Fathers in the Family

Paula Sherriff Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) on securing this interesting debate.

We know that families come in many shapes and sizes. Regardless of the gender of the parent, children need a safe, loving and stable environment in which to thrive and develop into healthy and happy adults. We also know that many fathers wish to spend significantly more time with their children than they are currently able to, in order to create that loving environment. However, many fathers find themselves unable to avoid working long hours or are subject to an inflexible working environment that prevents them from sharing parenting duties more equally.

Many of the underlying causes of those issues are inextricably linked to the same deep and corrosive structural barriers that hold women back in the workplace and contribute to a persistent gender pay gap of 18.9%, which, at the current rate of progress, could take 60 years to close. Occupational segregation, for example, sees women stuck in low-paid and undervalued sectors of the economy. Women make up more than 60% of those earning less than the living wage set by the Living Wage Foundation. Meanwhile, men continue to dominate the best-paid positions. Women make up 67% of the management workforce in entry-level roles, but only 43% of senior managers and 29% of directors. Those factors, taken together, often give families little choice as to whose wage they rely on.

Women continue to play a greater role in caring for children and sick or elderly relatives. According to Office for National Statistics analysis of time use data, women put in more than double their proportion of unpaid work in cooking, childcare and housework. As a result, more women—42%, compared with 11% of men— work part time, and those jobs are typically lower paid, with fewer opportunities for progression. The issue therefore becomes cyclical.

The impact of women being stuck in low-paid or non-paid caring roles has implications for fathers in the workplace too. Research undertaken by the TUC last year shows that as many as two in five new fathers are ineligible for shared parental leave, as their partners are not in paid work or they fail to meet the qualifying conditions. That prevents fathers from spending time with their newborn children. Will the Minister tell us what steps she is taking to ensure that all new fathers who want to take shared parental leave are able to?

Another solution to enable greater flexibility for parents is to provide high-quality, universal, affordable childcare, as Labour has promised to do. We believe that childcare can play a vital role in promoting gender equality, particularly by making it easier for parents to balance the competing demands of work and family life. The Government’s promise of 30 hours of free childcare a week for three and four-year-old children of working parents is looking more and more likely to collapse as each day passes. Research by the Family and Childcare Trust shows that providers and local authorities feel that the 30 hours requirement will mean either that they are forced to reduce the total number of places on offer or that they will simply no longer remain financially viable.

The Government have also admitted that the majority of children who are eligible for the current universal 15 hours of childcare per week will not be eligible for the expanded entitlement, leaving hundreds of thousands of children from working families—particularly those with parents on low or insecure incomes—shut out of the 30-hour-a-week offer. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are going to do to ensure that providers and local authorities can afford to provide 30 hours of free childcare? Does she have plans to expand the current entitlement?

Finally, the Women and Equalities Committee report on the gender pay gap recommends increasing paternity rights, particularly those around leave, to ensure that men can spend more time with a new child. Increased paternity rights for men, on top of existing maternity rights, would make both men and women’s lives better. We know that fathers want to play an active role in their children’s lives and families want to spend more time together with a new baby, which is why Labour would increase both paternity leave and paternity pay.

One of the most pervasive underlying causes of the imbalance between men’s and women’s roles in the family is workplace discrimination. Government research with the Equality and Human Rights Commission estimates that 54,000 women a year are being forced out of their jobs due to maternity discrimination. Does the Minister agree that extending paternity leave and consequently increasing workplace flexibility would be one way of addressing that appalling discrimination? Does she also agree that women suffering maternity discrimination must be able to uphold their rights, yet—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Lady finish her sentence and then conclude?

[Paula Sherriff]

Okay, sure. If we are to support men in taking a greater role in the family unit and, as a consequence, tackle the barriers facing women, we need to support men and women in having a real and meaningful choice when it comes to accessing well-paid and family-friendly employment.