Support for Children and Families: Covid-19

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I hope you are joking, Sir Christopher.

I want to thank The Sun newspaper and their agony aunt, Deidre Sanders, for flagging up today’s debate with their “Sort It Out” campaign. So let us sort it out for Louis, aged 8, who said:

“My mum and dad spend so much time hating each other, they don’t have time to love me”,

and for Shakira, aged 14, who says:

“when she picks up her phone and sighs and rolls her eyes, I know it’s my dad. I’d pay a lot of money to stop that, she just forgets that I love my dad too and I’m stuck right in the middle”.

I agree with what was said earlier on in the debate that the mums are bearing the brunt of so much of the ghastly covid pandemic. We have too many mothers out there forced to do everything by themselves. Those mothers are doing a heroic job, often under trying circumstances, and they deserve a lot of credit, but they should not have to do that alone as often as they do. Raising children is the most important job in the country and it is the responsibility of all of us as mothers and fathers.

As President Obama said in his 2010 father’s day address, our children

“don’t need us to be perfect. They do need us to be present. They need us to show up and give it our best shot”.

Too many fathers are missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities and acted like boys, not men. We need fathers to realise that responsibility does not end at conception. What makes someone a man is not the ability to have a child, it is the courage to raise one and then enjoy the most rewarding and joyful experience of being a father.

A third of children see their parents split up before they are 16, and 1.25 million children are exposed to conflict between their parents. Efforts to support healthy relationships between parents are vital and we know that children benefit from loving parents and strong, loving and respectful marriages and relationships as well. We pass on empathy and kindness by living it; we are not strong by putting others down, but by lifting them up. That is why the work Patrick Myers is doing at the Department for Work and Pensions is so important with his Reducing Parental Conflict programme and why the work done by the members of the Relationships Alliance—Relate, Tavistock Relationships, Marriage Care and OnePlusOne—is so vital, as is the pre-marriage course, the work of Jonathan and Andrea Taylor-Cummings and many others. Also Care for the Family is a fantastic charity that teaches so much, telling parents to stop scoring points and stop thinking the worst.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. I am going to have to interrupt the hon. Member, otherwise we will not have time for wind-ups.

Transpeople (Prisons)

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Selous

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman that assurance, and I apologise for not having said that in response to the shadow Minister.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend believe that we can do more to show how much we value the work of prison officers? This distressing case illustrates the challenges that they face every day, and I am not sure that people outside understand how difficult their job is.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. We should all spare a moment to think of the prison officers who daily try to prevent these tragic events and have to deal with them when they happen. When such tragic events happen, it has a huge emotional impact on prison officers. We should do our best to ensure that we look after prison officers in such circumstances.

Delivery Surcharges (Transparency for Consumers) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Selous

Friday 13th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

This is an example of a private Member’s Bill that is well suited to raising the issue, having a proper discussion and getting a response from a Minister. I note that the Minister offered to have a delivery charges summit under her chairmanship. I hope that the promoter of the Bill thinks that that will be a sufficient reward for having been successful in the private Member’s Bill ballot.

I do not think that introducing new regulations with criminal sanctions against those who break the regulations is the way to improve matters. Of course, by shopping online one probably undermines the viability of many of one’s own local retailers, and if we want to campaign for small shops in rural areas we do not necessarily want to encourage people to engage in online retail. However, I do not think that there is anywhere in the retail world that is more competitive than online. I recently visited a shop in Christchurch that supplements direct retail with online retail. The proprietor told me about a product called “Bananarama”. Unless the shop is the cheapest online retailer of that product, they will not make any sales. The proprietor showed me at least 20 or 30 examples of where the product was available for sale, and the cut-throat way in which it was being sold. That shows the benefits of healthy competition. If an online retailer is alienating his customers by not providing clear information about delivery charges, then he is unlikely to stay in business for very long.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend enlighten the House as to what “Bananarama” is?

[Mr Chope]

“Bananarama” is a sophisticated form of Scrabble, which comes in a small package. I think the pieces are yellow, but that is enough publicity for that product.

The Bill is an example of where people come forward and say, “There is a problem, therefore we must have more legislation”, but are we really going to start penalising online retailers by saying that if they do not provide all the information upfront as soon as the customer clicks on to their website, they will be subject to a criminal assessment? Apart from anything else, common sense dictates that it is only at the end of a transaction that one knows the bulk and scale of the products ordered. The retailer may offer a range of different products, some of which can be delivered by Royal Mail and some that might need to be transported by an elephant. It is only at the end of the transaction that the online retailer will be in a position to say what will be a reasonable charge.

The Bill, therefore, is completely over the top. It states that the Government would have to introduce regulations, thereby transferring responsibility for drafting from my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) to the Government. I just wonder how the Government would ever be able to introduce regulations requiring online retailers to include a clear statement of, for example, “a reasonable indication” of the total cost. What do we mean by “a reasonable indication”? Do we mean an approximate indication or a reasonable guess?

The Bill is riddled with anomalies and problems. I have always been a great believer in putting bad legislation out of its misery at the earliest possible stage, so I have no compunction in saying that I will be doing the House a great service if I ensure that the Bill does not have its Second Reading. It is ill-conceived and the wrong way to address the problem. I do not represent a rural constituency, but there are a lot of online retailers and they do not want to be burdened with the excessive regulations proposed in the Bill. Apart from anything else, and as so often happens with such proposed legislation, it would be counter-productive. Clause 1 requires that the online retailer sets out what the charges will be. An outline retailer would be able to avoid all the burden of this Bill by saying at the beginning that it did not sell goods to islands in Scotland or England, such as the Isles of Scilly or the highlands and islands, or the Isle of Man. That could be counter-productive, because people who live in those more remote areas want to have access to goods, but they recognise that the other side of the coin of living in a remote rural area is that delivery charges are higher. I do not think that anyone has suggested yet in this debate, and perhaps in due course they will, that there should be cross-subsidy of those—