Jayne Dowle: It’s not just hours, Ed, it’s the facts of family life

He reckons that the way to fix all that is wrong in our world is to introduce family-friendly hours in the workplace.

This way, he argues, the kind of problems which caused the summer riots, the poverty, the stagnation of social mobility, the disillusionment with politicians, all of those things which make Britain a pretty grim place to live just now, will be solved if we do what they do in Sweden and Finland.

And that is to cut the hours parents work and make it easier for us to manage the balance between work and home, so we can spend more time bringing up our children.

It is a laudable aim, you can’t argue with that. Although you could argue that we have been here many times before. And if such a Utopia didn’t come about in boom time, it certainly isn’t going to happen in the middle of a recession.

But let’s be idealistic for a moment. In an ideal world, we would all be happily working half the week and finishing at half past two so we could be standing at the school gate waiting for our offspring.

Then we could go off and do improving things together, settle down to a nice healthy tea, an early night, a bedtime story, and a good breakfast en famille the next morning.

Miliband points out, rightly, that we have some of the longest working hours in Europe. He says that parents need to spend more time with their children in order to instil decent values, so they grow into responsible citizens instead of taking any random opportunity to loot Sports Direct for a laugh.

Hang on a minute. Has he not noticed that unemployment is at a 17-year high? There are 2.49 million people out of work, almost eight per cent of the working age population. Does he not think that his exciting new idea is at best misguided, at worst woefully insulting to all those parents who have lost their jobs?

I am sure that many of these would be only too happy to enjoy the benefit of family-friendly working hours, if only they had actual work to go to. And what about those families where no-one has worked for two or even three generations?

The very concept of “working hours” is so alien that an early finish every other Tuesday and school holidays off has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. Why does he think the kids in families like this are so angry? It’s not because mummy wasn’t there at parents’ evening because she had a vital presentation to do.

The Labour leader was speaking at a conference addressing the causes of the riots, so was launching a counter-attack to David Cameron’s big announcement about his controversial new “family intervention” idea.

But if Miliband didn’t have anything sensible to say, why did he have to say anything at all? Whoever advised him to open his mouth, it is clear that either they don’t read the newspapers or speak to ordinary people and actually listen, or take any notice of what they find when they do.

If they had done so, they would surely have cottoned on to the fact that those of us lucky enough to have a job are working all the hours God sends because if we don’t, we won’t earn enough to pay the rising bills.

Individuals who “work two or three jobs” come in for special mention as neglectful of their parental duties. Do you know anybody who has more than one job for fun?

And also, if we say no to the boss, we run the serious risk of getting sacked. Think of all those shop assistants stuck behind a till until 11pm this week, as the big shopping centres desperately try to pull in the punters with crazily-extended trading hours.

Do you think that they would rather be there than at home, having quality time with their kids? But what kind of position in are they to say no to the manager with the calendar, the timesheet and the profit and loss statement? None whatsoever.

Chances are, these are only seasonal jobs anyway, and come January, they will be back at Jobcentre Plus. And then, the irony is, these are the parents who will have all the quality time in the world to spend with their children, because they won’t have anything else to do.

Does Miliband really think then, that in these kind of families, happier working hours would make all the difference and stop kids going off the rails? I simply cannot see the logic in his argument, because it has no basis in the reality experienced by millions.

It is a blessing for him that its nonsense has been largely overshadowed by the Prime Minister’s own headline-grabbing initiative to right our social ills, because all it does is prove that Planet Miliband is in orbit far from this Earth.