Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Matthew Hancock
I am sure that we can make a commitment right now to assess the success of small business Saturday, which will be celebrated across this House and across the country. This is the first one this year—it has been going on for some years in the United States—and I hope that it grows and grows.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
T8. The number of workers who feel insecure in the workplace has gone up from 6.5 million to 12 million since this Government came to power. That has a knock-on effect on the physical and mental health and productivity of workers. Will the Minister make an assessment and do some research into the effects of insecurity on the work force?
Jo Swinson
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the downsides of job insecurity. We already have robust data from the workplace employment relations study, which gives us a strong base of research on which to draw to understand those issues. However, I gently point out to him that an increase in job insecurity is related to the fact that we had a massive economic shock on his party’s watch in government. High unemployment and unfortunate economic circumstances are the price that everyone is paying. The least his party can do is apologise.
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Chris Ruane Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Jo Swinson
I am sure that my colleague the Secretary of State has a very busy diary, but he may well be making an appearance—
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Chris Ruane Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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John McDonnell
Exactly. In 2006 we had a lengthy debate on all sides when we identified groups in society that had not been given a fair crack of the whip and which, if they had, could contribute so much to our economy. Clause 52(1)(a), which removes section 3 from the Equality Act 2006, removes that statement.
It is interesting that only a few months ago the European Commission, in its recent report on equality, recommended to other Governments that they follow the example of the UK and embody in legislation a vision of an organisation that can contribute towards developing a society based on equality. Here we are, taking a step backwards from what is happening elsewhere across Europe. This is not just a tidying-up exercise. It is not about creating unrealistic expectations. It undermines the legislative basis of the organisation.
At the recent conference on discrimination law, Sir Bob Hepple QC made it clear what section 3 stands for. He said that it provides the link between the promotion of equality and good relationships between groups and society, and that without it we are rudderless. That was his statement. We included the measure in the original legislation to give direction.
It is extraordinary that in the Government’s own consultation, which has been cited time and again today and which was entitled “Building a fairer Britain”, there was overwhelming opposition to the abolition of section 3. The opposition was 6:1 against removing that visionary statement from the legislative basis of the commission.
Clause 52(1)(b) repeals the duty to promote good relations between members of different groups. MPs who have been working in their constituencies as MPs, councillors or community activists will recall that it is these sections that we have used to protect individual groups against racist attacks, attacks on Travellers and against undermining and stigmatising people with mental health problems. This is the legislative base that we have used time and again to ensure that the commission can play its full role.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham said, this is the measure that we used to tackle racism in football, so it has been used in campaigns and it has been effective. We have used it to undermine the development of extremist racism in our society and to ensure that we give advice to public authorities, particularly local authorities at elections, to set standards.
It has been argued that other organisations will be available to do this, such as the Runnymede Trust and the Fawcett Society, but both of them are reliant on public funds and some of the public funds that go to those organisations are from the EHRC. The EHRC is having its grant-making cut so those organisations will not be out there to fulfil that role.
On the removal of the duty in section 10, I want to raise an issue on behalf of organisations such as DPAC—Disabled People Against Cuts—and the group in Scotland, Black Triangle. Section 10(5) places a duty on the commission
“to promote or encourage the favourable treatment of disabled persons.”
Over the past year we have had debate after debate on hate crime against people with disabilities. We thought we had a breakthrough with the Paralympics in raising the profile of people with disabilities and extolling what they can do if given the chance. What message does it send out that we are scrapping that duty of the commission?
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Four or five categories of hate crime are monitored—race, religion, gender, sexuality and disability. Over the past year disability hate crimes are the only hate crimes across all the categories that have gone up, and the reason is the language used by the Tories. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Jo Swinson
Although this debate has not been as consensual as the previous one on insolvency measures, I recognise none the less that Members have raised genuine concerns, on which I hope to reassure them.
Various Members referred to the Second Reading debate and, in particular, the question that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) posed to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who said that there were no proposals, at that point, to bring forward the measures in the amendments today. Of course, in June, when Second Reading was undertaken, a consultation was under way, so we did not have firm proposals at that point. My right hon. Friend said, though, that there was nothing to stop people proposing amendments, and since then, of course, the consultation has ended. In answer to the hon. Lady’s specific question about the consultation, I can say that the Government published their response on 10 October. She is right that the Government Equalities Office has moved, following the reshuffle, and is now housed in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, where the Minister for Women and Equalities is also Secretary of State.
I can provide a range of clarifications. The shadow Secretary of State asked about the scope of equal pay audits, in particular, and whether they would apply only to private organisations. I can confirm that they will also apply to public sector organisations, so it will be the case for all employers, although we must bear in mind the moratorium on additional burdens on micro-businesses until 2014. It is certainly not our intention, however, to limit its scope to the private sector.
The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) made a helpful intervention pointing out the unfortunate increase in disability hate crime. It was helpful because it reminded us of the issue. I share his concern, and he should not be under the impression that such concern is limited to the Opposition.
Chris Ruane
I hope that the Minister noticed that I did not say “the Liberal Democrats”. I said “the Tories”.
Jo Swinson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification, but given that I speak on behalf of the Government, it is only fair that I point out that many of my Conservative colleagues also share his concerns. Very often, on the issue of people with disabilities who require support, the reporting in some sections of the media leaves a lot to be desired.
Higher and Further Education
Chris Ruane Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I have the privilege of representing both of Sheffield’s great universities. Both are strong in their own parts of the sector, extremely popular and important to the local economy, and both are facing falling applications as a result of this Government’s policies. That is no surprise, because it is in line with the national trend. The deeper concern in the sector, as I have learnt from talking to vice-chancellors over the past year, is not so much about the applications but about the conversion rate. We are now seeing their fears realised. As the final figures are beginning to emerge, it is clear, as has been pointed out, that the rate of people dropping out of the process after submitting applications is now much higher at 16%.
It does not have to be like this, because politics is about choice. The Government are clearly making the wrong choices. Earlier in the debate, the Minister for Universities and Science, on the back foot, simply blamed austerity. Were he here now, I would remind him of his statement to the House in November 2010. In response to questions, he made it clear that the Government’s response to the Browne review was only partly driven by the need to deliver cuts, and was more about “delivering reform” and “remodelling” the sector. Indeed it was: it was about transferring the cost of teaching from the state to students, ending the previous position whereby that responsibility was shared, and making our system one of the most expensive in the world, with fees higher than most universities in the United States.
Paul Blomfield
I am sorry, but I will not because of time.
The Government’s response was about withdrawing all public funding for teaching from the majority of courses in the majority of universities, making the statement that arts, humanities and social science courses do not deserve public support.
I am also sorry that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) is not in his place, because I recall him, in the same debate, seeking and securing a guarantee from the Business Secretary that fees of £9,000 would be the exception, not the norm. They are now the norm, because the Government failed to listen to vice-chancellors when they changed the system. At that time, every vice-chancellor was saying, “We cannot run our institutions at the fees the Government are talking about.”
Amazingly, when university governing bodies fulfilled their responsibilities to their institutions by setting fees at the much higher level that we have seen, it seemed to surprise the Government. It appears that they expected the universities obediently to set their fees according to their perceived quality, with Oxbridge setting the fees at £9,000 and everybody else neatly ranking themselves below. When that did not happen, new policies emerged as quickly as they could be written on the back of a cigarette packet, particularly the core and margin policy. Taking 20,000 places out of the system and selling them off to the lowest bidder does not help students; it simply reduces the student loan obligations to the Treasury. Indeed, it has damaged the position of many students, as universities were encouraged to scrap bursaries to fund fee cuts and create competition for places.
The debate is about not just the sector’s problems but the unfairness caused to students who can least afford it. The problem at the heart of the Government is that the Prime Minister just does not get it. Echoing the comments made by the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), I recall that at the height of the debate on trebling fees, the Prime Minister tried to defend his policy during a factory visit by asking workers:
“Do you think it is right that your taxes are going to educate my children and your boss’s children?”
It clearly had not crossed his mind that those factory workers might have children who wanted to go to university, had the talent to do so and deserved support.
The damage that the Government’s policies are doing to social mobility is not just at undergraduate level. There is deep concern in our universities that the transition from undergraduate courses to postgraduate taught courses will be affected by higher fees. The Browne review did not consider the issue, but many professions now require a taught master’s qualification and others expect it. If that route is closed to those who cannot afford to add to their debt, we will have taken an enormous step backwards.
The Government’s higher education policy is deeply damaging to our universities and deeply unfair to students, so I hope that the House will support the motion.
Children's Subjective Well-Being
Chris Ruane Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Our children are under threat like never before. In the past, threats to children were mainly physical. Many died in infancy, when working or of diseases. The modern threat to our children and young people is more to their mental and psychological well-being.
There are many reasons why, and one is child poverty. After the war, whichever party was in government, child poverty hovered between 12% and 15%, but it went from 13% in 1979 to 29% in 1992. With the huge investment that Labour made over 14 years, we managed to get it down only to 20%—a big reduction, but not enough.
There are other factors. We face an obesity epidemic, with costs to the individual child’s health and self-image. The most recent figures, for 2010-11, show that obesity among children in reception class, at five years old, is at 9.4%, and that by the time they reach year 6, at 10 years old, it doubles to 19%.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we are storing up problems for the future, both in terms of cost and from a psychological point of view, as many such children unfortunately become very disturbed adults?
Chris Ruane
The cost will be huge in terms of the individual, society and the economy.
When we look at mental illness, we find that certain groups are affected more than others: 45% of looked-after children and 72% of those in residential care suffer with mental illness. Some 1.5% of children are hyperactive; 0.3% have eating disorders; 5.8% have conduct disorders; and 3.7% have emotional disorders. Those figures might sound low, but at any one time 10% of children between the ages of five and 15 are suffering with a mental health disease. That is 850,000—almost 1 million—children.
We have to look at the reasons why that has come about. As I suggested earlier, something happened in the 1980s. The Government often talk about the broken society and broken Britain, but I honestly believe that the problem started to ramp up in the “loadsamoney” era, when there was no such thing as society and atomisation and isolation were rampant.
We have also seen the decline of those institutions that did believe in a big society and in social cohesion, such as the Church and the trade unions. Stable minds equal a stable society, but even Labour used the terms “producer” and “consumer”. We did not use “citizen”, and that is what we need to get back to—to viewing individuals as citizens and as part of society.
The Government can take many kinds of action, and many programmes have been tried, tested and proven. The roots of empathy classroom programme in New Zealand is a big success; the Swedish Government banned advertisements to children under 12, and that, too, has been a big success; and the Welsh Assembly Government introduced the foundation phase, with children learning through play until the age of seven.
My local authority of Denbighshire has had quite a few initiatives, including one by Sara Hammond-Rowley, involving simply sending out information sheets to parents, teachers and social workers, and giving out books, readily understood by parents and teachers, that can help with emotional disorder. We have had volunteering days in the local school in Prestatyn. Thirty-eight local volunteering groups aimed at children were there. The children were let off, one year at a time, to join them in friendship groups. It is about increasing volunteering and getting children away from the TV and computer and into socially interactive and physical activity. That is all to the benefit of those individuals and society.
The curriculum needs to be rebalanced. The national curriculum was introduced by the Conservatives. I was a teacher for 15 years and we followed the curriculum religiously, but we need a review. Have we thrown the baby out with the bathwater? We need to go back to stuff such as gratitude, empathy, discernment, reflection, silence, mindfulness, resilience, centring—the softer, gentler, more emotional approach to the curriculum, heavily present in the Catholic school in which I taught and in many religious schools. That would be a means of countering the advertising, media, peer pressure, consumerism, materialism and individualism.
A number of key statistics are not being monitored by the Government. I have tabled parliamentary questions asking what monitoring there is of advertising’s impact on children; there was no assessment. I have tabled questions about the number of fictional acts of murder that a child will watch, but there is no assessment and no figures are kept.
A young child will see tens of thousands of fictional acts of murder and violence, which do not correlate to their own, natural world. What is most disturbing is that the Government do not collect statistics on self-harm, eating disorders, mental illness, hyperactivity, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or transient children. The statistics are out there; they are often compiled by research departments or voluntary organisations.
I pay tribute to two reports in the past week, one of which—“Promoting Positive Wellbeing for Children”, came out last Thursday and is jam-packed full of practical steps that local and central Government can take to promote positive well-being for children. This afternoon, the Action for Children campaign on neglect was launched; the Minister was there and spoke well. Those reports are excellent documents, but what use do the Government make of them? When the guiding association found out about the speech that I was making today, it sent me a briefing about its research on volunteering.
The Prime Minister talks about the big society and volunteering and I back that 100%. But we need to make sure that his words are backed up with action. This is a quote from the Prime Minister in 2006:
“It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB—general well-being. Well-being can’t be measured by money or traded in markets. It’s about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and, above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society’s sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times.”
I share every single one of those sentiments.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Earlier, the hon. Gentleman touched on child poverty. Does he feel that the Government’s proposed changes to the benefits system will directly impact on families in child poverty now and those who will fall into it? Does he feel that the Government should be giving priority to address child poverty across the whole United Kingdom?
Chris Ruane
I absolutely concur with every word of that, and I shall come to those points in more detail in a moment.
I want to spend a few minutes on the Children’s Society’s excellent report on children’s subjective well-being. It gives the definition of subjective well-being, which focuses on how people are feeling, whereas objective well-being focuses on conditions that affect those feelings, such as health or education. The report looked at 10 areas: relationships with family, relationships with friends, time use, health, the future, home, money and possessions, school, appearance, and the amount of choice in life. It has some interesting key findings. One in 11 children has low subjective well-being. Family relations and choice are the two most important factors. Family relations has the best score and is always a positive, but how a schoolchild or young person manages the choices that affect his own or her own life has one of the lowest scores. External factors, life events and relationships with others can have a dramatic and sudden effect on the subjective well-being of children. Household income is important, but it should be enough rather than a lot. If a child has too much, they can mark themselves out and become a figure of fun as the posh kid in the class.
The report highlights six priority areas, one of which is the opportunity to learn and develop not just cognitive but emotional intelligence. I was a little disturbed last week when one of the education Ministers said that he held emotional learning in complete disregard. That does not chime with the opinions of the Prime Minister, and the Minister needs to think carefully about it.
The home environment is as important as the school environment. If a child goes home to a house in multiple occupation and is living six storeys up where it is wet, windy and draughty and he or she cannot concentrate, that is not a good environment in which to create opportunities for learning and developing.
Children and young people should have their opinions respected. They should be listened to not only in school, through schools councils, but by their parents around the breakfast table or the dinner table. They need to have a positive image of themselves. Advertisers tell us that beautiful people are thin, attractive, intelligent and dynamic. That is not always the case, but it is the image that is thrust at us through the media.
We must ensure that all families have enough to live on as they face the sudden shock of redundancy, benefit caps, the freeze in child benefit and the abolition of education maintenance allowance. The full consequences of those measures as regards how they will impact on childhood well-being must be thought through before they are introduced.
Positive relationships with family and friends are a key priority area. Family bonds are 10 times more important than the structure of the family. A lot is made of the nuclear family, which is held up as a paragon. I am from a nuclear family and I have my own nuclear family, but we should not be promoting that model by saying “You are not quite right” to all the other families, because that additional pressure will not help a child’s well-being.
Children must be in a safe and suitable home environment. Privacy is important for a child’s well-being: they need to have their own bedroom. If a child is in a transient family that moves between one town and another, they are twice as likely to have poor well-being. I come from a seaside town, Rhyl, where one primary school has a 49% transiency rate. In other words, for every 100 children who are there in September, 49 are gone by July. That is not good for the 49 and it is not good for the 51 who remain. Those children will often move two or three times in a year, leading to massive pressures on themselves and their families.
Children need an opportunity to take part in positive activities, because otherwise they will turn to negative activities such as drink, drugs, teenage sex and teenage pregnancy. We need to create positive opportunities for volunteering and creative and expressive activities.
The report is a mixed blessing. I hope that the Minister has a copy. The final page has a grid on which the green areas represent initiatives that have been put in place—I congratulate the Government on that—and the purple areas represent ideas that have not been acted on. I hope that in the course of this Parliament they will all become green areas. Just to remind the Minister, I have put down 36 questions tonight—one for each box—so he will be able to answer them tomorrow.
The important thing that the report says is that all these things need to be monitored. I know that the Minister, his party and the Government do not believe in red tape, but if they are not monitored, we will not know whether they are successful.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I am afraid that the hon. Lady cannot make an intervention from the Front Bench, but if she moves to the Bench behind, she can.
Mrs Hodgson
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am interested in what my hon. Friend said about monitoring the outcomes. We are signed up to the UN convention on the rights of the child. Many of its articles, such as the article on the right for the child’s voice to be heard, could play a big part in meeting those outcomes. What does he think about the idea of having a Bill of Rights for children?
Chris Ruane
There is much to be said for that. The UN perspective is important, as is the European perspective. We need international comparators so that we can measure ourselves against international standards. We also need to monitor the programmes that we put forward nationally.
The Children’s Society report gives credit to some of the initiatives that the Government have put forward over the past year, such as telephone support for families, free parenting classes for those with under-fives and the junior individual savings account. Of course, to have an ISA people need enough spare cash to put in it and many families do not have that.
There are big changes, which the Minister knows about, that will impact on children and their well-being. I will simply echo a thought that is in both reports. One of the key things that the neglect report asks of the Government is for information to be collected. For dozens of parliamentary questions that I have put down, the answer has been that the information is not collected by the Government—I must say that it was not collected by the Labour Government either.
These are two excellent reports. Progress was made under the Labour Government and it is being made, although more slowly, under this Government. However, there are dark clouds ahead and we all need to monitor this area—both those in government and those outside government—through parliamentary questions and debates to ensure that we get the best deal for our children and young people.
Girls (Educational Development)
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
For 14 years before becoming an MP, I was a primary schoolteacher. I ended up as deputy head of the primary school that I went to when I was three—Billy Backwater, perhaps, and some might say that I have swapped one set of bells and playground humour for another. While I was a teacher, I taught eight, nine and 10-year-olds. The young girls had confidence, dynamism and enthusiasm—I could see it in their body language, their movement, their facial expressions and how they interacted with boys, teachers and each other. Something happens around the age of 13 or 14 that turns girls from dynamic people to not-so-dynamic ones who adopt the role of second-class people in school.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) on securing this debate on a subject that is rarely debated. The briefing pack from the House of Commons Library concentrates on jobs and not on the essence of the debate, which, as you have said, Mrs Main, is girls’ confidence.
The hon. Member for Wirral West mentioned many research documents and books. I draw hon. Members’ attention to Mary Pipher’s book “Reviving Ophelia”. Ophelia, as hon. Members will know, determined her own value by how she was perceived by her father and Hamlet, and ended up dying, drowned in a beautiful dress that made her look ever so pretty but dragged her down and kept her underwater, surrounded by flowers.
At the crucial age of 13 and 14, in early adolescence and puberty, the battle for self is won or lost. Much is made of qualifications such as GCSEs and A-levels, but only 18% of a person’s success, measured over a lifetime, is down to qualifications. We focus attention and funnel billions of pounds of funding into education, but is that the wisest use of our public funds? Are there other ways we could try? Could we divert some of it into confidence-building measures such as mentors and role models?
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
If what the hon. Gentleman says about early puberty and age 13 and 14 is correct, should we not concentrate all our efforts on that age group? If we have to take resources away, we should take them and concentrate them on that age group, in order to give them the confidence to shoot through and go on to do GCSEs, A-levels and so on.
Chris Ruane
I agree that it is a crucial age, but as another hon. Member mentioned in an intervention, the most crucial age is probably nought to three, when children are dressed up in pink or blue and told to be active or passive. For me, though the thrust of this debate is that 13 and 14 are a critical age.
Other factors that determine success are emotional intelligence and confidence. Luck, as everyone within this room will know, provides a great deal, as do social connections and networks. Some people are well connected—I would say that most of us here are—but in places such as the constituency of the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), a seaside constituency like my own, social networks and networking opportunities for jobs, placements and internships are minimal.
During the period when girls are aged 13 to 14, smartness is seen as a liability. There is pressure to be popular rather than honest with themselves, and young girls are taught to be feminine rather than a whole person, as that might be slightly unfeminine—“She’s a bit tomboyish. She’s a bit too big for her boots. Get down.” Many young girls spend more time on make-up than on developing value systems. We could do a lot to teach young girls to develop their own value systems.
I mentioned the education budget, but there are also consequences for the health budget. Mental illness among children is running at 25%, and obesity in young children at 29%. We are following the American model, although we are 10 years behind, so we have a lot worse to look forward to. Binge drinking is on the rise, and smoking has decreased in virtually every sector of society save for one group: 15-year-old white working-class girls. What is going on? Why is that group the worst affected? Incidences of bulimia, anorexia nervosa, loneliness and self-harm are on the increase and need to be tackled. Not only do they have an economic consequence, they have a human consequence. Girls’ complicated lives are often reduced to one thing by the media: weight. “If you’re thin, you’re okay. If you’re not, you’re not okay.”
Mary Pipher’s book outlines some practical tools, one of which involves centring oneself on a regular basis. We are all on the hedonic treadmill. As MPs, we get up at 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning and get home at 11 o’clock at night; often, we find little time for our spouses, parents and children. We are not alone; other people out there are in the same position. We pass on those values to our children, and they do not have time to reflect. Reflection and centring are key, especially for young girls, but perhaps for all of us here.
Mary Pipher says that a distinction should be made between thinking and feeling. Girls should not just follow their emotions; they should slow down and think. Is that feeling intelligent? They should check with reality. Girls need to develop personal value systems, which she describes as a north star, by asking, “Who am I? What is important to me?” and holding it up so that when advertisers try to throw them this way or that, they say, “No, I’m going that way. I’m following my star.”
Mary Pipher says that we should take time for the important decisions in life. Teenage pregnancy has been mentioned. Deciding who their first boyfriend will be is a big step for girls, as is how that relationship unfolds. Who are their friends? Are they the right friends and not just the popular ones? Do they have the right values that fit with a girl’s own personal values? Mary Pipher also says that young girls, like all of us, should try to manage pain. Pain can be a good thing if we handle it right: if we feel under threat and get on top of that threat, we become stronger people; if we fold under it, we become weaker. It is a dangerous game. Pain is all around, and to overcome that pain, proper support is needed, as is time to talk with family, friends, trusted mentors and role models. Organisation of a young person’s life is also important. We should help them manage their busy schedules and be there when they need help.
Other hon. Members mentioned providing the right activities, although it sounds a bit old-fashioned, a bit big society and a bit like the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron)—perish the thought. The right activities, such as exercise, reading, hobbies and meditation are all old-fashioned but good stuff, as opposed to the wrong activities, which are thrown at kids in every advert. We witness something like 1,400 adverts a day. They are full of promotions of drinking, eating and overeating, sex, drugs and smoking. The advertising industry is a multi-billion-pound industry that tells us to consume, consume, consume and not to bear in mind its effect on individuals and families.
Developing the right activities is important. As was mentioned, we need to recognise, record and celebrate successes, whether in sports or other activities. That becomes a virtuous circle, as a girl gains confidence in one activity such as singing or dancing and becomes a bigger person for it. Again, it is big society-ish, but we need to develop altruism and volunteering to get away from the self-absorption forced on us by the media, and to use skills such as humour and to develop a thick skin against our peers when they say, “Your values are wrong and ours are right.”
In his book “Affluenza”, Oliver James calculates the amount spent on advertising in America to be 2% of GDP. In the UK, it is 1.5%, and it is 1% in mainland Europe. The purpose of advertisers is to sow discontent and make people think that their life is not quite right, but that it would be right if they had this or that. Some of us can say, “No, I don’t want that,” but young girls are especially vulnerable to advertising and that state of permanent dissatisfaction. Advertising comes through the TV, the radio and, increasingly, through the internet. It comes especially through girls’ magazines, which have been described as the work of the devil. Considering the values that they communicate to young girls, should such magazines be regulated? I know that we are not in favour of press censorship, but let us at least have an assessment of the harm that they are doing to young women.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will bring the word “confidence” into his discussion of all these activities.
Chris Ruane
With respect, Mrs Main, every single point I have made is about confidence. This is about someone creating their own value system rather than having the media’s values rammed down their throat, and it is about developing as a person with individual confidence. Another way people can combat such pressure and develop confidence is to check the messages that enter their ears and eyes daily. Hon. Members may laugh at the concept of media studies, but when we became a literate society 600 years ago, literacy flourished and people studied it. Now we are in the age of the moving image, but we do not study the moving image. It is pooh-poohed, because the owners of the media do not want us to understand it or to appreciate the control that they have over our lives.
Bob Stewart
I am overawed by them. The hon. Gentleman mentioned literacy. I also have two sons, and I have found that the daughters spend so much time reading compared with the boys. That is absolutely fabulous, and we should use it somehow to develop confidence among our children.
Chris Ruane
In conclusion—I realise that others want to speak—there is a number of positive actions I hope the Minister will take. Much of the research that was done for Mary Pipher is American, and although there is a direct correlation with this country, we need British research to find out what is going on in our society. We must not leave such research on dusty shelves, but use it to create practical activities in the classroom and in the home for young women. We need a curriculum that includes properly structured confidence building, which is measured over time to ensure continual improvement. Dare I say it, we may even need regulation. I know that the Government are loth to regulate, but we need an assessment of the damage advertising causes to specific groups, especially young, vulnerable women and children, and if regulation is needed, we should implement it.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) and other hon. Friends who have spoken thus far. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) on securing the debate. I went to an all-girls school, and I look forward to going back shortly to do its prize-giving. I have a suspicion that confidence will be a key part of any speech I make, so this debate will be not only important but incredibly timely. For that, I thank my hon. Friend.
Everyone has approached the debate so far from completely different directions, which is interesting. The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) mentioned the importance of literacy and education, which is telling when we look at other countries across the world that ban women from reading books because the regimes are frightened of the information and education that women can gain from them.
Chris Ruane
One quote, which I did not use before, is: “The less a woman has in her head, the easier she is to carry.” What does the hon. Lady think of that?
Tracey Crouch
It is interesting how in the past certain comedians have mocked women’s education, to try to belittle women. Some dictatorships have banned women from being educated, which makes the point.
In my short remarks I want to mention the importance of sport and physical activity in building girls’ confidence. I am interested and active in sport, and am pleased to say I have just been appointed parliamentary ambassador to Us Girls, a lottery-funded project within 50 areas of high disadvantage, spread throughout England. It is tied in with the hugely successful StreetGames. I am also the manager of a girls football team in Chatham. I have been with the girls since they were nine and 10 years old, and now they are 13 and 14—the key age group we have been talking about this afternoon. They have gone from timid little girls to strong, confident and often cheeky teenagers. It has been very interesting to see them grow up, and I am proud to have played a small part in their lives thus far.
I am pleased to be involved in youth sport, not least because a quick search on the internet shows that there has been much scientific research into how sport can help to build confidence in girls. In addition, it has been proved that girls who do sports do better in school, because exercise improves learning, memory and concentration. It can also help to reduce stress and make people feel a lot happier, not just about their physical self but about their mental ability. What is fantastic about some of the recent initiatives to get youngsters—boys and girls—active in sport is the fact that there has been much more innovative thinking about the type of sport or physical activity that is offered. In my day—without meaning to sound as if I am 100 years old—the only opportunities for sport we had were netball and hockey in the winter and athletics and tennis in the summer. We were very lucky to have the playing fields so we could do those activities, but not everyone wanted to do competitive team or field sports. Now there is much more to do, ranging from dance and trampolining to Zumba, which is apparently the latest craze.
Kevin Brennan
I am not an expert on Zumba, I am afraid, so it was not on that matter.
The hon. Lady is making an interesting point about choice and diversity for girls in PE and games in school, and physical activities. In her role as an ambassador will she emphasise that to Ministers, too? An emphasis on competitive sports between schools is right, but for some girls the physical activities that will get them to participate, and increase their confidence, are not necessarily the traditional games she mentioned.
Tracey Crouch
I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and have been careful not to talk just about sport, because physical activity is incredibly important.
Getting people involved in sport or physical activity is one thing; keeping them involved as they get older is a very different problem, and all clubs or organisations involved in providing sports opportunities are finding it difficult. In my field, football, girls drop out more as they get older. The Football Association and other organisations that are looking at sport for women are trying to deal with that. Interestingly, when girls start to drop out of sport their confidence often drops, partly because when they are participating they become more confident about their weight and body shape, so it follows that they get less confident if they drop out.
Access is one way of keeping girls involved, and that is a debate for another day, but confidence can be instilled by others, which is why media portrayal and positive role models are important factors. So far, every Member has mentioned those two elements. I hope that I am a positive role model for my girls football team and indeed for local schoolgirls, who may or may not be interested in politics, but see a female politician in the local area. There are only three female MPs in Kent, and I think it is important for me to go out to schools in my area. We have a few single-sex schools in Medway, and I visit them to show them that women locally can achieve.
I am merely one woman in their lives, and television and local newspapers are often shaping influences. The shape, size and style of women on our TV screens or in magazines is often commented on. I applauded loudly when in the current series of “The X Factor” talented but not stereotypically size 8 beauty-queen participants were put through to the later stages. From an early age girls see what happens, and they go from wanting to be the Disney Princess to wanting to be a slimline pop star. The irony is that often the bigger girls are better singers. What we do to encourage diversity of representation in the sector is important.
Chris Ruane
Will the hon. Lady congratulate Sami, from Rhyl, my home town, who, when pressured by the judges to lose weight, said, “No, I am happy the way I am”?
Tracey Crouch
The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to know it was Sami I was thinking of when I wrote those words earlier. I thought she was a fantastic singer and that it was an inspiration to everyone watching to see someone of a bigger size be talented, and have the confidence to go up on stage and sing well.
It is a shame we do not see as much coverage of female as of male sporting heroes on our televisions. I hope that that will be addressed during the Olympics next year, and that serious consideration will be given to how to achieve balance in broadcasts and writing. The lack of women on the shortlist for BBC sports personality of the year is in the news today. Some superb sportsmen are on the list, and I would not want any woman to be included on it for anything other than merit and excellence, but it might be easier for females to be considered if they had a higher profile in the coverage in the first place.
I am proud to have co-signed with the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), earlier in the year, a letter to Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, which helped to secure coverage of the women’s football World cup quarter final on terrestrial TV. It was an important step forward in achieving wider interest in women’s football, but it is now time we looked at how broadcasters cover women’s sport in general. At the moment coverage is dominated by men’s sport. I do not suggest it should be 50:50, but I would like a bit more coverage, especially at peak times.
We have some brilliant sportswomen at the moment, and I will quickly plug Kat Driscoll, from Chatham, who has just secured her place in team GB, for trampolining. I cannot think of anything more inspiring for girls from Chatham than to see someone who grew up in the same street or went to the same schools as they did representing their country. Girls who play sports learn to set goals and develop discipline. Often they learn about teamwork. Those skills are good not just for sports but for life. We heard earlier, from my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West, that confidence is hard to define. However, participation in sport and physical activity develops friendships and relationships and a passion for something that can stay with people for life, building the strength of mind and body that perhaps encapsulates what confidence should be about. I hope that the legacy of the Olympics and future sporting events will be to identify female role models, inspire greater participation in various sports and, ultimately, build confidence in girls, which in turn will stand the next generation of women in good stead.
Kevin Brennan
She would be quite capable of doing so, having recently got through to the next stage of a debating competition with her school. Members may be interested to know, however, that she is not particularly interested in following me into politics—I think that she has higher ambitions than that.
The contribution of the hon. Member for Wirral West highlighted the work that she has done on the subject. I commend her for her work with girls to try to build their confidence and make sure that they have opportunities. She spoke about the National Youth Theatre project in which she is involved with her book and her work with Girlguiding UK, an excellent organisation with which I had many dealings as a Minister in the old Department for Children, Schools and Families. Girlguiding UK is a superb organisation that does great work with young women and girls, and it is also extremely progressive and forward looking. I commend some of its publications to hon. Members, if they have not had the chance to look at them and see the work that it is doing with young women. It is a modern organisation doing a great deal of good work, and the hon. Lady gave an extremely thoughtful and thoroughly researched speech on the subject.
The hon. Lady then talked about the English baccalaureate and the role that it might play in building confidence, but that is one point on which my opinion might differ from hers. The reason why I intervened on her on the matter of music—another hon. Member said that it is a subject that can give confidence to young people and to girls in particular—is that, when I asked the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), who has responsibility for schools, a question recently, I was unable to ascertain an answer from him about the survey to which the hon. Lady has referred as to what has happened to those subjects not included in the E-bac.
Kevin Brennan
That is a valid point. I completely accept that it is important that, when it comes to those crucial points in school when choices are made, young people and young girls in particular are aware of the choices that they are making and given good advice and mentoring about their consequences. My personal view is that the English baccalaureate does not serve that purpose particularly well and that it demonstrates that more young people are choosing the subjects that the Government want them to choose at a particular level. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that that will happen when schools are told that that is how they will be measured. Inevitably, they will then change their timetables and resources in order for that to happen. My point is that that does not necessarily deal with the issue of having the confidence to take those subjects in the first place. I am concerned that we still do not know, because the Government did not ask the question thoroughly in the survey, what impact that has had on the other subjects that are outwith the English baccalaureate, such as religious education and music and drama, both of which have been referred to as confidence-building subjects.
The hon. Lady was followed by the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who made some important points about confidence in relation to teenage pregnancy and the rates of teenage pregnancy in this country. She is absolutely right. Teenage pregnancy fell by about 13% during the period in which the previous Government were in office, but the figure is still far too high in this country. All hon. Members want to figure out the best way to tackle that, because it is far too high. There are sometimes differences of opinion on the best way to approach the matter in relation to sex and relationship education and other such issues, but I have no doubt that the hon. Lady is absolutely right that building girls’ confidence and self-esteem is key to lowering that all-too-high statistic.
The hon. Lady also mentioned the issue of self-image, weight and obesity. I commend to hon. Members, if they have an opportunity to read it, the Foresight report, which was produced during the previous Government’s time in office, although it is not a political report. It centres on obesity and was published about four years ago. It is a key document to understanding the subject and its importance, particularly in relation to some of the issues under discussion.
The contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) was also very thoughtful and well researched. He made the point, which I think all of us strongly recognise, about the confidence that young girls have at about the age of 10. I have always thought that if someone wants to find common sense on legs, they should talk to a 10-year-old girl and they will get the common-sense answer to any question on any subject. Something happens, however, during the course of secondary education, puberty and the teenage years, and, often, girls who were tremendously confident, articulate and able to speak up for themselves, and who had ambitious ideas about what they wanted to do for their future, become withdrawn all of a sudden.
I was a secondary school teacher for 10 years from the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, teaching children between the ages of 11 and 18, and I saw that for myself when I observed their progress during that period. I was lucky enough to be a form tutor for one form group for seven years, so I saw the boys and girls who stayed for each of those years grow up during that time. It can be depressing to see what can happen to young girls in particular at the crucial age mentioned by my hon. Friend, although I did everything that I could as their teacher and form tutor to try to instil in them the kind of confidence that they should have had. My hon. Friend also mentioned the importance of networks and the frightening statistic that the only group in which smoking is increasing in the country is 15-year-old, white, working-class girls.
My hon. Friend was followed by the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), who spoke with a great deal of passion and commitment about the importance of science and engineering, and about encouraging girls to take up those subjects and to have the confidence to do so. I listened recently, while driving, to Jocelyn Bell on Radio 4. She was, of course, denied the Nobel prize for science. Many people think that that would not have happened to a man if he had discovered the pulsar, but because she was a relatively junior scientist at the time she never got the recognition, through the Nobel prize, for her achievement. She still went on to be an extremely distinguished scientist, but her description of the sexism that she faced as a young scientist working in the scientific community was disturbing. That was back in the 1960s, which is quite a long time ago, but there remains a certain attitude towards girls and science that we need to make sure is overcome.
The hon. Lady was followed by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who spoke about the importance of sport and physical activities in instilling confidence in girls. When I was a Minister with responsibility for school sport, I was fortunate enough to work with Dame Kelly Holmes and Baroness Sue Campbell on this subject. The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I had the wonderful experience of witnessing my daughter’s one and only brief experience on the hockey field at the age of 11, but then, somehow or other, she disengaged from sport and physical activity, so I think that the hon. Lady is absolutely right that we need to do more to encourage a wider range of activities for girls.
I want to mention one sporting heroine of mine, Nicole Cooke from south Wales, who won the gold medal for Great Britain in the cycling road race at Beijing. She won the world championship in the same year, which is something no other cyclist has ever achieved. If she were a man, I am sure that the recognition would have been absolutely enormous. It is a shame that there is not a female sports person on the sports personality of the year shortlist this year, as the hon. Lady has rightly said.
As I have said, I was a school teacher for 10 years until 1995 and became an MP in 2001. There is rightly a focus on standards and on the need for high achievement in the curriculum. However, I am absolutely convinced that we should not lose sight of some of the things that I fear might be regarded in some quarters of Government as the softer, wishy-washy liberal aspects of our discussion today. For example, one of the things that I was responsible for when I was a Minister was the social and emotional aspects of the learning programme in school. That dealt head-on with the problem that some children, particularly girls, were sometimes coming to school with a lot of baggage—emotional baggage rather than the bag in which they carried their school books—because of the nature of modern society, which some hon. Members have described today.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd has said, girls can come under pressure in the home, from the media or from the pace of modern life. As was mentioned earlier, the social and emotional aspects of learning programmes and subjects such as dance, drama and sport, or extra-curricular subjects such as debating, group work or the Duke of Edinburgh award can build self-esteem, confidence, resilience and the ability to take risks.
As the hon. Member for Wirral West has rightly said, those things are extremely important. I sometimes fear—it is entirely possible that when we were in government, we gave this message as well—that, in our desire rightly to say, “We want to raise standards. We want academic standards to improve. We want this to be the country that is the best place to go to school in the world and that has the highest academic achievements,” we lose sight of the importance of some of the social and emotional aspects of learning. Such subjects actually promote better academic achievement. Anyone who has worked in education will know that children who are well-balanced, well-rounded and emotionally stable will do better in the classroom.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. I am sure that the Minister would like to have a few minutes to respond to this important debate.
Chris Ruane
I do not give credit to the Prime Minister for many things, but he is introducing the index of well-being, which is being dealt with by the Office for National Statistics. Will my hon. Friend pay tribute to the work that is being done by the Government to measure well-being as well as academic standards?
Kevin Brennan
It is important to measure well-being, because welfare in the economic sense is not entirely related to the level of gross domestic product. There is nothing particularly new in that concept, but it is important to have a measure of well-being. It is also important for there to be such a measure in schools. That is the point I am making. If we are going to have such a measure for society as a whole, let us make sure we have it for schools, too.
Many books have been mentioned today. Hon. Members may have read the interesting book, “Grit: the skills for success and how they are grown”, by Yvonne Roberts, which talks about how to build social intelligence, emotional resilience, enterprise and discipline skills in girls and the importance of social and emotional intelligence. It also mentions how crucial reinforcement, mentoring and building resilience are. Some of the work done on that in schools by organisations such as the Young Foundation is extremely valuable and important.
Today’s debate has been extremely informative and of a very high standard. The subject is probably not highly politically controversial, but it has provided a useful opportunity to explore what the Government are doing to try to instil greater confidence among young women and girls in our schools and colleges.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Sarah Teather
I am delighted to hear about that school using the pupil premium in that way. It is good to hear from head teachers examples of how they are spending the money and the impact it is making on the ground. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would invite the head teacher to write to me to tell me more about the detail of the work that that school is doing and its impact on pupils, as we are looking to try to publicise examples of good practice and it would be helpful to hear what is happening in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency?
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Although the pupil premium has some merits in theory, what we shall see in reality over the next few years is the biggest cut in education funding since the 1950s. Is this not simply a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul?
Sarah Teather
I am glad to hear some grudging acceptance from the Opposition of the benefits of the pupil premium, which focuses money on the most disadvantaged students and gives schools freedom to spend it as they choose. I have just heard an example from my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) of where that is making a substantial difference. I remind the hon. Gentleman that there is a flat cash settlement per pupil, and that an additional £2.5 billion has been made available for the pupil premium.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Prisk
We are working hard to ensure that the sector, which is a £10 billion industry by sales, is able to grow. That is why I am co-chairing the Marine Industries Leadership Council, and we held a reception in Parliament for all Members to understand its impact. We have a number of important studies on exports and on trade, making sure that investment is forthcoming, and we are determined to ensure an effective partnership between industry and Government so that there is growth.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
What is the Minister’s definition of the big society, and what role is his Department playing in it?
Mr Davey
I believe that the whole point of the big society is to give people the permission and the support to engage in their local community and to show responsibility. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members supported something that plays to the best traditions of our country.
Independent Debt Advice
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Yvonne Fovargue
I totally agree. Having worked for a CAB, I know that people are extremely confused about where the funding comes from. The organisation gets very few donations. The depth of its service is often misunderstood as well. I have heard people say, “Oh, CAB, they tell people where to go.” We did not often do that.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has given us some of the current statistics. Looking ahead over the next few years when hundreds of thousands of public sector workers will be sacked by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, what burden does she think that will place on Citizens Advice? In my constituency of Vale of Clwyd, some 50% of workers are in the public sector, about 4,000 of whom may be laid off. What effect will that have on citizens advice bureaux in my constituency and elsewhere?
Yvonne Fovargue
Indeed, over the past year, the number of debt clients seen by the CAB has risen by 23%, and a significant increase is expected in the next few years as well, so the loss of skilled advisers in local bureaux will have a catastrophic effect. It is essential that local links are retained. The trust that has been built up between local agencies, such as that between the bureau and the local authority council tax collection department, will be lost, to the detriment of local people who are struggling to pay. St Helen’s citizens advice bureau had regular meetings with the head of finance and the bailiffs to discuss tactics and to raise issues from clients’ experiences. It developed a protocol to assist residents, particularly those entering employment who found that all their creditors immediately descended on them, causing quite a number to leave work, feeling that they were better off on benefits, despite their increased income, because their debts had come back to haunt them.
Lorely Burt
I would rather move on than talk about things other than the subject that we are here to discuss today, which is citizens advice bureaux and debt management.
Lorely Burt
Despite the heckling from a sedentary position, I will continue.
In 2009-10, citizens advice bureaux experienced a 23% rise in demand for their services. Of the queries that they dealt with, 150,000 were about quite complex debt problems, as outlined by the hon. Member for Makerfield. It is estimated that the loss of the financial inclusion fund reduces the debt advice capacity of citizens advice bureaux by 40% to 50%. So I am looking forward to hearing from the Minister today about what steps are being taken, particularly in relation to the national money advice service and how that service will help people and make up the shortfall.