Child Development

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, for that most eloquent speech in an amazing debate. I feel that I have learnt a huge amount today. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester on securing this important debate.

I will start with a quotation which states:

“The best thing you can do for your child is to provide them with loving parents who are happy, healthy and at ease with themselves so that they can grow up with that as their idea of ‘normal’ and be likely to adopt the same approach to life”.

That is from the psychologist, Dr Amanda Gummer. The most challenging aspect of the debate is the question of the extent to which Governments can help or hinder the achieving of the ideal of happy, loving parents who are at ease and who can bring children up in that image.

We have touched on a wide range of topics in today’s debate. Some of them are at a softer end of the spectrum, where we try to influence society as a whole; and some are much more specific and cover the role that Governments and legislators play in helping foster this ideal. I will touch on a few.

We heard very eloquently from the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, about the role that nutrition plays. That fundamental bedrock of a child’s development is something to which perhaps we do not pay enough attention.

Early intervention was definitely a theme that came out of the debate. A number of noble Lords quoted the excellent resources that were made available by the Library and that covered the need for early intervention. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friends Lord Young and Lady Massey mentioned the need for early intervention to ensure that we do not end up spending far more as a society on trying to solve the problems that will arise from not tackling the early problems in a child’s development. I was taken with my noble friend Lady King’s analogy that we have ambulances waiting at the bottom of the cliff, rather than trying to take more preventive measures to prevent people falling through the cracks. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby talked about what happens after perhaps 15 years of falling through the cracks; it then takes a big intervention to get people back on track.

A number of noble Lords raised the issue of internet safety. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, who has a Private Member’s Bill on this topic. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and my noble friend Lady Massey also mentioned it. Clearly we are going through something of a new age in children’s access to information. I am at the other end of the spectrum from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay; I have a toddler under two at home and know that he is already using the iPad. That concerns me because, as we heard in the debate, by the age of seven you may already have spent a year in front of a screen. It is a troubling statistic. I do not have any solutions. I wonder whether the Minister might have some because I would like to know what I can do to get it away from him.

I will return to slightly more serious issues. The debate touched on a range of topics. What was interesting was the way in which it intertwined with debates about marriage. There are many ways of addressing this. Personally I think that having stable parents who are loving and in a warm and supportive relationship is perhaps more important than the piece of paper that gives the relationship legal status. Nevertheless, a number of noble Lords raised this and it is an important aspect of the debate. We also heard about a troubling aspect that threatens children’s development: namely, child trafficking. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was very eloquent in raising this important issue.

I will wrap up and make my points because I know we are time-limited. There is a role for legislation, legislators and policy-makers in this very important and broad-ranging debate. Our role must be to ensure that there is a support network in place for parents and families who find themselves struggling through no fault of their own. It is absolutely true, as many noble Lords mentioned, that if parents struggle, children will struggle—and we will end up in a cycle of repeated problems. The problems that parents experienced in their childhood are repeated and reproduced in subsequent generations. We must try to find a way of breaking the cycle.

One thing that we should be very proud of in Britain is sustaining and maintaining the very valuable network of social services that help families break the pattern of negative cycles and protect the most vulnerable from harm. These services are not perfect—nothing is—and they tend to hit the headlines when something goes wrong, but I will take this opportunity to pay tribute to all those people out of the glare of the media spotlight who spend their working lives trying to improve the situation of families who are struggling. It is not easy work. It is mentally and emotionally draining, it is not highly paid and it is not glamorous, and yet it is extremely rewarding for those who do it. The social services are a great asset of British life, and a constant reminder that there is more to life than simply pursuing money, fame and privilege. Helping people in need, leaving things in a better state than they were when you found them and improving the lot of the most vulnerable people in society are noble endeavours that provide dividends to those who undertake them that cannot be measured by pounds in the bank.

As we struggle to reboot our economic growth we must recognise that recession hits the most vulnerable hardest, and social services feel the direct pressure that comes from more and more people slipping from the position of just about coping to being suddenly overwhelmed and then desperate. We cannot, in our zeal to decrease our debt and address our economic problems, sacrifice the welfare state that helps prevent people reaching that point of desperation. I am sorry to say that the Government do not understand that this is a fundamental aspect that must be maintained. In the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s comments to his conference last week, because he lacked a comprehensive strategy on the economy, he made policy suggestions that have potentially very serious negative consequences for the well-being of families and children.

Why is it that in a time of economic difficulty we suddenly point the finger of blame for our slow economy at those hard-fought-for employment rights that are maintained because we want a civil society that helps support families and children? Why should they be brought into the frame as being part of the problem? The idea that we should invite employees—it will probably turn out that we will insist on this—to drop their rights to parental leave in return for shares is a miserly, short-sighted policy. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on how it would help engender safe and secure parenting and families if parents were pushed into a situation where they had less parental leave than they otherwise would have enjoyed.

We tend always to look to America as a shining beacon of how we should pursue economic growth—although America’s economy is not doing well—rather than to some of our more progressive European neighbours. The UK’s record on parental leave is pretty poor. It is not yet quite as bad as that of the US, but if George Osborne’s proposals take off, we will see parents who will have no parental leave. In Germany the situation is far better for parents. There is much greater flexibility and extended periods of leave that apply to both the mother and father. Why can we not look to Germany rather than the US when we consider how we might build a strong economy while maintaining our social fabric?

I am conscious of the time. Other noble Lords mentioned concerns raised in the media and elsewhere about money being taken away from very important programmes such as Sure Start. Not only do we have fewer Sure Start centres, but announcements about increasing access to education for two year-olds are robbing money from the Sure Start programme. Surely that cannot be the answer.

It is likely that we will see more children falling into relative poverty. We are not the only ones saying that. The Government’s analysis in the Autumn Statement forecast concluded that changes would increase child poverty by 100,000 in 2012-13. Surely that is not the right time to cut services for our most vulnerable children.

This is a huge debate and we could talk at great length. I will end by echoing the contribution of my noble friend Lord McFall, who pointed out Labour’s excellent record in this policy area. We passed the Child Poverty Act 2010. It creates important targets and we were making great progress towards them when we lost the election. I echo my noble friend in asking the Government to be honest about whether they think they will be able to meet those targets and, if not, to set more realistic ones that take into account everything being done to the welfare system and other policy changes.

Labour is the party that introduced the minimum wage and used tax credits to create a system of welfare back to work. That is how you create happy, stable homes with parents who are at ease with themselves and able to bring up healthy, happy children. Labour’s record is excellent on this. I look forward to hearing from the Minister in regard to the Government’s policies.