunity, ensuring boys and young men can succeed in education. And we've heard about the Milburn Report and all the work that is happening and is going to be happening over the coming weeks and months.
And third, about connection and belonging, which is fundamental. It means supporting healthy relationships, positive understandings of masculinities and strong community ties. So, chair, I want to thank once again my hon. Friend for this debate, and I can reassure him and all members, as we develop the government's work on men and boys, fatherhood, mentoring and positive male role models and they will absolutely remain a very at the heart of this conversation, I want this to be a collaborative process across government, but with parliamentarians from all sides of the House, because this is an issue which is clearly vital to all our communities, that we are here to represent you very briefly.
Absolutely. Yeah.
16:26
16:26
16:26
Speaker 23
-
Speaker 23
Yes. And we're working very closely with the with the Department for Women and Equalities. And actually, I was heartened by the announcement that I think was earlier this week, because there is a particular issue also with working class boys. Again, those those educational statistics are even more pronounced or acute for working class boys in communities like his and mine in particular. Perhaps we know we need to give young men opportunity, and you then give him a stake in his future.
If we give them strong relationships and give him people to turn to. If the future does not go to plan, if we give him a purpose and belonging , and he give him reasons to look after himself and reasons to look out for others, that is how we can ensure boys and young men thrive. That is how we can build a better society for everyone. And that is what this government is determined to do.
If we give them strong relationships and give him people to turn to. If the future does not go to plan, if we give him a purpose and belonging , and he give him reasons to look after himself and reasons to look out for others, that is how we can ensure boys and young men thrive. That is how we can build a better society for everyone. And that is what this government is determined to do.
16:27
16:27
16:27
16:27
Speaker 2
-
Speaker 2
As I prepared my remarks today, it was important to me to speak from the heart, but that meant taking time from being able to address various points. And so I trusted in my colleagues around the House to make those points for me in their speeches. And that was not misplaced trust. So I want to thank everybody for that. In particular, people who spoke about paternity leave. We had several UK comparisons to much more generous offers in Europe.
People mentioned the social inequality about who gets it, about the importance of supporting mothers when they're recovering, and about the wellbeing benefits. But people also brought in things around the family courts, CMS, social housing, the importance of increasing male teachers and caregivers appreciate the opposition bringing up the the Men and Boys Summit and the response that the minister gave to that. And I, I really do hope that there can be maybe some some cross-party working on on how we address that.
And it was also wonderful to to hear the Minister proudly confirm that this is a pro-family government and those ideas of purpose, belonging and connection that he set out. And I really feel that we too often look to just government or teachers would say, sometimes we look to teachers for the answers for all problems in the rising generation. But actually a lot of it does start in the home. And fathers play such an important role. We can't keep overlooking it.
It's vital for for the future of that generation.
People mentioned the social inequality about who gets it, about the importance of supporting mothers when they're recovering, and about the wellbeing benefits. But people also brought in things around the family courts, CMS, social housing, the importance of increasing male teachers and caregivers appreciate the opposition bringing up the the Men and Boys Summit and the response that the minister gave to that. And I, I really do hope that there can be maybe some some cross-party working on on how we address that.
And it was also wonderful to to hear the Minister proudly confirm that this is a pro-family government and those ideas of purpose, belonging and connection that he set out. And I really feel that we too often look to just government or teachers would say, sometimes we look to teachers for the answers for all problems in the rising generation. But actually a lot of it does start in the home. And fathers play such an important role. We can't keep overlooking it.
It's vital for for the future of that generation.