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6.48 pm
Mrs. Jacqui Lait (Beckenham): Each year when I take part in this debate, I am not sure whether to welcome or deprecate it. It is sad that we continue to feel the need for a separate debate on women. I wonder whether we should be debating the excluded young men whom young women do not want to marry and with whom they do not want to have children--or rather, the young women will have the children, but do not want the responsibility of having the young men as husbands or even, dare I say it, partners.
For a long time, many of us have fought to achieve equality for women. Many hon. Members are old hands on that subject, not only through participation in debates in the House, but because we have campaigned for decades--in my case, I am happy to admit that it is since the 1960s--for equality for women. It is sad that the same subjects continue to come up, although the position has improved dramatically since I first started to debate such matters at university in the 1960s.
Let us consider the achievements of women. If one goes into a school and asks the girls what they plan to do, they are organised and clear in their views; they have clear goals and know what they want to achieve. They are pouring into universities and colleges, where they comprise at least 50 per cent. of students; they are gaining degrees and will make a huge impact on the professions. The situation has changed beyond all recognition. Police forces now recognise the problems of domestic violence
and have set up domestic violence centres. They know that, if they get a panicked telephone call in the early hours of the morning, they must respond quickly and do what they can to remove the perpetrator of violence against women.
The situation has changed in many ways. I am one of the oldies who remembers what it was like before. I campaigned for sex discrimination legislation and for the establishment of the Equal Opportunities Commission. However, in spite of those changes for the better, I now believe that we should consider long and hard whether the commission is still required.
I welcome the announcement that membership of the Women's National Commission will now include smaller women's groups. I campaigned hard for that inclusion when I was a member of a smaller group. I felt excluded from communicating to Government the clear and positive views of my group. If the Women's National Commission is now to encompass all smaller groups and if we assume--it is possibly a big assumption--that it will receive sufficient funds to service those groups properly, we should look to that body and to the women's unit to do the work of the Equal Opportunities Commission.
I believe that the Government--who claim all sorts of achievements with regard to women's issues--should review sex discrimination legislation and assess what does and does not work in that area. The Government must identify what formats are helpful and those that are past their sell-by date. Organisations such as the Equal Opportunities Commission were crucial in the early days, but I question whether their role remains important today.
The Government trumpet their achievements in the area of women's issues and we have spent hours considering on the Floor of the House and in Committee legislation that they claim will assist women. So why are we spending precious time today talking about women and women's issues when we have done nothing else ever since I returned to this place in November 1997? I have served on the Committee considering the working families tax credit. It contains some huge flaws, only some of which have been identified at this stage. However, that measure is discussed endlessly as a means of helping women.
My hon. Friend the maiden for--[Interruption.] That was an interesting slip of the tongue. My hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) pointed out that the working families tax credit contains a fundamental flaw which we fought hard to eliminate in the 1960s and 1970s: the transfer of money from the purse to the wallet. We fought for child benefit as opposed to a tax allowance that recognised the cost associated with raising children because we did not want money to go to the wallet. The Government are returning to the bad old days by reinstating that money to the wallet.
Mrs. May:
I am also concerned about the transfer of funds from the purse to the wallet which will occur under the working families tax credit. Does my hon. Friend share my great concern that the issue has not been raised on the Labour Benches? I am somewhat surprised that Labour Members are entirely silent about the matter. They trumpet the advantages of the WFTC but are unable to see its flaws.
Mrs. Lait:
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the silence was deafening from Labour Members during discussion of that issue in Committee. We made the point time and again, but it has remained unacknowledged.
I noted with interest that the Minister said that the working families tax credit would benefit families who earned up to £23,000. I was tempted at the time to ask whether she was formulating new policy in that area and reducing the taper--thereby reinforcing the poverty trap--or whether she did not know that the working families tax credit is available to families who earn up to £38,000. That creates the paradox whereby some people who pay 40 per cent. tax--that is, super tax--receive the working families tax credit. The logic behind that calculation is slightly beyond me--and we have received no answers from the Government.
Another interesting issue has arisen as a direct result of the working families tax credit and its interaction with the national minimum wage. My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) referred to this matter, and it is one about which I have received several lobbying cards from my constituents on behalf of the Pre-School Learning Alliance. They point out the effect that the national minimum wage will have on pre-school employees and express the fear that it will damage that provision.
We agree that all four-year-olds should receive nursery education, but the previous Government ensured that choice remained. The minute that Labour was elected, it abolished nursery education vouchers and insisted upon free pre-school education for all children from the age of four onwards. The state-maintained sector is now eating into choice and the pre-school sector by reducing the age at which it is prepared to offer children nursery education. Pre-schools must not only deal with the consequences of the national minimum wage, but compete on an unfair basis--we welcome fair competition--with the maintained pre-school education sector.
Mrs. Ann Winterton:
I have listened to my hon. Friend's remarks with interest, and I agree with her entirely. This morning, I visited a playgroup in Rode Heath in my constituency, and exactly those points were raised with me. The playgroup serves a village and a rural area, and without the support of an extra grant, would not exist this year. Without that playgroup, there would be no provision in the area. It has been hit by provision for four-year-olds in the maintained sector and by the legislation introduced by the Government.
Mrs. Lait:
I agree completely; my hon. Friend reinforces the point made by pre-schools.
However, there is another twist in the tale. Costs will be forced up by the minimum wage, which will prompt the pre-schools that survive to increase their prices. The working families tax credit and the child care tax credit will meet those costs, but prices will increase in the sector as a whole.
At the risk of being declared out of order--if that is possible in a debate such as this, Mr. Deputy Speaker--I will compare that experience to what has happened in the rest homes sector. As soon as the state declared a minimum price, that was the price charged. Costs increased, the state--for whatever reason--was not prepared to increase prices and the quality of provision
fell. In those circumstances, unless county councils were prepared to assist--which is what happened in the maintained rest homes sector--prices increased and were further subsidised by the maintained sector. I suggest that exactly the same thing will occur in the child care sector as a result of the child care tax credit. Prices will increase, as will the cost to the taxpayer.
Another reason why the working families tax credit and the child care tax credit will be so expensive--I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead on precisely this point--is that people will organise their affairs to maximise their income. That is why a poverty trap exists. People will say, "I cannot afford to go back to work because I get more benefit when I am out of work." I am not saying that that is right, but those people are making a clear economic statement. They will organise their child care and working patterns to maximise that tax credit. That means that the £1.5 billion that the Government dream will be the cost of the measure will increase certainly to about £7 billion and potentially to as much as £15 billion. That is an increase of 8p in the pound in the basic rate of income tax.
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