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Julie Morgan: I welcome this opportunity to speak in the Welsh Grand Committee about the Government's plans for Wales and the pre-Budget report. I particularly welcome the fact that there were two Wales-only Bills in the Queen's Speech, and I am delighted that the Secretary of State has announced that we will also consider the establishment of a commissioner for older people. That is a first and a sign that Wales is looking in new areas and leading the way. I congratulate the Secretary of State on having found time in the legislative programme for us to consider the commissioner for older people; it is good news for Wales.
In my constituency, things are going extremely well economically. Cardiff Gate business park, on the M4, will announce new jobs tomorrow and is emerging as a major business park. Although things are generally going well, however, there is a problem with civil service jobs. I have been approached by many civil servants in Cardiff, North who are concerned about how their jobs will be affected. Some implications of the Department for Work and Pensions' proposals, such as the moving of the social fund from Cardiff to Wrexham will mean that there will not be a front-line service for social fund applicants in Cardiff, which has implications for some of the people who turn up to claim social fund payments on the desk in Cardiff. We need to debate that at greater length at another time. I would be grateful if the Secretary of State could address that issue in his wind-up speech.
I am supportive of the overall themes in the Chancellor's statement last week, and the fact that child care is a key issue at the heart of Government is huge progress. I am amazed that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire did not spend any time recognising that child care is an important economic issue and recognising the huge strides that the Government have made. He ended on a note of pessimism about where the Labour Government is going and what happened to all the great hopes of 1997. Yet there has been a huge change in the way in which families in Wales cope with family life and work. When I joined this House in 1997, there were titters from the Opposition Benches if one mentioned child care and other such issues affecting women, and some men. There was not a serious attitude to those issues then, but the Labour Government has transformed the situation, and I am amazed that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire did not even mention that important issue.
Dr. Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab): I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her pioneering work on child care, particularly the setting up of the South Glamorgan women's workshop and other such initiatives. Does she agree that in linking the welcome announcement of the commissioner for older people and the question of work-life balance, we should also think about having more day care
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centres for the older people, whose numbers will increase because of the demographic time bomb?
Julie Morgan: I certainly agree. My hon. Friend makes an important point, and we should think about it as we plan the work of the commissioner. That is one of the main areas in which the Government have changed how we look at society and approach issues. Child care, which has not received as much attention as terrorism and identity cards, which we have discussed at length today, is one of the areas in which Labour has made a real difference.
Adam Price: I agree with the hon. Lady on the importance of child care and the very valuable shift in policy. However, the number of economically inactive women has risen by 31,000 since last year. Does she think that, despite the change in policy, that is because there are still problems with the supply of child care workers and centres, particularly in rural areas?
Julie Morgan: I certainly think that that issue has to be addressed. There are more women in work in Wales than ever, and there are more jobs, but the Chancellor's statement emphasised the great effort that has to be made to ensure that child care places are available for everybody. It is definitely an issue in rural Wales—the hon. Gentleman's point is an important one—and I hope that we will build on what the Chancellor has said to ensure that every child in Wales has access to a child care place. That is a huge undertaking, but we are on the way. The Chancellor's statement has increased our chance of doing it.
The Chancellor's plan for England was for child care from 8 am to 6 pm in all schools, and we plan to move towards that Scandinavian-style child care provision, and to a more Scandinavian-style society, in Wales. I welcome that strongly and believe that the Welsh Assembly will move along similar lines. Many child care initiatives have already started in Wales. As the hon. Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price) mentioned, they are not universally available, but examples of good child care practice can be found in all our constituencies. In Cardiff North, many schools offer breakfast clubs and after-school clubs. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Eglwys Newydd school in my constituency, where the children all said how much they enjoyed going to school to have breakfast. They were enthusiastically tucking into toast and cereal. I am sure that most of us would join those children in showing our support for breakfast clubs and for the Welsh Assembly's excellent, forward-looking policy of providing free school breakfasts for primary school children. It is greatly appreciated by the mothers to whom I have spoken; they hope that when it is fully implemented it will bring great benefit to the children of Wales. When my children were little, I could never get them to eat breakfast. I do not know whether other Members experienced similar problems, but it is certainly a great help when children are offered breakfast in school, as they do eat it. That is another great advantage.
I welcome the increase in the child-care element of the child tax credit from 70 per cent. to 80 per cent. The availability and cost of child care throughout the country are two of the biggest child-care issues. Child care is expensive, and the Government have made
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huge strides in enabling people to receive a 70 per cent. refund of the costs. Raising the refund to 80 per cent. will reach some of the people who find it very difficult to pay for child care. I hope that eventually—many years ahead, I am sure—we will move to a system in which child care is universally available and free for all parts of society. We have, however, made huge progress so far.
I also welcome the extension of paid maternity leave, initially to nine months and then to 12. Figures published by the Equal Opportunities Commission show that the longer maternity leave is taken by women in higher-paid jobs. It is the women in lower-paid jobs who cannot take the more extended maternity leave, so, again, the Government are tackling issues that are tremendously important to ordinary working families. Some of those issues do not grab the headlines. Quite often, I may be the only one talking about child care at any length, but it is really important to record the steps that we are taking that really change the lives of families in Wales.
Mr. Wiggin: The hon. Lady's point about maternity leave is very interesting. Certainly, very small businesses cannot necessarily carry a missing person for a long time. Would the hon. Lady have liked the Queen's Speech to contain something that would help Welsh companies, particularly very small ones, to carry that missing person for as long as is necessary for proper maternity leave to be taken?
Julie Morgan: Maternity leave is an issue for small businesses, but I am pleased that they, and the Federation of Small Businesses in particular, are acknowledging the needs of their staff far more and are becoming more sympathetic to the idea of maternity leave. I had discussions with small businesses in my constituency recently. We must acknowledge that it is difficult for small businesses, and we must work with them to ensure that they can give their employees what they need. However, anyone returning from maternity leave is a huge and valued asset who is coming back. If those women simply leave at the beginning of their pregnancy because the small business cannot cover them, the business may have to invest in retraining or in recruiting a new person who will have to learn the job. It is a great advantage for the small business when someone returns, so we must work with small businesses to make it easier for women to take maternity leave.
Small businesses started off by being very sceptical about many of the benefits for workers, such as the minimum wage, which the Labour Government have introduced. They are now coming round and recognising that they will be left behind and will lose out unless they go along with those things, because the benefits are economic as well.
Mr. Hain: I very much agree with my hon. Friend's argument. Does she agree that small businesses, like larger ones, are looking for good-quality labour and highly skilled people in a very tight labour market with a buoyant economy, and that such provisions encourage more women to bring their skills into the
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labour market, making it easier for small businesses and the Welsh economy to prosper?
Julie Morgan: I absolutely agree. All these provisions are making it much more attractive for women to enter the work force with their skills and to stay there. We have much to be optimistic about—the underlying trends in the work force, what the Chancellor said in his pre-Budget report, and the Queen's Speech.
Another very important point about the announcement about maternity leave is that it can be interchanged between partners. It is very good that the man or the woman will be able to take maternity leave when it eventually becomes 12 months. That is part of the trend that the Government have encouraged; they have tried to make it easier for fathers to be involved with their families and their children. That trend was started by the introduction of paternity leave, and the proposals will make it easier, in situations in which the mother wishes to go back to work earlier, for the father to be able to stay at home and look after the children. It is a ground-breaking measure; we are changing the way society works.
I have had quite a few discussions and several consultation meetings with parents in my constituency. I have found, invariably, that the mother—it is usually the mother—wants to stay home with the child for at least 12 months, and the provisions that have existed up to now have not enabled that to happen. However, we are moving towards a position in which a mother will be able to stay at home with a child for 12 months. My two daughters have recently had babies and have had to return to work after about nine months because they could not afford to stay at home any longer. The provision will be a huge boost to mothers in similar situations who want to stay at home for as long as possible.
There have been problems in Wales with women getting access to well-paid jobs, and that has contributed to the gap in earnings between men and women. We want to tackle that issue, but we have not been able to make as much progress as we would like in narrowing that pay gap. It is directly linked both to the breaks that women need to take in their jobs, and to the fact of occupational segregation. We know that certain jobs, such as child care work, are done almost exclusively by women. Child care is a vital job and should have more money invested in it so that it becomes a better recognised profession. Similarly, some catering jobs are universally done by women. Women in those sectors earn low wages, and it is therefore difficult to reduce the pay gap so that we can achieve a more equal society in Wales.
I particularly welcome the plans in the Queen's Speech to make Wales a more equal society—the disability Bill and the proposals to set up a commission on equality and human rights. I am pleased that those measures were included in the Queen's Speech, and I hope that we will make rapid progress.
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