Birmingham Yardley MP John Hemming has spoken out against the amendments to term time family holiday regulations, saying they prevent hardworking families from enjoying affordable holidays together.
Mr Hemming, who was recently appointed Chairman of the Parents Want a Say campaign said: “The Government’s reforms to the term time family holiday rules are adversely affecting families across the UK and are reducing the amount of quality time they spend together.
Many families can’t afford a holiday during school holidays and many businesses cannot let all their employees with children take their time off during the school holiday period. Therefore we have a situation where families either take a holiday during term time or do not have one at all.
For those of us that work hard, pay our bills and taxes, a family holiday is the only time off we get to spend quality time with our families. The government are struggling to understand why we have ‘Benefits Britain’ and one of the reasons is simple, broken families. Parents need time off, they need to enjoy their children and have time together as a unit.”
More than 200,000 families have already signed up to the Parents Want A Say petition, which is part of the non-profit organisation of the same name recently set up by Craig Langman.
Craig said: “The new website launched today, we urge all parents, cross party politicians and interested parties to have a look and show their support via social media, with your help we will be able to overturn these short sighted regulations. Parents are not saying that taking children out of school is an absolute right. They simply want to revert back to allowing Head Teachers to make common sense decisions based on circumstances.”
