Jenny Tonge on children

Jenny Tonge

In this series specially for The Westminster Hour's website, we have challenged politicians to say what inspires them about the political systems in other countries.

Each week there is a different contributor and at the end of this series the best ideas will be featured in a special report to be broadcast on The Westminster Hour.

So far we have had cabinet minister Tessa Jowell and Tory former minister Ann Widdecombe both citing Germany, but for very different reasons. Labour MP Graham Allen turned his gaze to America and Labour's Jim Knight to Taiwan.

This week's contributor is Dr Jenny Tonge, the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park in South-West London and her party's spokeswoman on international development issues.

I think in countries all over the world where I have travelled one of the things I have reflected on is the way we treat our children here.

I am quite pleased that Tony Blair has now appointed a minister for children. There is a lot of talk about women and ethnic minorities, but children are, after all, our future. They are this country's greatest resource. And what this country does in the future and how great or not great we are depends on the children that are here now.

Looking around the world - and I have travelled extensively in the last six years - children seem to be much more a part of everyday life and included in every sense, in every occasion. Certainly children in Africa are never excluded and are just part of family life, with babies hardly ever leaving their mother's body until they are about two, let alone not being included in the family circle.

And in Europe too, restaurants in the evenings are full of children and I have seen English people in French restaurants tut-tutting, because there is a baby crying or someone is feeding a baby or there is a toddler running about. I can never understand why, as it always seems to me such fun. It is better than having a television set on if you have got little children running around - it is of great interest to see how they interact with the adults.

That is one of the things we need to move a long way on in this country. There are all sorts of issues connected with how we treat our children, how we treat our future, that need to be addressed and I hope Margaret Hodge will do that.

I think it is a cultural problem about the British and I do not know how we have developed this, because in other countries of the world children are much more accepted. Is it because we're a little island stuck off the coast of Europe? We feel isolated and therefore we like to isolate our children? I'm sure the sociologists could theorise on this forever, but it has to change. We have to change.