Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Percy and Charlie Elphicke(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we recently allocated £27 million to the Humber in the growth deal. It is important to remember that, on a per-head basis, that is more than has been received in large parts of the south of England. We will announce in the coming weeks the Greater Lincolnshire LEP allocations that also cover North and North East Lincolnshire as part of the £392 million package for the midlands.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Percy and Charlie Elphicke
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Percy)
Any individual or organisation can make representations on planning applications for infrastructure projects, and it is of course for the decision maker to decide what weight, if any, should be given to those representations.
Charlie Elphicke
For more than a year, my constituents have been battling to get rid of a 40 mph speed limit on the main motorway to the port of Dover—a road of national strategic importance—yet the infrastructure for this to happen is being held up by the AONB. What measures can be taken by the Department or through legislation to make sure that a better balance is struck?
Andrew Percy
I am aware of this issue and my hon. Friend’s advocacy on behalf of his constituency. Clearly, legislation does require Highways England to have regard to the AONB’s purpose to conserve and enhance that natural beauty. I am more than happy to meet him or to pass his concerns on to the appropriate Department.
Water Industry
Debate between Andrew Percy and Charlie Elphicke(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Charlie Elphicke
Then they went back up again, as my hon. Friend remarks. Under the previous Government the water industry was allowed to become 100% mortgaged to make the tax avoidance work. There have been excessive pay rises in the boardroom at a time when hard-working families have not seen substantial pay rises. That has been very hard to justify and people look askance at that.
Andrew Percy
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. We have heard a lot about people having problems with a shortage of water. In my constituency, which is very low-lying and where we rely on significant pumping capacity to keep us dry, the problem has been the other way round: we have had too much water. While our water companies have been making big profits, we have not been getting the investment in keeping us dry, let alone in ensuring we have enough drinking water.
Charlie Elphicke
That is true. In some parts of the country we have too much water and in some parts too little. I am sure that at some point someone will raise the need to move water from one place where there is too much of it to another place where there may be too little of it.
Debate on the Address
Debate between Andrew Percy and Charlie Elphicke(12 years, 7 months ago)
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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.
Children’s Access to Parents
Debate between Andrew Percy and Charlie Elphicke(13 years ago)
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Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I am delighted to have secured this important debate. Week in, week out, our constituency surgeries are all too often full of parents who are struggling to see, have contact with or have access to their children. Evidence suggests that around 3 million children in the United Kingdom live apart from a parent, and 1 million of them have no contact with the non-resident parent three years after separation.
In recent years, the number of court applications, and the number of backlogged cases in the system, have increased. In 2005, there were 110,330 court applications, compared with 122,330 in 2010. The CAFCASS—Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service—case load has also been growing: in 2007-08 there were 39,432 cases, but in 2010-11 there were 43,759. A massive delay in family court cases is not in the best interests of children or parents.
Although the numbers of court applications and cases in the CAFCASS backlog look slightly better than last year, they are still far too high and I suggest that mediation would be a faster and better way forward. Mediation is cheaper at £752 per case compared with £1,682 for full court proceedings, and on average it takes 110 days, while court cases take 435 days. Some 95% of mediations are complete within nine months, while only 70% of court cases are over within 18 months.
In such circumstances, time is of the essence to provide stability for the child and their parents, and to ensure the protection of the child’s welfare and that there is closure and a settlement regarding how they will be looked after, with arrangements for parental contact and access. It is important that such situations are dealt with quickly, and from paragraph 115 onwards the Norgrove report promotes mediation, which is to be welcomed. My only caveat, however, is that the report goes on to state that if people do not like the results of mediation, they should still be able to apply to the courts. I do not agree; one needs closure as soon as possible, and parents who are busy arguing with one another should not be allowed further bites of the cherry.
A key issue is the right of children to see their parents following a separation. It is not an issue of dads’ rights, or fathers’ rights, or about those of the mother; it is about the fundamental and basic rights of the child. I believe that child welfare is best served by ensuring that children know and have a relationship with both parents after separation. Too often, parents sink their children’s rights in a sea of acrimony when they split up, which must be fundamentally wrong.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He is right to say that such cases should be about the rights of the child, but does he agree that those rights also extend to a child’s right to see their grandparents?
Charlie Elphicke
The right of grandparents to see their grandchildren is important, although not, I hasten to add, in the teeth of the unity of both parents if the grandparents are, shall we say, of the more interfering busybody variety who destabilise families. In general terms, however, a relationship between a child and their grandparents is positive and should be encouraged. It is not good if one parent who has custody of the child tries to frustrates that relationship, just as they should not try to frustrate the non-resident parent. My hon. Friend is a passionate advocate of grandparents’ rights, and once again he makes a powerful and forceful point. If there is acrimony between families, it is flatly wrong for parents to inflict their mutual loathing, which too often exists in a relationship breakdown, on the child.
In its conclusions in paragraph 109, the Norgrove report states:
“The child’s welfare should be the court’s paramount consideration, as required by the Children Act 1989. No change should be made that might compromise this principle. Accordingly, no legislation should be introduced that creates or risks creating the perception that there is a parental right to substantially shared or equal time for both parents. For that reason and taking account of further evidence we also do not recommend a change canvassed in our interim report that legislation might state the importance to the child of a meaningful relationship with both parents after their separation where this is safe. While true, and indeed a principle that guides court decisions, we have concluded that this would do more harm than good.”
The most important words are,
“no legislation should be introduced that creates or risks creating the perception that there is a parental right to substantially shared or equal time for both parents.”
The difficulty with the report is that it confuses the issue of time with that of an emotional bond. An emotional bond—love and affection—is not about the amount of time spent with someone. A person could have a best friend from university they have not seen for years. When they next meet, however, the friendship will pick up as if it had been only five minutes and that is because a relationship exists. The person may not have spent much time with their friend over the intervening years, but they know and have a relationship with them. That, in essence, is what we must ensure for our children, because they have the right to know both their parents and to have a relationship, reasonable access and contact with them following a separation.
The Norgrove report has confused those two issues. A relationship is not about time but about that bond, that sharing between parent and child, and the love and affection that goes with it. A clear social message needs to be sent out, which is why I have tabled the Children (Access to Parents) Bill, and why I secured this debate. A relationship is not about the amount of time spent together but about the bond created, and that lies at the heart of my case.
We need action because 1 million children do not see both their parents. Society has changed and is still changing, and social change means that over the past few decades, both parents have become more actively engaged than was previously the case. One study showed that parental involvement by fathers rose 200% between 1974 and 2000, and the change in work patterns seen over recent decades suggests that there is more joint parenting. According to research that I requested from the House of Commons Library, the number of men in part-time work has risen from about 500,000 in 1985 to 2 million today, while the number of partnered mothers in work rose from 52% in 1986 to 71% in 2010. That suggests that parents are sharing work and bringing up their children, and all of us, particularly the younger Members of the House, know that the work-life balance includes more juggling and sharing of parenting and parental responsibility.
National Policy Statements
Debate between Andrew Percy and Charlie Elphicke
Charles Hendry
I shall take a couple of interventions and then seek to conclude my remarks.