House of Commons Hansard Debates for 8 Mar 1999 (pt 29)

9.19 pm

Ms Dari Taylor (Stockton, South): I am pleased to be able to make this contribution on international women's day. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister for Public Health on introducing the debate on delivering for women. In my constituency this most definitely means choice. It means a range of choice, from universal nursery provision and the national minimum wage to good family-friendly policies and the working families tax credit. These are all incredibly valuable measures, and my constituents are talking about them and have high expectations from them.

My constituency has been celebrating international women's day and I shall talk about that gently while wearing my defence hat. As many in the House

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know, I have been keenly involved with the armed forces for some time. When I visited Bosnia and Srebrenica I was taken by the fact that our armed forces are not only the stabilising but the building-up force in that torn country. We may find ourselves doing exactly the same thing in Kosovo. I say that because the Labour Government have widened opportunities for women in the armed forces, and I want that to be celebrated as widely as all other measures. When the Labour Government took office, only 47 per cent. of all the positions within the armed forces were available to women. Now, more than 77 per cent. of positions are available to them. That is valuable.

Two of our women are controlling frigates. That is a sign of things to come. I want to join up the way in which I celebrate the involvement of women--the serious development of women within the armed forces and the use of their talent--with a small group of people who are active in my constituency. The group is called Women's Aid and its members too have been in Srebrenica. Four of them described themselves as ordinary women with nothing very special about them to suggest that they could open the doors and get into Srebrenica. On hearing of the hideous happenings that were taking place in that area, however, they decided that they wanted to play a part.

These four women operated an organisation called Hands for Friendship. They managed to get the funds for a lorry and they filled it with medical provisions, blankets, books and anything else that they thought would be valuable. These are four ordinary, everyday women. They drove across Europe and they found themselves at the border with the passport people saying, "No, I am sorry, you can't come in. There is no way we can allow you in." They begged, pleaded, cried and stayed at the border for two nights and two days until eventually they broke down the reserve of those on the border and they were allowed in.

The women went into Bosnia and then they went on into Serbia. They went into areas that were especially dangerous. Nobody would guarantee their safety and nobody would protect them because they could not do so. Such women are to be celebrated.

The four women managed to get to Tuzla. They wanted to be with the women of Tuzla, who were remembering the massacre that had occurred there. Let us remind ourselves that, overnight, 10,000 men disappeared--murdered, and not even buried. They were left strewn on a mountainside. The ordinary women of Tuzla wanted one thing only, and that was to bury their dead. They wanted to find their sons and husbands. These four ordinary women said, "We will help you in any way we can." The women of Tuzla wanted to get to a small place called Dulici where they knew that many of their men were probably buried in mass graves. Again, the four women had to go through terrain that was unknown and isolated. They were threatened with ambush. They were stoned and shot at, but they stuck with the Tuzla women and walked the journey.

The Russians said, "No, there is border control and you cannot go through." The British, too, said that they could not go through. However, they pleaded. The Tuzla women said, "They are our menfolk and we have a right to kneel at their graves. Please let us through." Eventually, the women were let through. Those are women whom we should always celebrate--ordinary women, women who were so poor that they had no shoes and barely more than

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the clothes that they stood up in. They wanted to do what is only decent--to say a prayer over the graves of their loved ones.

I must tell the House that I am incredibly proud of the women of my constituency, particularly Naseem Akhtar. I am sad to say that ultimately the women were turned back. They did not make it to Dulici and had to go back to Tuzla. They cried, they were heartbroken, but they had done their best.

On international women's day, when the House has remembered so much that is valuable, we know that the women and the families in our communities will value so much of what the Labour Government are doing. It is appropriate that we remember that throughout the world there are women who are not even capable of articulating such an agenda. It is meaningful to them, but it is totally outside their grasp. I hope that in celebrating women's lives and the roles that we play, we will remember the women who are fighting so hard in other countries, in desperate situations, to define rights that we consider inviolable in our own country.

9.26 pm

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley (South-West Surrey): This has been an extremely interesting debate. There has been some selective memory, a great deal of propaganda and a great number of words. I shall try to do justice to some of the contributions that we heard today.

The first speaker from the Back Benches was the right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). She spoke about the importance of universal, affordable child care. Many others spoke about universal, affordable child care, as though that was something new and different, which was actually in place. I must tell the House that in my constituency there is absolutely no difference between the affordable child care today and that which existed before 1 May 1997.

Before that, there was a great increase in child care places. A large number of out-of-school children's initiative places were created by my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard). She introduced nursery vouchers and tax relief on workplace nurseries. As a result of the Children Act 1989, each area had to develop a child care plan. The suggestion that the position was new and totally different on 1 May 1997 is not one with which I entirely identify.

The right hon. Member for Camberwell and Peckham also spoke about power-sharing and the importance of change within Government. I can understand her doing that. At her time, there was an editorial in The Economist which stated:

"Bringing more women into Parliament is, of course, an achievement in itself"--

I pay credit to it. The editorial continued:

"But there is not yet much sign that the advent of Blair's babes represents a decisive breakthrough for female politicians. . . Because Mr. Blair has made it brutally clear that Labour back-benchers are expected to toe the line set by the party leadership, few of the new intake of women have had a chance to make much of an impression in Parliament."

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The document "Delivering for Women--Progress so far" is an extraordinary series of trite comments. We read that

"Crime blights the lives of victims"--

not too controversial there. We are told that

"A decent environment is our legacy to our children"

and that