Healthy Relationships

Jade Botterill Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jade Botterill (Ossett and Denby Dale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis) for opening this debate on the Government’s support for healthy relationships. It was great to hear hon. Members talking about what healthy relationships mean to them, and it is wonderful to see both Movember and Dad Shift in the Gallery today.

This debate could not come at a more welcome time. We have recently published our groundbreaking strategy for halving violence against women and girls in the next 10 years, backed by at least £1 billion of Government funding. We published updated relationships, sex and health education guidance last summer, which will be implemented in all schools from September, and we have committed £8 million to support schools to maximise the impact of curriculum changes. The importance of healthy relationships was written in our manifesto, and we are proud of the action this Labour Government are taking in this area.

The new curriculum reflects the importance of supporting young children to build the skills for healthy relationships from the start of primary. We should not pretend that relationships are easy, and the reason we are having this conversation is because we know they are not. We will support children to learn the difficult skills of setting and recognising healthy boundaries, balancing different people’s needs and preferences, managing conflict and communicating with kindness and respect.

In secondary school, we will move away from an exclusive focus on consent, which has led to a culture of “anything goes, so long as I’ve got a yes.” Young people must understand the importance of consent, but they must also understand that consent alone is not enough. We want to raise a generation of young people who value kindness, who pay attention, who notice power imbalances and who look out for vulnerability. This is fundamentally about how we approach our relationships. Are we out there trying to get what we want from other people, or are we here to be kind and take care of each other?

We will teach young people how to turn a critical lens on content that encourages harmful attitudes or prejudice in any form of media. In the online world of Andrew Tate’s AI deepfakes and hatred presented as brotherly advice, we will ensure that young people can identify misogyny and recognise how social media influencers capitalise on it to the detriment of men and women and boys and girls. We have to be absolutely clear that this does not mean stigmatising boys, or making boys feel that they are the enemy. Where society polarises, the job of schools is to help young people find their common ground. Where boys and young men feel lost or isolated, the job of schools is to ensure they have a safe space where they feel they belong. None of that is easy and we are not saying teachers hold all the answers, but they clearly need support. That is why we are investing £11 million in support for schools; £8 million to support the RSE curriculum and £3 million to provide targeted support for children who are displaying harmful behaviours. We believe that every child deserves the support needed to develop healthy relationships.

Hon. Members have rightly drawn attention to the importance of strong, loving families, and many have discussed the need for stronger paternity leave. The Government have launched a full review of the parental leave system. It is a chance to look at how the whole framework can better support working families and reflect the realities of modern work and childcare. Equitable childcare arrangements not only promote family stability, but help address the gender pay gap.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley rightly raised, what it means to grow up in a typical family has fundamentally changed; divorce rates have grown, more women are in the workforce, and households are much more likely to have two earners. Government policy must reflect and support families as they exist in modern working Britain. That is why, through our strategy for giving every child the best start in life, we have set out our first steps to expand and strengthen family services. It will make early education and childcare more accessible and affordable, and improve the quality of early education and childcare to make real change happen for families and children across the country.

We are already delivering support to working families. Eligible working parents of children aged nine months and older are now benefitting from 30 hours of funded childcare per week, which can save families up to £7,000 per eligible child every year. We are improving access by creating tens of thousands of places in new and expanded school-based nurseries. Schools have already reported that more than 5,000 places have been made available through the first phase of that programme. Backed by £45 million of funding, phase 2 will deliver at least 300 new or expanded school-based nurseries that will be ready to offer new childcare places in the 2026-27 academic year. There will be an increased focus on supporting families from disadvantaged areas to access early years provision.

Phase 3 will be led by local authorities, who have been invited to develop multi-year funding proposals. The Government continue to prioritise and protect investment in the early years. That is why we are investing more than £1 billion more in the early years entitlements year on year, and we will continue to go further. From next year, we will give additional funding to extend the early years pupil premium in the areas most in need, testing new approaches to maximise its impact and ensuring that children most at risk of falling behind receive high-quality, evidence-informed support. To make sure that the early years funding system is hardwired to benefit those children in parts of the country that have higher levels of additional need, we will review early years funding, including national funding formulas, and consult the sector on the changes by this summer.

As part of the child poverty strategy, we will work with the Department for Work and Pensions to make it easier for parents to use universal credit childcare and the funded hours together, helping them to access work. Those changes are made with modern families in mind. The 30 hours of childcare entitlement is designed to help families get on, not just get by. It is assessed on a per-person basis to ensure there is no incentive for the lower earner in the household to reduce their income to be eligible.

Not every child gets the chance to be born in a safe and stable family. Domestic violence can sometimes begin during pregnancy. Refuge has reported that

“1 in 3 pregnant women experience domestic abuse”

and between April 2024 and March 2025,

“14% of Refuge’s service users reported being pregnant.”

That is why NICE guidelines are clear that all women accessing maternity services should routinely be asked about domestic abuse, typically at their first antenatal booking appointment, so they can be referred to specialist services. As our strategy for halving violence against women and girls makes clear, tackling domestic abuse is a whole-society effort. When proximity to such violence begins in childhood, my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley is correct that Best Start family hubs can be vital for identifying and tackling it. When parents are struggling to support their children, family hubs can give them new skills to help their children’s social, cognitive and emotional development. That is why we are building on this year’s £126 million funding boost for family hubs and the Start for Life programme. We will be rolling out our Best Start family hubs to every local authority from April.

Children also learn from their peers, and that is why we are actively considering the evidence on peer-to-peer and trusted adult relationships as we develop our pupil engagement framework. That framework will help all schools measure and improve the key factors that determine pupils’ engagement in education. That includes a sense of belonging, safety and inclusion, and relationships with teachers and fellow pupils.

Rich, healthy relationships thrive in a context of shared purpose and understanding. We all know that from our experiences of taking part in sport, putting on plays or even confronting and understanding differing points of view. That is why we are supporting schools and colleges to develop strong and strategic enrichment offers through our upcoming enrichment framework, which will encourage a sense of belonging and enable children and young people to form communities, explore their interests and develop their skills.

I was really touched to hear of the couples admired by Members across the House. Their contributions reminded me of my own parents, who worked so hard to raise me and my two siblings. They both worked long shifts, put food on the table and, around that table, made decisions together. They taught me the values I carry with me today. I grew up with the benefit of healthy relationships at home, at school and in my community. Every child deserves that chance, and has such capacity to enjoy positive, healthy relationships when given the opportunity. Through our childcare expansion, our strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, our work in schools, our review of parental leave and our plans to support and nurture boys, this Government are committed to helping everyone benefit.