(15) MP, Ben Bradleys’s International Men’s Day Speech: Working Class Boys at the Bottom of the Pile: Part 2

Caring about men and boys. A continuation of the International Men’s Day parliamentary debate.
This episode discusses the very small minority of MPs who attended this debate and the contributions of Philip Davies MP and Elliot Colburn MP.
Subjects discussed include
-  an 'equality plan' that wasn’t 50/50
-  how relationship breakdowns can lead to family breakdowns and to an individuals mental health breakdown
-  parental alienation
-  how relationship breakdown can result in increased suicide risk, especially for men
-  men’s higher rate of infection, admission to hospital and death rate from Covid-19
-  prostate cancer
-  mental health
and of course......good guy of the week! A Vietnam vet, who despite suffering from cancer,  saves his neighbours from their burning house

Transcript

 MP, Ben Bradleys’s International Men’s Day Speech: Working Class Boys at the Bottom of the Pile: Part 2

This part 2 follows on from Ben Bradley’s 12 minutes speech and focusses on the even briefer 3-4 minutes speeches of 8 other MPs with a slightly longer contribution from Kemi Badenoch; Kemi Badenoch has two ministerial portfolios, one of which is minister for equalities. The contributions needed to be so brief because, as I said in part 1, this debate, which was originally tabled for 3 hours, in the end was paired back to one hour only. A fact which Ben Bradley and other colleagues felt was indicative of the lack of importance that the government gives to men’s issues.  

I was disappointed that, in my estimation, there were less than 20 MP’s attending this debate; further, of the 10 members who made speeches, 8 including the minister, were Conservative, one was a Scottish Nationalist Party MP and only one was a labour MP. 

I could only see 3 MP’s on the opposition benches which surprised me because traditionally, the plight of disadvantaged working-class men and boys would have been a Labour Party concern. The minister Kemi Badenoch pointed out the very small number of opposition members; this prompted the SNP member, David Linden to ask the minister to give way to him, which she did, and he, for the record, stated that COVID-19 restrictions may be why there are fewer Members taking part in this debate. Kemi Badenoch responded that while she understood that there were restrictions, this had not been the only debate that day; she said the other debates had been very well attended and that she hoped to see many more Members participating at the next International Men’s Day debate, 

First to speak after Ben Bradley was Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, who Ben Bradley said was just as responsible as he was for securing the debate. 

 Many of the contributors repeated Ben Bradley’s concerns about male suicide, men’s mental health and the educational attainment gap. I’ll only mention these issues again in this episode if I think a speaker had added some further value to the subject. 

Philip Davies began by saying that male disadvantage and poor outcomes, especially those of white working-class boys, had been brushed under the carpet for too long, with more politically correct groups being favoured.

He told us how, just this week, Bradford Council had consulted on its latest equality plan and had set targets for people in council jobs; one target was for 65% of its top employees to be female. Philip Davies said that he did not believe in quotas and targets, he believed that each job should be awarded on merit, and merit alone; he then said, but even if we go along with this so-called equality, where is the equality in that particular target? I’m no mathematician but if you are going to set an equality target surely an equitable one would be 50%? 

Philip Davies went on to say that the leader of Bradford Council represents a ward in his constituency with a high proportion of white working-class people in it, yet she had been completely silent about that group in her equality plan, despite the fact he argued, that she must know very well the disadvantages they face.

Philip Davies told members that he knew of men who have had their lives ruined because of a relationship breakdown, which had then, needlessly in his opinion, led to a whole family breakdown and then, in some cases, a mental breakdown too. 

He said he had talked about parental alienation before and did not apologise for mentioning it again; it is, quite simply he said, abuse, and the many people who had written to him with heart-breaking personal stories showed how this happens all too often. It’s not only abuse against the alienated parent—who he said is not always male, but also against the sons and daughters of the alienated parent; further, he told the House, it affects a whole host of other people in the wider family.

He said he was very pleased that the Government had taken some of his points on board, including parental alienation as an example of abuse, in the draft statutory guidance for the Domestic Abuse Bill, which is presently going through parliament. He hoped that the Government would continue to look at ways to prevent this, as it would make a huge positive difference to so many people if it could be stamped out.

Philip Davies also mentioned the high suicide rate of men; he referred to studies in Western countries that have linked relationship breakdown with increased risk of suicide; he told us that the data indicates that, unsurprisingly, relationship breakdown elevates suicide risk in both sexes, but more so for men. 

 Despite various charities reporting that a father being separated from his child or children can be a source of overwhelming distress, none of the studies had investigated the specific effect of this on the likelihood of his suicide. It was clear to him, he said, that a lot more needs to be done to ensure that fathers are not stopped from seeing their children, and this, he believed, would save lives. 

 He went on to say that in these Covid lockdown times, it is not difficult to imagine, how this will be causing even more mental health problems and, unfortunately, more suicides.

 
Next up was Elliot Colburn, Conservative MP for Carshalton and Wallington.

As someone who used to work in the National Health Service, he wished to focus on three primary health challenges faced by men.

 The first one he talked about was in relation to coronavirus. Public Health England’s review had demonstrated that, despite making up only 46% of the diagnosed cases, 

·      60% of deaths are among men

·      70% of admissions to intensive care are men and 

·      working-age males diagnosed with covid-19 are twice as likely to die. 

He noted that there is ministerial cross-departmental work seeking to understand the risk factors, so he hoped that the minister would continue to look into the reasons for the disparity.

The second health risk that Elliott Colburn focussed on was cancer. He drew our attention to prostate cancer, the most common cancer for men in the UK, and the second most common cause of death, with around 12,000 deaths in 2017. 

While great strides have been made in this area, in the survival rates for prostate cancer, which has gone from 76% of men dying within 10 years of diagnosis in the 1970s to just 16% now. He said though that there is still a lot more to do; that while the NHS long-term plan had an ambitious cancer screening commitment, it should be coupled with taking steps to tackle the stigma around men’s health, as too many men leave it too late before they seek help.

Elliot Colburn ended his contribution by drawing attention to the good work of the NHS long-term plan, to design a new mental health strategy and improvement programme, which will focus on suicide prevention. He said it cannot be right for the most common cause of death, for anyone of any age, gender, sexuality, race, religion or creed, to be taking their own life. He urged the Government to do all that they could to consign what he called, ‘these terrible health statistics’ to the dustbin of history as soon as possible.

I really enjoyed seeing how passionate about, and committed to men’s issues these members are; how diligently some of them work, all year round, not just on International Men’s Day, to raise awareness of the disadvantages of men and boys and improving the quality of their lives. There are still more speeches to report, including the minister’s speech, so more episodes to come! I hope you will join me.  

Good guy of the week

So, this week’s act of a good man was carried out by Marshall Helm, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran from Salem, Illinois; he’s being hailed as a hero after he saved his neighbours from a house fire this week.

He had been walking his granddaughter to the bus stop early in the morning when the bus driver drew his attention to the smoke and flames emanating from the house next door.

Helm ran over to the endangered home and threw open the garage door only to find flames raging fiercely against one of the walls. Despite the fact that the Vietnam veteran had been battling cancer, he did not hesitate to charge past the flames, into the house so he could make sure his neighbours were safe.

Gary and Kathy Benjamin had been sleeping upstairs; they awoke when they heard Helm shouting loudly about the fire. Although they were confused by the commotion, they managed to run into the hallway and escape with Helm through the back door just as flames were engulfing the garage door where he’d entered the house only a minute before.

Thanks to Helm’s quick actions, the Benjamins suffered only minor smoke inhalation; even though they lost a good part of their home in the fire, they are so very grateful to Helm for saving their lives.

“Lifesaver! Lifesaver is all I can say,” Mr. Benjamin said. His wife added, “Helm’s our hero, he’s our angel.”