Teenage Mothers To Be Put Into Care
It’s almost like John Major’s government never left. Gordon Brown, in what might be his last Labour party conference speech as Prime Minister has repackaged ‘family values’:
Teenage parents on benefits will be forced to live in “supervised homes” instead of being given council houses, Gordon Brown declared today in a bid to cut the number of pregnancies.
The Prime Minister said it was not right that a 16-year-old girl could “get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own”.
Instead, he told the Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton, groups of young mothers and fathers would be taught responsibility and how to raise their children “properly”.
“It’s time to address a problem that for too long has gone unspoken: the number of children having children,” he declared.
“For it cannot be right for a girl of 16 to get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own.
“From now on all 16- and 17-year-old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes.
“These shared homes will offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly.
“That’s better for them, better for their babies and better for us all in the long run.”
He told delegates: “We won’t ever shy away from taking difficult decisions on tough social questions.”
A difficult decision or a lame decision? Yes there is a problem, yes the rate of teenage pregnancies in the UK has gone up again, but to suggest it’s because girls just want a council flat isn’t just ignorant, it’s stupid; I mean anyone would think there was an election under a year away. The reasons are complicated and interconnected, from British attitudes towards sex, to mixed messages about sex education provision in schools, through to various governments’ disinterest or inability to tackle child poverty. I’m sure there are many other reasons too, not to mention answers to the problem, but a ‘network of supervised homes’ is just insane. What exactly is likely to change the mentality of teenage parents by being in care? Will boys be put into ‘supervised homes’ as well as girls, or is this a staggeringly mysoginistic policy? For that matter where will the extra money which social services will need to enforce this policy come from? I can’t be the only one thinking these very simple thoughts, surely?
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I don’t think it’s fair to blame John Major into this.
This is exactly the sort of policy that Nick Ridley advocated in the 1980s and Thatcher was initially enthusiastic. Major was opposed, and quipped that they should put red lights on the houses.
“What a good idea,” Thatcher enthused. “Then they’ll know where to go!”
Thatcher displaying her odd combination of naivité and lack of ironic perception.
Nick Ridley got exactly what was meant though and was not amused.
I’m seeing horrible visions of the Magdalene laundries.
I’m seeing a Labour government behaving like a bunch of Tories and then getting all shocked when the public starts to wonder if they should vote Tory again. It’s hardly surprising – the whole notion of New Labour in the first place was essentially to be able to vote Tory with a clear conscience. Now you can’t vote either of them with a clear conscience, or have I got it all terribly wrong?