Edward Timpson: 'I wouldn't be children's minister if my parents hadn't fostered'

One night in the House of Commons, trying to stay awake for a vote, Edward Timpson picked up Harold Macmillan's diaries in the library. "He was complaining about what an imposition it was to have to go back to his constituency once a month, and harking back to the halcyon days when it was an annual visit. You turned up on the train and there was a brass band on the platform and you waved out of the window, made a speech and disappeared back to London."

Politics in 2014 could not be more different. Timpson, like most MPs, lives in his constituency, Crewe and Nantwich. The 40-year-old Conservative children's minister is a weekend dad, staying in London during the week, and doesn't like it. "I miss those impromptu, intimate moments that just being together brings. I voted for more family-friendly hours and I think we could go a lot further."

In some ways, Timpson is a traditional Tory: public-school educated, from a rich family (his great-great-grandfather started the Timpson shoe repair business), former barrister. His wife, Julia, gave up her job as an accountant to look after Sam, 10, Elizabeth, eight, and Lydia, six, though she is now retraining. When he was elected in a 2008 byelection, Labour activists donned top hats and mocked him as an out-of-touch toff.

But Timpson's upbringing was unusual. His parents fostered nearly 90 children and adopted two, and these relationships shaped his life. "I've obviously thought about this a lot and I've come to the conclusion that I wouldn't be children's minister and I wouldn't have gone into family law if my parents hadn't fostered," he says.

He was named Minister of the Year last month after pushing through reforms that will see the age of leaving foster care raised from 18 to 21 – a change piloted by Labour – and strongly supports further changes to working patterns in parliament.

"A lot of us now have young families and we could do much more to recognise that life has moved on. The fact is, children thrive on routine and stability and one thing that would make a massive difference is to have regular recess dates – so we can plan ahead in the knowledge that arrangements won't fall apart and cause disappointment. At this stage I'm not convinced that job-sharing is the answer, but let's look at whatever is going to make parliament more attractive to those who face the competing pressures family life brings."

Timpson dates his own interest in politics to an item on Blue Peter about the Labour leadership in 1980. He decided early on not to follow his elder brother James into the family business. There was a feud in his grandfather's generation and, on a placement in one of the shops, when Edward sliced open his thumb on a machine and fainted, he took it as a sign.

He studied politics at Durham University before converting to law, and met his wife, Julia,in a London pub. He says his decision to practise family law was because of his mother, Alex.

"I was the youngest of three and my mum couldn't have any more children. When I went off to school and my dad was working, suddenly she had no patter of tiny feet around the house."

Alex Timpson answered an ad for foster carers in the local paper and, when Edward was six, two brothers, aged three and five, arrived while he was at school. Edward ran upstairs and shut the door to his room. He spent several years struggling to understand why he had to "share my mum with other children", as he puts it. Luckily, he got the hang of it, finding it easier as the age gap between him and the foster siblings got bigger and he could join in looking after them. "She'd been a nanny growing up and it's in her blood," he says. "There's never a moment even now that I go round to her house and there isn't a child there."

As the minister responsible for adoption and fostering, Timpson looks back on those character-building years with amusement and a degree of political calculation, since he knows constituents are interested. "My mum came to watch me in a school cricket match. I was excited because I was opening the bowling and I remember looking over, expecting to see her watching with great attention, to discover that her back was turned in a circle of other mums. In the middle were these triplets we had fostered, who, as you can imagine, were far more interesting to a group of mums coming to watch their sons play cricket than me going in to open the bowling."

But he agrees that it wasn't funny at the time. "I was probably pretty miffed that they had taken centre-stage, but I learned to accommodate that and I think that's partly my personality. I'm able to fit around the circumstances I'm in. By the time I was 11, 12, 13, I got quite attached to some of the children who came to live with us, particularly some of the babies and toddlers. I know my mum found it difficult when many of them left and I probably didn't say much about it myself but, looking back, I was lost on a few occasions when they moved on."

As the backbench chairman of a parliamentary group on fostering and adoption, Timpson lobbied for the age at which young people leave foster homes to be raised from 18 to 21, and wrote a paper that showed educational outcomes were better for those who stayed on. When he became a minister, following the sacking of Sarah Teather and Tim Loughton in 2012, Timpson found himself on the receiving end of his own report. This month, the changes became law. Timpson had pulled off the rare feat of persuading the government to spend money on expanding the role of the state.

Raising the age of leaving foster care, new rules about children's homes and time limits for family court proceedings have been welcomed by charities and campaigners. But experts are concerned that cuts in mental-health services threaten progress. Timpson agrees this is a "really serious issue" and knows there is a case for investment: "About a third of young offenders have spent time in care and up to two-thirds have a mental-health problem. So if you don't deal with them early on, when you have the opportunity, you're only storing up those issues for later cost to society."

With more austerity promised whoever wins the next election, it seems unlikely that the interests of children in care will be protected from further cuts. How far Timpson will go to defend them, and how much time he has left, remains to be seen. In the next few weeks, his department will publish research into the rate at which adoption placements break down.

Personal experience is no substitute for policy but the insight with which Timpson talks about children in care is refreshing. "Even a month in a child's life is 0.5% of their childhood that they never get back again," he says of the delays that saw some cases drag on for years when he was a family court barrister.

One foster brother smashed his fish tank. Another broke every pane of glass in his father's cold frame in the garden. "A lot of these children are angry; they are really angry about what's happened to them, but don't have the emotional maturity to express that," he says. "Not many of us do. Sometimes they do things that seem really destructive – but it's to let people know they're angry and hopefully get some attention on top."

Timpson describes his own family as outdoorsy, keen on cycling, kayaking and running marathons. His wife won't allow the children to be photographed, which is "a bit awkward when you're children's minister". Would they consider fostering or adopting?

"I would, but it's important to discuss any decision as a family. You all have to want to do it.

"I think back to some of the experiences we had as a foster family – they make you laugh, they make you cry. I remember us all sitting in the car waiting to go to the airport to catch a flight to Spain for our family holiday and one of the foster children decided it was a good moment to run off. That was another bit of attention-seeking behaviour – you can imagine the panic and hair-tearing it brought about.

"But that's what made it such a joy. It enriched our family. It made it greater than the sum of its parts."