We must take childcare seriously

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Councillor for slington South, replies to a press campaign.

I AM a working mum. Council work takes about ten hours a day, and I'm bringing up a nine year old daughter.

The timetabling of meetings, set by men to suit men's working hours, prevents me from spending as much time with Daisy as I want to, and I'm not around to see her at tea-time and bed time, when kids want their parents around.

Women on the Greater London Council (GLC) and Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) have tried to change meeting times to fit in with our dual responsibilities. But committees on the whole can't see that they shouldn't meet at teatime, or why they should juggle with agendas if children's needs won't be met otherwise.

Only a couple of weeks ago, Daisy had to come with me to a committee meeting. She was ill and obviously should have been in bed. I asked the meeting to take the item concerning me first on the agenda. It wasn't taken until 8.30pm, and as I picked up Daisy to leave at 9pm no-one even asked how I was going to get an asleep nine year old across London:

I've come to the conclusion that there is an unbridgeable gap between those who have childcare responsibilities and those who haven't. At that meeting they couldn't even see that a sick kid who had fallen asleep on a row of hard chairs could not wait all night for them.

And now the press is alleging that I am abusing my position by jumping into a GLC car to collect Daisy from school and take her back to County Hall where she can safely wait for her dad or until I finish my meeting. It makes me mad to hear that because of this I'm supposed to be part of a privileged elite.

The situation would never have arisen if we had decided to try to afford a car, or if we had paid or unpaid domestic help at home (a wife, perhaps?)

The Labour Party County Hall has defined the timing of meetings so that male councillors with kids shouldn't expect to see much of them. Much worse, it has defined things so that councillors' wives should take almost all the responsibility of childcare, and the children of labour movement activists won't have normal amount of contact with their parents.

What the press have picked up on is not an abuse of privilege, but an attempt to make the best of a bad job and to be a serious councillor while making sure that my daughter doesn't suffer too much because of it.

The response from many Labour Party members has not been to back me. They have gone along with the press and forgotten about the changes we have to make to 'normal' (i.e. male-