Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) on securing this important debate on an issue that concerns us all. I come from a family where the only thing controversial about gender equality was the suggestion that us men were anything other than inferior, so it has always been a mystery to me why the prejudices and discrimination against women, and indeed any other groups in society, persist, but sadly persist they do.
I suspect that the hon. Lady was not in the hall, but I am sure that she was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in one of the most effective and powerful passages in his party conference speech in October, say:
“I’m a dad of two daughters—opportunity won’t mean anything to them if they grow up in a country where they get paid less because of their gender rather than how good they are at their work.
The point is this: you can’t have true opportunity without real equality.”
As well as paying tribute to the Prime Minister’s leadership on this issue, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who, throughout her career in Parliament, in government and on repeated occasions as acting leader of the Labour party, has led the way on equality, including on women’s pay. All of us should salute her persistence and leadership on this issue.
The fact is that the pay gap, although smaller than it was, is too big, is unacceptable and must not be allowed to survive into the next generation. We can acknowledge that some progress has been made without in any way undermining the assertion that the gap as it remains is unacceptable. There has been some progress. The pay gap has decreased for full-time earners, but it is still too high at, I think, 6 and a bit per cent for full-time earners, and much less progress is being made for part-time workers and those in low-paid jobs. We can all agree that that position is not one that we should tolerate, so the question is what we can do to ensure not only that progress continues to be made, but that it is made more rapidly and made across the board, for part-time as well as full-time work.
I shall explain what the Government have long believed to be one of the most powerful tools in this respect. The laws were passed, as many hon. Members pointed out, by previous Labour Governments a long time ago, but once the necessary laws are passed, progress is often most rapidly achieved as a result of transparency—as a result of making it absolutely clear to everyone, not just the people who work for an employer but customers, partners or neighbours of the employer, what their record is on paying people equally. That is why we have decided to require employers of more than 250 people to publish information about the pay of men and women in their employ, so that they can demonstrate whether they are properly paying people equally. Driving through that transparency and adding to it, as we do with the enforcement of the national minimum wage, and a certain element of naming and shaming, whether formal or informal, both as MPs in respect of employers in our constituencies and as a Government in respect of larger employers nationally, will have a powerful impact on progress.
The second most powerful way to achieve change is to ensure a change in leadership. The Government’s focus on the representation of women on boards is not so much a result or a reflection of our interest in equality being greater in relation to high earnings than low earnings, although equality should be in place across the spectrum. It is more the fact that we are convinced that the more women there are on boards, the more voices there will be insisting that equality be achieved and not putting up with any persistence of inequality, however well disguised.
That is why we are delighted that we have more than met the original target set by Lord Davies of Abersoch to achieve 25% female representation on the boards of FTSE 100 companies. The figure is now at 26%. We now have more women on FTSE boards than ever before. I believe that there is not a single FTSE 100 company left that has no women on its board, but again, although that is welcome progress, it is not nearly enough, because many of the women who have been brought on to FTSE 100 and 250 boards are in non-executive roles. Our next challenge is to ensure that there is an equal increase in the representation of women in senior executive positions, because it is through the leadership roles in every employer that we will drive the change in employment practices down through all the employers in the country.
After leadership, the third most important step is to make it easier for women to get work, to stay in work and to return to work as soon as they choose to do so—it should always be their choice—after having children. That is why, at a time of very difficult decisions on the public finances, we have nevertheless made it a priority to invest in the provision of 30 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds for all families who work, because only when there is that significant number of hours of free childcare will we make it possible for more mothers of young children to go to work as soon as it is right for them to do so.
The final and most important measure is more broadly to increase the rate of pay, particularly in low-paid jobs. We have heard from many hon. Members that women unfortunately occupy more low-paid positions than men do. If we can increase pay in low-paid jobs, we will disproportionately help women. I understand the unwillingness of Opposition Members to acknowledge the substantial and significant step that the Government have taken by introducing the national living wage for people over the age of 25, and I accept that the Opposition want to continue to preserve the concept of a living wage as something distinct from our new national living wage. Leaving aside the nomenclature for a moment, the minimum wage that will be paid to every 25-year-old in the country, including in the great kingdom of Scotland, will go up by an amount far greater than any Opposition party suggested in the general election campaign.
Nick Boles
I will not give way right now, but I will do so in a second. We have plenty of time, so the hon. Lady need not worry. The minimum wage will go up by an amount far greater than was recommended by the Low Pay Commission. We have strong evidence not only from internal Government estimates but from the Resolution Foundation that women over the age of 25 will disproportionately benefit from the increase in the minimum wage. For all that Opposition Members want to retain some scepticism about the brand that we are putting on the new, higher minimum wage, I hope that they will welcome that significant step in improving the pay of many women in this country.
Barbara Keeley
I do not think that the Minister needs to lecture the Opposition on the national minimum wage. Labour Members brought in the national minimum wage in the teeth of a fight from the Conservative party. I know that he was not in the House at the time, but he must know that. None of us needs to be lectured on that. Will he say whether he will address the issue that several Opposition Members have raised about transitional arrangements for the state pension age inequality for women born in the 1950s?
Nick Boles
I say gently to the hon. Lady that I was not lecturing her at all. I was resisting the suggestion that the national living wage—I accept that Opposition Members do not like its brand—is anything other than a dramatically positive step for low-paid workers, especially women, in this country. I did not hear a single member of any Opposition party welcome the increase that will happen in April for every worker over the age of 25 who is in a national minimum wage job. If the Opposition want the Government—for better or for worse, we are likely to be in government for the next four and a half years—to take on board some of their excellent suggestions for further progress, they should give us a little acknowledgement for that real achievement. It absolutely builds on the national minimum wage, which the Labour party introduced, and I am always happy to acknowledge, as I did earlier, the Labour party’s role in the Equal Pay Act 1970, but acknowledgement of each other’s achievements is a two-way street. It would be good for Opposition Members to acknowledge our achievement.
Nick Boles
I will answer the other point made by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) before I give way again. She asked an important question on a subject that was also raised by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith). As I have said, I come from a family that is entirely dominated by women, and two of my sisters are in the age bracket that the hon. Ladies referred to. I have also had some pretty difficult conversations in my constituency surgery with many women who are affected.
The equal pension age is being introduced at the same time as the new state pension, which, compared with the current two-tier state pension, improves the amount of state pension for many women whose national insurance records are incomplete as a result of career breaks or a great deal of part-time work. I am not implying that it makes up all the loss, but there is a countervailing improvement. I am advised by the Department for Work and Pensions that there will be a review of the state pension age. The Pensions Act 2014 provides for a six-yearly review to take into account up-to-date life expectancy data and the findings of an independently led review. The first review will conclude by May 2017 and will consider, among a number of other factors, the impact of the state pension age change on women. That will be an opportunity to consider the issues that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South raises.
Barbara Keeley
I would like to repeat what the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said in 2011 on Second Reading of the Pensions Bill:
“Let me simply repeat what I said earlier…we have no plans to change equalisation in 2018, or the age of 66 for both men and women in 2020, but we will consider transitional arrangements.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 52.]
There were no transitional arrangements. Women who now do not get their pensions until 66 get nothing—no pensioner benefits or bus passes—and, as I have said, many of them are on jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance. Some are even being forced, at the age of 62, on to the Work programme. That injustice will keep coming back. The Secretary of State in that debate promised transitional arrangements.
Nick Boles
I do not want to get into a discussion about what another Minister said in a debate that I was not part of, but the quote that the hon. Lady read out indicated that the Secretary of State would consider transitional arrangements. It did not sound to me like a clear pledge to bring in any particular transitional arrangement. I have described the position and the fact that there will be a further review in 2017, which will allow those issues to be revisited.
Margaret Greenwood
What analysis has the Minister made of the impact of the cuts to local authorities that the Government are considering on low-paid women working in councils up and down the country?
Nick Boles
As the hon. Lady is aware, all decisions, legislation and regulations are subject to equality impact assessments, in which all those things are considered. Her intervention leads me neatly to my conclusion. For all that the steps that I described—transparency, leadership, childcare provision and increasing the national minimum wage through the introduction of the national living wage—are powerful, the most important source of opportunity to improve the pay of women and close the pay gap is a strong economy that creates lots of new jobs. Those new jobs and employment opportunities give women the opportunity to go out and command better wages.
Although I understand that the hon. Lady opposes public spending cuts, it is nevertheless the case that as a result of the consistent policy of slow but steady deficit reduction, this economy has created more jobs than any other country in Europe, and more women are in work than ever before. It might have been possible for Opposition Members, while properly opposing the Government on specifics, to give some acknowledgement of the fundamental achievement of creating jobs, which create opportunities, including the opportunity for women to improve the wages that they earn.
