Andrew Percy
Main Page: Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)Department Debates - View all Andrew Percy's debates with the Cabinet Office
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a delight to be called to speak in this debate on the Gracious Speech. I want to dwell on one or two of its themes that are of great interest to my constituents and on one that is of absolutely no interest to them. Before I do, I should reflect a little on what has been achieved by the Government and where there is still room for improvement.
Like most Members, I came to the House to do good—not as a do-gooder, but to do good for my constituents. I came here as a Conservative in the belief that I would be able to rebalance how hard-working folk in Brigg and Goole, and beyond, are treated. In some respects, the Government have made progress; some of the changes to the benefit system have made work pay, and I support those wholeheartedly, as do my constituents. When they speak to me in the street or I knock on their doors, they generally say that they support the benefit cap and changes to entitlement programmes. Similarly, I am delighted that the Government have been able to freeze council tax, which doubled under the previous Government, for the past two years.
However, there have also been things that I have not felt comfortable with and which I do not think have in any way rebalanced fairness or rewarded those who try hard and want to do the best for themselves and their families. That is why I have voted against a number of measures, although I have voted with the Government on the vast majority of occasions—about 90% of the time. In any other job, I would be a slavish loyalist out for promotion, but in this place if a Government Member votes a couple of per cent. of the time against the Government, they are a serial rebel.
On issues such as the bedroom tax and changes to council house tenancies, I think that the Government got it wrong. Similarly, I do not yet think that the Government have rebalanced things as they should have in favour of hard-working citizens on issues such as immigration and law and order. Some of that, of course, is because we find ourselves in a coalition Government.
The other day, I was asked on Radio Humberside, which I am sure many hon. Members listen to, whether it was right for my colleagues to say that the Government were not Conservative enough. I said that that was right. It is a simple fact. Just as the Government are not Lib Dem enough for Lib Dems, they are not Conservative enough for Conservatives.
I say to Conservative Front Benchers that many of the pitfalls and traps into which we seem to have walked in the past few months—indeed, the past couple of years—have been those that our coalition colleagues have advised us to advance towards. Perhaps the message should be that sometimes we should stick with our gut. I hope that, in so far as anybody in this place listens to speeches from Back Benchers, that message will be taken back to the powers that be in Whitehall and elsewhere.
I welcome much in the Gracious Speech. I mentioned the themes of particular interest to my constituents. I welcome the draft social care Bill. Social care is the biggest challenge facing our country and, like many Members who have spoken, I hope that we will be able to advance on it on a cross-party basis. In my view, there is one opportunity to get the issue right. There are huge pressures, not only on the NHS but on local authorities, and they will only increase. I say to Front Benchers that we must advance in a way that protects those who have tried to make provision for themselves and have worked hard.
Many in my constituency have worked hard, got a private pension and tried incredibly hard during their working lives but now face the prospect of having to sell their homes to pay for care. That absolutely has to be taken into account. Labour Front Benchers have made it clear that the matter should not be kicked into the long grass, and they are right—although I question whether they made any progress on the issue when they were in power. We must not rush, either, because we must get it right.
I look forward to the reforms on special educational needs and support for disabled people. As I know from my previous employment as a schoolteacher, those issues definitely need to be addressed. We have to improve how the statementing process works and that is why I welcome its replacement with the integrated education, health and care plans. If those simplify the process for families and young people, as I hope a single assessment will, that will be all to the better. I also say to Ministers, who I am sure are listening, that we must ensure that those plans are supported with proper statutory obligations across the various agencies involved, including academies and free schools.
I look forward to the changes to access rights for divorced fathers, and I hope that they will provide another opportunity for us to push forward the issue of grandparents’ rights, which are supported on both sides of the House.
What are the most important issues? I have heard a lot from people on my side about what happened in the local elections last week. We did not have any on my patch, but I have heard a great deal about them. People have talked about House of Lords reform and other issues, but such matters are not why the coalition parties did so badly. The people of Brigg and Goole are not worried about House of Lords reform or other matters; they are worried about the economy and job creation, both of which are struggling at the moment.
As I have watched this debate in my office and in the Chamber, I have been surprised by some of the comments from Labour Members about what they left to this country. I know that they will attempt to gloss over their record, but given the area that I represent—the Humber, east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire; only two or three Members representing that area were born and bred there—I do not recognise the glory days of the previous Administration. During their time in power, the Humber lost manufacturing jobs and the number of private sector jobs was lower in 2010, when they left office, than it was in 1997. We also faced the prospect of Labour’s dreaded ports tax, which would have killed jobs in our successful ports such as Goole, Immingham and Hull. We also saw no action regarding the Humber bridge, which, since its creation, has divided our sub-regional economy. Now this Government have acted to halve the tolls on the Humber bridge.
Ministers are absolutely right to tell us that they want to prioritise jobs and economic growth, and I hope that they will continue do so. I have two warnings for them from my region, one of which they will have heard plenty about recently—the prospect of the caravan tax. Some 90% of manufacturing in this industry is located in east Yorkshire, and thousands of jobs are involved. Many of the people working in that industry are already on three-day weeks. The Government’s own projections for the impact of the tax suggest a further 30% reduction in static caravan sales. This is a successful industry, most of which is deployed in the United Kingdom. The supply chain is almost wholly within the UK, and there are thousands of jobs on caravan parks up and down the country. I hope that the Government will listen to what is being said about this, and I think that they are starting to do so.
I completely support a lot of the changes that have been made in the public sector, including on pensions. I would be happy to defend those to my former colleagues, some of whom are probably not too keen to drink with me these days as they see the proposed changes to teachers’ pensions. I defend all those changes, because it is clear that in the past few years the state became too big and the gap between public sector pensions and private sector pensions became too wide. However, the Government need to proceed extremely carefully on regional pay. In the Humber, we have struggled to attract people into teaching. When I was a local councillor in Hull, we had to come up with the so-called Hull offer whereby we had to pay people more to come and teach in local schools. A few weeks ago, when my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and I were at a meeting with our local hospital trust, we were told that the trust was unable to attract doctors to come and work in our NHS trust area and would possibly have to consider paying more as a consequence.
Some people in the public sector understandably feel that they are being targeted at the moment. There is undoubtedly an issue with pay in the south-east of England, but it would be morally wrong to take money from public sector workers in the north of England to solve a problem that exists in the south. Taking money out of the public sector in an area such as Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, which is very reliant on it, can only have a knock-on effect on the private sector. Ministers need to be very careful as they move forward on this issue. I do not rule the policy out completely, but we need to see more detail. When the previous Government introduced academies, they conceded the principle of allowing schools to set their own pay and conditions, and they introduced that in HM Courts and Tribunals Service.
House of Lords reform is one issue in the Gracious Speech that is of absolutely no interest to my constituents. I have not been regularly stopped while doing my shopping in Goole and elsewhere by people saying, “But Andrew, what we really want is for you to get on and reform the House of Lords.” As it happens, I think that the Government are right to raise the issue, as I support reform of the House of Lords. When I came here, I was told that it was packed full of talent and the debates were wonderful. Doubtless there are some very good people in there, but there are also people who have absolutely no legitimacy and no right to sit there, and are perhaps not necessarily as in touch with the country as it is today as they should be. However, by reforming something one can make it a lot worse. The Government’s proposals for 15-year non-renewable terms would do nothing to inject democracy into the House of Lords. I would like a 90% to 100% elected Chamber with those elections taking place at the same time as the general election and people serving five-year terms. I say that as a history teacher and somebody who does not like to see traditions swept aside lightly. Indeed, were it not for the House of Lords in these past few months, the Government might not have seen sense on matters such as the chief coroner and, recently, on mesothelioma.
I understand the important role that the House of Lords plays in our democracy, but the Government’s proposals do not stand up to much scrutiny and would not do much to inject democracy. They should press ahead with having a debate on the issue, but the current proposals would not enjoy my support, especially as they involve using a voting system—the single transferable vote—on which the public have had no say. I think that we can safely say after last year’s referendum on the alternative vote that the public have voted against moving to a more proportional system and want to retain first past the post; certainly, that was their choice.
I look forward to many of the proposals in the Queen’s Speech, which has three policy areas of which I am particularly supportive. I commend the Government for prioritising jobs and the economy. I also commend them for taking the action that we have already seen in the Humber, where in many areas they have done an awful lot of good—although there is a risk that that could be undone by the caravan tax and regional pay. Broadly speaking, I welcome this Gracious Speech and look forward to the forthcoming debates.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
I was interested to listen to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), whose speech was remarkable for one thing, as has been the case with so many speeches. We are currently seeing a fundamental clash in Europe between democracy and austerity that has been reflected in the polls in France and Greece, and indeed in Britain in the local government elections, with a choice between growth and making cuts to get down the deficit. There seems to be no acknowledgement of the fact that we are hurtling towards a fundamental change that will mean the end of the euro and perhaps the end of Europe as we know it. We need to focus on the need for proactive growth to invest in the capacity for productivity across Europe and to change course while we see the emergence of the far-right-wing parties that have been mentioned by my colleagues. Instead, however, the main preoccupation is still with the House of Lords.
I am sure that people like to talk about the intricacies of the House of Lords—about whether having someone elected for 15 years without re-election is really democracy, whether there will be a clash of democracies between the different Chambers and so on—but I think we all know that this is a very difficult issue, and that this is not the time to confront it when we are facing such severe economic issues on our doorsteps and such fundamental changes in the nature of Europe and our exporting prospects.
Andrew Percy
I am not sure whether my accent was the problem, but I think I made it very clear that House of Lords reform was a completely marginal issue of absolutely no interest to my constituents. As I said time and again, my constituents expect that the economy and growth should be the priority.
Geraint Davies
I am not talking about whether the hon. Gentleman and others referenced growth, but whether they took any notice at all of the fact that across Europe we are seeing these fundamental changes. The economic orthodoxy wants to ignore the wishes of people who are being downtrodden by these austerity measures, and we are facing a real challenge as regards the future of democracy in parts of Europe, the future of the euro, and the future of the European Community. In this year of her diamond jubilee, the Queen should have been given the opportunity to demonstrate that the Government are showing greater leadership by example in developing a proper, coherent strategy for delivering growth instead of cuts to get the deficit down. Instead, we have had the same old medicine with the familiar side effects of less money being spent in the public sector, leading to less money in the private sector and a downward spiral of unemployment and poverty. We have seen that across Europe.
What we need in the UK and Europe is a combination of fiscal stimulus and co-ordinated investment. The party with the best record on growth is of course the Labour party. Between 1997 and 2008 there was unprecedented and continuous growth that we had not seen since the war. In 2008, of course, we faced the financial tsunami, and to the credit of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and Barack Obama, the introduction of the fiscal stimulus enabled the world to avoid depression and deliver shallow growth into 2010. Then the Conservatives took over a deficit that was two-thirds caused by financial institutions and one-third caused by the Labour party investing beyond earnings to continue growth. Their immediate response was to announce half a million job cuts, which deflated consumer demand and led to negative growth. Indeed, the deficit projection is up by £150 billion.
Charlie Elphicke
Yes, and no doubt five different views could be advanced.
We all agree about the key point of the Queen’s Speech and the challenge facing this country. When I talk to my constituents in Dover and Deal and ask, “What is your priority?”, they say, “It’s the economy, stupid”—President Clinton made much of that point in his first election campaign. The economy is the heartland, and it is essential that we have more jobs and money in Britain. We have had a very difficult time for the past four years, and the situation is challenging for many families in my constituency, who are struggling to get by and have not had a pay rise for a very long time. They are struggling to keep hold of a job while we seek to rebuild out of the mess that went before. I therefore particularly welcome the fact that the Government’s first priority is to reduce the deficit and restore economic stability.
The hon. Member for Swansea West has a prescription along the lines of saying that if we did not cut so far and so fast, all would be fine. The difficulty with that is that we would need to borrow more money. If we did that, we would threaten our economic credibility, which would mean rising interest rates on Government debt. If that happened, interest rates would increase for businesses and home owners.
We have been lucky because we have the same level of deficit as Greece, but the markets trust our economic policy and our cracking down on and reducing the deficit. That means that our interest rates are similar to those in Germany, while we still have a deficit the size of Greece’s, albeit one that is falling.
Andrew Percy
There is another point to be made. The Opposition position is almost like telling someone with a £10,000 credit card bill, “Go and get another £5,000 on the credit card because you’ll feel a bit better today.” However, at some time in the future, the credit card company will come knocking. The Labour party wants us to increase the £120 million in debt interest every day by borrowing even more, which would mean that we had even less to invest in the public services that our constituents want and deserve.
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend is right. One does not fix a debt crisis by borrowing more money—it makes no sense. It is the economics of the madhouse, because we would have more debt to service over the long term. It would take us longer to pay it, thereby mortgaging our children’s futures for longer, and interest rates would rise. Under the Government, interest rates have fallen, and that has done much to ensure that we have more money to invest in public services than would have been the case under the previous Government.
Charlie Elphicke
The hon. Gentleman supposes that if the previous Government’s economic policies had continued, the markets would have played along, and the music would have kept playing. Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy are evidence against that. We are very lucky that we had a change of Government. We had a close shave, but we have managed so far, goodness willing, to escape the position into which we would otherwise have fallen. Without a shadow of a doubt, the previous Government would have taken us the way of Greece and we would have been plunged into serious economic chaos. We would not be talking about a technical double-dip recession, but a minus 5 or minus 6 double-dip recession, of the sort and on the scale that is happening in Greece. I hope that when the Office for National Statistics reviews the figures in a few months, we will see that we skirted recession, but were not in recession. Many of us feel that confidence is already rebuilding. From other surveys, many of us suspect that the ONS figures will be revised upwards, and we will find that we did not go into recession and that we may just be starting to recover.
I hope that that is the case, because our constituents have had and are having a difficult time trying to keep hold of their jobs, get a pay rise and pay their bills, which have been increasing ever faster. The Government’s policies, which focus on the economy like a laser beam, are right. We need a more flexible labour market—not a right-wing, “Let’s have the ability to hire and fire at will” policy. The OECD growth project investigated the matter at length and in detail and concluded that a flexible labour market was a key driver of economic growth. It identified another key driver as lower corporation taxes, which the Government are delivering. It also said that a certain and credible financial services and competition regulation regime, which we are rebuilding, was another key driver.
I think that the House accepts that the Financial Services Authority system—the tripartite regulation system—was an unmitigated disaster. The brainchild of the former Prime Minister and the shadow Chancellor, when it was put to the test, it was found entirely wanting. The Bank of England managed to save the secondary banking system and our general banking system in the 1970s, but this time, we had to have massive state-funded bail-outs, which cost the taxpayer a fortune. That need not and would not have happened had the FSA and the tripartite regulatory regime not been in place.
The OECD growth project is also clear that increased competition to promote enterprise and fair markets is also important. Promoting competition, free enterprise, fair markets and a level playing field for market entrants is vital. We have pro-growth policies on all those. I make no bones about the fact that I should like the Government to be more pro-growth to get the economy moving even quicker. I should like them to lever in more private investment sooner so that we can grow more quickly. However, I recognise that all government is a negotiation, and it is clearly a challenge in a coalition to have everything that we would like. From a Conservative point of view, I would like a more pro-growth policy so that we grow the economy even more quickly.
I am realistic about what we can do, but I think that we are doing a lot, and as much as we can. I can look my constituents in the eye and say that we are trying to get the economy growing as quickly as possible, that we are focused on it and that nothing matters to us more than jobs and money.
It is real cheek for the Opposition to talk about youth unemployment, for two reasons. First, it rose massively under the previous Government. Although it has increased under this Government, it has done so at a much slower rate than in the previous Parliament. Secondly, when I knock on the doors in Dover and ask people what their key concern is, they reply, “Immigration and I want my kid to have a future.” They are furious that the open borders policy that the previous Government pursued means that their children are finding it harder to get a job.
Andrew Percy
When my hon. Friend talked about youth unemployment figures rising under the previous Government, he failed to mention that they increased when unemployment generally was falling. For youth unemployment to be increasing now is bad enough, but for it to rise when unemployment generally is falling is a national tragedy. We have heard no apology for that.
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend is right. Not only that, but if we examine the figures for job creation since the early 2000s, we see that people from the EU accession eight countries had a massive increase in the number of jobs, that that also applied among foreign nationals—people born overseas—but that employment hardly increased at all for those born in the UK.
Charlie Elphicke
I agree with my hon. Friend. That is the central point, which I was about to address. Employers’ difficulty is finding the right person with the skills for the job. It is incumbent on the Government to create a framework whereby people—particularly our young people—can get the skills so that they qualify and are eligible for a job, and that they have the skills that employers need. Instead of dealing with the skills deficit in our population, the previous Government thought it was easier to put a sticking plaster on it and have an open borders policy to enable employers to take people with the skills that they wanted from anywhere, rather than ensuring that our children and young people had the skills for the labour market and therefore a better future.
It is important to have stronger border control in the UK. It is also important to skill up our children because the previous Government sold us a pass on the hopes and aspirations of our young people and people who do not have great skills to get a job, promotion, more money and more skills. The Government’s emphasis on apprenticeships is essential. That is what I hear on the doorsteps in Dover. For many in the House and in the metropolitan elite, that is a difficult message, but the opinion polls show that unemployment and immigration are linked, and we should be honest about that. We should be honest with people, and tell them that we understand their concerns and are acting on them. One of the greatest things about the Government is that we have taken such strong action on apprenticeships to ensure that our people have the skills to have a job and do well in life.
The Government are nothing if they are not about aspiration, but they are also about understanding the pressures of utility bills and the costs of modern life. One really important policy in that respect is the proposed reform of the electricity market to deliver clean, secure and affordable electricity and ensure that prices are fair. The Leader of the Opposition chooses these days to forget that he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and that he planned, with the renewable heat initiative, to load £193 on to the bills of every household in this country. He chooses to forget that, with the electricity renewable energy obligation to which he signed up, he was going to increase our power prices by 20%, and those of businesses by 30%. He goes on about the costs of living and the pressure on households, and yet chooses to forget that the responsibility for much of the increase in the cost of living lies at his door, because when he was Secretary of State, he loaded bills and balanced our carbon commitments on the backs of the poor, which was a disgusting and disgraceful thing to have done.
We cannot balance our carbon commitments on the backs of the poor, as the Labour Government wanted. We need to ensure that our carbon commitments are executed in the most cost-effective way. That means not that we should back winners or favour this or that technology, but that we should favour technologies that reduce carbon emissions at the most effective and best possible price, regardless of whether we happen to like or dislike them. That is what we owe the least well-off in our communities, and our hard-pressed families and electors.
From the detailed list of Bills in the Queen’s Speech, I want to pick out the children and families Bill, which contains an acceptance of the important principle I proposed in a ten-minute rule Bill last year: that children have the right to know, and have a relationship with, both their parents following separation. I believe that that is right and in the interests of the child and their welfare, but let me explain why. The Bill does not set out with complete clarity reasons for that provision or for the shared parental leave provision, but they are linked, because families have changed. There is a new norm, and we need to accept modern families.
Let me set out how families have changed. One can have an “olde worlde” image of the family—a bloke goes to work while the mother bounces the child on her knee or does the washing up at home. That is perhaps how it was in the 1950s, but things have not been like that for a very long time. Just about everyone I know from my generation joint works. I looked at the figures, because many of our policies seem to be aimed at people who live that kind of traditional family life, rather than at families who joint work, which is the reality.
Some things jump out from the figures on parental employment rates. Back in 1986, half of partnered mothers were in the workplace; today, 71% of them are. Whereas 25 years ago five out of 10 partnered mothers went to work; seven out of 10 now do so. The overwhelming majority of couples with children under the age of 16 both work, which has led to a wider change in respect of juggling the work-life balance.
It is not just that there are more mothers in the workplace. What about the number of men who work part time? Some people go around saying, “Only women ever look after children,” but that is also old fashioned and archaic. Things have been changing. Notably, the number of all parents in part-time work has changed, which is basically accounted for by the fact that the number of men in part-time work has risen. Official statistics from the Office for National Statistics show that 25 years ago, 696,000 men were in part-time work. That number has risen nearly fourfold to more than 2 million today. To my mind, that indicates that parents are increasingly juggling work and child care, and that there has been something of a seismic shift.
Many think, “Mothers go back to work when the child is a bit older,” but let us look at the figures. When do people go back to work? Do they wait until the child is about five and going to school, or do they go back before that? Twenty-five years ago, 27% of partnered women went back to work when the youngest child was under three years of age. In other words, two thirds of women stayed at home and brought up the child until they were at least three, and then considered going back to work. That position has reversed. Now, 63% of partnered women go back to work when the youngest child is under three.
There has been a massive social change, and we need to understand modern families and how they live. If most women are going back to work when the child is pre-school age, there is a lot of juggling and work-life balancing. Who takes the kid to school or nursery? Who collects the kid? Who looks after the child? Who takes primary responsibility in the workplace and in the home? Increasingly, most people whose children are grown up will know from their children’s lives that there is much more of a juggle and a balance of work and life.
The rate of increase of lone parents has been very great. In 1986, 15% of lone parents went back to work when their child was under three; by 2011, that had doubled to 32%. We can therefore see substantial change in families, which has consequences for family policy. The flexible parental leave provision in the children and families Bill is justified because it is necessary. It is a recognition that families juggle work and child care. It is not just a case of saying, “The mother has a baby, therefore she has maternity leave.” The situation is much more complicated, and provision should be balanced so that men and women in a family can balance that equation.
More work needs to be done on child care, for two reasons. First, the number of child care places has been broadly static for years. In 2001, there were more than 300,000 places with child minders and about 300,000 day nursery places—about 600,000 places in total. The number of places with child minders stayed static, but the number of nursery places—full day care—increased to about 600,000. In 2001, there were 600,000 places in total, but in 2008, there were around 900,000 places. The number has remained static since.
What does it mean if there are now 900,000 places? Are we catering for all the children in the country who are in need of child care? I did some back-of-the envelope calculations, and it struck me that there is potentially a shortage of child care places. There are about 13 million children in the UK, of whom roughly 3 million are pre-school age. The numbers indicate that 55% of children at pre-school have parents who both work. In other words, about 2 million children need child care, but there are only 900,000 child care places. What is happening to the other 1 million children? Who is looking after them? Is it grandparents or neighbours? There is a kind of child care apartheid. On the one hand, there is a system of nurseries that are so heavily regulated that most people cannot afford them, and on the other hand there is a system of child care for the other half that is completely unregulated. We know nothing about what is going on in that half. The right balance would be to reduce the regulation on our nurseries, increase the number of places and bring the cost of child care down so that more people can access it, because one of the biggest pressures on modern families is affording the cost of child care for pre-school children. It is an absolute nightmare—
Andrew Percy
My hon. Friend questions whether grandparents are doing the caring and, as I said a few moments ago, they are increasingly involved in families and are the unsung heroes of child care. Does he share my hope that additional rights for grandparents will be introduced in the next Session?
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend is a passionate campaigner on behalf of grandparents. When grandparents are constructive, they can make a powerful contribution, but a balance inevitably needs to be struck. Some grandparents like to interfere and meddle, and they can be really annoying. All parents know that some grandparents are not quite the saints that my hon. Friend suggests. Nevertheless, if grandparents play a constructive role in a child’s life, there is a lot to be said for them. My hon. Friend has been a passionate and trenchant campaigner in the cause of constructive grandparents—as opposed to destructive grandparents, who we could all do without. We all know people who know them—I hope my hon. Friend understands where I am coming from on that point.
We need more availability of nursery places and deregulation of the system. The figures show that dads are more involved in children’s lives than ever before. Father is no longer sitting behind a newspaper at the breakfast table, oblivious to the world: instead, dads are deeply engaged in children’s lives. So when it comes to separation, the question is what is in the interests of the children. What best serves the child’s welfare? I think that it is stability and the continuation of what they have known. So if a parent who has been heavily involved in the child’s life—as they are in the overwhelming majority of families—suddenly disappears off a cliff edge, it makes no sense. That is why the Government are right to enshrine in legislation the principle that children have the right to know and have a relationship with their parents. The way in which modern families live indicates strongly that that is what best serves child welfare.
I recognise that the judiciary and the legal system are, as always, about 30 years out of date and are astonishingly weak-kneed when it comes to ensuring the rights of children to know both their parents. That is wrong, and we need to send a clear legislative message, not just to anti-dad social workers but to the court system, that society has changed. We in Parliament get that society has changed. We get that we need stability for our children and that child welfare is best served by having minimum disturbance to that which they have been used to. If we send that message, real and positive change could be made.