Healthy Relationships

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I think it is the first time I have spoken in a debate that you have chaired and it is wonderful to see you there.

I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis) for securing this important debate today. Before I get going, I just want to say what an honour it is to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). We often joke in this place that he is at every debate, speaking on everything; today it is truly an honour to see the emotion and passion with which he spoke about being a grandfather. I sadly never got to know either of my grandfathers, and I would have been delighted to have had someone like the hon. Member for Strangford as my granddad. I thank him for that.

To be honest, when preparing for today, I thought, as the education team were asked to cover the debate, that we would largely be talking about relationships and sex education. I see that the Conservative Front Bench thought that too, and maybe even the Minister, so there we go.

I will go a little bit off script, because the hon. Member for Ribble Valley was much broader in her speech, talking about family policy and how we support and champion families. I am the education, children and family spokesperson for the Lib Dems. That is very deliberate, because as a party we believe that we should look at children and families much more holistically and not just through the prism of education. We are very keen on championing family policy, not just as a party but cross-party.

As several hon. Members have pointed out today, healthy relationships are difficult to build when we are living in such challenging times. There is a cost of living crisis; there are parents who are working full-time jobs and sometimes juggling two or three jobs, while trying to put food on the table and looking after children, and all the pressures that brings.

The hon. Member for Ribble Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo) both talked about parental rights. I recognise the fiscal situation that this Government find themselves in, but we need to find the money to spend on parental rights and parental leave. All the evidence tells us that, in those early weeks and months after a baby is born, and in the early years, parental involvement at home can make a massive difference.

That is not making a judgment on those who want to go out to work—I say this as a working parent myself. I was very clear with my husband from the get-go—“I am not staying at home even part time, once I finish my maternity leave. I want to be back in the workplace.” He actually wanted to take the decision to go part time with our first child and was largely full time, apart from being a local councillor, with our son.

[Sarah Smith]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Munira Wilson]

I will just get to the end of my point, and then am very happy to give way. The time at which my husband wanted to take more parental leave when our first child was born was towards the end of the coalition Government, before the new parental leave rights had come into place. He could not take any paid leave, although we were able to afford for him to do that. I will come on to what I think we should be doing on parental leave and paternity pay, but will give way first.

[Sarah Smith]

An important element that maybe has not come through so far in the debate is the class impact of the current policy situation. Currently, 90% of paternity leave claims are made by the top 50% of earners. It is very rare that low-income earners are able to even access the current system. Unfortunately, the challenge of the policies laid out under the coalition is that parental leave is only accessible to those who were better off to start with.

If we are going to get this right going forward, we have to design a policy framework and put forward legislation that puts those fathers and those families first. If we are not achieving parental leave for the families who are, if we are honest, those who are often dealing with the most complex situations, we are letting down the children that need us the most.

[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?

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

indicated assent.

[Munira Wilson]

Okay. I was not sure whether you were struggling. I will bring my remarks to a close.

The Liberal Democrats believe that an age-appropriate RSE curriculum should be led by a qualified teacher, be delivered in a safe, non-judgmental setting, and include teaching about sexual consent, LGBT+ relationships and issues surrounding explicit images. All young people deserve access to high-quality education that empowers them to make safe and informed choices. That obviously also means proper funding, training and resources to deliver high-quality RSE. I have already set out some of the family policies we would like to see. If we want to achieve a society in which all can flourish and have happy, healthy relationships, we need to invest in our families and in our education system.