PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

99 Debate on the Address
9 MAY 2012
Debate on the Address
100
[Charlie Elphicke]
much more complicated, and provision should be balanced
so that men and women in a family can balance that
equation.
More work needs to be done on child care, for two
reasons. First, the number of child care places has been
broadly static for years. In 2001, there were more than
300,000 places with child minders and about 300,000 day
nursery places—about 600,000 places in total. The number
of places with child minders stayed static, but the number
of nursery places—full day care—increased to about
600,000. In 2001, there were 600,000 places in total, but
in 2008, there were around 900,000 places. The number
has remained static since.
What does it mean if there are now 900,000 places?
Are we catering for all the children in the country who
are in need of child care? I did some back-of-the envelope
calculations, and it struck me that there is potentially a
shortage of child care places. There are about 13 million
children in the UK, of whom roughly 3 million are
pre-school age. The numbers indicate that 55% of children
at pre-school have parents who both work. In other
words, about 2 million children need child care, but
there are only 900,000 child care places. What is happening
to the other million children? Who is looking after
them? Is it grandparents or neighbours? There is a kind
of child care apartheid. On the one hand, there is a
system of nurseries that are so heavily regulated that
most people cannot afford them, and on the other hand
there is a system of child care for the other half that is
completely unregulated. We know nothing about what
is going on in that half. The right balance would be to
reduce the regulation on our nurseries, increase the
number of places and bring the cost of child care down
so that more people can access it, because one of the
biggest pressures on modern families is affording the
cost of child care for pre-school children. It is an
absolute nightmare—
Andrew Percy: My hon. Friend questions whether it
is grandparents doing the caring and, as I said a few
moments ago, they are increasingly involved in families
and are the unsung heroes of child care. Does he agree
with my hope that additional rights for grandparents
will be introduced in the next Session?
Charlie Elphicke: My hon. Friend is a passionate
campaigner on behalf of grandparents. When grandparents
are constructive, they can make a powerful contribution,
but a balance inevitably needs to be struck. Some
grandparents like to interfere and meddle, and they can
be really annoying. All parents know that some
grandparents are not quite the saints that my hon. Friend
suggests. Nevertheless, if grandparents play a constructive
role in a child’s life, there is a lot to be said for them. My
hon. Friend has been a passionate and trenchant
campaigner in the cause of constructive grandparents—as
opposed to destructive grandparents, whom we could
all do without. We all know people who know them—I
hope my hon. Friend understands where I am coming
from on that point.
We need more availability of nursery places and
deregulation of the system. The figures show that dads
are more involved in children’s lives than ever before.
Father is no longer sitting behind a newspaper at the
breakfast table, oblivious to the world: instead, dads are
deeply engaged in children’s lives. So when it comes to
separation, the question is what is in the interests of the
children. What best serves the child’s welfare? I think
that it is stability and the continuation of what they
have known. So if a parent who has been heavily involved
in the child’s life—as they are in the overwhelming
majority of families—suddenly disappears off a cliff
edge, it makes no sense. That is why the Government are
right to enshrine in legislation the principle that children
have the right to know and have a relationship with their
parents. The way in which modern families live indicates
strongly that that is what best serves child welfare.
I recognise that the judiciary and the legal system are,
as always, about 30 years out of date and are astonishingly
weak-kneed when it comes to ensuring the rights of
children to know both their parents. That is wrong, and
we need to send a clear legislative message, not just to
anti-dad social workers but to the court system, that
society has changed. We in Parliament get that society
has changed. We get that we need stability for our
children and that child welfare is best served by having
minimum disturbance to that which they have been used
to. If we send that message, real and positive change could
be made.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD): The hon. Gentleman
mentioned that in some way the status quo might be
maintained. Does he agree that in fact there is evidence
that one parent is often excluded from the life of the
child by the parent with care, and that therefore the
status quo may become a pattern of one-parent family
life as opposed to two-parent? Does he therefore agree
that the Government should say that children have an
absolute right to life with both their parents unless that
is unsafe?
Charlie Elphicke: Yes, I do. If I understand her correctly,
the hon. Lady refers to the concept of shared parenting.
I am personally a fan of that, but it is a difficult
argument to advance at the moment because the Norgrove
report looked into what happens in Australia and managed
to become completely and utterly muddled about the
difference between quantity of time and quality of time.
Every parent knows that quality of time is what counts.
In Australia, it seems to have become an issue of quantity
of time and an insistence on 50:50 time, but that misses
the point altogether and, therefore, misled the entire
Norgrove report. Before the report was published, I
spent an hour putting that case passionately to members
of the panel, but they published it anyway. It will
therefore be difficult to persuade the legislature that
shared parenting is the right way to go, but the social
changes in modern families will mean that it is almost
certain to end up that way in five years’ time.
For now, the best win that can be had is to ensure that
children have the right to know, and a right of access to,
both their parents. If the parent with care tries to
subvert that, they are not having a go at the parent
without care but undermining their child and attacking
the rights that their child should have. If we frame it
that way, parents with care will more quickly understand
that they need to think about their children, rather than
themselves.
Tessa Munt: Does the hon. Gentleman agree, therefore,
that the courts have the ultimate solution in that, if a
parent with care prevents a child from accessing his or