Healthy Relationships

Leigh Ingham Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (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 securing such an important debate.

As someone who, before I was elected, worked in the sector, delivering programmes with and to young people, I understand how key this issue is. When we talk about healthy relationships, we are really talking about the kind of country we want to be. Long before a child sits an exam, applies for a job or decides who they want to spend the rest of their lives with, they are learning how to treat other people and how they expect to be treated themselves. Healthy relationships are therefore the foundation of confidence, safety, educational success and mental wellbeing. If we can get this right early on, we can prevent harm later; if we neglect it, we end up paying the price in poor outcomes and avoidable crises.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis) for securing this excellent debate. One organisation that does really interesting work in this space—which, I am ashamed to say, I did not know much about until last year—is Soroptimist International, which has developed fantastic “Loves me, Loves me not” bookmarks that it takes into schools and colleges. The bookmarks detail the component parts of a healthy relationship, as well as how to detect whether or not someone is in one. Does my hon. Friend agree that more initiatives like that would take us in exactly the direction we need to go in?

[Leigh Ingham]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Soroptimist does incredible work in my constituency on supporting healthy relationships, as well as work to support women in prisons, which I have worked with it on, so I completely agree.

Schools in Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages are working really hard to get this right. I will speak to a couple of specific examples. At Tillington Manor primary school, healthy relationships are not an occasional lesson: they are woven through the culture of the school. Through a structured personal, social, health and economic education curriculum, children learn about friendship, family, communication, conflict resolution and how to recognise healthy and unhealthy behaviours.

The lessons are all age appropriate, and they build year on year. They are delivered through safe discussion, role play and reflection in a safe environment. But what really stands out to me is the whole-school approach. The school has dedicated spaces, such as the nook and the hive, where emotional support is provided for children and families, and the staff are trained in emotional literacy and wellbeing. As a result, the pupils are more confident in identifying healthy relationships and more likely to seek help from trusted adults. The school has found that, as a result of the programmes, repeated conflict has reduced over time. That is what prevention can look like in practice.

At secondary level, Sir Graham Balfour school teaches relationships and sex education from years 7 to 13 as a spiral curriculum. Students are learning about consent, safety, what healthy relationships look like and what toxic dynamics look like. The school also runs focused workshops on toxic relationships and masculinity for groups of pupils who might be struggling.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley mentioned the debate around boys and young men. The discussion often becomes incredibly polarised, but the reality is that many boys and young men are navigating a confusing online landscape where extreme and harmful messages about masculinity are only a click away—and then not even a click away, because algorithms amplify extremist content, and it gets worse and worse.

We need to create spaces where boys can talk honestly about respect, emotions and what it means to be a man, because we know that if we do not, someone else will fill the vacuum. Teaching children about healthy relationships is not about blaming boys; it is about equipping them and helping them to build the skills to form respectful partnerships, handle rejection and understand that strong men do not prey on the weakest in society. The healthy relationship that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) spoke about was a wonderful example of that.

At the same time, we cannot ignore the pressures facing girls and young women. Schools in my constituency report increasing concerns about body image, self-esteem and unrealistic expectations, fuelled by social media. Girls are measuring themselves against edited, filtered versions of reality that are being presented as the norm on their phone screens.

When another school in my constituency strengthened its RSE curriculum, students began to come forward about inappropriate touching that had previously gone unreported. That was a significant step in creating the foundations of healthy relationships, and it makes it crystal clear why such lessons are so important.

Last week, I visited Burleyfields primary school, where four and five-year-olds told me how they keep their brains happy and healthy. They suggested—we all need to know this—baking, reading books, imaginative play and spending less time on our devices. Let us be honest: we could all do with a bit of that. Even at that age, the children knew what a healthy relationship and healthy activities could look like.

But schools cannot do it alone. Our Government have a real opportunity to build on the strong foundations that are already in place. Continued investment in high-quality PSHE and professional development will help to ensure consistency across the system, and strengthening early intervention mental health services would support children and families before things escalate.

I welcome the Government’s focus on attendance, behaviour and school improvement, which is helping to create conditions for healthier relationships in schools. With 140,000 fewer children persistently absent, and the new attendance and behaviour hubs spreading really good practice, we are seeing how structure and support can work effectively together.

In Stafford, our schools are already leading the way. They are demonstrating that when healthy relationships are embedded across the whole school, culture changes, behaviour improves and children feel safer. What steps is the Minister taking to advance the progress the Government have already made and build on the incredible work that is already being done in schools such as those in my constituency?

We all know that healthy relationships are not a luxury; they are a vital fabric underpinning our society. They define so many of the debates we have in this place, from academic attainment to mental health and public safety. If we want to create a generation that is resilient, respectful and ready to contribute, we must invest accordingly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point. I am not suggesting that the parental leave policy was perfect by any stretch of the imagination. If it was perfect, we would have far more fathers taking more parental leave, but typically it is mothers who take most parental leave. It is far from perfect, but the Government have an opportunity now, with their parental leave and pay review, to consider the situation holistically.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame has already set out, we as a party would like to see all parents being able to share parental leave. There would be six weeks of “use it or lose it” parental leave each, so that fathers, as much as mothers, have an entitlement of six weeks. However, the rest of the 46 weeks—taking us up to 52 weeks—would be for a mother and father to share as they wish.

Again, recognising that that is challenging fiscally at the moment, frankly we have an ambition to try and double the rates of statutory maternity pay, which is also parental pay. That probably relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith), because at the moment the rates of statutory pay are, frankly, less than the minimum wage and lots of parents just cannot afford to take time off, and feel driven back into the workplace, often before they are ready to return to it. Therefore, I respectfully disagree with the Leader of the Opposition, who at one point said that maternity pay was “excessive”. I think that it is far from “excessive”; indeed, it is far too low and we have a long way to go to improve it.

While we are discussing the parental leave and pay review, we should not forget about kinship families. Lots of families are not conventional families. Many children cannot grow up with their parents, but other family members look after them. Kinship carers step up overnight to look after children, frequently giving up jobs and careers, and incurring costs that they do not necessarily have a statutory right to receive any support for. Also, they are not allowed to take leave; often, they are excluded from adoption leave as well as from parental leave. When we are discussing family policy and building healthy relationships, that is a real gap in the system that needs to be fixed.

I will move on to what I was originally going to say today, which is about trying to build good relationships. We cannot take for granted that children growing up today will necessarily have access to the right sources of knowledge. The rise of technology and social media has put our children at increased risk of encountering extreme and harmful content that distorts their understanding of how they should interact with each other, what romantic relationships look like, and—frankly—what sex looks like.

We know that women are 27 times more likely than men to be harassed online, and that a third of young women between the ages of 17 and 21 have received unwanted sexual images online. We know that the online world needs to be reined in, with tech companies and influencers alike profiteering by exploiting the insecurities that men and boys often have, through the use of addictive algorithms that often promote radicalising content and monetise misogynistic content.

It might have been the hon. Member for Ribble Valley who said that we should not stereotype our image of what men and boys are like at the moment. However, I think it is true that many men and boys feel increasingly lonely and isolated, and struggle with all sorts of issues, whether the cost of living or a lack of access to other positive activities. So, we need to look at men and boys as well as at women and girls, and to consider the different needs of each.

I said in a debate on relationship education last year that we need a culture change in all aspects of society. We must encourage the men in our lives—our brothers, fathers, friends, boyfriends, husbands and sons—to stand up against the toxic masculinity that we have seen, and to demonstrate to other men in their lives, particularly young men, what it means to be compassionate and kind in all relationships, and to realise that compassion is a strength and not a weakness.

Given the significant amount of online content that promotes violence against women and girls, which is particularly targeted at men and boys, we need to ensure that we protect our children and young people, not only because of the risk of harm to their mental and physical wellbeing but because of the impact on their social development and how they build relationships.

That is why we, as a party, have called very strongly for a ban on harmful social media for under-16s. Different political parties have different proposals on how such a ban could be implemented, but I think it needs to go hand in hand with getting people off their devices and into other activities, as the hon. Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) mentioned. We cannot start restricting things for children and young people if we do not give them alternatives. I have seen that at youth facilities that are easy and cheap, or free, to access. When the young people at those facilities were asked, “What did you do before you came here?”, they said, “We would be on our screens, in our bedroom, on our phones.” We have to provide those third spaces for young people.

[Leigh Ingham]

During the years in which Staffordshire had a Conservative-led county council, which coincided with the Conservative Government, we suffered the third-worst youth service cuts in the country. One of the things most regularly brought up with me when I meet constituents is how few activities there are for young people.

Indeed, I spoke to the vicar of a church in Eccleshall who told me that he had made a map of the activities in Eccleshall for older people and those for younger people. He came up with 112 things for older people to do in that part of my constituency, but none for younger people. Does the hon. Member agree that, while we are considering healthy relationships—and youth workers are key to modelling this behaviour, because they give a safe space to talk—we must focus on equipping our local authorities, in my case a Reform-led local authority, to prioritise the needs of young people?

[Munira Wilson]

I could not agree more. Youth services are critical and youth workers are amazing, whether they are employed by local authorities, our churches or voluntary groups up and down the country. I am the parent of an 11-year-old who is at the age where, in the holidays, she absolutely does not want to go to holiday clubs. I am trying to persuade her to go to some of the youth venues in the area. We are lucky that we still have two or three of those facilities, but I recognise that in some areas of the country there is not very much. I welcome that the Government have made announcements in this area—the Culture Secretary has made some very positive announcements on this issue. I would like to see a longer-term strategy to support those announcements, particularly in relation to the workforce.

In the classroom, relationships and sex education is so important for tackling and preventing violence against women and girls. I see amazing examples in my constituency, where schools are working hard on this issue. I am proud that our local authority, Richmond council, is White Ribbon-accredited and does lots of work with schools and lots of awareness-raising work in the area.

However, age-appropriate relationships and sex education at school has a crucial role to play, alongside the role of parents and carers, in giving children the knowledge and information they need to keep them safe by teaching them about consent, healthy relationships and online risks such as pornography and sexting. That is essential for safeguarding. Yet, according to a report by Internet Matters, many children say that they have

“received no specific education in relation to sexual image sharing or only very superficial coverage”

in relationships and sex education lessons, and that they do not feel able to get the information they want in whole-class groups. Many children felt that they were not offered enough information when the issue was discussed and that, when information was delivered by teachers who were not subject specialists, those teachers

“often sped through the topic because they found it ‘awkward’”.

[Interruption.] Was that a cough to say that I need to wind up, Ms Jardine?