Children and Families Bill

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, this is a good Bill. It addresses important failings in our current child support system. However, it will be very expensive to implement. With the present state of the nation’s finances, there must be a question mark over how local authorities will be able to afford to implement it.

The underlying problems that the Bill attempts to address relate mainly to the problems of those children whose parents are unable or unwilling to give them, or to procure for them, the love, care, support and education that they need if they are to develop into happy and useful adults and to be able to be good parents and good citizens in their turn. It is important that these problems be solved not only for the future of our society but in the context of the human rights of every child and of social mobility within our society. Too many of this nation’s parents today have not been adequately prepared for their role as parents. Might it not be a more effective—and, perhaps, less expensive—way of achieving the Government’s objectives to concentrate more on prevention? Should we not be thinking about what steps we could take to reduce in the future the number of families that will fail to give their children the start in life that they need?

This leads on to two practical questions. First, should we not define more clearly what responsibilities towards their child we as a society expect a parent to accept and shoulder? Secondly, should we not be doing more in school to motivate, empower and prepare our young people, the nation’s future parents, for the responsibilities of adult life and parenthood?

The majority of mothers and fathers want to give their children the start in life that they need, but there are many obstacles in the way. More than 3 million children in this country are growing up in lone-parent households. Some 30% of women and 17% of men have been victims of domestic violence at least once since the age of 16. Some 22% of children live with a parent who drinks hazardously. These statistics, and many others that are available, give some indication of the problems that prospective parents face in our society today: unemployment, family breakdown, unstable and chaotic families, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, fathers in prison and many more. We will never entirely wipe out these problems, which devastate the lives of some of our children, but their number and severity could surely be reduced. I believe and hope that such a process might be set in train by the Bill.

There are things that we could and should be doing. I will mention just two. First, we could use the Bill to clarify in simple language the respective responsibilities of parents and the state in the complex task of raising the nation’s children. The complexity of the law today means that too many parents, and especially too many young men, are choosing to ignore their parental responsibilities. Section 2 of the Children Act 1989 refers to “parental responsibility” but does not define it. I should like to see this Bill define a parent’s responsibilities to their child unambiguously and in simple language so that every prospective parent, even teenage fathers, could understand that they have responsibilities towards any child they bring into the world. I would also like them, if possible, to have some understanding of what those responsibilities are. Today, the law on this subject depends on case law. This is fine for lawyers but is not helpful for teachers and others when trying to explain to young people why they should take seriously their responsibilities to their future child. Scottish law has an excellent short definition of parental responsibility, on which I intend to base an amendment.

My second suggestion for action relates to the fact that recent research shows that there are two windows of opportunity in a child’s life when it is possible to influence their social and personal development. The first is in the first three years of a child’s life. This window of opportunity has already been recognised by this Government and has led to their early years programme, so ably led by Graham Allen. The second window of opportunity is during key stage 3, between the ages of 11 and 14. At this age, most young people are eager to find out more about the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities that they will meet in adult life. This is a time when good schools have the opportunity to help, teach and guide pupils on these issues, perhaps through the PSHE programme.

However, the sad thing is that, as Ofsted reports show, few secondary schools today are giving any priority whatever to PSHE. Most do not regard personal and social education as an important subject and in the majority of cases the subject is being taught, if it is taught at all, by teachers with no specialist training or experience in it. I call on the Government to encourage all secondary schools to employ at least one teacher with specialist training in this important subject and to take steps to ensure that enough specialist teacher training is available to make this possible. Today, not one single teacher-training university in this country offers such a course.