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Mr. Corbyn: ILO convention 138 is central to the debate. Will my hon. Friend confirm that if the Bill became law, it would prevent Britain from ratifying that ILO convention?
Mr. Pond: The Bill would improve protection for children, but it would not fully meet the requirements of that convention. However, the current arrangements and the EU directive do not meet those requirements either. I agree with my hon. Friend that we should work to achieve for our children the best protection that is required under international agreements. The Bill is a step in that direction, but I accept that in itself it would not fulfil all those requirements.
The Department of Health briefing reminds us that many children want to work and that child employment is an established tradition which, for better or worse, the Bill does not seek to challenge. As I have said, we recognise that properly regulated child employment can be beneficial as long as it is not allowed to compromise the child's safety, well-being and educational prospects. The Council of Europe acknowledges that. It states:
I stress that the Bill does not prohibit child employment--and it certainly does not prohibit newspaper delivery by children. There is a myth that all or most child employment consists of the delivery of newspapers. In fact, almost twice as many children are engaged in other forms of employment. I am a little disappointed that the Department of Health briefing encourages the notion that the Bill might threaten the delivery of newspapers by children. Such anxieties have
been fuelled by the Newspaper Society, the trade association for newspaper publishers, in a press release dramatically headed:
That is what the Bill does not do; this is what it does do. First, it would limit the maximum working week during term time to 12 hours. That is the limit originally proposed under the European Union directive and the limit which already exists in every other EU country. According to the Low Pay Unit survey this week, about 14 per cent. of children work more than 12 hours a week. Current legislation, made up of the 1933 Act and local authority byelaws, allows children to work legally for up to 17 hours a week, or 20 hours a week for those aged over 15. Added to a normal curriculum school week, plus an expected 15 hours of homework, it means that children only just into their teens can legally work 60 hours or more a week.
The argument for limiting working hours to 12 per week is strong. There is evidence that children's employment beyond such hours can result in a decline in school performance. The work of Sandy Hobbs and Jim McKechnie in Paisley shows that there is a fairly clear tendency for longer hours of child employment to be associated with poor performance at, and commitment to, school. Research suggests that working 10 hours or more a week can have an adverse effect on a child's school performance. The authors do not argue that there is necessarily a causal link between the two, but I think that most of us would agree that there is likely to be a link between the number of hours that a child is employed and his performance at school. The increasing responsibilities that we are placing on children through their schoolwork should make us think carefully about whether the limit on working hours, which was set several decades ago, is appropriate to modern circumstances.
The Trades Union Congress survey, which was carried out by MORI, found that more than a quarter of children working during term time were often or sometimes too tired to do their homework or schoolwork because of their job. One in 20 admitted to playing truant in order to do paid work instead. Sometimes it is more blatant. The Times Educational Supplement last week reported that one student sat her examination wearing her supermarket overall to make sure that she was back at work in time for her shift. It reported that retailers were putting pressure on sixth-formers to work hours that damaged their chances of A-level success. Is that sensible when the Government rightly place education as the first, second and third priority? We need to ensure that our attempts to build an education system for the new century are not undermined by child employment practices more appropriate to the previous century.
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills):
I support and commend the Bill. However, will the hon. Gentleman allay the concern felt by many of us, which has grown out of our own experience in the delivery of newspapers? I am aware that much of the criticism of the Bill has focused on this point. I did a morning and evening
Mr. Pond:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for his support for the Bill. I can give him the reassurance that he sought. The 12-hour limit in the Bill relates only to term time, not to the school holidays. The National Federation of Retail Newsagents says that the 12-hour limit is acceptable, because it would allow children to do a newspaper round during the week and also another job or additional newspaper deliveries at the weekend. The 12-hour limit has been carefully chosen for that very purpose.
The Bill would provide a uniform overall structure. At present, the law on child employment is complex. It is based on a mix of national legislation and local byelaws, many of which are pitifully out of date. Some local authorities still prohibit the employment of children as lather boys in barber shops or outlaw the extraction of sugar beet from the ground by hand. I have no objection to outlawing such practices, but I would prefer to focus more seriously on the real threats to child safety today. That is why the Bill specifies the types of jobs that children can and cannot do, wherever they live in the country, by establishing a list of appropriate and inappropriate jobs based on both the EU directive and the guidance from the Department of Health. The Bill retains some flexibility for local authorities to build on that platform of basic provisions, but provides much greater uniformity than currently exists.
"Not all child work is harmful to a child's well-being. Rather, child work involves a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, some kinds of work are wholly beneficial to the child's health and development, teaching skills, building self esteem, building a sense of solidarity and loyalty within a family and providing a bridge to the adult world of work. At the other end of the spectrum is work that is wholly detrimental to a child, such as bonded labour, commercial sexual exploitation, sexual and physical abuse in the workplace and hazardous industrial work."
The Council states that whereas there can be no clear-cut universal definition of where on the spectrum child work becomes unacceptable, article 32 of the convention on the rights of the child defines three areas where the child has the right to protection. The first is in the area of economic exploitation. All hon. Members will agree that the example that was published this week by the Low Pay Unit of the child who was earning 33p an hour for delivering newspapers can be considered only in the realm of economic exploitation. Secondly, the Council of Europe refers to hazards to health and development; and thirdly, it refers to interference with a child's education. I think that we can all agree that those are sensible measures showing the divide between which forms of child employment are acceptable and which are unacceptable. The Bill would ensure that the first of those are permitted, while the second are outlawed.
"New Bill Threatens Work For Young News Deliverers".
It does no such thing, as the people who really know--the retail newsagents who employ children to deliver newspapers--are fully aware. As I said, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents supports the Bill, which it sees as no threat to newspaper deliveries by children.
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