Question: The 48 hour week is having less impact than expected - we're still working long hours and it's making us ill. Why has it failed?

Margaret Hodge: I don't think it's failed. In fact for many people it's brought huge advances, but what we've now got to do is move from a basic set of rights to a culture change tackling the long hours culture which is a peculiarly British illness. It's very difficult to know why we've got this culture. I think we look more to the States for the way we work than perhaps looking to Europe where it's unusual to find meetings taking place after five or six o'clock at night, whereas I think they're commonplace here.

It is worrying that one in nine people in the survey worked more than 60 hours a week and one in eight worked both Saturdays and Sundays. And what was particularly worrying was that the people who were most likely to work the longest hours were men with child care responsibilities and that's not very good for family life and not very good for the children.

Question: Do you think it's part of the culture that it's macho to work long hours?

Margaret Hodge: Because we are so concerned about it we are actually commissioning some research to try and identify what are the factors that make for a long hours culture in the UK and I wouldn't like to pre-judge that research. But I think there is a British tendency to think that if you're at work you are being both more productive and more effective. And hours worked aren't necessarily hours effectively used, and don't necessarily improve British productivity. In fact one of the depressing findings is that employers are far more likely to be providing stress counselling advice to their work force than they are to be providing support for child care, which tends to suggest the employers are dealing with the consequences rather than the causes of the long hours culture.

Question: Where do employers fit in - is there a blame to be laid on employers directly?

Margaret Hodge: I'm not sure we're apportioning blame. What we've tried to do in this, I think, extremely comprehensive survey is lay out the current patterns of work within the UK, and the work-life balance issues. And I think there's been some very interesting findings. But what I hope we can achieve through our campaign is that in a situation where we've got an ever tightening labour market and where in the new economy skills of people are the key to high profitability, we've got to convince the employers to become the employer of choice so that they can recruit from the widest pool of talent and keep people in their organisations. And one of the ways they can do that is enable people to have a better work-life balance. Everybody thinks it's a good idea in theory- that was overwhelmingly endorsed by both employers and employees in our surveys. Nobody is very good at practising it, yet.

Question: What effect are these long hours having on families?

Margaret Hodge: I'm sure it's not a very good thing for children not to see their parents or spend time with their parents. Again we haven't got any solid research which gives us the answer but we know that the presence of fathers in the family is vital to ensuring that children grow up securely and develop their potential. Dads in the home are an important role model and much disaffection particularly among young boys which we're now experiencing and also lower achievement levels among boys rather than girls, we think can be attributed in some measure, not fully, but in some measure to the role that fathers play in the family.

Question: A recent survey found that families aren't having meals together anymore, one reason being because of these long hours. What sort of effect do you think that has on family life?

Margaret Hodge: Well you're asking me on opinion rather than facts on all of these things but meals together as a family is one way in which you can bind a family together and ensure that at least for that half hour or three-quarters of an hour, as long as they're not watching Eastenders or Coronation Street, they are engaging with each other and building bonds, talking about their days and their problems together. And that's very important for kids. My kids have grown up now, but I have to say that one of the things I tried to do in a busy life was try to find the space to have those mealtimes together, because for me in my own experiences, they were a very important way of keeping the family as a strong family.

Question: What's your message to employers who are planning to make their staff work round the clock during the Christmas period?

Margaret Hodge: I think my message for employers is a much longer term message, and that is if you want to recruit from the widest pool of talent, and you want to keep the best people in your organisation you will need to respond to the growing demands of employees to have a better work-life balance, and you will need to sell yourself as the employer of choice in an ever tightening labour market. So introducing flexible working practices will not only attract better people, it will also help your bottom line.

And the thing that I'd say about the 24 hour businesses, as we move towards more 24 hour businesses both because of the global nature of the economy and because people want services - they want to be able to go to the supermarket on Saturdays and Sundays and in the evening, and perhaps if they're mad enough at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning to avoid the crowds. But as that changes, actually it ought to enable employers to offer even greater flexibility for individuals to meet their work-life balance demands. Because there's no such thing as part time working and full time working anymore. Everybody is interesting in the 24 hour business simply in hours worked, and if the employee wants hours worked and can offer flexibility there's more chance that the employer can cover their needs in that way. So I don't think 24-hour businesses mean 24-hour working. I think it actually works the other way round and gives the employer the opportunity to offer employees greater flexibility to individuals to meet their own individual circumstances.

Question: Looking at these work patterns that are changing so rapidly, and looking at second term for a Labour government. How big a priority do you think a second term Labour government would give to this work-life balance and to family rights policies?

Margaret Hodge: We think achieving a better work-life balance is very important. People want it, we think it's better for business, we think it's better for building strong communities, and we think it's better for strengthening families. So it is a priority for us. But this doesn't necessarily mean massive new legislation because I think what we're into is encouraging a culture change among businesses and organisations, and we're doing that in a number of ways.

The mere fact of reporting this survey I think has created a big debate in conversation about work-life balances so that brings the issue to people's attention. We have a challenge fund which we resource from the Department for Education and Employment where we provide companies with free consultancy advice for them to tackle work-life balance issues and look at flexible working practices in the context of improving business efficiency and productivity. So it's bringing together the aspiration of businesses to achieve better with the aspirations of employees to have a better work-life balance. And that's been an incredibly successful exercise on our part, we've had many many more people apply for that free consultancy than we've been able to award consultancy advice to. By using that we've then spread the word among other employers that they can change the way people work and achieve more efficiency at the same time.

I'm working with an employers' alliance of 22 leading employers and they're providing website training as examples of good practice, I'm working with Margaret Jay in government so that we look at the way we run our government services and government departments so as an employer and provider of services we ensure that we meet work-life balance priories, and that means for employees having flexibility in how they work, and for services making sure things like doctors' surgeries aren't just open during working hours but are open at times that are convenient to families.

Question: Harriet Harman is in favour of creating a new government department which is responsible for all working family policies. Would you support such an idea?

Question: But would you be keen to have stronger horizontal alignments with other departments?

Question: In your surveys did you discover anything about trends of working from home?

Margaret Hodge: Yes, that was one of the unexpected findings, although when you thought about it, it wasn't that unexpected. And we found that more men than women were actually working from home, one in five of our respondents worked from home sometimes, not all the time, and 24% of men, and only 16% of women worked from home.

And then when we asked employees whether they would want to work from home more men than women said they wanted to. And the reasons they said they wanted to work from home was not balance work and child care responsibilities or other care responsibilities but because they thought they could work more efficiently and effectively from home. Now when you first hear the fact you're surprised, but when you think about it that makes sense because we all know that once you get into the office and everybody's around you you're not working probably as efficiently as when you're on your own at home. So there's the efficiency argument there, and when you think of it from the view of women actually probably the best way they can balance their lives is if when they work is not to have to think about should they put the washing machine on, or worrying about a child next door who appears in some distress and then thinking should they leave the computer and go and look after the child. So the results reflect a common sense, but nevertheless when we first looked at them they were a little surprising.

Question: Would you want to promote that?

Margaret Hodge: Yes. I think what we're about is trying to persuade businesses and other organisations just to think creatively about a whole range of possible flexible working practices which would support better productivity and better profits. So we never say do it because it's altruist or do it because it's good for society and bad for business. We say do it because it will help your bottom line and at the same time it'll help society and it'll help individual families.

So working from home sometimes or all the time may be one option and that actually if you think about it does open up opportunities for people who've been inactive in the labour market for years and years and years - for example people with disabilities who perhaps could perfectly well work from home but would find it very much more difficult to travel. Women who are pregnant might be another group. So there are lots of groups so it opens up groups of people who can enter the labour market, and we are in this tight labour market desperately looking for more skills and more people. But there are other things: job sharing, annualised hours, compressed hours, part time working, shift working. There's a whole range of ways of working. It's about where you work, how you work and when you work, and thinking creatively about that may help.

Let me give you examples of that because people don't believe you when you say it, but let me give you one private sector and one public sector example. My public sector example is Bristol: Bristol City Council library staff were just fed up with their working hours, they didn't like it and asked for a review. So they looked at reviewing and providing more flexibility, achieved that and managed to get weekend opening of the libraries as part of the bargaining. So they got a better service at the same time giving greater flexibility to the employees so a more satisfied and probably less stressed work force. My private sector example - there are plenty but let me give you an example of a small company because lots of people say this won't work for small companies. And this is a small company in rural Norfolk called Listwoods who make mouse mats. And they were very dependent on the local labour market to grow - they ran a production line. They have introduced all flexibilities so basically people work the hours they want to, with an evening shift in the school holidays for example so that the mothers can stay at home with the children in the day and come into work after the fathers come in. And they've had a 360% growth rate and grown from ten to fifteen employees to getting on for two hundred today, and that's in a period of ten years or so. So they have actually introduced flexibility to facilitate growth. And then of course there are hundreds of examples of big leading edge companies. I mean Penguin introduced a much more generous maternity package and found that although it cost them 1% or so on their payroll to do that, it cut their absenteeism rates to 2% below the sector average. So invest in this and you save elsewhere.

Question: So what's your message to business organisations that would argue that maternity and paternity leave is going to cost business millions?

Margaret Hodge: Think again because it's my view that introducing flexibility and being sensitive to people's needs, particularly with more women in the market, women have driven this although men want it as much as women, will enable you to get the best people, to keep them, and people are your best asset.

Question: Your colleague Tessa Jowell believes the government should not promote marriage as the ideal. Do you agree with that?

Margaret Hodge: I think really on the issue of marriage that we know from the research that children prosper best in very stable relationships and we know that marriage provides the best stability. What the government has to ask itself is where is there a public policy issue in which the government needs to have a say that can improve outcomes for children.