Lucy Powell MP, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Childcare and Children, will today (Thursday) highlight the prejudice working parents face and call for a childcare revolution in her first keynote speech as Shadow Minister for Childcare and Children.
On being a champion for working parents, Powell will argue:
“Part of this revolution is a society that values the contribution of parents in the workplace. They too often get a raw deal and suffer from prejudice.
“Too often working parents are given a bad name at work: seen as not focused on the job or having to leave early or take time off. I want to bust this myth. I want to champion working parents, particularly working mums, and I want business and other organisations to join me.
“Far from being scatty and clock-watching, working mums have done a day’s work before they leave the house - we don’t waste a minute of our day. We are highly productive at work because we have to be. We are loyal and creative employees.
“We should be celebrating not berating the role parents play in the workforce and in society.
“This is a job for all of us. It is shocking that there is only one mum in David Cameron’s cabinet, and the depiction of working mums on the TV hasn’t moved on much from Wendy Craig’s character Ria in Butterflies. That’s why we need more working mums in positions of power and culturally to reflect the positive contribution we make.”
On dads she will say:
“Without a cultural shift, men will continue to have requests for flexible leave turned down, and parental leave won’t be taken.”
On the need for a childcare revolution to match family ambitions, Lucy Powell will say:
“For many parents balancing work and family life has become increasingly difficult. The way in which families are structured has fundamentally changed over the last twenty years and public policy has failed to keep up with these changes.
“We now have more women than ever in work: more women who want to work, and more who need to work. More and more dads want to play an active role, families need to work more hours and more anti-social hours to make ends meet and parents not only struggle to get by but also struggle for the time and space to enjoy their kids.
“Gone are the days of dad working while mum stays at home bringing up the kids. While this is the choice of some, it is not the reality for the majority.
“My generation of women expected that we could ‘have it all’ but we are all too often still having to choose between career and motherhood, and being plagued by guilt whichever path we take. There remains an impenetrable glass ceiling for working mums.
“I want my daughter’s generation to be able to have the best of both worlds and to have real choice.
“So my main message to you today, is that in order for this to be realised we need an ambitious agenda for childcare and family policy.
“While there’s been a quiet revolution in the way people live their lives, we now need a childcare revolution to match it.
“Labour gets this challenge. I get this mission.”
Lucy Powell will say that Labour’s new policies of an extension of free childcare for three and four year olds with working parents from 15 to 25 hours and the introduction of a primary childcare guarantee to help families manage before and after school care demonstrate that the Party is serious about supporting working mums and dads. Labour will continue to focus on meeting the childcare challenge faced by working families.
“I will work with parents and the sector to develop an ambitious agenda for childcare and family policy that meets the needs of families today and in the future. I want to work with you to build a movement for radical childcare reform that leads to a cultural shift in how we see childcare, how we value the care for our youngest, how we value parents in the workplace and how we set a generation of women free.”