International Men’s Day

Martyn Day Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin. I thank the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) for securing this debate on International Men’s Day, which will take place on Sunday 19 November. I am grateful to him for his detailed presentation and for reminding us that it is an international event. It is a pleasure to recognise that it is now promoted in over 80 countries.

There are many issues which disproportionately impact upon men. However, in addressing these, it is important that we do not detract from the work done to address institutional bias against women. The main themes from today have been male vulnerability and wellbeing, and there are clearly many facets to this situation, and poverty and deprivation are two of the key components, as is fatherless families. Fatherhood has been well covered by the hon. Members for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). I am grateful to the hon. Lady for mentioning the Scotch Year of the Dad. I would like to take this opportunity to praise publicly my own father, Ron, who has been an absolutely great role model in my life. It is a reminder to everybody that children are children at all ages. As I arrived here today for this debate I got a message from him updating me about the cat, which he is looking after, and the car, which he is getting sorted at the garage. I thought it was a message from the Whip. The Whip is sitting behind me, but I did not get any message from the Whip, so I think I have free rein to say what I like.

Perhaps the crux of the problem for me is that men are much more likely to be roofless than women are. The Scottish Government found that in 2014, 81% of those sleeping rough were male. This is partly due to the fact that men are much less likely to seek help for issues such as mental health or substance abuse. I remember a housing slogan from the 1990s—I cannot remember which charity had it, but we had it on car stickers at the time—which said, “Build a home; build a life.” That was true then and it is true now. Scotland has some of the strongest legislation in the world on rights for the homeless. All homeless people have the right to temporary accommodation immediately, and if unintentionally homeless, to settled accommodation, with a commitment to invest more than £3 billion over the lifetime of the Scottish Parliament and to deliver at least 50,000 affordable homes, and the most important component of that for me is that 35,000 of those are to be for social rent. That builds on the work of the previous Parliament, where they exceeded the target of delivering 30,000 affordable homes.

Then we come to perhaps the most frightening part of this debate: the issue of suicide and early death. There are around 12 male suicides a day in the UK, representing 76% of all suicides. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) highlighted this issue very clearly, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who amplified the situation in Scotland, which has seen an increase for the first time in the last six years—truly frightening and shocking.

The hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) advised that the life expectancy for men is five years lower in Scotland than for women. I always tell people that my constituency is a great place to live—and it is. In my area the life expectancy is only three years lower for men. That is still a problem we need to address and tackle, but it is compounded further by inequality. It is not an even three years across all social classes.

The majority of children in care are boys. In 2015, 53% of the looked-after children in Scotland were male. How can the educational attainment and outcomes for these youngsters be summed up? It is just not good. Only 6% of them go on to university and nearly half suffer from mental health issues. Staggeringly—this statistic is appalling—a young person who has been in care is 20 times more likely to die before the age of 25 than someone who has not been in care.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East spoke of mental health and the impact of projects such as Men’s Sheds. He also spoke of his own personal experience, and it highlights that many are in that situation.

Half the adult prison population are people who lived in care growing up. Last summer—a year and a bit ago—I visited Shotts Prison. It was a very interesting experience. It is an interesting place to visit, but not somewhere I would like to live. It is not often that I find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but today I do. Some 95% of the prison population are male. It was shocking to learn that they are more likely to be sent to prison and to receive longer sentences than women for the same crimes.

The increased attention being paid to mental health issues in NHS Scotland, and now in England, will hopefully help to reduce this problem. The Harry’s Masculinity Report, produced by University College London, found that the main factor in mental positivity for men was job satisfaction. Having a direct impact on the success of a business was also important, with autonomy cited as a main reason for increased job satisfaction. Self-esteem is critical. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) spoke of stigma, which I also want to comment on. I asked 1st Step, a local charity from my constituency, about its experience. I have mentioned it before, and it deals with issues that particularly affect men developing addictions to alcohol or drugs. The charity deals with addicts in recovery and two thirds of its clients are male. It finds that drug addiction is associated with unemployment, while alcoholism is more often associated with stress at work, and both are associated with self-esteem issues. The major issues for males in addiction are shame and guilt, with men frequently in denial about their problems and feeling useless or suffering from depression. Fortunately, in my area 1st Step is there to offer activities supported and managed by those in recovery, providing additional opportunities to develop skills and enhance self-esteem, and it really has made a difference to many of my constituents.

Equality, including equality for those of any gender, is thankfully a core value in our society and I welcome this debate as an opportunity to highlight those issues today.