Tag: Siobhan Baillie

The speech made by Siobhan Baillie, the Conservative MP for Stroud, in the House of Commons on 9 December 2022.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It should not be controversial across the House that parents should be responsible for their children unless they really cannot do that and need help. That parental responsibility is in all of us and the state welfare benefits and state systems in many other ways will step in to support families when it is absolutely necessary to do so. However, parents are too often let down by ex-partners for a range of reasons and they do not receive the support that they are due financially or otherwise.

In the case of child maintenance issues, parents who are receiving that money and, in many cases, relying on it to live on should be able to trust the child maintenance system to move as swiftly as possible to help them to recover maintenance arrears when it becomes necessary to do so. I am interested in that area through my experience as a family law solicitor, for my constituents who regularly bring incredibly complex child maintenance matters to me, and because this is an area of Government business—in a fantastic Department that works incredibly hard to help people who come to it with their issues—that can actually lift children out of poverty. I want to give the Child Maintenance Service, my constituents and everyone involved as much support as possible to do their job, which is where the Bill comes in.

This is an important measure to improve the recovery of arrears from parents who fail to meet their financial obligations to pay child maintenance. Before going into more detail about what this Bill aims to achieve, it may be helpful if I explain the purpose of the Child Maintenance Service for anybody who is not aware. The CMS is to facilitate the payment of child maintenance between separated parents who are unable to reach their own agreement following separation. That is an incredibly challenging job done in very difficult circumstances. Many Members will have experience of the CMS through their constituents. Some of that will be positive and some will be negative, but those Members who remember the Child Support Agency will I am sure acknowledge that the CMS, which was launched in 2012 to replace the Child Support Agency, is performing relatively well and is much better than previous systems. My parents are separated. My dad has some war stories about the Child Support Agency. We must not forget that that thing was on the front of newspapers, and that is not something that we see with this system, even though I am here in the Chamber saying that we can make improvements.

To emphasise the importance of the service, I should say that, in the past 12 months, more than £1 billion of payments were arranged or collected through the Child Maintenance Service. Under the Child Maintenance Service Act 2012, payments are calculated so that they are fair and affordable for both parents. That is key for these things to be successful.

The CMS uses gross income for calculation, whereas the old system was based on net income. To keep the impact of the calculation broadly the same, the 2012 scheme introduced modifications to the percentages with the banding system. In family law, it should be known that we would do the calculations for child maintenance for the parent client before us in our office before we turned to the other parent for other maintenance payments, so these calculations and the formula are important and it does work in many cases.

The statutory scheme is designed to limit the number of changes throughout the year. That is why the threshold for in-year changes to income is set at 25%, so that the liability remains consistent and parents can factor this into their own financial planning. Children are expensive. We need to be able to plan.

The CMS manages cases through one of two services. The first is direct pay and the second is collect and pay. Direct pay does what it says on the tin. The CMS provides a calculation and a payment schedule, but, effectively, the parents arrange the payments between them. For collect and pay, the CMS calculates how much maintenance should be paid, collects the money from the paying parent and pays it to the receiving parent, so it is a much more interventionist activity. Cases in collect and pay tend to include parents where a collaborative arrangement has either failed or has not been possible to achieve. Paying parents on collect and pay are therefore considered to be less likely to meet their payment responsibilities.

The difference that child maintenance payments make to children’s lives is critical, and the CMS takes action to tackle payment breakdowns at the earliest opportunity, to re-establish compliance and to collect unpaid amounts that have accrued. I give credit to groups such as Gingerbread, which often raise with MPs and Select Committees the impact on single parents; often, we are trying to help single parents through the CMS support schemes.

Where compliance is not achieved and the parent is employed, the CMS will attempt to deduct their maintenance, including any arrears where appropriate, directly from their earnings. Employers are obliged by law to co-operate with that action. Enforcement powers also allow for deductions to be taken directly from bank accounts, including joint accounts and business accounts, either as a lump sum or regular amounts—so far, so good. That is the run of the mill enforcement stuff. Members needed to understand that to understand the more severe enforcement measures used to collect child maintenance, which is what the main part of the Bill deals with.

The CMS is committed to modernising and improving and, as part of that commitment, it is reviewing the enforcement powers to make them as effective as possible in recovering arrears from parents who are failing to meet their financial obligations to their children. Under current legislation, the CMS must apply to the magistrates or the sheriff courts to obtain a liability order before the use of enforcement powers such as instructing enforcement agents or sheriff offices, or the use of more stringent court-based enforcement actions. So there is an extra step to go to court to get that stage of enforcement. Enforcements can include disqualification from driving or from holding a UK passport, or committing a non-compliant parent to prison. So it is serious stuff.

Obtaining a liability order through the courts is time-consuming. At the moment, the Government website tells parents that it can take anything from a few weeks to a few months. We know that there are now also an awful lot of delays in the courts—there was a pause during the pandemic, when the courts were closed—so I imagine it has been even more difficult recently to obtain these things.

That delay in receiving child maintenance has a consequence for the receiving parent and the children. Delay is bad for children, and we know that that principle underpins much family law. Furthermore, this additional step in enforcing debt is no longer required by other Departments, such as His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Other Departments are doing what my Bill is trying to achieve, so give me those powers so that the CMS can do the same.

We are also trying to introduce a lot of speed. The Bill will repeal the sections of the Child Support Act 1991 requiring the CMS to apply to the courts to obtain the liability order. It will stop applications to the courts by making amendments to uncommenced powers in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008. Those powers, once enacted, will allow enforcement measures to be used more quickly against parents who have failed to meet their obligation.

Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)

My hon. Friend makes the good point that the procedural step in the current system of requiring the CMS to apply to the courts for a liability order creates delay. Can she give the House an indication, based on her experience, of the sort of delay we are talking about?

Siobhan Baillie

I have been looking through my casework, and the delay has been months in some cases. What is worse is that, even though the system we have is well-meaning, few parents have trust that anything will ever happen. Even where there have been successful liability orders—they are in the hundreds, and I have figures here—any delay becomes the chat in the communities and there is no trust. Any delay or confusion about what can and cannot be achieved is damaging to these families. I thank my hon. Friend for his important intervention.

To preserve the safeguards for paying parents, the Bill makes provisions for secondary legislation to allow the paying parent a right of appeal to a court against an administrative liability order—so there will be appeal rights. The first regulations relating to appeals against liability orders will be subject to the affirmative procedure.

The Bill will operate across England, Wales and Scotland, as they are all part of the same child maintenance regime. The court system governing the enforced collection of child maintenance is governed by broadly the same statutory provisions in England and Wales. In Scotland, however, the judicial system is devolved, so provisions in the Bill allow for a later commencement date, by which time changes to the appropriate court processes can be made. For that reason, the Child Maintenance Service will work with legal colleagues in the Scottish Government to ensure that the policy is effectively delivered in Scotland. I would also say, to those colleagues who always are interested in devolution issues, that Northern Ireland has its own arrangements.

To conclude, this is quite a techie thing—it is nerdy, which is why I like it. However, it introduces a genuine change for families on the ground by avoiding delay, which is harmful for children.

Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech and bringing forward a great piece of legislation. I was in the House only a few weeks ago supporting my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), who was making changes to the CMS for those suffering domestic abuse who are trying to get payments. Has my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud had a conversation with her about how this Bill can dovetail with her Bill? Perhaps the Government can take both Bills forward to provide extra protections for those who are struggling to get payments for their children.

Siobhan Baillie

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I actually read all of that debate in Hansard, including his many interventions on my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye, so I think he just wanted to show you that he really knows his stuff, Mr Deputy Speaker. He is absolutely right that my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye is taking a Bill through the House that will protect people who have experienced domestic abuse, because so often, where there has been domestic abuse and a breakdown of a relationship, there is then no payment between the parents. It is probably very unusual for the Department to have to deal with two Bills, but we have very enthusiastic Members of Parliament who want to help families caught up in this system. I have real confidence in the Government teams and the Ministers to use the corporate knowledge for both these Bills and get this done.

This Bill will introduce a quicker and cheaper process to pursue enforcement, not just for the taxpayer but for the people who are waiting for their money, and it will ensure that more money is collected for more children. These are often children of single parents and children who desperately need £5, £10, £15, £20 or £100 a month—whatever the amount is, it will make a difference. I thank all Members in the Chamber for being here to debate the Bill and the Department for helping me with the drafting, and I very much hope it will receive support today.

The speech made by Siobhan Baillie, the Conservative MP for Stroud, in the House of Commons on 9 December 2022.

I have spoken before about the serious and outrageous behaviour that girls from Stroud High School in my constituency reported to me. Those girls, in their distinctive school uniform, deal with completely unwanted public sexual harassment from men. There are random comments sometimes, and the comments are sometimes sexualised and are sometimes just really weird. I listened to their experiences. They took the initiative of creating a survey, so they went around their school—these are really smart kids—and they discovered, to their horror, that girls as young as nine had experienced public sexual harassment.

We have all experienced that and we have spoken about that in the Chamber. It ranges from being shouted at to comments by those who think they are being funny, to people being flashed at and far more serious incidents. We saw from the Everyone’s Invited campaign that this is prevalent among schoolgirls and schoolchildren. I started to investigate this, listening even more closely to my excellent colleagues and looking at the fantastic work that went on prior to my joining this House, and it became really obvious that things needed to change.

In Stroud, sadly, we have had a series of rapes and sexual assaults, which is totally devastating for the victims and their families. It has also completely rocked our community. This is a safe, beautiful Cotswolds town, which is similar to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) said about his area and the need for strong police and strong communities. We now have women who are worried about going out. We have women who are worried about going for a run during the day down our championed canal routes, because one of the attacks was in broad daylight. The Bill is not about rape—I get that—but about public sexual harassment. None the less, from speaking to the women and girls in my constituency and from listening to the experienced hon. and right hon. Members in this place, I know that, although the harassment on the streets and the trolling that is happening online daily, even hourly, to women and girls may be down to keyboard warriors being idiots, it is also fuelling physical abuse in the real world.

Caroline Nokes

My hon. Friend is making the important and powerful point that we must never ever forget that there is, uncomfortable though we may find it, a pyramid of offending. Although not every flasher becomes a rapist, every rapist has started somewhere, and public sexual harassment can be the somewhere. Does she agree that that is one of the many reasons why we have to make sure that it is stamped out at source?

Siobhan Baillie

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. That is why I get so frustrated when people dismiss this as unnecessary, going too far, or too heavy-handed. It is a very short hop, skip and jump from someone shouting obscenities or being rude to a woman on the street to being rude in their own home, if that is their mentality. We have to make that connection and we have to keep making it strongly.

When we had those rare horrendous incidents in Stroud, the advice that was immediately given was for women. They were told, “Change your behaviour. Change your clothes.” It was exactly as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said. It was also, “Don’t wear your headphones. Think a little bit more about where you’re going to walk”. Where do I want to walk in a beautiful Cotswolds market town? I want to walk everywhere. I do not want my thought processes to be about whether I will get attacked on any given day.

But Stroud fought back. This is a very spirited place, very politically bouncy, as anyone who follows politics will know, and my inbox is very bouncy, too. Anybody who thought that they would get away with attacking women and girls or being rude to them on the streets in my area was very, very wrong. We have all banded together to make changes, which is why I am so much in support of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells is doing. Our voices are being reinforced, although it is not just about our voices: in all of our constituencies, we have Government support for a very important Bill.

I have led a successful campaign, which the Government have now supported, to change the law and reduce anonymous online abuse, which, as I said, is completely connected to the real world. Hundreds of people in Stroud have marched, on a number of occasions now, specifically on these issues. Our police and crime commissioner, Chris Nelson, and our police have joined those marches. That is a really important step. Our PCC has made tackling violence against women and girls a focus of his work. The hon. Member for Walthamstow was talking about police forces that were ahead of the curve; Gloucestershire is one of them and I am very proud of it for that, although the police have a lot more work to do. We held a public meeting about these issues, and even though we have been reporting hate crimes and public harassment for much longer than other forces, women were standing up saying that they still did not feel comfortable going to the police. There is an awful lot of work to do, and I know that the Gloucestershire constabulary understand that.

Two fabulous constituents, Nikki Owen and Sydney-Anne McAllister—I met Sydney quite recently—have launched a pressure group called This Ends Now. They want to change the law and the media, and they are challenging both to do better, particularly on language. Where there is a rape, it should be reported in the media as a rape, not as a sexual assault, and it should not be played down in any way, shape or form. I believe that committed women in my patch will be pleased to see what we are trying to do today.

I encourage all Members of the House to look up the work of the Holly Gazzard Trust, which was set up by a family who were devastated by the loss of their daughter. They have gone on to campaign on domestic abuse and to really change the lives of many other families, and they are front and centre in supporting and fighting for women and girls in Gloucestershire.

We also have Chrissie Lowery, who is winning awards all over the place. Following the rapes and other incidents I have mentioned, and the rise of concern among our school girls about public sexual harassment, she took up the baton and created the Safe Space campaign, which Stagecoach, the police and lots of local businesses are now on board with. After an incident in a very dark, dingy, scary tunnel, Chrissie took the initiative of getting some amazing artists together, and we painted the tunnel, which sounds very simple. My daughter and I went down, and we put butterflies on the wall of this horrendously dark tunnel; it is now a beautiful open space that people are comfortable going down during the day, and we are looking at having lighting and CCTV at night. These efforts are small acts of kindness, but they will all join up to make a difference.

Gloucestershire police have created something called the Flare app, which is being rolled out to other forces. It allows people to put in the details of places they are worried about in the Stroud district and creates a heat map, so the police know to go to specific points of concern and the council can come in and do work on things such as CCTV. It is really innovative, and we can probably do more with it, but 3,000 people have downloaded it, so it is going pretty well for a new piece of kit.

Given that my community and constituents have done so much legwork—there are more examples, but I will not go on and on—it is right that we in this place constantly review the law. Following the advice from bodies such as the Law Commission—where very learned people have spent a lot of time investigating this issue—my right hon. Friend’s Bill assists us in doing that. We are creating a new law that deals with intentionally harassing or seeking to cause alarm, which is a gap in the legislation that we have in this place, so I welcome the Bill.

However, it is right that there is a balance in what we are trying to do and in what happens should somebody be pulled up for sexual harassment, so I welcome the explanation of what will and will not result in imprisonment. The headlines and challenges that we have seen—that someone will be sent to prison because they wolf-whistled—are immediately dismissive. It is therefore right that we are clear about what the Bill does and does not do and about how we have sought to strike a balance. The test is the intention to cause distress. Where somebody is being a plonker, that is a very different test—we could deal with plonkers in other ways. This intention to cause distress is a serious test, which will hopefully lead to prosecutions in the right places and then to deterrence, so that we can start to change society and culture.

Stella Creasy

Does the hon. Lady also recognise the point I made earlier about adding the concept of “foreseeable”? The risk with intent is the young man who says, “I didn’t realise that this would be harassment,” when everybody else would. When we look at intent, we have to be clear that it is foreseeable that some behaviour could cause distress; otherwise, we create a big loophole, and we will not make the progress we want to make.

Siobhan Baillie

I heard what the hon. Lady said earlier. It is not something that I have looked at, but I understand that there are already examples in legislation and I heard the challenge to the Minister to look carefully at this. It is important. We cannot create legislation in the knowledge that people are going to get let off the hook or that they will learn how to respond when pulled up by the police. That is why we have to be clear about the balance and about what the Bill does and does not do. We have to think through a range of different examples and about the responses that will be given by the perpetrators, so that the legislation is tight.

As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), made clear, we have to avoid demonising all men and boys. They are not all bad. They are not all plonkers. We know that men and boys are very much part of the solution. Early education in our schools is absolutely vital, but we cannot get away from the fact that the incidents are generally perpetrated by men. It is right to continue that debate and to also be really careful with our language about men and boys.

To conclude, the reality is that only 26% of those who experience public sexual harassment report the incident to the police, no matter how scared, harassed or intimidated they have been by it. We have also heard examples such as that robustly and passionately given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North of the girl in the supermarket. That was a really visual story of the nonsense that girls and women have to go through every single day when they are not asking for it or wearing anything provocative but just trying to do their job. With such examples in our minds and this happening every single day of the week, of the month, of the year, we have to make changes.

I am relieved and really grateful that the next time I am in Stroud with Stroud High School girls or with the campaign group This Ends Now and other teams, or the next time I am on a march or dealing with these issues in front of a group of people in our town hall, I will be able to point to the Government backing this Bill as yet another example of the Government wanting to protect women and girls and being prepared to create the legislation to do so and bring our laws up to date.

The speech made by Siobhan Baillie, the Conservative MP for Stroud, in Westminster Hall, the House of Common, on 16 November 2022.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the terminology used in family law.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes, not least as I know you are a huge champion of families, and when you looked after relationship work in the Department for Work and Pensions under previous ministerial briefs, you understood the importance of this field of work.

Who does not love a good on-screen relationship drama? Lovers falling out, marriages breaking down and dramatic affairs of the heart are the stock-in-trade of film, soaps and the media. But when children are caught in the middle of storylines, we routinely hear, “I’ll see you in court”, “I’m going for custody of little Johnny and little Sarah”, or the possessive—“She’s my daughter”—and divorce is described as a battle to be won. This language is hugely unhelpful to families who are going through the heartache of separation.

I was a family law solicitor before I came into this place, and I saw the fallout of unnecessarily divisive battles. I am often found shouting at the telly when they get the terminology wrong. My love of “Coronation Street” and “Eastenders” probably needs to be outed here—I am going to write to the producers about the report and the debate today. Language really matters in family law.

In real life, every year around 280,000 children see their parents separate. It surprises many that the term “custody” should have stopped being used 30-odd years ago when the Children Act 1989 came in, but it surprises nobody that the language of war used for separating families is damaging to all involved, with approximately 40% of all separating parents bringing issues about their children to the family court. For too long we have allowed thousands of children to be caught up in an adversarial court system.

The language of the legal system is accusatory and divisive. Parents are described as Smith v. Smith; barristers will talk about “my opponent”; we refer to “the applicant” and “the respondent”; and we have “dispute resolution” rather than problem solving. The most important humans in a child’s life are therefore immediately pitched against each other at a time when co-operation is most needed.

Many years ago while working for the relationship experts OnePlusOne, I wrote an article that explained—there is lots of evidence—that destructive and acrimonious conflict between parents puts children at greater risk of emotional problems such as depression and anxiety. Children may develop behavioural difficulties and become aggressive and difficult. Parents do not want that. For the majority of mums and dads, separation is extremely painful and a decision not taken lightly. The wellbeing of their children is their main concern, and often the first concern when they come in to speak to lawyers.

Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)

In the time I have had the privilege of knowing the hon. Lady, she has addressed these issues with a deep interest and knowledge, and I thank her for that. In children and family courts, children often hear big and complicated words without knowing their meaning, but they know the emotional impact—for example, custody in prison, being in pain, separation, being alone and perhaps even violence. Does she agree that the justice system could and must look at the courts’ choice of words, their impact on young children’s development and the fear they instil about the environment those children are growing up in and the changes that they might face?

Siobhan Baillie

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford for what was, as usual, a thoughtful intervention. He is absolutely right. The language we all use, whether it is in the media or in the legal system and court documents, can be changed. It will not be easy—we all use terminology that is outdated and that we have been told is wrong, and we get it wrong sometimes—but it can be changed, and we have to work towards that.

With that in mind, I encourage everyone to look at the “Language Matters” report by the Family Solutions Group. The FSG was set up by the eminent Mr Justice Cobb in 2020. It is an excellent and constructive multidisciplinary group of experts working with separated parents and children. There is a lot of emotion in this area, but it is trying to find solutions and I recommend that everyone look at its work.

Let us be honest: the courts system that we are working in is stretched to breaking point. Over 66,000 new cases started in the family courts in April to June 2021, which is up 14% on the same quarter the year before. The case numbers are increasing. The pressure on courts in the pandemic was a tipping point because so many hearings were cancelled. Delays in cases involving children are always counter to a child’s best interests, yet despite the best efforts of the Government, the judiciary and lawyers, from 2011 to 2021 the mean duration of disputes and cases involving children increased from over 31 weeks to 41 weeks—up by a third. It is now commonplace for hearings to be cancelled at short notice, and the number of litigants in person are rising exponentially. That gives the judiciary an impossible task in many cases.

Let us imagine how hard it is for emotionally charged parents to go through a confusing court system on their own. When I was practising, people would save up to have one hour of my time. That is all they could afford—hundreds of pounds. They would get as much as they possibly could from me and head into the court system on their own, often terrified and desperate to do a good job. We come back to language in the courts system. The FSG report sets out the archaic language that is familiar to me, the judiciary and lawyers, but court bundles, pleadings and section 7 statements are alien to most people.

In essence, the court should be the last resort for parents, but sadly it is often seen as the first port of call. However, our system can be changed so that parents who do not have legal issues to resolve do not go anywhere near a judge, particularly for child arrangements. Many cases are not about law but about communication or relationship issues, responsibilities, schools, hobbies or the scheduling of a child’s time once they are in two homes. If there is no safety, or if there are domestic violence or protection issues, parents would be best served by being supported to reach agreements as early as possible outside the court system.

I have said for years that I estimate that about a third of private law children cases should not be in court, but I defer to the brilliant judge Sir Andrew MacFarlane, the president of the family division, who I heard on a Radio 4 programme the other day. He estimated that about 20% of families could be helped outside court. If we invested in helping 20% to 30% of families stay out of litigation, we would not only help the children of those families but free up court time for the families that need it most. In the case of Re B, His Honour Judge Wildblood said:

“Do not bring your private law litigation to family Court here unless it is genuinely necessary for you to do so.”

Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)

As a former magistrate in the family proceedings court, I completely agree that when people come for contact arrangements with their children, very often the magistrates are acting in the role of mediator and helping them to come to a decision in the court. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is not the place for parents to go to have other people sort out their child arrangements for them?

Siobhan Baillie

I agree. It is not a good use of magistrates’ time, either. This is not easy for parents—nobody should suggest that they rush to court, because often that is not the case. At the moment, parents think that court is the only place to go to get disputes resolved. That change in society and culture would help to free up the court’s time, which is incredibly important to my hon. Friend and other magistrates. His Honour Judge Wildblood went on to say this, directed at parents and lawyers:

“If you do bring unnecessary cases to this Court, you will be criticised, and sanctions may be imposed on you. There are many other ways to settle disagreements, such as mediation.”

I am looking to the Minister to help me and other parliamentarians to change the family law system to, in turn, help the Ministry of Justice to achieve its goals to ensure that people can access justice and court time in a timely way when they really need it.

Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)

I agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. The problem is that there are insufficient resources in mediation services, but if we invested in them, we could make savings further down the road within the court system and the Ministry of Justice. Is that something she would encourage?

Siobhan Baillie

It is absolutely fantastic to hear the hon. Gentleman talk about mediation. There has actually been a lot of investment in mediation. The demand went up an awful lot when we had a voucher system, which we may hear about from the Minister. Where demand has gone up, we need to meet that demand, because those parents will end up in court if we cannot get them into mediation services. It is absolutely great to hear the hon. Gentleman champion mediation in that way, and we will look to the Minister to hear more about the options.

I am asking for a few things today. Will the Minister confirm that the Ministry of Justice’s much-needed focus on family law reform is continuing, now that the Lord Chancellor is back in his post? It went quiet for a bit, and the Lord Chancellor previously did an awful lot on this issue. What has happened to the demand reduction plan? I know the Department was looking at that very carefully, and it was designing the plan to keep families out of court wherever possible. Does the Minister agree that the FSG should receive a formal response from the Government to its “What About Me?” and “Language Matters” reports?

Can the Minister please confirm that the Ministry of Justice is working across Departments to embed support for separating families in services such as family hubs, and to learn from the Department for Work and Pensions’ successful reducing parental conflict programmes? Will the Government confirm that they will investigate extending family law projects and pilot schemes? We know that they are working really well and teaching us better practice for cases involving children, so we would like to see more of them. Finally, will the Minister get representatives of the FSG to meet officials in the Department in order to discuss their proposals?

I genuinely believe that changing the options available to parents, re-educating society about the impact of litigation on children and changing the legal language of separation will help millions of parents and, importantly, the life chances of children. I hope we can work together to make that happen.

The speech made by Siobhan Baillie, the Conservative MP for Stroud, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on her great speech about a fantastic petition. My notes say, “Don’t cry,” but I might. Lewis, I watched your BBC interview; I know your aim is to enshrine Oliver’s memory, and his name will be recorded in Hansard repeatedly today. The fact that you are able to find strength from your grief to try to help others is incredibly inspiring.

I have been campaigning on childcare for as long as I have been an MP. I have now bothered three Prime Ministers and four Chancellors, one of whom is now the Prime Minister, and I know they all care deeply about this issue. I want to see action and I do not think it is right to criticise the Government for looking into the issue of childcare ratios, which I will come to in a moment. We are right to reform the childcare system. We are spending £5 billion to £6 billion of taxpayers’ money on various different schemes that work for some families but are perceived to be failing for many others.

I am doing some work on the childcare element of universal credit. That needs reform because parents say that they cannot go to work or that it is not worth them going to work. Brilliant mums and dads are really feeling the pinch on the cost of childcare. Parents in the UK currently spend 26% of their entire household budget on childcare, and the proportion is 20% for single parents. The OECD average is 10%, but the UK figure is 26%, whereas in the USA it is 14% and in Canada it is 12%. As I said to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions last week, we have to make the system work and ensure that providers do not go belly up. There are some fantastic childcare providers in Stroud who are incredibly worried at the moment, so it is great to have this debate.

If we are going to change childcare ratios, I want to hear from the Government about the impact on safety. We may not be able to hear about that in full today, not least because it is the debut response to a debate by the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), but what is the safety impact? Show us the evidence. I know she is looking carefully at all the evidence and safety impacts, but will she tell us whether a change to the childcare ratio will reduce fees for parents? Will it increase salaries for early years staff, which is something we desperately need? Will it offer flexibility to providers? We have heard from many providers that they do not want to take up any change to childcare ratios, but is more flexibility good for the sector?

I am concerned about changing ratios now because of the issues we face in the workforce. I want the issue flushed out. It is has been going around in circles since at least 2013, when my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) held the position now held by my hon. Friend the Minister, and we know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) wanted to look at the issue when he was Prime Minister. On the surface, my right hon. Friends are right that England has stricter ratios in comparison to other countries. For children aged two in France and Canada, the ratio is one trained adult to eight children. In Australia, that ratio is one trained adult to five children, and in Japan it is one trained adult to six children. There are no limits at all in Denmark, Germany or Sweden.

As we have heard from other Members, the question is whether other countries have more relaxed ratios partly because their workforce is more qualified. The parents present today have set the challenge of putting safety first. It is wrong to assume that if ratios are relaxed, nurseries in England will suddenly be able to take in more toddlers without employing more staff, because our current workforce do not feel able or qualified to a high enough standard to look after those children.

Also, child-to-staff ratios could not be changed without adjusting the space ratios, as we have heard from a number of Members. Many providers are at capacity with the amount of children they have in the space, so relaxing child-to-staff ratios would not result automatically in providers being able to care for more children. Nurseries would have to look at other premises, and we know the costs they would face to change them.

I have briefings on this coming out of my ears. People really care, and I thank the NDNA, Pregnant Then Screwed, Coram, Mumsnet and all who have been speaking to parents and providers throughout the country for an extremely long time. Gloucestershire PATA, with which I had a Zoom conversation about the concerns for Gloucestershire providers, wrote:

“Having one practitioner looking after four 2-year-olds is already challenging, especially in small settings (which many are in Gloucestershire). This may mean that there are only two practitioners looking after 8 children in a room. The minute that a child within that group needs 1:1 care, one practitioner is occupied and the other required to supervise the remaining 7 children. In the course of a day this may happen many times, with for example a child who misses the potty and needs changing, along with the cleaning of the area where the accident happened, or a child who…needs reassurance…This is in addition to routine nappy changing, preparation of snack and the myriad other tasks which need to happen for the day to run smoothly.”

Earlier, I was preparing to go on the BBC and I was so stressed that my daughter was still in a Hallowe’en costume when I was trying to get out of the house. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) talked about the ability to man-mark of the parent of two children, or even one, and I take my hat off to the early years educators who deal with multiple children.

I want to focus on childcare ratios, because that is the issue of the day. I know the Minister is completely seized of the issue as we have had many conversations, and I constantly take it to Cabinet—to anyone who will listen to me. We need wider reform. My message to parents and everyone present is that the Government’s suggestion to look at childcare ratios was just one part of a wider review of childcare; it was never going to be the only thing. I also think it is right that it is investigated fully, so that we can flush out and understand the evidence, with safety absolutely at the top of the agenda.

Improving childcare is future-building for our society and our country. It is crucial to the economy to get more parents into work, if that is what they want to do, in order to improve the productivity of this great country. We must stop suggesting that childcare and early years are an add-on to education. The Minister is in the Department for Education, and we are talking about year-zero educators in our early years settings. We have to value, pay and champion them as much as we possibly can. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

The speech made by Siobhan Baillie, the Conservative MP for Stroud, in the House of Commons on 24 March 2021.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered online anonymity and anonymous abuse.

In recent weeks, we have been rightly concerned about safety in our towns and cities, yet people face danger and harassment not just in the physical world, but on the dark cyber streets and alleyways of the internet. Cowardly keyboard warriors stalk these streets and lurk in our phones. They bully with abandon, they spread racist and misogynistic abuse, they attack looks, weight, age, race, gender, disability, success as well as failure and the young and old alike. No one is safe from their violent hate. Anonymity provides the shadows where these people can hide. It facilitates and encourages online abuse.

My own experience of hate came after the birth of my daughter last year. The outpouring of venom because I took four weeks’ maternity leave was a shock. Attacking somebody for being a mum or suggesting that a mum cannot do the job of an MP is misogynistic and, quite frankly, ridiculous. But I would be lying if I said that I did not find it very upsetting, especially at a time when I could barely move and needed to work out how to feed my new baby. Other people have suffered more—from death and rape threats to all forms of intimidation and harassment in between. Nobody should have to put up with that. Seeing the bravery with which others have confronted this menace has prompted me to campaign for change, and I am not alone.

The racism and abuse levelled at footballers is no longer from the terraces. Many England players who will run out for us tomorrow night have suffered unspeakable racist abuse. I fully support Harry Maguire’s calls for verified identification. I have spoken to the FA’s excellent Kick It Out, which has superb goals for social media companies to create robust and swift measures to take down abusive material, and for investigating authorities swiftly to identify the originators.

Katie Price launched a petition only a few weeks ago that already has over 160,000 signatures.

Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing today’s debate on this incredibly important issue. Will she join me in paying tribute to Katie, who is my constituent? She is a mum battling for her disabled son who is often abused online. Her petition makes the very sensible proposal to end online anonymity. No one has a right to a cloak to conceal their actions of harm. Both Katie’s petition and my hon. Friend’s own great work in this area deserve the support of the whole House.

Siobhan Baillie

I thank my hon. Friend; it was very kind of him to set up a meeting between me, Katie and her mum Amy. We talked about her experiences of the trolls. What they have been through is absolutely heartbreaking. Harvey has been subject to the most vile abuse, which I actually cannot bring myself to say. This has gone on his whole life. The strength with which he and his family have endured these issues is remarkable. Any mother would want to protect her children and we must arm parents with the tools to do just that.

In Stroud, a robust military veteran has had years of deliberate online attempts to ruin his business and reputation. It has nearly broken him mentally at times. The Facebook page that attacks him has a spare one in case the first gets taken down. Another constituent has endured years of stalking and harassment. She is a retired social worker. She has found the police ill equipped to deal with such fast-moving tech, and even when the perpetrators put a picture of her garage door up online—indicating they knew where she lived—she still felt unprotected. A Gloucestershire journalist was recently told by an anonymous loon that she is single because she

“is self absorbed and looks like a slut”.

I have done enough domestic violence work as a lawyer to know that such attitudes and language are a short hop, skip and jump to violence.

Of course, not all online nastiness is anonymous. One named man said of me on Facebook last week:

“She should be banished from our lovely Stroud…years ago she’d have been shot on the spot for her arrogance and hypocrisy…yet people voted for the ass licking vile piece of slime.”

Lovely—and I could go on and on. I do not have enough time to properly address other reports of dangerous antisemitism, fake news, vaccine misinformation, deliberate reputation ruining and online fraud. That is on top of the daily legal but harmful harassing-type behaviour, plus posts that have the veneer of a justified challenge but are really just deliberately spiking pile-ons and hate.

Constituents I have spoken to are clear that the reporting does not work, the cost of legal remedies are out of the reach of normal people and the law needs updating. We need to make social media known more for the good in our society, rather than as a toxic, unsafe hellhole. The Government’s online harms work, though overdue, is to be commended as a huge step in the right direction. That legislation will require media platforms to take more effective actions against abuse, whether it is anonymous or not. Its aims of protecting children and empowering adults to stay safe online are noble, yet the White Paper barely addresses the issue of anonymity. There were no specific consultation questions about the issue. That should be rectified without delay.

As it stands, tech companies do not know who millions of their users are. No matter how good their intentions, the lack of basic information means that any attempt to police platforms and bring offenders to justice is a painful process, if it happens at all. Ofcom’s hands will be tied behind its back before it even starts.

I do not propose the banning of anonymous accounts. There are great benefits in anonymity that I know other Members will speak passionately about today. I would like to see tech companies move on this issue, as we should not always need the Government to intervene, although sadly it currently looks like they will have to.

Three simple steps would go a long way to prevent, deter and reduce online abuse. First, we should give social media users the option to verify their identity. Secondly, we should make it easy for everybody to see whether or not a user has chosen to verify their identity. Members of this House already use that function—my Twitter account has a prominent blue tick next to it, thereby providing confidence that the account is genuine and my details have been checked. Verification works: we should make it available to all. Finally, we should give users the option to block communication, comments and other interaction from unverified users as a category, if they wish.

Some people argue that such moves would undermine freedom of speech, but I disagree. No one would be prevented from using another name or being “Princess What’s-her-chops”, but it would make it harder for online abusers to hide in the shadows if they cause mayhem. Importantly, it would make abusers easier to catch and give social media users the power of choice. Some will be happy to interact with unverified users; others will not. But there must be a choice.

In any event, what greater impediment to freedom of speech is there than people worrying that what they say online will end up in a death threat or a rape threat? What personal freedoms have been lost through the damage done to mental health by online bullying? How many people have already looked at online abuse and hesitated before applying for public-facing jobs, or not applied at all? My proposals would protect freedom of expression and respect the choice of anonymity, but make it harder for abusers to hide in darkness and give individuals new powers to control how they interact with others. I urge everybody to look up the organisation Clean up the Internet, which was co-founded by one of my constituents, to see the proposals in more detail.

Mr Deputy Speaker, no one should face the abuse and horror that you will hear about today. For the victims of online harm, the abuse is not virtual. It does not stay in cyber-space. It impacts the real lives of real people in the real world. If we fail properly to investigate the impact and options surrounding anonymity, I fear we will render any forthcoming legislation and change—no matter how good it is—out of touch and out of date before the ink is dry. We have the expertise, support and drive to tackle online harms; let us be a beacon of light and illuminate the dark streets of social media. Let us really lead the world on tackling anonymous abuse.