Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Meacher

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly, having not participated in this Bill because of other commitments, in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. As others have said, we are pressing here for a change of culture. We are looking for fathers to play a much more active role in the upbringing of their children. Clearly, as my noble friend Lady Lister has rightly said, if fathers are involved right at the beginning, they bond with the baby and will then be much more involved throughout the child’s early life. This has to be good. In my view, we are seeing that change of culture: more and more fathers are bonding with children in the early stages and being much more involved throughout the child’s life.

I want to put on record the link between this and what I regard as the Government’s very helpful inclusion in this Bill of a recognition of the equal importance of both parents to a child if the tragedy of divorce strikes. If you involve fathers very closely at the beginning of a child’s life, they bond, they become involved and they care for that child, but they are cut out after a divorce—which happens, as we know, all too often in this country year after year. This is actually very cruel. Maybe it was okay in the old days for men to remain outside the family, unattached, but if we are all working towards greater equality of mothers and fathers in terms of their involvement in the family—and therefore greater equality for women in the workplace—we have to follow through, as I believe the Government are trying to do, to the post-divorce situation, should that tragedy arrive. Having been through it myself, I know exactly how that feels for everybody. I strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, but it is very important to see these two parts of the Bill joined up.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this is a very interesting area, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for bringing her expertise to bear on it and for analysing the case so well. It is curious that we are stuck on the horns of a dilemma here. We all agree that we are trying to bring in a new system which rightly promotes joint responsibility for children, in terms of the various histories that we have heard about already, and the future we wish to carve out in our country in which parents jointly take greater responsibility.

The underlying strain in that point, which has been brought up by the two recent conclusions from the noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler and Lady Meacher, is that we are coming from a position where fathers have not actively played a part, although there are notable exceptions and some of those might be present today. However, the generality which is revealed by the research is that fathers, despite what has been available to them up to now, have not taken advantage of it and, to misquote an earlier comment, they have “lost it”, in the sense that they have not taken what is available.

We have a reasonable expectation that the new arrangements will be a step in the right direction. However, will they be enough? That is the question. In particular, I was struck by the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, about divorce situations, which we regret but which are a natural part of all this. Without the bonding early on or even quite late on in the growth of the child, the loss of the relationship between fathers, mothers and children in a divorce is tragic and will have a lifelong impact.

There is a big picture here; there is a lot of activity and change. This is a new system and the Government are rightly defensive of it, but the Achilles heel in their approach is the statement in the impact assessment that the take-up of the proposed new shared parental leave by fathers is expected to be very low—this has been mentioned already—at between 2% and 8% of those eligible, or between 5,700 and 22,800 fathers, representing less than 3% of all maternities a year. Is that really all that our expectations are for that? If it is, it is up to the Government to defend why that represents a satisfactory situation compared to the rhetoric that we have been listening to from the Minister, which tells of a glorious engagement of a much higher percentage where people would expect joint caring. It is not joint if only 2% or even 8% of those eligible are taking up what is available, and indeed are “losing it” if they do not.

It is indeed disappointing, as my noble friend Lady Lister has said, that the scheme of the parental leave model, which is good and which we support, seems to be suboptimal if it does not include anything new for fathers in their own right. It provides an enabling power for the Government to extend paternity pay by regulation, and there is already a power to extend paternity leave by regulation so it may be that the Minister can give us more hope that this will happen. However, the commitment does not seem to deliver the same outcome as the proposal in the amendment that we have just heard about. A father quota would mean that a father could take leave, as has been pointed out, on a much more flexible basis later on in the first year rather than in the early stages and perhaps even later, particularly when the mother is making the difficult transition back to work. The time would be at his choosing and the leave would not reduce the mother’s entitlement; those seem to be very important elements in this debate. I admit that I myself am not sure whether or not more is needed here but the case is certainly there to be answered, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

The second amendment in this group, Amendment 266CA, suggests that we bear down with laser-like intensity on the facts and watch what happens: we would see how many fathers are taking this up, whether it is 2%, 8% or better. We would look at the relatively poor pay that has been provided for this, and try to work out what is going on here. That is also an important element of the new proposals, and it would be wrong to let it pass without signalling that we are concerned about it.

As the Official Opposition, we cannot yet support what has been proposed because it is a big spending commitment; I accept that, so we are not doing so. However, we suggest that more information, research, reporting, discussion, debate and academic work would give us a better handle on this for future times. If the powers are there in the Bill to do something about it, we would be satisfied with that.