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I beg to move,That this House has considered cross-departmental strategy on social justice.I am delighted to have secured this vital debate, which I applied for with my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), on the importance of joined-up thinking on social justice. I am delighted, too, that we have obtained it so early in our new Prime Minister’s tenure, because my right hon. Friend has already made it abundantly clear that she is personally interested in social reform and in continuing the one nation tradition that has been a consistent and defining strand of 21st-century conservativism.I propose to use family policy as an example of an area in which greater cross-departmental strategy, involving several Ministers and one Cabinet-level Minister with overall responsibility as a primary element of his or her portfolio—not only as an adjunct—could reap exponential benefits, in particular for the poorest families in our society. That is crucial, because as many Members present today know—I thank those attending for their support, in particular those on the Government Benches—family breakdown is a key driver of poverty. It causes so many problems, not least financial ones, but also problems in health, including mental health, educational difficulties—leading to employment disadvantages—addiction and housing pressures.In taking charge of the newly minted Social Reform Cabinet Committee, the Prime Minister has put social justice right up there on her list of priorities, alongside Brexit and the economy. The message could not be clearer. She stood on the steps of No. 10 and talked about governing for everyone:“That means fighting against the burning injustice that, if you’re born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others”.She also highlighted the fact that“If you’re a white, working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university.”She has indicated that she intends to take personal responsibility for changing such unacceptable realities. To my mind, that is not only encouraging, but exciting.Moreover, I applaud the Prime Minister’s stated ambition, a“mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone”.Most, if not all constituency MPs must have completely agreed with her when she said:“If you’re from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise.”We all very much want to work in harness with a Government who see it as their duty to deliver success on behalf of everyone in the UK, not only the privileged few, and who also have social justice explicitly at their heart.Let me explain what I mean by using the example of family policy. I am sure that other hon. Members will have other policy areas to share. For too long, there has been a view in Government that an aspiration to help families struggling to nurture their children and to hold down stable relationships was indefensibly interventionist and intrusive. Before my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) laid bare the social, financial and emotional costs of family breakdown in our poorest communities in his paradigm-shifting reports, “Breakdown Britain” and “Breakthrough Britain”, fractured families were simply not considered policy-relevant. He punctured the myth that relationship breakdown was none of the state’s business by pointing out that the public purse was picking up the tab and by exposing the easy complacency of those who are better placed in our society.I accept that no social stratum is immune to family difficulties. I know that from almost 30 years of leading a law firm specialising in family law. Many people in this House, for example, come from broken homes or have seen their own marriages falter, and no one judges them. However, the social justice narrative articulated so eloquently by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green and the Centre for Social Justice highlights how more advantaged people tend to experience family breakdown somewhat differently from people in our poorest communities—although I have to say from my own experience that children can suffer grief from relationship breakdowns however affluent their background.When the family relationships of those from better-off backgrounds experience shipwreck, they or their parents can deploy reserves of social and other capital to soften the potentially harmful effects on them and the children involved. For example, in good schools, staff are less embattled than in deprived areas and have more time for each individual pupil; or the family might have enough cash that a split does not plunge the people involved into poverty or they can pay for counselling.All that stands in stark contrast to what happens for the poorest 20% of society, where debt, educational failure, addictions to substances, and under or unemployment often conspire together to compound the damage of broken relationships. Such pressures make relationships hard to maintain, or for parents to spend time with their child to encourage interaction between them. As a result, half of all children in communities of the 20% least advantaged no longer live with both parents by the time they start school—seven times as many as those in the richest 20%. -
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Her words are important and resonate with those in a recent speech by the noble Lord Sacks, who referred to the “two nations” we now have—those, perhaps the preserve of the rich, who benefit from the association of children with two parents, and those who do not, the 1 million children who have no contact whatever with their fathers. -
Yes, Jonathan Sacks, who is so respected and speaks from a heart of compassion, indeed said that. I very much support those words, because we know that about 1 million children have little or no contact with their fathers, and they are vastly over-represented in our poorest communities.What I said about the poorest 20% on the income spectrum holds true for those who have a bit, but not a lot more. The Institute for Social and Economic Research found that, on average, women’s incomes dropped by more than 10% after a marital split, and that family breakdown is a route into poverty for many. The single fact of family breakdown can tip people out of a degree of financial security and into a much more precarious and uncertain set of circumstances, in which they are also far more dependent on the state.As I always state in such debates, I make no criticism or condemnation of single parents. So many of them strive so valiantly to support their children and to do their very best for their families, often in challenging circumstances. However, the fact is that lone-parent households are twice as likely to be in poverty as couple families. In 2015, 44% of children from lone-parent families were in households living on less than 60% of median income, as compared with 24% of children from two-parent families. Inevitably, single parents struggling to juggle their time will face greater challenges to spending time with their children.Some might suggest that parents raising children on their own should simply receive more support from the state, but single parenthood is a risk factor for poverty internationally. Swedish statistics show that parental separation is the biggest driver into child poverty, by a large margin, and that is in the country with the most generous welfare regime in the world. The state does not and cannot protect a child against the absence of a relationship missed with one parent or another. As this Government’s emphasis on life chances has made clear, however, we cannot look only to the effects on income. Poverty is not only about income, but about many other things in life, not least, particularly in a child’s life, poverty of relationships. How are the nation’s children and young people faring in terms of their mental health and wellbeing?Research commissioned by the previous Labour Government shows that children who experience family breakdown are more likely to experience behavioural problems, to perform less well in school, to need more medical treatment, to leave school and home earlier, to become sexually active, pregnant or a parent at an early age, and to report more depressive symptoms and higher levels of smoking, drinking and other drug use during adolescence. The most up-to-date research also demonstrates those associations. The recently published “Longitudinal Study of Young People in England” found that young people in single-parent families had greater mental health challenges than those with two parents, and there was a greater likelihood of them being above the “caseness” threshold, which means that someone is suffering from such psychological distress that they need clinical help.
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I welcome my hon. Friend’s comment that social injustice is based not just on financial poverty but, in effect, on social poverty—things such as bereavement, family breakdown and children’s time being consumed by them acting as carers. Does she agree that we should look at how things such as the pupil premium are calculated to ensure that they take into account the whole range of social injustices that children in this country face?
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We certainly need to look at a range of solutions for supporting such children more, and that could be one. My hon. Friend raises the concerning issue of young carers, who are certainly under-supported and under-resourced and whose number is underestimated, as I know from my own area.I am patron of a young persons’ mental health charity, Visyon, which cannot cope with all the requests for help that it receives, including from children as young as four years old. I recently asked how many of those children have mental health issues because of relationship difficulties, and the answer was virtually all of them. Similarly, young people in step families were reported by the longitudinal study that I referred to as being significantly more likely to be above the caseness threshold than those living with two parents. We are often reminded of the need for more and better mental health services, but the role of family breakdown in fuelling that need is almost never mentioned. Would it not be wonderful if we could start to look earlier in the chain of difficulties and challenges that such children experience at how we can prevent family breakdown from occurring, as it does in so many cases?When the study that I referred to was publicised, digital media received the lion’s share of the blame for driving poor outcomes. I have no doubt that over-exposure to screens and the online world does children and adolescents no favours—I and many other Members spoke about that only yesterday during the debate on the Digital Economy Bill—but digital media are here to stay, and we must be ruthlessly honest that family background can make children more likely to get less help than they need to navigate the challenges of the digital world. That is why I said in that debate that“whatever protections the Government devise, they cannot be comprehensive. Parents need to be given as much information and support as possible to enable them to engage with and protect their children from harmful behaviour online in what is a very challenging environment for many parents.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 841.]That might not be the responsibility of the Ministers promoting that Bill, but I believe that it should be grasped by someone in government.Families with two super-invested parents who have time and motivation to supervise their children’s internet use and coach them to be savvy digital natives are at a distinct advantage over others in helping to protect their children from self or other, abusive sexual experimentation. My main point is simply that when it comes to social harms, there is still a tendency to emphasise factors external to families and to look for solutions at a safe distance. However, the report of the Government-commissioned “Longitudinal Study of Young People in England” stated:“Schools would seem ideally placed to cut through to all young people in year 10 and provide them with the support that they need around wellbeing”.I accept that schools have an important role to play—many do so and support children with difficulties and disadvantages well—but the challenges are huge. We should surely also equip and educate parents so they can help their children. I commend Keith Simpson, headmaster of Middlewich High School in my constituency. When he seeks to support children with challenges in his school, he seeks to work with their parents, too.The Institute for Public Policy Research, in its report “A long division”, found that no less than 80% of the factors influencing pupil achievement come from outside school, and family influence is particularly strong. Equipping and educating parents must include helping them when their own relationships are under strain and being honest about the effects that a culture of family breakdown has on the next generation.The Government has a self-interested responsibility in this area, given that young people with poor mental health and wellbeing often grow up into adults who struggle, with implications for employers, national productivity and health services. University College London’s research department of epidemiology and public health has shown that 60-year-olds still suffer the long-term effects of childhood stress linked to the trauma of family breakdown. As someone who has been involved in a law firm that has undertaken family work for three decades, I can confirm that the bereavement and grief that young people feel from missing relationships can be profound and last a long time.Members will be pleased to hear that that brings me back to the title of the debate, “A cross-departmental approach on social justice”, which has clear implications for the Prime Minister’s broader social reform goal. I have touched on just some of the social problems that restrict a child’s life chances and make life in Britain much less fulfilling and prosperous for so many than we in this place want it to be. If we are to cut through and make a lasting difference to those problems, a much more concerted and co-ordinated effort has to be made from the very top of the Government to address family breakdown than has been made to date.
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I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Children’s experience of school demonstrates perfectly how their experiences transcend departmental lines. You—she, rather—will not be surprised that when I spoke to colleagues in my constituency who work in the education sector, their primary concern was not curriculum reform, exam success, assessment or even funding, but children’s mental health. That has an impact not only on health policy but on children’s education—and their life chances, for which the Department for Work and Pensions is responsible.
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Ms Ansell, I am more concerned about the length of your intervention than your use of the word “you”.
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My hon. Friend puts that point very succinctly, and better than I have in my prepared speech. She speaks not only from long experience but from her heart. Her commitment to family concerns has become well recognised since she entered the House, and I thank her for that.There are examples of good practice in the form of joined-up governmental thinking. The previous Social Justice Cabinet Committee found that when Departments took a strategic approach to working together on issues such as the dreadful outcomes for care leavers, on which the DWP’s work was backed up by the work of the Department for Education, the then Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department of Health, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Ministry of Justice and others, they could generate a wave of reform, not just a few isolated initiatives. For example, Jobcentre Plus advisers now know that when they have a care leaver in front of them, they will get extra support or flexibility, including early access to the Work programme; there are more funds for housing for those people and help for them to save through the junior ISA; and there is a care leavers champion in the criminal justice system. The list of co-ordinated government action is long and should make us and our former coalition partners proud.I and many others were deeply encouraged when Lord Freud explained during the Report stage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill in the House of Lords that the life chances strategy would cover measures relating to“family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol addiction.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 January 2016; Vol. 768, c. 1084.]I welcome that. It would be wonderful for the kind of cross-departmental work and ministerial leadership that we have seen on support for care leavers to be applied to family life. When it comes to the knotty problem of family breakdown, I am an incurable optimist, despite my law firm background, but I doubt our ability to successfully reverse the epidemically high rates of divorce, separation and family dysfunction in our society unless there are clear accountabilities across the full range of Government Departments represented in the Social Reform Cabinet Committee.I pay tribute to my noble Friend Lord Farmer for his commitment to promoting and strengthening family life and all he has done in this place. I also pay tribute to Dr Samantha Callan, who works with him, for the many years of work research and advice she has dedicated to this field, particularly but not exclusively with the Centre for Social Justice. She has laboured for years to emphasise the concern we should all have about the impact of family life on children in particular. At times she may have wondered whether anyone from Government was really listening, but I am optimistic that those years are behind us and that now there are people in the top levels of Government who are listening. My noble Friend Lord Farmer recently wrote inThe Times that we need a Minister in every Department who is explicitly responsible for leading a strand of family-strengthening policy. I agree and would add that we also need a Cabinet Minister with overall responsibility for the family.Better support for marriage by beefing up our slender tax allowance that recognises enduring aspirations to make a commitment in the teeth of the many financial pressures that can make marriage seem so unattainable would be good, as would be community-based support in family hubs for people to get advice when they are struggling with parenting and relationships. I hope the Minister has seen the report I recently produced as chair of the all-party group on children’s centres entitled “Family Hubs: The Future of Children’s Centres”, which proposed that and a number of other actions to strengthen family relationships in our local communities.Support for action to ensure that prisoners maintain the family ties that can boost rehabilitation efforts and make jails safer would also benefit from a co-ordinated approach. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), our previous Prisons Minister, for all he has done to emphasise the importance of strengthening prisoners’ family relationships. Mental health services that work with all the family dynamics underlying children’s problems could be better co-ordinated, but without a level of steely-eyed determination I fear our life chances indicators in these areas will put us to shame.As I said, I am incurably hopeful, particularly as our new Prime Minister is the only person ever to have had the title Secretary of State for the Family—albeit that was preceded by the word “shadow”, when we were in opposition. It is now time for family policy to come out of the shadows, take its rightful place in her new Cabinet Committee along with many other important areas of social justice—I am look forward to hearing about those from colleagues over the course of the debate—and be tackled unflinchingly with the energy and talent of all those around the Cabinet table.
Wednesday, 14 September 2016
Cross Departmental Strategy on Social Justice
Tuesday, 13 September 2016
Digital Economy Bill
I welcome the Bill and the Government’s commitment to the universal service obligation and a quality high-speed broadband connection to every home and business. I do so in the hope that it will facilitate an end to the difficulties endured by very many of my constituents, of whom Ministers are aware, as a result of poor internet speeds that are in some cases wholly inadequate, such as the business owners who have a broadband connection so slow that it can take hours to send one email. I hope, too, that it will end the deep frustration of buyers of new build homes, such as those in Somerford in my constituency who found themselves totally unwittingly moving into their new homes with no broadband service in place, and which then took months and repeated endeavours to get connected.
I welcome the Government’s aims in part 3 to protect children from access to online pornography, although I have some reservations that I would like to go into regarding enforcement capacity. I await, too, the details of the age verification procedures. As many as one in 10 visitors to adult sites are children. Some 80% of children now live in households with internet access, so they increasingly have the opportunity to access pornography. I welcome the ambitions of the Bill to make online access to pornography harder for young people, but, as several hon. Members have said, there are reservations.
A number of colleagues have been concerned about this matter for some years. Since entering the House in 2010, I have been part of a group of MPs who produced a report on protecting children from online pornography. I welcome the fact that the report’s considerations were fed into the Bill.
On my specific concerns, I would first like to draw the attention of Ministers to a possible anomaly in the Bill as currently drafted relating to the supply of videos on demand. UK-based video-on-demand services are already regulated by Ofcom under the Communications Act 2003, as amended by the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2009 and 2014, the latter of which expressly requires that UK-based video-on-demand R18 material, which as I understand it is particularly strong pornographic material, must only be made available in a way that cannot be accessed by children. This brought online child protection standards regarding the R18 rating for videos on demand in line with offline child protection provisions, which have long prohibited the sale of R18 videos to children, for example in licensed sex shops.
The Bill further closes the gap between offline and online protections in the sense that it requires provision of age verification checks on pornographic websites showing both 18 and R18-rated material online. My concern relates to videos on demand, because as I read it—I would be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation or clarification—clause 15(5)(a) states that the Bill does not cover online UK-based video-on-demand pornography, as it states that
“making material available on the internet does not include making the content of an on-demand programme service available”.
On that basis, it would seem that the law covering pornographic content online, presented in the form of a video on demand, is still dealt with by the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014, which only mandate age verification protections in relation to R18 material, but not 18-rated material. If this interpretation is correct, it is an omission. The failure of part 3 to cover video on demand means that children will remain unprotected from 18-rated videos on demand. I am sure that that is not what the Conservative party manifesto meant when it committed to stop children’s exposure to harmful sexualised content online.
I hope that that can be corrected by an amendment. In that regard, I commend to the Government Lady Howe’s Online Safety Bill, which had its First Reading in another place in early June. The Howe Bill specifically includes video-on-demand pornography and applies consistent standards on age verification across all 18 and R18 online video-on-demand pornography. I pay tribute to Lady Howe, and to the organisation Care for the work it has undertaken on this issue over many years. Will the Minister explain either how, despite clause 15(5)(a), part 3 somehow fully engages UK-rated video-on-demand material, or alternatively how this anomaly could be considered and corrected in Committee?
Let me turn to other concerns about enforcement, echoing many of those raised by other Members. First, the Bill contains powers for the regulator to impose large fines on providers for persistent non-compliance. The figures are substantial: either 5% of turnover or £250,000. Although I welcome what looks like a helpful provision, a study by the Authority for Television On Demand found that 23 of the top 25 adult entertainment sites were based outside the UK. Admittedly, that was in 2014, but the question arises of how the regulator proposes to fine a pornographic website targeting the UK if it is owned by a company located in Russia, for example.
Secondly, I support mandatory financial transaction blocking for non-compliance. However, although clause 22 allows the regulator to inform credit card companies and other payment providers of non-compliance, I share concerns that there is no requirement for them then to block payments or withdraw services. I understand that the Government’s answer to this issue is that they do not think it would appropriate or necessary to place a specific legal requirement on those payment providers to remove services, based on the belief that payment companies can be relied on to do so because their terms and conditions require merchants to operate legally in the country they serve. I remain concerned that such a view is optimistic. One reason is that some of these payment providers generate significant percentages of their revenue from adult websites. They are not incentivised to adhere to mere requests to block transactions—a point well known by pornography providers, which further decreases their fear of non-compliance.
Thirdly, no provision is made to allow the regulator to block sites that are non-compliant. I understand that the reason for this omission is that it is disproportionate and considered not to be in line with other policy areas. It seems curious that we are willing to grant powers to courts to take down content that infringes intellectual property, but not to extend the same power to an organisation tasked with preventing children from accessing all manner of sometimes violent and explicit material, which can have a devastatingly negative effect on their lives.
When granting powers to the state, a high threshold has to be met. The stakes on this issue are high. There has been a disturbing rise in sexual violence committed by young people against young people. Over 800 cases of sexual assaults committed by children under 10 were reported to have occurred between 2009 and 2015. Although growing access to online pornography is not the only explanation for these figures, it is believed to be contributory, with individual cases pointing to it as a primary inspirer of such activity.
While engaging in consensual activity, young people are under increasing pressure to live up to a standard of behaviour portrayed in online sources. They are encouraged to engage in riskier behaviour and to meet an unrealistic standard of physique. This, in turn, can cause problems of low esteem or remove expectations of any emotional connection with sex.
The Government’s impact assessment states that the purpose of the Bill is
“nudging the online pornography providers to comply and introduce age verification”.
The Government’s manifesto promised to
“stop children’s exposure to harmful sexualized content online”,
not merely to nudge it along. I restate my welcome for the ambition in part 3, but I hope that real teeth will be provided as the Bill progresses.
Finally, having said all that, whatever protections the Government devise, they cannot be comprehensive. Parents need to be given as much information and support as possible to enable them to engage with and protect their children from harmful behaviour online in what is a very challenging environment for many parents. That responsibility might not be the responsibility of the Ministers in their places today, but it should be grasped by someone in government.
Thursday, 8 September 2016
Bangladesh (Religious Minorities)
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I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for securing this debate and for the sensitive way in which he has presented some very traumatic information. While Bangladesh rarely makes the headlines in this country’s national press, my hon. Friend has had a long-running concern about the welfare of the people of that country and their freedom to express minority views of both religious and political sentiment.I am speaking first as a member of the International Development Committee, which had hoped to visit Bangladesh during the past year, but unfortunately we were advised not to do so due to security concerns. Secondly, I speak as chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission. I am currently conducting an inquiry into the shrinking space of civil society across many countries in which DFID is providing UK aid. That inquiry has taken evidence from both politicians and human rights activists from Bangladesh, who have confirmed the overall picture that my hon. Friend has painted of escalating violence and increasing concern about the protection offered to religious and political minorities, including by the state authorities.I have been assisted in preparing for the debate by the all-party group on international freedom of religion or belief and by Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which has recently completed a fact-finding mission to Bangladesh. I will not go into all the detail, which would largely echo my hon. Friend’s evidence today, but I invite colleagues to look at the website at csw.org.uk as it contains more information.I want to reflect on two background aspects to the concerns my hon. Friend has raised. First, there is concern about freedom of the press in Bangladesh. As we know, protection of religious minorities is often greatly enhanced by the protection of a free press. Therefore, it should appropriately be of concern to this House that a number of high profile editors and journalists in Bangladesh have been arrested over the last few years. Earlier this year, Mahfuz Anam, editor of The Daily Star, Bangladesh’s most popular newspaper in English, was arrested. He currently faces no fewer than 79 cases against him, 62 for defamation and 17 for the very serious charge of sedition. There is a real logistical challenge for him to defend himself because all his trials are being held in different parts of the country, and even appearing for them is a major logistical problem.Mr Anam is reported to be the victim of a campaign that has allegedly been encouraged, if not orchestrated, by the current Government of Bangladesh over his printing of allegations of corruption. Reports tell of the Government putting pressure on his newspaper’s advertisers to withdraw their money and pressure being put on other press institutions to refrain from criticising the Government.I also want to reflect on the political context of the concerns raised by my hon. Friend. In January 2009, Sheikh Hasina and her party, the Bangladesh Awami League, took power through controversial general elections held in December 2008 and were re-elected in 2014, but DFID commissioned an independent expert report on those elections and their legitimacy was questioned. The report states:“Recent election processes have had escalating levels of shortcomings, relating to the election commission’s ability to provide for neutrality, integrity, and freedom from undue influence, intimidation and violence.”We all recognise that often in the context of religious persecution where there is intimidation against the press or political opposition, it paves the way for broader persecution against a range of minority groups, as the rule of law is increasingly undermined in favour of protecting the interests of a ruling party. Prime Minister Sheikh promised in her 2014 manifesto that the“religious rights of every people would be ensured and the state would treat equally with every citizen irrespective of their religion, culture, gender and social status.”Sadly, subsequent events do not appear to bear out this manifesto pledge.I should like to turn now to the persecution of atheists. Some Members might be surprised at my wanting to defend those who have no religious belief, but it is essential in defending the rights of those who have a religious belief we should also defend those who choose to have none at all. This is particularly important in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, violence against atheists has led to an increase in confidence among those who are attacking non-Islamic communities, whether of any belief or none. Since 2013, Islamic extremists have regularly called for violence against atheist writers and bloggers. Killings have occurred with disturbing frequency, and there was a string of high profile murders in 2015.I highlight the following case to the House. There are a number of others which bear striking similarities. Mr Avijit Roy was a well-known champion of secularism through his blog Mukto-Mona. On the evening of 26 February 2015, Mr Roy and his wife were returning home from a fair by rickshaw. At around 8.30 pm, they were attacked near Dhaka University by assailants. Mr Roy was struck and stabbed in the head with sharp weapons. Mrs Roy was slashed on her shoulders and the fingers of her left hand were severed. Both of them were rushed to Dhaka Medical College hospital. Sadly, Mr Roy died at 11.30 that night.Mr Roy’s wife survived, and she has openly criticised the lack of response from the Government to the murder, as have others. Strikingly, even the Prime Minister’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, has acknowledged that the Prime Minister is unwilling to show public support for Mr Roy’s widow due, we are told, to a fear that the Government would be accused of siding with the atheists. The lack of faith among the atheist community that the Government will protect them is unsurprising when we reflect that Inspector General A. K. M. Shahidul Hoque and Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan have warned atheist bloggers against expressing their views online. The first warned them not to “cross the line”, and the latter stated that the Government themselves would take action against those“who defame religion in blogs and on social media”.I want to turn now to reports relating to the persecution of Christians. Last year, a 57-year-old Catholic priest, Father Piero Arolari, was shot in Dhaka by three assailants as he cycled to church. Rosaline Costa, the 67-year-old Catholic editor of Hotline Bangladesh, has recently had to leave the country due to concern for her life. Hotline Bangladesh is a monthly newsletter that chronicles corruption, crime, terror and religious violence in the nation. Due to her reporting of the harassment of Christians in the country, Rosaline has been subjected to frequent phone calls intimidating her and telling her to “be careful”. A number of her relatives have also had to leave the country after they were followed at university and told to convert to Islam “under the fear of death”. An attempt was made to coerce one of her female relatives into a forced marriage with a Muslim. Rosaline reports that her and her family’s experiences are not isolated and that they represent a microcosm of the wider persecution that many Christians face in the country, with continuous intimidation in an atmosphere of hostility.I endorse the evidence given by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East regarding the persecution of Hindus. Buddhists and Hindus are deeply concerned about persecution. Advocate Rana Dasgupta, secretary-general of the Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council of Bangladesh is quoted as saying:“The entire community has been terrorised and is feeling very insecure. We are not seeing any active role by the political parties to find solutions to these problems that we are facing.”Christian Solidarity Worldwide continues to receive reports of attacks on Hindus and Buddhists, as shown in evidence on its website. -
In conclusion and in light of such concerns, I have several questions for the Minister. I pay tribute to DFID representatives in Bangladesh. What work is being done by DFID in that country to address both religious persecution and the reported absence of steps by the Government there to satisfactorily address them?What representations have been made by our Ministers to their Bangladeshi counterparts to express concern about the abuse of human rights in Bangladesh, about which we have heard today?Has there been any exploration of bans on the entry to the UK of law enforcement personnel who may be involved in attacks on activists in Bangladesh on religious or political grounds?Finally, has a review been proposed of the UK’s business involvement in Bangladesh to ensure that no UK funds are being used to support systems that oppress religious minorities?
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mark Spencer.)
Tuesday, 6 September 2016
Educational Performance: Boys
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One million children have no significant contact with their fathers. Research recently cited by the Department for Work and Pensions says that children with highly involved dads do better at school, have higher self-esteem and are less likely to get in trouble in adolescence. If we say that male role models as teachers are important, how much more so for boys are father role models? Addressing family stability is critical and this is a social justice issue too, because in lower-income families there are far greater levels of family breakdown. We need to address that and to support them.The Institute for Public Policy Research produced a report entitled “A long division”, which found that only about 20% of variability in pupils’ achievements is attributable to school-level factors. About 80% is attributable to pupil-level factors and particularly family influence. The IPPR says:“Even if every school in the country was outstanding there would still be a substantial difference in performance”.We need to help families strengthen, so that we can help these children and boys.Here are some solutions, very quickly. First, the Government need to appoint a fatherhood champion. Secondly, they need to set up a fatherhood taskforce, perhaps mirroring the taskforce that my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) suggested, to develop a distinctive set of policies aimed at encouraging father engagement. Thirdly, all new fathers should be offered and encouraged to attend parenting classes. At present the majority who attend are from affluent families who say that they learn a little. A minority are from low-income families but when they do attend, they say they learn a lot. -
We also know that a disproportionately high number of black boys are excluded from school. Does my hon. Friend agree that there needs to be a much greater understanding of the barriers and hurdles that these boys have to face, both inside and outside school, such as racism and, as she said, the absence of fathers? -
I do. There is much evidence to show that parental involvement and support, even for the most disadvantaged children, can translate into good educational outcomes. Children from poor families where there is a strong commitment to learning achieve better results. For example, 69% of Chinese boys from low-income families gained five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C compared with just 17% of boys from white working-class backgrounds. Interestingly, the number is very similar for those from black Caribbean backgrounds, where again there is a high level of father absence.To conclude the solutions, fourthly, every community should have a family hub. As chair of the all-party group on children’s centres, I recently published a report on that issue and I ask the Minister to look at it. I am talking about a place where every family can go to get help, to strengthen their family lives before they perhaps become troubled families or before a marriage begins to disintegrate completely, or to get help with a troubled teenager.Fifthly, any efforts to regenerate the 100 worst sink estates in the UK should put family and relationship support at the heart of those new developments. Regeneration of the estates needs to go far beyond bricks and mortar if lives are to be transformed, and a healthy relationships fund should be properly resourced to ensure that parenting, couple relationship and family support programmes are included in the master planning processes, not just for this, but for the other Government initiatives such as troubled families, children’s mental health and parenting. They need to include a specific focus on the couple relationship and on strengthening the whole family to ensure that the additional benefits of family stability are reaped by these young boys.
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