Hawking states that the state of the universe prior to the big bang was a singularity, thus the laws of physics did not apply to it. it therefore, has no way of influencing the events after the big bang, and we have no way of explaining it as the rules do not apply to it. Thus, it can be ignored. Also, the light from the big bang was sort of discovered some decades ago, at least so he says in "A brief history of the universe". We also know that the universe is expanding rapidly and it is outspeeding its own gravitational pull, thus it will not collapse back into a singluarity.

How did that one proto-singularity, out of which all the universe appeared, come into being? I think we are a thousand years too early in asking this question. We are like dogs, trying to comprehend the moon.