Alex Brewer MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Sept 2026 · Fathers and Positive Male Role Models · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) on introducing this really important debate. There is a contradiction between the widely shared agreement, certainly in this Chamber, about the vital importance of a positive male role model in shaping young lives and the lack of support, services and policy to support that. But let me say something equally important at the outset: a child does not need a father in the house to flourish. Children raised by single mothers, two mothers, grandmothers or kinship carers are not children with something missing. I represent many such families, and we have heard powerful testimony about them today. They do an extraordinary job, often with less support than they deserve. Children benefit from care, stability and good examples of how to be in the world. It matters whether every child has adults around them modelling something worth copying, but a good role model must first be a present one, and presence is a question not simply of character but of how we structure our society. If we want fathers to be there in the earliest weeks and years, we have to build a society that fosters that through policies, including paternity leave. The evidence on why this matters is strong. Research led by the University of Leeds found that children whose fathers regularly drew, played and read with them at age three did better at school by age five, and that fathers’ involvement at five improved key stage assessment scores at age seven. That effect held regardless of the child’s gender, ethnicity, age in the school year or household income. We know that couples separate. For separating couples, we can reduce conflict with better early support, perhaps via family hubs. On the Women and Equalities Committee, we have examined the impact of paternity and shared parental leave. We recommended raising paternity pay to the level of maternity pay for the first six weeks—90% of average earnings—and setting out a pathway to six weeks of paid statutory paternity leave over this Parliament. Unfortunately, the Government did not commit to taking up that recommendation. Last year, the Committee visited Iceland, where we had the opportunity to learn from and hear about one of the most progressive parental leave policies in the world. Iceland’s parental leave is framed explicitly around ensuring that children can receive care from both parents—or carers—and enabling women and men to combine family life with work. It is grounded in gender equality and children’s rights. Countries that provide fathers and co-parents with substantial, well-paid leave generally have better gender pay gaps—around four percentage points smaller than those that offer less than six weeks of leave. Increasing women’s workforce participation and earnings while reducing pay inequality should be a long-term priority, and it goes hand in hand with providing good male role models. I wonder whether, if that phrase was less awkward to say, we would talk about it more. Role modelling does not stop at the front door. Only around 24% of teachers in England are men; in primary schools it is 14%, while in early years it is only 3%. Those are professions built around care, patience and emotional literacy, and we have allowed them to become, in practice, “women’s work”. That says something to every child at school: it teaches boys that caring is not for them, and it means that the children who most need a steady male adult in their lives are even less likely to find one. Patriarchal values upheld by society have taught boys that care is weakness, that what is associated with women or femininity is worth less, and that asking for help is failure. Before I came to this place, I worked in a domestic abuse refuge. I saw what happens when the male role model in a child’s life is a violent one. Many children in the refuge had witnessed violence at home, usually directed by a father or partner against their mother. That is role modelling, too. To prevent the trauma from those circumstances affecting the next generation, we need to ensure that young boys in particular have at least one stable, secure, positive male role model in their life, and we need to enable a system that keeps children safe from violence in the home. As a society, we have spent over a century examining what it means to be a woman. We have barely begun the equivalent conversation about being a man, so others have stepped in with a much uglier answer. We tell girls that feelings are okay and that it is good to talk, but we tell boys the opposite: that strength is silence and the only acceptable emotion is anger. Talking is “what girls do”, and what girls do is weak, so when a boy has a question he is too embarrassed to ask his dad, he does not ask anyone; instead, he types it into a search bar. Movember’s research, which surveyed more than 3,000 young men, found that nearly two thirds of them regularly engaged with men and masculinity influencers, and those who did reported worse mental health, less willingness to prioritise their mental health, and higher rates of risk-taking behaviour such as steroid use. We have also, as a society, grown accustomed to male violence—in pornography, on television, in the street. That content, which is a feature of the manosphere, is landing because it offers men and boys a story about themselves. One in 10 girls aged 11 to 16 have missed or avoided school to escape sexual harassment, and that is more likely still for girls who are neurodivergent, disabled or LGBTQ+. The manosphere results in worse outcomes for everyone. When we build a country where men can be present, caring and visible in the home, nursery, classroom and youth club, we give boys something better to become, and as a result, we all gain.

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  The first 1,001 days of a baby’s life are the single greatest opportunity we have to reduce inequality, improve health and educational outcomes, and thereby improve the life chances of future generations. The “1001 Critical Days” report came out in 2013 as a truly cross-party manifesto, and I believe it has been relaunched at least twice since then. I took a great interest in it when I worked in the domestic abuse sector a decade ago, because I saw at first hand the devastating impact that trauma can have on babies and young children. I wholeheartedly welcome the statutory protection for babies that the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) is bringing before the House in this Bill. Reassuring words also need action, however, and sadly the actions of the party that he represents have moved in exactly the opposite direction. That has let families down year after year, with under-investment in all those areas that support our children. There has been a lot of talk of Sure Start and children’s centres, and Action for Children found that in just three years between 2015 and 2018, the average spend per child of children’s centres, and the number of children using them, fell by around one fifth, with the most deprived areas hit hardest. It is not just Sure Start; in North East Hampshire we used to have a drop-in health clinic—somewhere parents could weigh their babies, meet others, and build connections with other members of the local community. It made a real difference, but it stopped operating after the pandemic. Hampshire has 18 and a half constituencies, almost 70,000 children under five, and so far only one Best Start family hub. Today the nearest Best Start hub for the 5,000 children in my constituency is on the other side of Hampshire, and there is nowhere within my community offering a one-stop shop for early years support. When services are closed, others are stretched to breaking point. Families have nowhere local to turn to, and we miss a window of opportunity to invest in a child. That child might arrive at school without the basic skills they need; they might arrive at the GP surgery with avoidable health risks. They are more likely to need further help that is harder and more expensive to provide. Before becoming an MP, I ran a charity supporting children and young people with Down syndrome, working with families from the moment their child was born, and indeed sometimes before. My charity, and countless others, stepped in to provide the services that councils were cutting. I saw at first hand what early intervention does for a child’s health, skills and confidence, and what its absence costs. We saw the impact on families of speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and other interventions that are life-changing, especially if provided in those early years. We also saw the impact of a lack of those services. Although we are of course focusing on babies, we must remember that the first 1,001 critical days are from conception, nine months of which is pregnancy. The Bill is not just about babies; it is also about mothers. Inquiries by the Women and Equalities Committee into medical misogyny, women’s reproductive health conditions, miscarriage and bereavement leave, paternity and shared parental leave, and female genital mutilation all found that women are routinely let down across those areas of health, maternity care and scientific research. Sadly, I expect that that surprises nobody, but the impact is felt by everyone, including men and boys, because if the mother’s concerns are ignored, it can result in her son’s health conditions worsening. A father who has little to no parental leave has less chance to bond with his children, to the detriment of both. Investing in the first days, weeks and years of a child’s life is the right thing to do not only for people but for the economy. Early intervention could generate an estimated £45.5 billion for our economy every year, and for every £1 invested up to £200 comes back in long-term benefits. Previous Conservative Governments have systematically eroded the services needed to provide the best start in life. I saw that at the coalface when supporting victims of domestic abuse and their children to flee dangerous and violent partners. They needed the support of a children’s centre, but also of social services and the health service. They needed public transport and a safe and secure roof over their head. They needed reliable maternity services, reliable nursery places, and a reliable legal system. Often they got none of those things, and watching the systematic removal of support for the country’s most vulnerable people was the exact reason for my journey into politics. We have an opportunity to repair and build. We have the evidence, we have the numbers, and we clearly have cross-party support. We have a country full of children with huge potential who need our support. We cannot afford not to invest in their future, so I heartily welcome the Bill as a first step, and call on the Government not to toddle but to take great strides in providing the essential cross-departmental support for parents, carers and children that is so clearly needed.

• 2 Sept 2026 · Employer National Insurance Contributions: Small Businesses in Hampshire · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of changes to employer National Insurance contributions on small businesses in Hampshire. It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. I am equally privileged to be joined by a number of local business owners from North East Hampshire, who are in the Public Gallery. Soaring energy costs, a business rates system in desperate need of overhaul and, perhaps the most damaging of all, a rise in employer national insurance contributions: individually, any one of those changes would be hard for a small business to absorb, but together they are too much for many small businesses across Hampshire. When a small business’s costs rise, that cost moves on to workers through stagnant wages, to customers through higher prices and to the business owners in lower profits. When the numbers simply cannot add up, the cost also moves on to local communities, through weaker local economies and hollowed out high streets. In Hampshire, where almost 98% of businesses are small businesses, that is felt by an entire county. Small businesses cannot design their way around these tax changes. A big national chain can negotiate volume discounts, restructure its human resources or draw on a financial buffer; a beauty salon in Church Crookham or a care home in Ewshot cannot. That is why 35% of small firms say that they are planning to close or significantly scale back this year, and why these changes are, in plain terms, a jobs tax. This matters because these are precisely the employers we need. The Government’s own research has warned that without urgent action, one in six young people could soon be a NEET—somebody not in education, employment or training. Hospitality, retail, personal care and customer service are the sectors facing the steepest rise in labour costs, yet they are the very sectors that traditionally give young people their first, vital experience in the world of work.