Family Policy

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in a debate on such an important subject, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) on securing it. It should be noted that it is only six hours since we were in the main Chamber, and you will forgive me, Mr Meale, for saying that today we have shown our capacity to be full-time MPs without a change in the electoral system.

As all speakers have noted, family policy is not shaped around living in an ivory tower. As my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) said, we are dealing with a policy that affects intractable problems in society—the poverty-stricken estates and the areas in all our constituencies where we see the need to support and strengthen the family, which at its core would provide a stronger community, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned, and by its essence would support the weakest and most vulnerable.

When we debate family policy, we are talking not about the washing powder advert, sanitised version of the family, but about families affected by the deepest problems. I draw attention to the 250,000 to 350,000 children living in households where a parent is misusing drugs; barely four in 10 fathers in such families are in any contact with those children. At least 2.6 million children live in households where a parent is a hazardous drinker, and 750,000 live in a household with an alcohol- dependent parent. Those are deep problems, which are affected by our family policy.

Moving away from those statistics, one can drive down into the individual stories. A number of years ago, when taking part in the Centre for Social Justice’s study of addiction issues, I came across Ruth, who told me that, once, when politicians and others talked about family values she did not have a clue what they were talking about. She was a victim of drug and alcohol abuse, and went through the experiences of children’s homes and further abuse, which previous speakers have described. In words that have long stayed with me, she said that at the age of eight,

“I longed for someone to cuddle me and tell me they loved me, as I just didn’t belong. I cried and I cried but no one heard. My tender heart was breaking.”

Thankfully, Ruth managed to get through the system, going through numerous social workers, homes and allocated workers. The great value of voluntary sector organisations has been mentioned today: Ruth eventually found herself and landed on the help and care of one of those organisations, Victory Outreach UK, run by a Christian couple acting on their own family values of reaching out to others and to the most vulnerable, not just keeping to themselves. They supported Ruth and enabled her to understand what family values were about. She ended up saying that she did understand families and that they were about belonging. She wanted me to ensure that we take account of that as a matter of policy.

Mark was one of my regular clients as a criminal solicitor. No doubt he gave my firm good trade, but he blighted his life and the lives of those around him by being one of the most prolific criminals in Enfield. He was the subject of intergenerational drugs misuse, knowing only what he saw: he saw his mother taking drugs and he continued to take drugs, and from what he saw around him, he knew that the way to get more drugs was to commit more crime. His life was full of potential—he had the potential to train for the Olympics next year in weight-lifting, rather than watch the hatch lifting on cell doors in Pentonville and other prisons around London, which is what he spent his time doing. What made a difference to him and made the lights flicker on, just for a while, was the involvement of family.

I remember a time when Mark had gone through a spate of criminality and ended up in the cells of Enfield magistrates court. The bravura of being a high-profile criminal left him, and he did not demand a cigarette as he usually would, but said, tears running down his face, “Where’s my father? I want to speak to my father.” That was the big issue for him and what he had missed through his life. The lights flickered on again when Mark himself became a father—he suddenly realised that life was not just about himself and feeding his addiction habits and the criminality around him, but about his responsibility to others and his profound responsibility to the most vulnerable person in his vicinity: his child. That was when he realised that he had a responsibility beyond himself to his child and to the community. Sadly, that opportunity was not grasped the first time round and was taken from him, but it was grasped for the second child. There were people and community organisations around him who helped him to engage with the child. Mark is now, thankfully, turning the corner, being a great dad to his child and trying to break that intergenerational cycle of crime and drug misuse.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

In many ways, what my hon. Friend describes, drawn from his experience as a solicitor, is very similar what our hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) said. She too was speaking from the heart as well as from her experience, as was our hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee). Does he agree that it is imperative that the Government understand and appreciate that lawyers, be they solicitors or barristers, play an invaluable role in bringing families together? We are much more than just lawyers: we bring together other services through our work when we represent people.

[Mr Burrowes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I do not want the debate to be too much of a mutual admiration society. The reality is that lawyers are not top of the bill in terms of our promoting them. What they are about is providing a service, especially to the most vulnerable, and we need to ensure that they are part of the picture—it is quite right that they should be part of it—of supporting and strengthening families.

My point is that we do not need a family policy for just one Government Department. I say that with respect to the Minister, and it is excellent to see her here today. She recognises, as we all do, that family policy affects all Departments. When we look at individual cases, we see that support and welfare structures have tended to treat people as one-dimensional clients rather than as the complex and unique individuals they are, who are part of complex and unique families. We need to look at the whole person and beyond them at their whole family, however dysfunctional it might be. We need to look at the mum, the dad—if he is around—the brothers and sisters and the grandparents. The Government need to assess at all times and in all policies the impact on whole families.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash mentioned, family policy is not simply about having a centrally directed policy. Let us take the example of early years child care. High-quality nursery care provision is important, but it is not just about the Government directing that provision; it is about nurturing children in their early years—indeed, in their early days and weeks. That is why we can all welcome the increase in the number of health visitors and the empowerment that that provides. If the parents are dealing with drugs or alcohol misuse, early intervention could indeed mean intervening as soon as pregnancy has been confirmed and creating the opportunity to prevent more children from entering the intergenerational cycle of abuse.

Supporting early years provision also means recognising the value of parents in their nurturing role. More often than not, it is the mother who is involved in full-time care of children in their early years. I want to see a time when that practice is not the preserve of the few who can afford it but a choice that is available to many.

Family policy is not just about money—and more money. Yes, resources help to provide the opportunity for children to have a good start in life, but the most important element in any family is good relationships, which most likely involve having both a mother and father around and, the evidence shows us, the parents being married. That is where Government can play a role. We are having the debate about the proper incentives and support that can help that family structure.

Finally, family policy is not only about mothers. As I said when I talked about Mark, it is about fathers too. It is worth saying that the time that my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash spoke for this morning—15 to 20 minutes—is roughly the time in the average working day that that a father 30 years ago would spend with his child. That that has improved is positive: indeed, a father today typically spends about the entire length of this debate—an hour and a half—and perhaps even a bit more time with their child in the average working day.

We must all recognise that the absence of a father has a profound effect, whether that be seen in problems for the children at school or in their future mental health, employment, and involvement with crime or misuse of drugs. That is why we welcome the approach right across Government of encouraging payment by results, giving incentives and measuring outcomes in all those policy areas that have at their heart the health and well-being of children. In particular, that approach will help to support and incentivise relationships that can become so frayed, but that are so fundamental to improving the outcomes for children.

We have spoken about strong family attachment, the supervision of children, establishing boundaries, affection and emotional warmth, all of which are crucial not only to protect children but to enhance their health and well-being. I believe that this Government will be judged by results and should be judged most profoundly on whether we are protecting and doing our best for the most vulnerable and fighting poverty. The way that we will do all that is by strengthening the family.