Baby in the House: MP Jo Swinson on her mission to promote shared parental leave

In her first interview since returning from maternity leave, MP Jo Swinson tells Rosamund Urwin about parent power and bringing her boy to the Commons
History maker: Jo Swinson’s seven-month-old son Andrew is the first baby to be carried through the voting lobby of the House of Commons (Picture: Adrian Lourie)
Rosamund Urwin5 August 2014

A month after Jo Swinson gave birth, she received an email from a Labour councillor in her constituency of East Dunbartonshire. This councillor — a woman — instructed the Liberal Democrat employment minister to “get a baby-sitter and go vote in the Commons”.

“So much for the sisterhood,” Swinson laughs. “That wasn’t very realistic, because at their age, babies are feeding constantly... You’re just living hour-to-hour: feeding, nappy-changing, then rocking them to sleep. Newborns work on a two-hour schedule and then you have to do it all over again.”

The 34-year-old Scot, whose son Andrew was born just before Christmas, says this was a rare dissenting voice against her decision to take six months of maternity leave. While off, her colleague and friend Jenny Willott covered her ministerial duties and her staff handled constituency work.

Swinson returned to BIS (the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills) five weeks ago. She says the transition has been easier than starting out as a minister. “I’ve remembered a lot of things that I thought might have been pushed out of my mind — replaced by new information about how to purée fruit and the words to nursery rhymes.”

Seven-month-old Andrew is the ultimate political baby. A double MPs’ son (Swinson is married to fellow Lib-Dem Duncan Hames), Andrew has accompanied both parents to constituency events and as they knock on doors. In the Commons, he’s been cooed over by MPs of all hues, been pushed up and down the corridors of Portcullis House in a buggy in a desperate bid to get him to sleep and is preparing to join the parliamentary crèche in September.

Political family: with husband Duncan Hames MP and Andrew

He’s also made political history, becoming the first baby to be carried through the voting lobby of the Commons, after Hames took him in for a vote last month. “Given that we’re still voting until 10pm on a Monday, that makes our lives slightly easier. It saves you having to leave the baby with a stranger.”

Is Swinson pleased it was a male MP who was the first to do this? “Yes. Having a baby has an impact on dads too — and people don’t always recognise that.”

I’ve met Swinson in her office in BIS — a soulless building on Victoria Street. She shows no sign of sleep-deprivation. Instead, she’s energetic, open and optimistic — even when I ask about her party’s prospects at the next general election.

Her main mission currently is promoting shared parental leave. Under new rules coming into effect next April, couples will be able to decide how to split the 50 weeks of leave they’re entitled to between them. That means this change will apply to couples where the woman is currently in the early stages of pregnancy.

“Until now, the Government has been effectively sending a message that it’s mothers’ work to look after children and fathers’ work to do the bread-winning,” Swinson argues. “But many families want to share the responsibilities much more equally these days. It means mums might go back to work earlier and dads might get to spend more time with their children.”

She reels off a string of benefits: for parent-baby bonding, child development and boosting the status of women in the workplace. Will it help reduce the discrimination women face where bosses don’t hire or promote them because they might take maternity leave? “I think it can do. Obviously discriminating in that way is illegal, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.” When the policy was first outlined to some “not very enlightened” business leaders, she notes, they asked: “What, so I won’t be able to employ men either?”

Currently, there’s been only a tiny take-up for the additional paternity leave the Coalition introduced three years ago. Why will shared parental leave be different? “The current system is very rigid: men can only take paternity leave after the baby is six months old, and then the mother loses all ability to take any more leave. The new system is much more flexible. The parents can take time together and the mother can go back to work for a short time — to keep her hand in and her skills and confidence up — and then she can take more time off.”

Swinson acknowledges a wider cultural shift is needed too. “As a society, we need to be better at recognising that dads want to have a bigger role in their child’s life from the first days. If employers don’t expect fathers to take leave, they may not feel empowered to ask for it even though they have a legal right to it.” She hopes that fathers in senior roles in organisations will take it up, so that others lower down feel able to follow suit.

I note that Swinson is trying to make workplaces more flexible and more family-friendly, when she works in a place that seems the opposite. “[Being an MP] is a big sacrifice in terms of the impact on family life,” she agrees. “Colleagues have told me how they ring up from Parliament to read a bedtime story down the phone to their children.”

It’s also not a place that’s seen as particularly women-friendly. Swinson says she’s never experienced explicit sexism, but she has experienced ageism (she was the “baby of the House” when she entered Parliament in 2005, aged 25). “That might have been related [to sexism] — perhaps some of those comments wouldn’t have been directed at me were I a young man.”

One particular bugbear was the way her age was used to dismiss her as a career politician: “People assumed I had only worked in politics, but I was a marketing manager. I worked in business for the best part of five years. People wouldn’t have assumed that about a 40-year-old who had only worked in politics.”

Swinson is one of just seven female Lib-Dem MPs — meaning the party has the lowest percentage of women of the three main political parties. She concedes that their record in this area is poor, but notes that progress is slow partly because of a small turnover of MPs and an absence of safe seats: “The times when both the Conservatives and Labour made a big step forward is when they had a big intake of new MPs: for Labour, 1997, for the Conservatives, 2010. The biggest challenge is incumbency: if you have an MP already elected, they’re pretty much going to be the candidate next time.”

However, Swinson — in line with her party — opposes all-women short-lists. She claims the problem for the Lib- Dems isn’t one of sexism in selection, it’s that many more men want to be candidates.

“We need to get more women coming forward — that’s not just a Lib-Dem problem, it’s a wider societal issue. Sometimes we also focus too much on the barriers for women: the message that gets sent out is that it’s bad to be a woman in politics. Actually, it’s a really enjoyable area to work in.”

The Lib-Dems’ problem isn’t just a paucity of women MPs, though: they’ve also never had a woman in the Cabinet. “It’s something Nick [Clegg] is very aware of, but our five Cabinet ministers are doing their jobs extremely well, so it’s not a straightforward issue to address. Nick has made sure he has promoted women, but we have a really small pool.”

Swinson may well be part of the solution: she is tipped to replace Alistair Carmichael as Scottish Secretary after the independence referendum next month. She is, of course, from the Better Together camp — for economic, international and emotional reasons.

If the whispers are true, that would make Swinson the youngest-ever female member of the Cabinet. Sadly, I imagine she’ll draw the line at bringing along the youngest member of the Swinson-Hames clan.

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