Fathers in the Family

David Lammy Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) on securing this important debate. I want to make a brief contribution as the chair of the all-party group on fatherhood. I welcome the work of the Women and Equalities Committee, which looked at this important issue in solidarity with all fathers across the country.

This is a cross-party issue that really ought to command the attention of all political parties, but unfortunately the political class in this country is behind the general public. All political parties are sometimes hijacked by other agendas. In my party, the attention on rights—particularly on women’s and children’s rights, although they are important and I stand by them—has sometimes drowned out the ability to talk about fatherhood. I also think that my political tradition’s emphasis on the state and state support, particularly for poorer families and poorer fathers, has meant that we have sometimes tended to think that the state should do everything, and we have found it hard to talk about children and the role of fathers. For colleagues on the right of the political spectrum, sometimes, just sometimes, the emphasis solely on marriage and the way the state and tax breaks can be used to deal with marriage has made it difficult to talk about other sorts of arrangements in our country, and specifically about fathers. Sometimes the language can slip into talking about feckless fathers.

Perhaps those are the reasons why we stand so far behind many of our continental European brothers and sisters in other countries, who are much further forward on this agenda. It is deeply worrying that the figures for parental leave are so low for fathers, and that we do not recognise, as the public do, that couples make these decisions every day of the week. If we give them a year or so off to care for their children, they will decide between them who is going to do what bit.

We know that fathers want to spend time with their children. They want to be engaged right from the get-go. How can we as a state facilitate that? I was worried when I was mooting changes to child benefits, because there is a very strong group that believes that we cannot give dad the child benefit or put it in his name because he is going to run off down the pub with the money. That seems a very old-fashioned view, and is not my experience of the fathers I meet up and down the country.

I am very worried about how we support young fathers. We cannot deal with teenage pregnancy unless we support young fathers and think about their housing and how they are going to be connected to their children. We need to think about the fact that our public services really do not respond to young fathers, particularly those from a working-class background, whether white or black. Some children’s centres have not even got a male toilet—such is their low expectation of those fathers. There is much to do, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts on securing this important debate.

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[Mr Burrowes]

My hon. Friend reminds me about the Farmer review, which is looking in particular at the relationship with fathers and at making that link. It is about that responsibility for another. The opportunity for rehabilitation is so important in the long term.

Involving fathers is a route out of poverty, as has been mentioned. Therefore, we must recognise that it makes social and economic sense to take the role of fathers seriously. In dealing with family relationships and crucial moments such as the birth, the early days, weeks and months, maternity services should involve paternity services. Barnardo’s makes that point clearly. The relationship with midwives and health services must involve fathers. Children’s centres, which the Government are looking at, and family hubs must take seriously how to involve fathers. There are some good examples in my constituency and elsewhere of involving fathers in such work. Fathers can play a crucial antenatal and postnatal role. Sadly, that has become too much a middle-class preserve, with the national childbirth trusts and others involving fathers. All of us may have been involved in that, but sadly fathers from more disadvantaged backgrounds are not involved. We must look practically at how to get fathers involved from the early stages before birth and afterwards.

Preventive work in terms of education is also important. As I should have said at the beginning of my speech, I pay tribute to the Centre for Social Justice for championing the role of fathers, along with other organisations, such as the Relationships Alliance—reference has been made to it. We must recognise the preventive role. Education can play an important role in that. Today, the Government rightly responded to cross-party calls to require relationship education in primary schools, providing a foundation for sex education. That is crucial in terms of the role of fathers and understanding that from a very young age.

The Minister has a cross-cutting role in this area. There is an issue of equality here. She has responsibility for equality. We have made a cross-party call on a practical issue of equality—the joint registration of births. That has been on the table since 2009—schedule 6 to the Welfare Reform Act 2009 provides for the joint registration of births. That happens automatically for mums, but why not for unmarried fathers?

[Mr Lammy]

Is the hon. Gentleman as concerned as I am that 500,000 fathers are not on birth certificates every decade because of a failure of the political establishment to sort that easy problem out?

[Mr Burrowes]

Yes. The measure must be implemented, rather than having the elongated process to get on the birth certificate. There are already exceptions in law to deal with violent fathers who should not be anywhere near the mothers, and we recognise that. However, that is not an excuse. We must implement that as soon as possible. It is a very practical measure. We talk here about the role of fathers. There are lots of ways to do this, but this is a matter of law. We all battle for a change in the law. That happened in 2009. Implement it, so that we can say loud and clear on the registration certificate that there is a joint enterprise of mothers and fathers and that we are taking it seriously. It is there from birth—it should be in the registration. We are saying loud and clear that of course mothers matter, and fathers matter too.