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5.58 pm
Jackie Ballard (Taunton): It is just over a year since we last had an opportunity to debate the Government's priorities and policies for women. The debate a year ago was held on a poorly attended Friday morning. I think that the same cast of players were here then as we have at this slightly better attended debate on a Monday afternoon. I hope that next time the debate will be even better attended.
Sadly, during the past year the two Ministers with responsibilities for women have been moved on without explanation and for no apparent reason, before they had time to get to grips with the challenges in their roles. I am sorry that the Government have not appointed a Minister for Women who has no other major portfolio or responsibility. I agree with the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) on that.
The right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) rightly said that the Government do not have the appeal to women that they might think that they should have. That is partly because of their way of communicating. Government communications still use male language. Although there are a number of women in the Cabinet, the main spending Departments are headed by male Secretaries of State.
I acknowledge--graciously, I hope--that the Government have made progress on a number of issues, including child care and the proposals for family-friendly working practices. However, I am a member of an Opposition party, so I am sure that the Minister will understand if I concentrate constructively on areas where the Government could do more.
According to the Equal Opportunities Commission, only 33 per cent. of managers and administrators are women--yet, as the Minister pointed out, 45 per cent. of all workers are women. In 1975, women earned only 71 per cent. of male earnings. Twenty years later, that had increased to 80 per cent--still one fifth less than average male earnings. Our society cannot be judged to be healthy if women still earn that much less on average than men for doing the same job, despite equal pay legislation.
Many women work part-time, especially those with caring responsibilities, and part-time workers are in an even worse position. Their hourly wage is less than two thirds that of full-time male workers. Despite legislation against sex discrimination, women are still discriminated against--especially in the work force and in terms of social security. Some 2 million women earn too little to pay national insurance contributions, and will--if the contributory principle remains--become poor pensioners in the years to come.
Around two thirds of widows live on or below the income support level. There can be no equality for women until they are economically independent and economically equal. I hope that the Budget will not take a retrograde step towards ending separate taxation for couples in order to tax the child benefit of high earners.
Each year, the Equal Opportunities Commission presents its report to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. Last year, I sought to get the report debated in Parliament, but I was unsuccessful. I hope that the Government will consider having not only an annual headline debate on their priorities for women, but a wider debate on sex equality, based on the EOC report.
One of the major pieces of work undertaken by the EOC last year was a proposal for a new sex equality law to replace equal pay and sex discrimination legislation. It proposed strengthening the rights of individuals and placing new responsibilities on employers and public authorities. The proposed legislation would provide better regulation and help to reduce the incidence of expensive litigation, which can arise when organisations fail to build gender equality into their plans, programmes and practices. I hope that the Government will make a commitment today to review the current legislation, and to introduce their own equality legislation in the next Session of Parliament. I will be interested to hear the Minister's response.
That would be a real step forward, not just for women who face discrimination on gender grounds, but for men--because equality is not just about women's rights. Women are still under-represented in many areas of life. I will not repeat the arguments that I have made often in this House on the gender balance in Parliament. I am too well aware of the problems in my party in that regard.
Those who wield power in Britain are still overwhelmingly male--just look at High Court judges, heads of large companies, newspaper editors and members of powerful quangos. That shows how far we have to go before the glass ceiling is broken. The Government have a stated aim to achieve parity in appointments to quangos, although I do not think that as much progress has been made as could have been. The Minister referred to health trust appointments, but 50 per cent. has not been achieved in appointing women chairs to the new regional development agencies.
The Government have done nothing to encourage the number of women in the judiciary. Women's organisations across the country say that the judiciary is in desperate need of reform--especially in areas such as domestic violence, rape and other issues. There are still no women in the highest court in the land, and only 7 per cent. in the High Court. I hope that Ministers have the ear of the Lord Chancellor on the issue, and that we will soon have a more transparent system of appointing judges that includes a balance of women. There is no shortage of able
women in the legal profession, and I know that during the last round of appointments, the names of a number of able women were proposed by women barrister associations and women lawyer associations as being suitable for appointment.
The fact that those wielding power are men conditions the way in which decisions are made that affect all our lives. Any decision or action by Government, or anyone who holds power, is bound to affect men and women differently. I am pleased that the Government have recognised that fact, and I hope that the Cabinet Sub-Committee examining Government legislation for its impact on women will be listened to by all Departments. For example, some of the Government's welfare reform proposals will have an impact on women, including the abolition of the severe disablement allowance to new claimants aged over 24--61 per cent. of whom are women. However, because the Cabinet Sub-Committee meets in secret, we do not know what it thought about the proposal.
I would like this country to have what many other legislatures have--a Select Committee on equality, to examine all proposed legislation for its impact on equality; not just in gender, but other areas. A pre-legislative Select Committee, made up of Members from all parties, which met in public, could provide proper scrutiny of Government legislation.
I wish to refer to paid work versus caring responsibilities. The belief in paid work as a panacea for all society's ills does not give adequate recognition of the contribution that women make as members of the unpaid economy, both in their role as carers and in holding together thousands of voluntary organisations on which society has come to depend. The Minister talked about work conferring a sense of independence and value, but parenting provides a sense of value also. It is the most difficult job in the world to do, and being a single parent is even more difficult than being part of a couple of parents. However, it is also the most rewarding job in the world.
The economic value of the unpaid economy, in which women are predominant, is not recognised, although both the paid and the unpaid economies are interdependent. To remove labour from the unpaid economy would have dire economic consequences, which even the experts--such as my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb)--have not fully estimated.
Mr. Steve Webb (Northavon):
It is my fault, is it?
Jackie Ballard:
It is not my hon. Friend's fault. I am saying that my hon. Friend, who is such an expert on these matters, has not fully computed the impact.
If the pool of unpaid labour is not replenished with new volunteers, there will be a cost to society of providing care from the paid sector. The Government's schizophrenic attitude towards unpaid caring is at odds with their desire to promote and subsidise child care provided by the paid economy. The implication seems to be that non-parents provide better care than parents.
Inasmuch as the House has a role in promoting lifestyles for women--it has a very small role--in terms of them staying at home or going out to work, I would like us to give women real options and choices. Many individuals, especially women, cannot have meaningful
choices unless the Government take action to remove the barriers to those choices. Those barriers are not just economic--they are social, political and cultural. Otherwise, there can be no progress and the inequalities in society will remain entrenched.
Universal access to child care will not be provided solely by the private sector--the market will not meet all needs. Universal child care has been mentioned, but it is not universal yet, and we have some way to go before it is as accessible in rural constituencies, such as mine, as it may be in inner-city communities. It is not universally easily accessible for those on average or lower incomes.
I welcome the Government's national child care strategy, which is a step in the right direction and something for which we have waited for a long time. It will be difficult to build a properly universal strategy that will give accessible and affordable child care to all those who want it. In the beginning, there are difficult choices. Should the priority be allowing people with children under five to get back on the career ladder quickly, or providing after-school clubs for children of school age?
Like many other women Members, I have in the past juggled with a variety of forms of child care. One cannot simply find one child minder who will do everything. Often one has to find one person for before school, one person for after school and someone else in the holidays; and then what does one do when the child is sick? We have all had that awful guilt feeling when we have sent our children to school because we are sure that they are not really ill, but we are not sure whether we are acting for their convenience or ours.
The women's jury, set up by previous Ministers for Women, concluded that women want genuine choice and help with balancing work and family life. It also felt that child care should be provided in conjunction with family-friendly policies in employment. I welcome the Government's recognition of that.
I hope that business, too, will recognise that both fathers and mothers are parents and that mothers will not have freedom until fatherhood is taken seriously by employers. Fathers should be entitled to paternal leave when a child is born. I read a letter in one of the newspapers this morning from a father who did not understand why he would want leave when a child is born, because his wife would not want him there for a couple of months after having the baby, so that she could bond with the child. What a strange father he must be.
Either parent should have an entitlement to paid leave to cope with the inevitable childhood illnesses; it should not always have to be the mother. No professional carer will look after an ill child for a day, and when children are ill there is no emotional substitute for a parent. If parental leave is not paid, as the right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham said, it will in practice be denied to the lower paid. I hope that, at the very least, the Government will consider enabling low-paid women to go on and off income support easily, so that they, too, can take parental leave.
Functional families need functional parents who are not tied to their desks or production line. We must get away from the idea that people need to prove their commitment or ambition by getting into work at 7 am and leaving at 11 pm. Perhaps we should take a lead by working more normal hours, both in Westminster and in our constituencies. So many of us now are parents that we
ought to be able to have some influence. I hope that we will take a lead from the Scottish Parliament, which will work normal hours when it sets up later this year.
Sadly, not all families are functional. Violence in the home is experienced by thousands of women--and by men--every year. Domestic violence is one of the Government's stated priorities for action, but the voluntary sector, which provides most of the services for victims of violence, is underfunded and suffers the double blow of withdrawal of grants by local authorities whose budgets are under severe pressure. There is a patchwork of provision of refuges, with availability of help varying from area to area, and many police forces still do not provide all their officers with training in dealing with complaints of domestic violence.
Domestic violence cuts across many departmental responsibilities, with input from the Department of Social Security, the Department of Health, the Home Office and probably other Departments that I have forgotten. The Government say that they are committed to joined-up thinking and have set up many cross-departmental working parties, but joined-up thinking needs joined-up resources, and there is as yet no evidence of that. Instead, there is a multiplicity of sources for bidding for funds. Domestic violence is too serious to be left to a lottery of fund bidding and funding.
All people want equality, not special treatment. Our daughters are beginning to expect equality as the norm, but it should also be the right of women currently on pensions or about to retire; of those doing the same job as a man but getting less pay; and of those whose choice is to look after their children at home or to take care of an elderly relative. Only then will both men and women be liberated to take on whatever roles they choose.
As the right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham said, men losing some of their powers in some areas will gain advantages in others, giving them the freedom to take on roles involving caring or staying at home, which in the past they felt were not open to them. Surely that should be our aim.
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