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5.10 pm
Laura Moffatt (Crawley) (Lab): It is a pleasure to follow my sister who was our leader in India and did a fantastic job. She is absolutely right that we did differently as women. My hon. Friend shared the responsibility of having the leadership role on that trip. It really showed how we could work together as sisters. It was a truly fantastic experience, which I shall never forget.
I proudly possess at home a badge that says, "Labour women make policy and not tea". I love that badge, because it reminds me daily of the driver that got me into the House. On Saturday, however, I will be making tea with the Crawley Labour women's forum in the town centre for all the shoppers. We are doing it to promote the whole issue of free trade and to ensure that Fairtrade is made prominent. That group of women understands that securing more Fairtrade products in the UK will improve the lives of women around the world. That is why we have linked the two celebrations of Fairtrade and international women's day. We understand how important it is to improve the lives of women all over the world. Day by day, we are increasingly achieving that.
Work remains to be done at home—the Government have made enormous strides—particularly on low pay. It is easy to say that we have improved the position by only 1 per cent. in a couple of years, but it was a hard-won 1 per cent., because it is extremely difficult to overcome all the social and cultural problems that reinforce prejudice. I pay tribute not only to the Government, but to the trade union movement, which is doing so much to help women. For example, Unison has helped health workers throughout the NHS. It has helped people with responsible jobs who are proud to be Unison members right down to cleaners who also contribute to the well-being of our hospitals.
I should like to recount one story that affected me deeply. It is about a woman in my local hospital who, sadly, was attacked in the basement of the hospital while doing her job. The person who attacked her was unwell and had managed to get away from the accident and emergency unit. He knocked her to the ground and it was later discovered that he fractured her cheekbone. That woman was one of the lowest-paid workers, but the way in which she was treated was the important thing for her. She wanted to feel valued.
In fact, the trust's response was very good. She was counselled through her difficulties and given extra support. She was allowed to carry an alarm when she eventually returned to work. However, the police response was not good: it did not value her. The police eventually rang her to say that, because the boy who attacked her came from a good home, they had decided only to caution him. She asked the question, "What sort of home do I come from?" She had worked hard and
done the job that she was employed to do. I am pleased to say that we have managed to get the case reopened, which has given the woman a further sense of value and worth. I cannot resist leaving the House with the passing comment that I doubt whether the response would have been the same if a male doctor had been attacked.Plenty of important work is going on. It was disappointing, however, to hear an hon. Member argue in the House that women were all offered the same opportunities and that the careers service could go into a school and tell all the young women that they could be astronauts, so what was the problem? Of course, there is a huge problem. If we do not value women and work with them when they are young girls and begin to have career aspirations, they will not consider themselves able to do jobs throughout our community and society.
That is why we need to be afraid of the attacks being mounted against Sure Start and the new deal for lone parents. It is no good just to talk the talk; we have to be able to put money into services and support women. Women who have taken advantage of the Sure Start services have been empowered and now have aspirations for their baby daughters. They know that that service has made them feel better about themselves and their children.
Lone parents at the further education college in my constituency get their children looked after. They are able to do the things that they always wanted to do. Careers officers used to suggest things like nursing as suitable careers, but young women now are being enabled to get the education that they need for other jobs. It is incredibly important that we safeguard the services that help women, and that we ensure that women have the power to do all the things that we know that they can do.
We must also help women to reach out to other women around the world. The beauty of our trip to India was that we had that sense of sisterhood. Whether we were with Sheila Dixshit, who runs Delhi, or two women working to improve conditions in a slum, we shared that lovely sisterhood. Today's debate is a celebration of that. I congratulate the Government on making sure that we come back every year to celebrate us as women. I hope that we will continue to do so always.
5.17 pm
Vera Baird (Redcar) (Lab): I am delighted to follow my sister and hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt), who made a dynamic speech. When I picked up the parliamentary Labour party briefing for this debate—which I am sure it is de rigueur not to mention in this Chamber—I was shocked to see how long it was. It details what Labour has done for women since 1997, and I do not jest when I say that my printer ran out of ink as I tried to download it. It was so heavy that I could not carry it, so I have not brought it with me today. I sat down to read it last night, but the task was so substantial that I considered being sponsored for charity. That would have let me hope that I could finish it in time.
Seriously, however, there is not an aspect of women's lives that has not been improved immeasurably by this Government's policies. In that context, it was simply inspirational to hear my right hon. Friend the Minister
for Women and Equality assert again today her commitment to do yet more. I have little time, so I will not dwell on how that contrasts with the miserable 20 years that women tolerated under the previous Conservative Government. I shall use the example of domestic violence, which is an issue close to my heart. This Government are introducing a Bill on a matter that was last the subject of legislation when Jo Richardson did the same more than 20 years ago—before the Tories came to power.The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) is not in her place at the moment, although I know that she will soon return. It is a tribute to her that she should have raised—albeit somewhat tangentially—the issue of domestic violence at the last-but-one Conservative party conference in 2002. The House will deduce that I am an avid reader of the Conservative party website, but the hon. Lady made the point that that was the first time that domestic violence had ever been raised at the Tory party conference.
I was going to talk about the proposed commission for equality and human rights, and say that I welcome it but want more. However, I shall abandon my legal lecture to echo the request from my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) that a public sector duty to promote gender equality be established in the near future.
The work of Fawcett has been much praised already. For the past year, I have had the privilege of chairing its commission on women and criminal justice. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) is a commissioner, as is the Liberal Democrat leader in the other place, Lord Dholakia. Our final report will come out in about a month. In it, we shall make it clear that there is systemic sex discrimination in the criminal justice system.
The system is made up of many sectors. The Crown Prosecution Service—I apologise to my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General for that usage: in future, I shall call it the public prosecution service—is quite good for women. The judiciary and the prisons sector are not so good. We conclude that the criminal justice system, where almost all the multiple sources of input are public sector, has gender discrimination steeped within it. That will have to be tackled. It is argued that it will be tackled across such multiple sources of input only if there is a public sector duty to tackle it.
When I was reading my way laboriously through the long PLP briefing on how women have benefited from the Labour party, I was so wearied by the long read that when I came across a section that I now see is clearly headed "Diversity in the boardroom", I misread it as "Diversity in the bedroom". However, I want to talk briefly now about diversity in the snooker room—in other words, how strongly I will support the Sex Discrimination (Clubs and Other Private Associations) Bill, which is to be introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright).
At the cost, I dare say, of a few Redcar male votes and perhaps not being bought a drink on Saturday night in the Eston and California club, I shall tell a brief story about the snooker room. It is not right that women cannot go into the snooker room there; what we cannot do is play snooker. I asked why and expected to hear
that women were such idiots that they would smash the baize with the cue, but no, no, it is much more complicated than that. If a woman leans across to do a long shot and her skirt comes up, somebody looks at her legs and her boyfriend hits him, there will be a fight and it will be the woman who has caused it by playing snooker. I do not know how long it took the club committee to dream up that excuse to avoid being pasted by good women snooker players, but truly I almost resolved to go to snooker classes. Then I calmed down. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Telford on his intention to introduce a Bill to put an end to this stupidity once and for all. Truly the Eston and Cali club is a pleasant place. It looks after its members and pensioners, male and female, extraordinarily well, but it is at the price of women having to acknowledge their second-class status. I think that the Government intend to support the Bill and I welcome that.Finally on the occasion of this momentous day for women which we celebrate as women Members of Parliament, I shall briefly mention earlier women who had to contend with much more than being excluded from a game of snooker and who fought, argued and, in at least one case, died so that we could have our equal rights and, of particular resonance to us, the right to vote. There is a current issue about Sylvia Pankhurst. She was a socialist feminist who, during the campaign for women's suffrage at the turn of the century, not only braved the horrors of hunger striking and forced feeding, but founded and built a remarkable women's organisation in the east end of London. The group, the East London Federation of Suffragettes, was composed of working-class women. The suffragette movement was almost exclusively middle class apart from this. They campaigned for the vote and for social change until 1920, sticking with it long after the Women's Social and Political Union run by Sylvia's mother Emmeline and her sister Christabel had pulled out of the fight.
There is much more to be said about Sylvia Pankhurst—not least, harking back to what my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) said, that she went to live in Ethiopia. She worked hard there and championed Ethiopia when it was conquered by fascist Italy. She was invited to live there and when she died she was given a state funeral. I had the privilege of visiting her grave twice last year and the year before when I went to Ethiopia to talk to the judiciary about how to deal with domestic violence—the Ethiopian judiciary know a lot more than the Conservative party about that—and then to talk to the police about domestic violence. What wonderful women I met there, and how they all remember what Sylvia Pankhurst did for them.
Returning home, I believe that Sylvia's strategy, based as it was on an alliance between class and gender, did far more to win the vote for all women than the more elitist and, ultimately, probably diversionary politics of her mother and sister. It is thus richly ironic that the British state has chosen to honour Emmeline and Christabel for their contribution to women's suffrage with a statue to the former and a plaque to the latter outside Parliament while completely ignoring Sylvia's role. She would not especially have liked such a memorial but, as a symbol of the unsung heroism of thousands of working-class women who fought for the
franchise and for socialism, some kind of recognition in the form of a statue is long overdue and would at long last help to correct the historical record.I alert women to the position of the campaign for a statue of Sylvia Pankhurst on College green. Westminster city council has given planning permission for that wonderful statue, and Members may know that the Accommodation and Works Committee of the House of Commons, which has some responsibility in such matters, has agreed. However, the Administration and Works Committee of the House of Lords has turned down the proposal, saying that if a statue were to be put in such a key position there would have to be a competition. However, the site has been empty for a long time and no one has applied. The Committee also claimed that the statue does not have artistic stature, yet its members have never seen the statue.
Apparently, the decision falls to the House of Commons Commission. What better tribute could there be than for our debate to galvanise the Commission into allowing that long overdue memorial to be raised? I hope that all Members will do everything that they can to press and lobby the Commission to ensure that the campaign comes to a successful conclusion. I venture to say to my sisters that if history has to repeat itself and we are obliged to chain ourselves to railings, I hope they will all be there.
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