Helen Goodman

1. What is the Flexible Families campaign?
The Flexible Families campaign is a call from the Mothers’ Union (MU) for an extension of the right to request flexible working to all parents of children under 18.

2. What is the right to request flexible working?
Flexible working provides a work pattern to suit both the employer and the worker. Employees can ask for changes to the hours and times they work, as well as the place they work from. Employers can refuse requests on legitimate business grounds.

The legal right to request flexible working was granted to parents of children under the age of 6 (or of disabled children under the age of 18) in April 2003 under the Employment Act 2002. The right to request will be extended to carers of dependent adults in April 2007 under the Work and Families Act 2006.

3. Why is the MU promoting it?
The MU believes that families are good for society and should be allowed to flourish. Today’s reality is that both parents usually work whilst their children are young. This means that all parents, whether single or a couple, must be supported in managing their work within the family and within the wider economy.

Flexible working offers families one opportunity to do this. Yet, the right to request flexible working, often known as the “right to request” is only available to parents of children under 6, or under 18 if the child has a disability. The MU believes it is now time to extend that right to parents of all children.

4. What work has the MU already done on this?
The MU were active campaigners during the passage of the recent Work and Families Act, and supported an amendment to extend the right to request flexible working to all parents of children under 18. This amendment was withdrawn at report stage.

MU members are concerned about parents who are working, mothers and fathers, single people and couples. This means families are overstretched, trying to manage their work as well as raise their family, both of which have natural implications in the wider economy.

5. What will an extension to parents of older children achieve?

The MU believes that such an extension will:
 Increase support for families by allowing them more personal choices
 Improve relationships by promoting gender equality
 Strengthen wider society by increasing business productivity and improving family relationships

6. How would it increase support for families?
Higher income increases opportunities for families. Indeed, employment for parents helps to reduce child poverty. Over the year 2000, 76% of those couples with children who escaped poverty did so through a rise in the work-related income of one of the partners. However, many parents feel torn between their family and their work. If all parents were able to request flexible working they could change their working patterns to best suit their family’s needs no matter how old their children are.

7. Do older children really need their parents as much as those under 6?
Family life changes according to the age of children. For example, it is not only children under the age of six that need full-time supervision. The NSPCC advises that most children under 13 should not be left alone for more than a short time as they are not mature enough to cope in an emergency.

During their teenage years children gain their first official qualifications, which have major implications for their future opportunities. Parents must have the time to help their children in the ways that the Government recommends. Flexible working arrangements for parents of children up to 18 would help them to find this time and allow them to continue working to help finance their families.

8. How would it strengthen relationships?
The MU promotes Christian care for families, which centres on a generous relationship between people as equals. This is why the MU supports strengthening relationships across families, including those building a marriage and parents with children. Furthermore, strong relationships between parents need to be supported to provide stability for growing children, even if the couple does not live together.

The right to request flexible working for both mothers and fathers of children up to 18 will give couples an opportunity to establish an equal partnership and find the best way to share their responsibilities. In this way their own relationship will be strengthened, which will not only benefit them but also their children and the wider society. Promoting such equality between men and women has an effect on all other social, economic and political contexts. Inequality between the sexes contributes to problems ranging from a loss of skills to the labour market to pensioner poverty, which is higher among women. Flexible working for all parents could play an important role in addressing some of the reasons why women are more likely to be held back, widening the ‘gender pay gap’, and why men struggle to develop the relationships that they want with their children.

9. How would it strengthen society?
Family is often cited as the building block of society. Good parenting strengthens society by creating strong family units and parents must be given adequate support to withstand the life changes that occur. The UK Government recognised this in its Respect Action Plan , which looks at parenting as a way of reducing anti-social behaviour in young people. Under the plan, parents face parenting orders if they do not take responsibility for their children and, if their child is excluded from school, they are responsible for supervising them for up to five days at a time. Yet without the opportunity to work more flexibly it is difficult for them to adjust their lives to fit around the care of their children, which has negative consequences for children and for the rest of society, in this case of an increase in antisocial behaviour.

10. Why should this be the next step?
Parents of older children are more able to work if they choose to than those with younger children, simply because their children are at school during the day. Yet they still need care from their parents, particularly during transitional periods including changing school, exams and any family crisis. One MU member from Battersea pointed out that, “All children are in need of support from and quality time with their parents. Older children warrant their parents’ support as much as small children and babies, if not more. Whereas a baby or a small child tends to adapt easily to being cared for by new people, the same cannot be said for teenagers who are experiencing the transitional difficulties such as puberty, changing from childhood to adulthood, changing from primary to secondary schools, trying to find out and understand their own identity.”

11. Shouldn’t more be done to encourage mothers to stay at home?
The MU is committed to offering support to families and works to equip parents with support and skills, giving them the confidence they need to do the most important job they’ll ever undertake. There are many aspects to caring for children including in the home and earning an income. Each aspect demands specific sacrifices and is a caring act.

We cannot assume that the brunt of either side of this caring should be done by one member or another. Families should have a choice about how tasks are delegated within the family. There is evidence that many mothers and fathers would do less paid work in order to bring up children if they had the real choice and they should be supported in these decisions regardless of their gender. According to the EOC, 89% of fathers are in employment compared with 74% of men without children, and fathers are less likely to work part-time (4%) than men without children (9%). This gender inequality is a public policy nightmare. Women are left poor because their pensions have been depleted by taking time to care for children. Children are left with essentially one and a half parents, and businesses with one and a half employees. The current situation is not satisfactory for anyone.

12. Is there current legislation going through parliament about this?
No, the last legislation was the Work and Families Act in 2006, which comes into force in April 2007. The legal right to request flexible working was granted to parents of children under this act. Parents of children under 6, or of disabled children under the age of 18, were granted the right in April 2003 under the Employment Act 2002.

There is a political consensus on this issue, with both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in full support of an extension of the right to request. In the 2005 manifesto the Labour Party said, “We have already introduced the right to request flexible working to parents of children under six and nearly a million parents have benefited. We need to balance the needs of parents and carers, with those of employers, especially small businesses. We are consulting on extending the right to request flexible working to carers of sick and disabled adults as a priority, and also on whether we should extend the right to parents of older children.” However, what is missing is a timetable for implementation.

13. Doesn’t this discriminate against those without children?
The long-term aim of government should be the introduction of a right to flexible working for all workers, as this would take the fullest account of the different situations in which people find themselves. People without children face pressures and would benefit from flexibility. Universal flexibility would also reduce the stigma that parents can face.

However, the MU recognises that there must be steps along the path to achieve this aim and that parents face particular difficulties as they are responsible for the upbringing of others. As some carers of dependent adults will receive the right to request flexible working in the next few years, the obvious next step is to enable parents of all children aged between 6 and 18 to ask for flexible working.

14. Won’t the extension of the right to request damage businesses?
We don’t want to damage businesses, as this is where families make their money. The right to request includes measures through which businesses can refuse, but only on legitimate grounds, not for prejudicial reasons. Flexible working does not need to be very dramatic. Being able to leave half an hour earlier on a couple of days a week can make all the difference to a parent.

Research from 2004 into the first year of the right to request for parents of children under 6 showed that employers welcomed the changes. Half felt the effect was neutral as they already operated a flexible working policy for all employees and most of the others reported that the change was positive since it gave an opportunity to widen the policy and promoted a positive culture. Of those responding to the specific question of “What changes would you like to see in this legislation?” 46% suggested widening the eligibility criteria, and 26% said “None.”

15. Does this have any positive effect on business?
Flexible working increases productivity. Businesses don’t have to lose their employees, particularly female ones, to lower skilled part-time jobs. In Britain about 5.6 million part time workers who work part-time work below their potential, one in five of the working population . Their skills could add a great deal back into the UK economy. I

In 2003 the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) noted that 94% of employers support moves that strengthen a balance between work and home life and 82% said they have some family friendly practices in place. In December 2003 Lloyds TSB reported that 37% of businesses experienced much greater staff morale following the introduction of flexible working and just under half (49%) claimed that adaptability helped them retain valued staff.

16. When can businesses refuse?
The right to request includes measures through which businesses can refuse, but only on legitimate grounds, not for prejudicial reasons. A rejection must specify one or more of the set business grounds, which cannot be scrutinised in an employment tribunal. The acceptable grounds are:
 The burden of additional costs,
 A detrimental effect on meeting customer demand,
 An inability to reorganise work among existing staff,
 An inability to recruit additional staff and,
 Planned structural change.

Although the actual number of requests for flexible working has remained at a similar level to that before the 2003 law was introduced, fewer requests are now being refused. It is estimated that the number of rejected applications fell from 21% to 12% after the law was introduced. These figures show how the current legislation is a positive tool for balancing the needs of families with those of businesses.

17. Is the MU’s own staffing policy in line with the principles of this campaign?
The MU is committed to the welfare of its staff. A system of flexible working operates at Mary Sumner House in order to help employees balance their job with domestic commitments. Requests to work more flexibly are considered on a case-by-case basis and an employee would never be regarded unfavourably for requesting additional flexibility.

We believe that promoting a healthy work and family life balance enables the MU and its 43 central staff to be more productive in the long run. This year we have granted flexible working for a number of staff covering childcare and elder care responsibilities. Reg Bailey, Chief Executive to the MU says: “We cannot promote flexible working to other organisations parents if we are unable to consider it for our very own staff. Here in the MU, promoting flexible working is commensurate with supporting family life as a whole - that’s what we were set up to do 130 years ago and we still believe it.”