Early Years Family Support

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Maria Miller

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

What has marked out this debate already is Members’ great passion for and commitment to this subject. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and to hear more about the work she has been doing. However, the absolute tribute has to go to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who is quite simply the oracle on early years and attachment theory.

I will always remember the first time I met my right hon. Friend, and I had a teach-in that most people would pay for on early years attachment theory. I think that it was in the car park of a pub, but I very much appreciated that teach-in. Actually, I do not think she realised it, but she sparked a real interest in this area for me. This conversation happened many years before we were both in Parliament together, and it really marked out a very deep interest for me. I was able to follow that up as a shadow Minister—not particularly when I had a ministerial post, but when I was a shadow Minister—in the years before 2010.

My right hon. Friend is an expert in early years and attachment theory, and I do not want to add to what she and, indeed, the hon. Member for Manchester Central have said on a number of these issues. I want to go on to some other areas to expand the debate a bit more, but before I do so, let me say that it is absolutely fundamental that we get it right for every single baby in this country. The early intervention that my right hon. Friend and the hon. Lady have talked about in the debate is completely critical and vital.

As my right hon. Friend has said, having universal and targeted services is a critical part of this. While she was talking, I was reflecting on the service offered in my own constituency by Basingstoke breastfeeding counsellors. They are a mixture of paid-for counsellors and volunteers, but this is very much focused on volunteers who are there for mums to be able effectively and successfully to breastfeed in those early weeks and months. It is a service, frankly, that the NHS finds quite difficult to provide and that involves those expert counsellors. That is one way we can help to improve not only the health of our babies, but attachment from those very early weeks and months. That sort of support can be so important for babies and new mums in the early weeks—certainly, it was for me when I had my three children. Health visitor support makes a real difference in supporting mental health, breastfeeding and the health of the mother and baby.

I want to expand on the specific issues talked about today, because we need to get it right for families, too. To get it right for babies, we need secure and stable families and parents before babies are born, as well as afterwards. My right hon. Friend talked about the stress that can be put on mothers during pregnancy and how it can be transferred to the unborn child. That is one reason why I introduced a 10-minute rule Bill to try to change the law with regard to redundancy and pregnant women. More than 50,000 women a year in this country feel that they have no choice but to leave their jobs when they are pregnant. Those of us who have been pregnant, or have had partners who have been pregnant, can think of no time of our lives when we have less wanted to leave a job. At a time when financial stability is so important, one can only imagine the pressure individuals who have to give up their jobs are under.

In addition to specific expert support for parents around attachment, the Government need to reflect specifically on how we ensure pregnant women receive the support they need. In Germany, a law is in place that stops, except in extreme circumstances, any pregnant woman being made redundant. Not only does that help to alleviate some of the stress we have talked about, it enables that country to ensure that more women go back into employment after they have had children, and that helps to close the gender pay gap. I hope that the UK Government will continue to think about this issue, particularly at a time when we now have more women than men coming out of our best universities with science degrees. We need to find a way to ensure that those women can stay in the labour market and have a successful family life.

My right hon. Friend touched on the mental health of women after they have given birth. I commend the National Childbirth Trust’s campaign for a six-week maternal post-natal check. I think that happened in the past, but it seems to have dropped out of the most recent iteration of the GP contract back in 2005 or 2006. It would be a great way to ensure that, as well as protecting mums before they give birth, we have a mental health check after they give birth. If mum’s mental health is good, attachment can be strong.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The right hon. Lady is making a very powerful point about the perinatal mental health of women. NHS England and the British Medical Association are conducting a review of post-natal checks and the GP contract. Does she agree that now is the right time to include in the GP contract a mandatory check, as the NCT is asking for?

[Mrs Miller]

I have very strong sympathies with that. It should happen by rote for every woman, and I think that it happens haphazardly now. I can remember having that sort of conversation with my GP after the birth of my children, but it does not happen routinely. The NCT is right to pick this up. If we are to ensure that early years family support is as good as it can be, it needs to include a mental health check for mums. All of us know individuals who have gone through post-natal depression. For the health of the mother as well as the children, it is so important that it is identified early on and action is taken.

As well as protecting mothers who are pregnant or have new babies, and as well as making sure that they get the right support from their GPs on mental health, the Government also need to reflect on a couple of other areas to make sure that our children have the best early years support possible. We heard about one of these earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), who talked about flexible working. The Government have already heard an expert dissertation from her, so I will not repeat what she said. In summary, however, the more that we can give flexibility to families, particularly when they have very small children, but not solely then—I speak as the mother of a teenager, as my youngest is now—so that they can balance work and family life, the better. This goes on for our children’s entire lives, even beyond them being children, so I hope that the Government are making sure that they take very seriously flexibility and flexible working as a default, which my hon. Friend spoke about in relation to her ten-minute rule Bill.

No Government have gone further than this one and the coalition Government in making flexible working something that we can all now request. We will take no lessons from anybody about any lack of understanding from Government Members on that, and I commend the Government for all the work that they have done, but we now need to look at going further to make sure that businesses take that flexibility for granted. The best businesses already do, of course, but we need more to do it routinely.

My final point is on shared parental leave. If we are to get it really right for our littlest people—the half a million babies that are born every single year—we need to get it right for both parents. At the moment, we do not get it right for dads at all. All the research coming out of countries such as Germany shows that if we have proper shared parental leave, fathers and children have much better relationships not just in the early years, but throughout their lives, including even if the adult relationship with the other parent breaks down. It is absolutely proven that a shared parental leave policy involving fathers far more in the lives of their children at an early age can lead to far better relations later in life as well. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider very carefully the role of shared parental leave in future. My Committee—the Women and Equalities Committee—has done an excellent paper on it, which he can read at his leisure. It shows clearly that three months of “use it or lose it” leave for dads is one of the best ways that we can support family life and help to address the gender pay gap.

Those are just some other ideas, building on the debate secured by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire, on how we can make sure that every child in this country gets the best start in life and that every family can thrive.

Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Maria Miller

Second reading committee: House of Commons
Monday 2nd July 2018 General Committees

[Mrs Miller]

After being in the House for 13 years I thought that the time for firsts was over, but this is the first time I have ever been on a Second Reading Committee, and it is great to be here, Ms Buck, and to serve under your chairmanship.

The Bill should most definitely be read a Second time. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bath for her tenacity in securing support from the Government for the Bill, and to the Minister for listening, which is sometimes a difficult thing to do. I have listened to what she has said today about the importance she places on clarity in the law. It is sometimes too easy to be convinced by officials that the law is sufficient and that change is not needed. However, I pay tribute to the Minister, who did not accept that. With the support of the Prime Minister, who also was not so easily convinced, we are here to debate a long overdue new law.

I want to pause to reflect on the Minister’s response to my earlier intervention, when I raised the possibility of upskirting being done for a profit motive. She specified many existing laws that would cover it—and that might be great for someone who is, like her, an eminent QC, who understands it, but I urge her to think about the problems that the police and victims face when the law is not as clear as it needs to be.

Today we are debating public sexual harassment, non-consensual sexual behaviour and, in particular, issues to do with image-based sexual abuse. We must be clear about it: the law is wanting in that area. The hon. Member for Bath talked about the need to address inconsistencies, and the importance of fighting to the end the vile practices that are apparent. I agree that upskirting is important, but there is a need for the law to deal with far more practices.

We debated the issue of revenge pornography in the House in 2014, and it was unclear whether it was against the law. The then Minister, now the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), recited a long list of different legal provisions that could catch revenge pornography; but for victims the reality was that that was all for naught. The police did not understand it; the courts did not seem to understand how those laws worked; and hundreds if not thousands of victims had to endure revenge pornography—the posting of intimate abuses online—without any redress. I am pleased that we are dealing with the present issue, and that the Government have dealt with revenge pornography, by legislating.

I am afraid, however, that we shall be back here again shortly to debate the fact that the law does not cover other ways in which people can be abused online. One issue is deepfake technology. Readily available software packages can be used to swap other faces for those of the actors in pornographic films. At the moment it is being done with the faces of other well-known actors, but what is to stop it happening with the faces of well-known politicians, or a person’s ex, or someone they know, or someone they saw in the street and happened to take a picture of? Today we are dealing with upskirting, but the Government need to take a long, hard look at image-based abuse, because more problems are coming down the line.

When I campaigned to make revenge pornography a crime, I was told by the Crown Prosecution Service—I remember it well—that there was not sufficient need and that only a handful of cases came across its desk. Others said that the victims were to blame for the photos being taken in the first place. Fortunately, the Government knew better and acted, and more than 500 crimes a year are now successfully prosecuted, although hundreds more could be, as I will discuss later.

Although we are congratulating ourselves on this legislation today, we need to ensure that we undertake a much broader review of sexual image-based abuse, and that we do it quickly. That will ensure that we future-proof the law, that we clearly set out to people who seek to undertake such appalling acts that they are against the law, and that we give the victims involved the redress that they deserve in the criminal system.

Secondly, in this broad debate, I ask the Minister to consider, in parallel with her consideration of this law, the changing nature of the offences that are captured by non-consensual sexual behaviour and how they are dealt with in law. There are some grave inconsistencies that appear to show disinterest in the victims or that demonstrate, at most, a lack of understanding of perpetrators’ motives when it comes to undertaking such sexual image-based abuse. For instance, flashing in a mac is a sex offence and is notifiable if the intent is to cause harm or distress, yet creating deepfake porn, where someone posts on a website a picture that has the face of an individual appearing to take part in pornography, is simple harassment. It is difficult to understand how the law can come to that conclusion, when we take into the account the impact on a victim of seeing a flasher versus the impact on a victim who has had their image put into a pornographic scene or video.

Where sexual privacy is violated, it is difficult to see why it is not categorised as a sex offence. Those issues, whether upskirting, revenge pornography or deepfake porn, are not just privacy harms; they are non-consensual sexual activity that is often very public, and they are not being sufficiently captured in law. I hope that the Minister will confirm that she will consider what has been said on the issue when she reviews the victims strategy in the coming months.

The sort of sexual harassment that the Bill highlights is important for society to think about more generally. I am delighted that, alongside the progress of the Bill, the Government are progressing another important element, which is education. If there is to be a real change in attitudes towards women and a world where upskirting is no more likely to take place than smoking on a train, it will be because we have changed people’s attitudes towards that behaviour. Of course, the impact of upskirting is even more devastating than that of smoking. I hope that in her response, the Minister may be able to tell us how she is working on, or how the Government will take forward, sex and relationship education, which is being made mandatory for all school-age children. That is an important achievement of this Government after 17 years of prevarication under successive Governments. That implementation could also further the cause of ensuring that people understand why upskirting is wrong, as well as it being wrong in the law.

As I have said, I support the Bill wholeheartedly, but it is clear that amendments could make it even stronger. I thank Professor Clare McGlynn, who has been extremely helpful in advising a number of MPs on how we might be able to strengthen the law in Committee, particularly by closing some of the gaps that are emerging in the Scottish law, under which upskirting is already a crime. That crime is set out as in the Bill before us, yet the Scots are finding that concerns are emerging, because the protection afforded by the way the Bill is currently drafted can be seen as somewhat patchy.

The first issue, which I raised in my intervention, is about those who may seek financial gain from taking upskirt photographs or those who do it simply for a “laugh”. I put that in inverted commas, because this cannot in any way be seen as a laughing matter, even though some will see the images in that way. They do not see themselves as causing immense stress or distress to the victim, and they do not seek sexual gratification from the images. Surely we should make the law incredibly clear and not leave it to our police forces and our courts to try to decipher what Parliament was trying to put in place.

A second issue on which I will seek amendments in Committee also came up in Scotland when a very similar law was passed. It should also be unlawful for images to be distributed, so we should outlaw the distribution of upskirt images clearly and succinctly in the Bill. The Scots had to pass an additional amendment to the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016 to ensure that that was addressed, and it is not the same as the amendment that we passed in this country in respect of revenge pornography; it is much broader.

The third objective is to ensure that all upskirting against under-18s is a notifiable sex offence. I do not think that we should leave the Bill as it is at the moment, whereby it is notifiable, when the victim is under 18, only in certain circumstances.

I am very pleased to say that the idea of the amendments that I have described has already gained quite considerable support.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I have been considering the proposed amendments and the Minister’s explanation about not making this an offence that immediately warrants someone going on the sex offenders register. We are talking about the victim being under 18, but what about when the perpetrator is under 18? The right hon. Member for Basingstoke does not make that clear in her proposed amendments. In discussions with the Minister, I have agreed that having a large number of young people on the sex offenders register might not be a desirable outcome from the Bill.

[Mrs Miller]

I am not sure that the Bill addresses that issue. I am not a lawyer and certainly not an eminent QC, so the Minister may want to stop me if I am wrong, but I think that those sorts of issues are dealt with in the usual ways by the CPS, which decides whether to bring prosecutions. Like the hon. Lady, my understanding is that the CPS already takes the view that people should not be criminalised if that is not sensible. The issue is not addressed in this Bill—I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong.

The amendments that I have talked about would strengthen the Bill so that all upskirting was a criminal offence. There would be no lack of clarity and no need to invoke other legislation. The Minister would get the clarity that she was setting out the need for—the Prime Minister has also set that out in the discussions on this law in recent weeks. We would ensure that the distribution of these images was against the law. At the moment that may not be the case, because not all distribution would fall under the revenge pornography laws or similar provisions. We would ensure that in all cases in which victims were under the age of 18, upskirting would be a notifiable sex offence, which would simply bring things in line with other parts of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

I am pleased to say that Members from across the House support those amendments, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) and for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). There is also my fellow Committee member, the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, who has indicated that she is prepared to support amendments to make sure that we have the clarity in our law that Scotland is discovering it does not have. The Bill very much replicates what has gone on north of the border.

In conclusion, I say again that I welcome the Bill. It underlines the need for a more comprehensive look at how we tackle these sorts of offences, perhaps in the same way as the New South Wales Government have done with their Crimes Amendment (Intimate Images) Act 2017, which criminalises all intentional taking and distributing of a private sexual image without consent. That is a catch-all for the many things that we struggle with at the moment, and it will hopefully be a catch-all for things that are yet to come. Education and cultural change is a huge part of this and needs to go hand in hand with changes in the law. I hope that the Minister will today give Members reassurance that, while we are taking forward this important Bill, those other issues are being taken into account as well.