House of Commons
Friday 13 February 1998
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Employment of Children Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
9.34 am
Mr. Chris Pond (Gravesham): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
When I chose today as the date for the Second Reading of my Bill, I did not realise that we would be celebrating something of an anniversary. Today, as we know, is Friday 13 February; by coincidence, the previous Bill providing national legislation on this issue received its Second Reading on Friday 12 February 1932. One hon. Member speaking in that debate on the Children and Young Persons Bill commented:
That hon. Member's wait might have been rather shorter. Nearly 25 years ago, in March 1973, a private Member's Bill with the same title as this one went into Committee. It, too, was called the Employment of Children Bill, and the private Member concerned was a Mr. Jeffrey Archer. I understand that the Bill was something of a potboiler, and is still available in airport lounges around the country.
Although Mr. Archer had come only 16th or 17th in the ballot, and although he admitted to being just a little half-hearted about the Bill--which was originally a Labour measure, and which he had taken off the shelf, having nothing much else to put in its place--it had a very fair wind. As Mr. Archer noted in Committee,
Let me take this opportunity to wish the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) a happy birthday. Although he cannot be with us this morning, for reasons that we understand, he can comfort himself with the thought that yesterday he was exactly six years younger than the most recent national legislation on child employment. He will not mind my saying that I am not referring to the 1973 Act--which was never signed by the Secretary of State, and therefore never came into force.
As well as the support for the Bill in the House, there is considerable support outside. I pay tribute first to the Low Pay Unit, an organisation with which I worked for many years before entering the House and with which I am still proud to be associated. The unit helped to draft the Bill, and for many years has carried out research on the extent of child labour. It has also campaigned for better protection for children at work.
As hon. Members will know from their postbags, the Bill is also supported by many other organisations, such as the major children's charities, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, NCH Action for Children, Save the Children, the Child Accident Prevention Trust and the Children's Rights Office. The Trades Union Congress and individual trade unions, many of which have done much work on the issue over the years, support the Bill, as do individual employers who want to ensure that where children are employed they are given appropriate protection, that their safety and welfare are not damaged in the process and that their education does not suffer. Those employers include the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, which supports the Bill. One of its spokespeople told the BBC on Wednesday evening that this
Apart from having a broad base of support, there are many other similarities between the 1973 Employment of Children Bill, which was never brought into force, and the 1998 Bill. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health in the Chamber. His predecessor a quarter of a century ago explained that the 1973 Bill was designed to deal with the shortcomings of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933:
Had the 1973 Bill become law, its namesake Bill before us today might have been less necessary, but although the 1973 Bill progressed through all its stages to become an Act, as I have said, it was never signed by a Secretary of State and it has continued to gather dust on the shelves.
Local authorities at the time argued, understandably, that they had insufficient resources to implement that legislation. The Government decided to try to implement its best features through modern byelaws, which were adopted by some local education authorities, but still left us with patchy regulations that are difficult to enforce.
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Faversham and Mid-Kent):
As a sponsor of the Bill, I feel ashamed that, as I have explained to the hon. Gentleman, I cannot be here for the whole debate; I apologise for that. Does he agree that one of the enormous difficulties, both in this sector and in relation to vetting volunteers, for example, is that, with the best will in the world, the regulatory authorities often take so long that the contract, as it were, has expired before the necessary procedures have been carried out? I am sure that, later in his speech, he will explain how the Bill will deal with that.
Mr. Pond:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. As he has to leave, and given that he is a sponsor and great supporter of the Bill, may I briefly respond to that point now? He is right to say that many employers feel that the way in which the permit system operates does not allow for flexibility in children's employment. That is why the Bill states that an employer, once a permit has been applied for, may employ a child for a period of grace of one month, until the local authority issues that permit. If, after that one month, a permit has not been issued, the employment must cease. The employer must, of course, apply for a permit in advance. In that way, we can retain the flexibility that employers need, but provide the protection that children deserve.
As a result of the events that I have described, a quarter of a century of providing greater protection for Britain's working children was lost. We must ensure that history is not allowed to repeat itself on this occasion. A further opportunity was missed to provide that protection more recently, when the European Union considered a directive to provide greater protection for children at work. For more than two years, the previous Administration blocked the measure, arguing for special treatment for the United Kingdom. That was a cruel irony, given that Britain's working children needed that protection rather more than children elsewhere in Europe.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the European Commission tells us, Britain accounted for one third of the working children throughout EU countries, yet Britain's children had less protection than those in any other member state. A recent Council of Europe report singled out six countries in Europe as having extensive child employment: Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria Spain, Italy--and the UK.
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham):
I wish my hon. Friend's Bill every success, but on the European and international aspect, has he read the remarkable report in
"If we accept this Bill . . . it is just 24 years since the last Children's Bill was introduced",
adding rather plaintively:
"Must we wait for another 24 years?"--[Official Report, 12 February 1932; Vol. 261, c. 1233.]
Actually, the wait was a little longer than that--66 years almost to the day.
"There has been a demand for it in the constituencies, and it is wanted by all parties. We shall all be glad to see it passed into law and on the Statute Book."--[Official Report, Standing Committee C, 14 March 1973; c. 7.]
The same might be said of the present Bill of the same title. Nearly 170 hon. Members signed the early-day motion supporting the Bill, and most of the signatures were collected in the space of a week. The Bill's sponsors, many of whom are in the Chamber this morning, have provided tremendous support, for which I thank them, and they represent each of the three main parties. At its First Reading, three of the 11 sponsors were Conservatives. Soon afterwards, we lost one of those three--not because he was no longer a sponsor, but because he was no longer a Conservative.
"is a very good Bill and the Federation supports it".
The federation and the distribution organisations played a constructive and helpful role in helping to shape the Bill. I pay tribute to Soroptimist International, many of whose members are here to listen to the debate and have pledged their support for the Bill as part of their work on the rights of the child.
"The first is the existence of a good deal of undesirable variation among local authorities, which at present have law-making powers in the matter of conditions and terms of employment for youngsters."
The Bill, he said, would introduce a
"uniform pattern of law-making throughout the country".
So, too, would the Bill before us. He went on to explain:
"The second purpose . . . is that power should be taken to enable the scrutiny of a child's employment to be undertaken not only after he has started work . . . but before he takes his first step into the job."--[Official Report, Standing Committee C, 14 March 1973; c. 4-5.]
The present Bill has a similar purpose, although clause 10 allows a grace period of a month between the commencement of employment and the issue of the work permit.
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