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Mr. Fabricant: I understand the right hon. Lady's motivation, which is laudable, for saying that 50 per cent. of health trusts and various other committees should be made up of women, but will she give an undertaking to the House that women will be chosen according to merit, and not merely because they fill a quota?
Ms Jowell: Any such suggestion would be deeply offensive to the excellent women who have been appointed to trusts and health authorities throughout the country. We are lucky to have their services, which will help us to deliver a modern national health service to the people of this country.
We have also delivered stronger simple guidelines to Whitehall policy makers, in which we set out clearly how we expect them to assess the impact of their policies on women, ethnic minority groups, people with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups, to ensure that Departments are responsive and act with sensitivity. We need to track our action on our commitment to equality across society.
Lorna Fitzsimons (Rochdale):
Does my right hon. Friend see it as a testament to the Government's record on putting policies into practice that the Treasury, the Department of Health, the Department for Education and Employment, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and the Foreign Office are all represented on the Treasury Bench, but that only seven Members are here to represent all the Opposition parties in a debate on issues that affect 52 per cent. of the population?
Ms Jowell:
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Department for International Development is also represented on the Front Bench.
We must look not just at policy making, but at all Government processes--for example, service delivery--and ensure that we understand the differing impact on men and women. A set of proposals will be developed and printed in the "Modernising Government" White Paper, which will be published shortly by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
For many years, the Women's National Commission has given 50 of the United Kingdom's largest women's organisations a direct voice to Government. I am delighted to report that we have extended the commission's remit by scrapping the limit of 50 member organisations and inviting all women's organisations to join the umbrella group. That is important as the group is a formal channel of communication between Government and women up and down the country. We want to ensure that we talk to all women--women from grassroots groups, community groups, tenants associations and other bodies in which many women are active--who, until now, have been excluded from that process.
This is a programme for women. It is a programme of listening, of action and of delivery with women for women. It is about not just what Government can do for women but what women, working with Government and
in their communities, can achieve for themselves and their families. It is about delivering on the key issues that count for women--for example, health, education, crime and jobs. It is about making women's voices heard and supporting women in delivering on their responsibilities to their families, at work and in their communities.
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead):
I welcome this opportunity to debate the Government's record on delivering for women--a debate that is made all the more important by Labour's emphasis on its approach to women's issues both before and during the last election. I also welcome the Minister with responsibility for women's issues to the Dispatch Box for this debate. I believe that I am correct in saying that this is the first debate on women's issues that the right hon. Lady has opened in the House since her appointment last July. Furthermore, in more than seven months in the job, the Minister has answered only one oral question relating to women--and that was about a health issue. That is hardly an example of placing women's issues firmly at the centre of Government, as the then Minister for Women, the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), promised in June 1997.
Dr. Lynda Clark (Edinburgh, Pentlands):
Does the hon. Lady accept that questions must be asked before they can be answered? Therefore, I assume that Opposition Members did not ask the Minister any oral questions on that topic.
Mrs. May:
I remind the hon. and learned Lady that it is the Government who have made much of the fact that there are so many female Labour Members of Parliament who are very interested in women's issues. How much interest did Labour Members show in women's issues? How many questions did they ask of the Minister with responsibility for women's issues? Sadly, there were none. I wonder how many questions on that topic the hon. and learned Lady has tabled for the Minister.
Ms Jowell:
If the hon. Lady looks at any Order Paper, she will see a long list of questions specifically about matters that concern women. I have made it very clear that we believe women's issues should not be locked in some Whitehall backwater but should be part of the mainstream of Government. Every single Minister is concerned about the position of women and about improving that position and delivering for women.
Mrs. May:
I am somewhat surprised by the Minister's intervention because it appears that she now agrees with the Conservative party about the importance of mainstreaming, which was certainly not the impression given by the Labour party prior to the election.
What is noticeable about the issue of oral questions is that when her colleagues, the right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and the hon.
Member for Deptford, were responsible for women's issues, they were asked a number of questions specifically relating to women's unit matters. Those questions seem to have dried up since the present Minister for Women came to her position.
Helen Jackson (Sheffield, Hillsborough):
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. May:
A surfeit of hon. Members want me to give way. I give way to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson).
Helen Jackson:
The hon. Lady referred to the previous Parliament. I remember that at that time, the Minister with responsibility for women was the Secretary of State for Employment, David Hunt, followed by Michael Portillo, and it fell to my hon. Friends to engineer any debate on women's issues during women's week. There was not even a glimmer of a suggestion from those Ministers that they wanted to discuss in the Chamber issues of great importance for women in this House.
Mrs. May:
Not all my ministerial colleagues in the previous Government who took responsibility for women's issues were men.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. George Foulkes):
They were men.
Mrs. May:
The hon. Gentleman says that they were men. My right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) is not a man and my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) is not a man. If the hon. Gentleman wants to make sedentary interventions, he should get his facts right beforehand.
The Minister, in opening the debate, referred several times to the Government's programme of action and delivery. She spoke of "deeds, not words" and claimed that the Government were listening to and acting for women. Sadly, the opposite is true. Although the Labour party promised much for women before the last election, it has failed to deliver. Its record owes more to gloss than substance, and this is yet another case of Labour's actions failing to live up to its rhetoric.
I am grateful to the Minister for setting out a number of areas in which she claimed that women's quality of life and role in society had improved. She gave the examples of the number of women in higher education and in the work force. I remind the Minister that those are successes of the previous Conservative Government, who, through flexible labour markets and a healthy economy, ensured that women were able to play a fuller part in the workplace than had previously been the case. The pay differentials between men and women were significantly reduced under the previous Conservative Government, and I am sorry to hear that the pay differential went up last year under new Labour.
Mrs. May:
I shall give way to the hon. Member for Salford (Ms Blears) and then I will make progress.
Ms Hazel Blears (Salford):
Does the hon. Lady believe that the 1.3 million women who will be helped by the first national minimum wage should not receive that wage and should continue to work in a flexible labour market for poverty pay?
Mrs. May:
I shall comment on the impact of the minimum wage later in my speech, so perhaps the hon. Lady would like to listen to my remarks. As she heard from the intervention on the Minister by my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant), problems associated with the minimum wage are affecting organisations and employers throughout the country. Pre-school playgroups will affect women in two ways because people employed in pre-schools are predominantly women and women are benefiting from the opportunity for their children to attend those pre-schools. The hon. Lady should not welcome the news that pre-schools may have to close because of the impact of the minimum wage.
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