Gypsy and Traveller Communities: Accommodation
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Of course, Gypsies and Travellers have the right to education, just like every other family in this country. We make every endeavour to make sure that the opportunities that are available to all the children in this country are available to Gypsies and Travellers as well, and that we take account of their cultural needs as we do so.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, no doubt all Members of your Lordships’ House engage exclusively in legitimate economic activity. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that this morning is a good time to reflect on the need to avoid demonisation of minorities and polarisation of communities? Notwithstanding the specific duties she set that local authorities have, maybe the Government could help local authorities to promote good relations.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that comment. When I was a councillor, I had a Gypsy and Traveller site in my own ward. It is important that all council officers familiarise themselves with the cultural issues around Gypsies and Travellers. Of course, we must all strive, always, to avoid division in our communities; it is very important that communities move forward together. If we are to achieve the full potential of our country, that is exactly what we must do.
Windrush Generation: 75th Anniversary
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I am afraid I cannot give that sort of information about what the Prime Minister is doing for Windrush, but I can say that across government there are numerous events going on. For a start, the Foreign Secretary has visited Jamaica only recently and discussed the positive contribution that Caribbean immigration had made to the fabric of the UK. The Ministry of Defence is using Windrush 75 as part of its Armed Forces Week, and we will be announcing plans in due course about what other departments will be doing to celebrate.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, in addition to parties and such celebrations, which I am sure we all welcome, might the Government not remember the Windrush generation by adequately compensating all those who are still waiting for justice—and not getting any younger?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
We are paying out continually under the compensation scheme, and the Home Office continues to make improvements to how easily people can access that scheme. We have paid out £59.55 million across 1,599 claims to the end of March 2023, a further £11.11 million has been offered and is awaiting acceptance, and a final decision has been made on 62% of the claims—so we are working on this. We are working with claimants on how we can make it easier and will continue to do so.
People of African Descent in the United Kingdom
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I think I have already said that we are not waiting. We have a strategy called the Inclusive Britain strategy, which has been going for a year. Today, we published the first results of that strategy. We will wait until the September final report and look at whether there is anything further that we have to do, but, actually, we are doing it before we get that report.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, it is, in fact, the turn of the Conservative Benches.
International Women’s Day
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I wish a belated happy International Women’s Day to your Lordships—your “Lordships” again; never mind—and I congratulate the Minister on bringing forward this debate and noble Baronesses across the House for making sure that this debate is an annual, permanent and ongoing event. It is a very important day in our calendar, and long may that be the case.
The challenges are, as we have heard, wide ranging and significant. That is not to say that there has not been progress, but it is important to be aware of those challenges. It is also important, in these days when International Women’s Day has been corporatised and sanitised, to remember its radical roots in the United States and Europe in the early 1900s and that this ought to be a genuinely bipartisan issue—many of the most militant suffragettes went on to be Conservatives. They were impatient for change on an issue of fundamental human rights, and we should all still be impatient for that change and for the completion of some of the tasks that we have begun. I will use my remaining time to talk about equal pay and to float, or develop, an idea of which I have given notice to both Front Benches and which I urge all noble Baronesses and allies to consider with open hearts and minds.
We have had equal pay legislation, famously, in this country for over 50 years. This country was one of the pioneers in the global community on equal pay, but not so much any more. As I floated with the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott—I note that it is not her but the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, who will be responding to this debate—on International Women’s Day, following a Question from my noble friend Lady Twycross, it is my belief that there is a historical and fatal flaw in equal pay legislation. That was Labour legislation; I am proud of it, but there is more to do.
The problem is this: we have left it to individual workers and employees—for today’s purposes, women—to find out, first, what their colleagues are getting paid, not just in the same job but in equivalent work; and, once they have found out what a comparator looks like, we leave it to them to sue their employer, with or without the help of their trade union, to enforce equal pay law. We do not do that in relation to any other regulatory standards that we really care about in our complex, modern world. We do not leave it to parents to do their own detective work about this school’s standards versus that school’s standards and which is doing well, and then to sue the school. We do not do that; we have inspections, notices, advice and, ultimately, enforcement. The same goes for food standards, drug standards, environmental protection and health and safety.
If we really care about achieving equal pay, and if we really believe that it is morally and legally wrong not to pay humans in equivalent terms for equivalent work, we as a community—the Government and the state—need to take some role in inspecting and enforcing that principle. This is a genuinely bipartisan point, because it has not been done to date, and that is why I am offering it up—and not in the usual way; this is not a rhetorical question but a genuine offering for everyone to consider. In addition, it has not really been done in the world community yet, although in parts of Canada, and more recently Iceland, people have moved a little bit further.
There has been transparency—the Minister will know that there have been increasing moves towards enforcing transparency—but, even beyond transparency, we do not want to leave it to individual women to sue when they find out that there is not equal pay. An example of this is in Iceland, where for the last few years there has been a requirement for employers of more than 25 people to certificate. However, I think that we could do better than even that, with some kind of inspection regime, possibly with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which already has powers to look at people’s financial affairs, payrolls and so on for taxing purposes. Whichever agency is involved, could we not explore becoming world leaders again in this area? We should not leave this to individual women or other workers; instead, we should take some collective responsibility to complete the promise on equal pay, so that the law is not a dead letter in a closed book. It should be a living, breathing, enforceable provision of which we can all be incredibly proud.
Lord Addington (LD)
The point I was making was that football is traditionally seen as a male sport—that is the status they have gained—not the fact that women’s sport itself has changed.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has put it well: it was meant in the spirit of this debate. I thank my noble friend very much for welcoming our announcement this week, particularly as I was that girl who dreaded the sports lesson, unlike my noble friend who could not wait for it. We have announced additional funding to support schools to provide high-quality PE and sport to pupils and to make sure that girls have exactly the same access to sport in schools. We want to really acknowledge and highlight, through the School Games Mark, those schools that can really demonstrate their delivery in this area. My noble friend is absolutely right to highlight the role of coaches, and the Government absolutely share her view of the importance of sport in building confidence, well-being and physical and mental health.
On the issue of women and girls in STEM, the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, rightly highlighted the extraordinary contribution of women scientists in the Covid-19 response. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, for also bringing our focus on to women who are at the early stages of their STEM career. I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that the Government absolutely understand the importance of the issues she raised in relation to ecology, soil systems and the like. She asked about encouraging girls into these areas. The Government’s commitment is always to offering choice. These are incredibly important and exciting careers and I imagine many girls will be enthused by them, but our focus is on choice and for the young woman to decide, and I imagine the noble Baroness has some sympathy with that.
The noble Lord, Lord Mair, raised the importance of engineering. I thank the Royal Academy of Engineering for the work it is doing to encourage women into this field and the noble Lord for the examples he shared with the House: they really brought alive the range of opportunities in engineering. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raised the importance of careers advice for young women in schools and of being clear about routes into STEM careers. We are taking action on this in specific sectors. For example, we have been supporting the Tomorrow’s Engineers code, which is managed by EngineeringUK.
The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, raised the point about women returning to the workforce. We are funding a new returners programme to help women back into these industries. We are also launching a women-led high-growth enterprise task force to increase the number of women starting high-growth and cutting-edge businesses, which is one element of building the leadership pipeline that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London referred to.
Moving from education to health, the noble Baronesses, Lady Barker, Lady Watkins and Lady Thornton, raised the issue of the menopause. I reassure the House that the Government recognise that the menopause can be a challenging time for women, which is why we put women’s health at the top of the agenda as part of the first-ever Women’s Health Strategy for England.
I remind the House that the Department of Health and Social Care is implementing an ambitious programme of work with the NHS to improve menopause care so that all women can access the support that they need, which will in turn support women either to return to, or stay in, the workforce. Just last month, the Minister for Women announced that, from 1 April, women prescribed hormone replacement therapy will have access to a new scheme, enabling access to a year’s worth of menopause prescription items for the cost of two single prescription charges. This will give around 400,000 women across England better access to menopause support.
More broadly in the area of health, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for highlighting the remarkable work of Dame Cicely Saunders and the extraordinary role that women play, particularly in conflict zones.
The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, asked what the Government were doing to encourage breastfeeding. She will be aware that we are investing around £300 million in family hubs and Start for Life services. That includes £50 million for infant feeding services, which will allow appropriate support for mothers and their babies in their breastfeeding goals.
The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, asked for an update on our funding of maternity services. In 2022, we invested £127 million into the maternity system, which will go towards the maternity workforce and improving neonatal care. Of course, we keep that funding under review.
I think the House will join me in thanking my noble friend Lady Cumberlege for her work on patients harmed by different medicines and devices. She raised the issue of compensation and will be aware that the Department of Health and Social Care is seeking views from the Patient Safety Commissioner on what redress schemes for sodium valproate and pelvic mesh could look like. But I will again share her concerns with colleagues in that department.
I turn to tackling violence against women and girls. As my noble friend Lady Scott highlighted in her opening remarks, tackling violence against women and girls is a government priority. These crimes are deeply harmful, not just for those affected and their children but for society as a whole. To help end this scourge, we published a new Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy in 2021 to drive improvements, to target perpetrators more effectively and to support their victims. In March 2022, that was followed by the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, which commits to investing over £230 million of cross-government funding in tackling these terrible crimes. This money is for our work at home, but I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, for highlighting the tragic deaths of so many women internationally, simply, as she said, for upholding their human rights. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for her account of the life and important work of Lady Constance Lytton.
I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Mann, for raising the issue of the scale and harm caused by child sexual abuse. I recognise his picture of disclosure, maybe not in the capacity of canvassing, but I remember that when I worked in the City, nobody ever asked me about domestic abuse, but when I ran a domestic abuse charity, I could not get on a bus without somebody wanting to talk to me about domestic abuse. It is about giving people that ability, permission and safe place to disclose.
More broadly and internationally, the UK is also a global leader on tackling sexual violence in conflict. As my noble friend Lady Scott mentioned, the UK hosted the International Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative Conference in London in November last year, which brought together partners, survivors and civil society organisations from more than 57 countries.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, expressed his deep concerns about the availability of pornography to children. As he will know from our Online Safety Bill, we expect companies to use age-verification technology designed to prevent children from accessing services that pose a high risk of harm, including online pornography, as a way of protecting them. The noble Lord will be aware that the Government made changes to the Bill in Committee to reinforce the safety of children online.
A number of your Lordships—the noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy, Lady Barker, Lady Ludford and Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, and the noble Lords, Lord Hussain and Lord Loomba—spoke about our international work. The Government remain committed to returning to spending 0.7% of GNI on this budget when fiscal circumstances allow. The international women and girls strategy commits the FCDO to at least 80% of its bilateral aid programmes having a focus on gender equality by 2030.
The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, pressed me to comment on our work on women and girls in the strategy. In terms of both what we want to do and how we want to do it, the “what” focuses on education, empowering women, championing their health and rights, and ending violence towards women. However, by creating conversations that change the narrative, we also lead by example and through knowledge. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for his work on widows, particularly in India.
The noble Lord, Lord Hussain, asked what the Government are doing to support Kashmiri women in prison. I am sure that he is aware that we engage with the Governments of both India and Pakistan, and raise our human rights concerns with them whenever we have those engagements. We are also working closely with civil society organisations and NGOs in both countries.
Women in Afghanistan was an issue raised by many noble Lords, including my noble friends Lord Shinkwin and Lady Fall, but my noble friend Lady Helic left me with a number of specific questions. I know that she is familiar with the two routes available to Afghan women—the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme and the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, which is obviously for staff who were previously employed locally. The Afghan citizens resettlement scheme will see up to 20,000 people from Afghanistan and the region resettled to the UK in the coming years and is not application based. Eligible people will be prioritised for resettlement.
On providing aid to women and girls in the region, the UK has disbursed £229 million in aid for Afghanistan since April 2022 and £515 million since April 2021. Our aid provides life-saving support in incredibly difficult circumstances, of which I know my noble friend Lady Helic is well aware. We are continuing to support the delivery of education and healthcare services, and to tackle gender-based violence.
My noble friend asked what work we were doing with allies around the world to influence the Taliban and promote gender equality. She will understand much better than I do the scale of that task, but we are working with the international community to press the Taliban to reverse its decisions and to honour the commitments that it has previously made. We do that through the G7, the G20 and the UN. Finally, on supporting long-term social change in Afghanistan, we have worked very hard and been instrumental in unlocking more than £1 billion of funding held within the Afghanistan reconstruction trust fund, supporting agriculture, education and health.
My noble friend Lady Fall asked about support for Ukrainian children in our schools. We are immensely proud of the support that we have provided to Ukrainian children and are honoured to do so. We have welcomed more than 20,000 children into our schools.
I hope the House will bear with me if I run just one minute over to do justice to your Lordships. In terms of women’s economic empowerment, the noble Lords, Lord Monks and Lord Watson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, all raised issues of the gender pay gap, which has fallen significantly, with more than 2 million more women in work since 2010 and a higher percentage of women on FTSE 350 boards than ever before. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, will be aware that we are obliged to carry out a review of the gender pay gap regulations after they have been in force for five years. That is something we are doing, and we will take time to consider and publish our views on the evidence.
More broadly, I thank all women across this House for their work in encouraging women into public life, particularly my noble friend Lady Jenkin, who has been remarkable in this area. The Government will continue to work across the House, and across both Chambers, to try to address the growing scourge of online abuse.
I will endeavour to write promptly on any of the points I have failed to cover today. It is truly a great privilege to have been able to close the debate. We have heard from women across the House who have found their voices and their place in the world, whether in business, politics, medicine, STEM, education or more. We have heard about the women who inspired us all. We have also heard about the women who lost their voices and their lives—and, all too often, at the hands of men.
I apologise for the weak tear ducts, but I close by remembering the women and girls who are currently being silenced all around the world, particularly in Iran and Afghanistan. We honour their courage; we are with them in spirit and solidarity. With those women in our minds and hearts, I commend the Motion to the House.
Women and Men: Pay Gap
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I am sorry; I cannot confirm that they are paid the same salary, but it is a jolly good job if they are doing the same as the men.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
Will the Minister reflect on whether we have a historic fatal flaw in equal pay legislation? We leave it to women themselves to find out the comparators and sue their employers. In every other area where the state wants to regulate, it takes on principal responsibility for inspection and enforcement.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I think the equal pay scheme has worked well since 1970, and it was protected but also enhanced in 2010. Many employers conduct regular equal pay audits in their companies, which is a good thing. It ensures that they are not acting unlawfully and that their staff are treated equally. In 2014, the Government strengthened equal pay protections by introducing mandatory equal pay audits for organisations that lose any equal pay claim, so if an organisation goes wrong, we will check it out.
Building Safety Defects
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend has decades of experience in government, and he knows that levies and taxes are a matter for the Treasury. However, not only my department, but others as well, have gone through countless numbers of fire risk assessments and external wall surveys. The results are littered with examples of people who did not build to building regulations, who cut corners and who, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, will know if he is here, used value engineering to make a bit more profit. The reality is that we cannot keep looking to the Treasury to keep bailing everybody out—we have to get the polluter to pay.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate the Minister’s frustration that he is not in a position to launch a magic bullet or even to make an announcement today, so might he instead share some of his own developing thinking? Following on from the very constructive suggestion from his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, why not produce a legislative scheme to immunise the victims and take from those who have been unjustly enriched?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I take that as a helpful interjection. We need to think about how we protect leaseholders, and sometimes statutory protection is a good thing. We know that the Building Safety Bill, that will have finished Committee in the House, provides a vehicle to do precisely that, but I cannot say any more on the subject.
Leaseholders: Costs
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(3 years ago)
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The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My apologies to Members. My list was the list for the fourth Question, not the third Question. I think we are on the right track again if I call the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, faced with repeated variations on this question from my tenacious noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark, I have heard the always affable Minister talk about this injustice in terms of complexity, sometimes referring leaseholders to their contracts. I am delighted that the new Secretary of State takes a more bullish approach, suggesting that leaseholders should pay nothing and acknowledging that we collectively—the department, some in local government and others in the private sector—failed people at Grenfell. That is a wonderful acknowledgement of principle. Why did it take four and a half years, and when will we move from principle to practice?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
We will move from principle into practice in a matter of months, but this problem has occurred over decades. Sadly, every decade, there has been a significant fire in a high-rise where there was a loss of life: Garnock Court in 1999, Lakanal House in Southwark in 2009 and the tragedy of Grenfell in 2017. Governments knew that cladding was often the cause, as it was in Garnock Court, and the regulations were actually dampened down under a previous Labour Government, who inserted the word “adequately”. It is a mess that took decades; give us months to sort it out.
Public Services
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I agree with my noble friend. There has been a tremendous success in the competitive tendering of services that has driven down cost and increased value for money for the taxpayer, and also seen an improvement in the delivery of local services. It is not surprising that £64 billion is now paid out by local government to private companies to deliver those services. Although local authorities have the powers to trade and charge, they should think very carefully before they decide to move back to the situation before the introduction of competitive tendering.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
Does the Minister think there are any features of some services that make them completely unsuitable for outsourcing? I am thinking of life and death matters such as firefighting or test and trace; extremely vulnerable service users in prisons or secure academies; or natural monopolies such as polluting water companies.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
As the Fire Minister, I certainly recognise the importance of the delivery of the vast majority of our fire and rescue services through people who are currently employed by local government. As a former council leader, I know there is a whole host of statutory areas where you would seek to deliver services through people who are directly employed. But increasingly there are areas where you can drive down costs through competitive tendering. That also gives in-house services the opportunity to compete with the market to see whether they can deliver those services more effectively. Competition does drive down costs and increases the quality of the services provided.
Inclusive Society
Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab) [V]
My Lords, far from being the leveller that someone once naively suggested, the pandemic has been a magnifier of every inequality and injustice so I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett for convening this debate when so many of us seek a 1945-style new settlement after the hardships of the last year. These many sacrifices, including the ultimate one, have not been distributed with an even hand.
It is now over two years since the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty published his damning report on the state of our nations. Professor Alston described the removal of our social safety net with “the systematic immiseration” of so many as the tragic consequences. This has only worsened as a result of Covid-19, despite the United Kingdom being one of the wealthiest places in the world. Millions of parents, including many in work, will skip at least one meal today in order to feed their children. I will use the remainder of my time to call for legally enforceable food rights in the United Kingdom, with corresponding duties and powers for national, regional and local government.
If charity alone were considered a sufficient guarantee for basic human needs in the UK, previous generations would not have legislated for universal state schooling or our National Health Service after the horrors and privations of World War II. Here are some modest initial ingredients of a right to food. Every child in compulsory education should be provided with a nutritious, free school breakfast and lunch. If we accept the universal and compulsory requirement that all children under 16 be in school, why break from that principle of care in relation to their meals during the day?
Universality avoids the bureaucracy and stigma of means-testing school-age children. If school kitchens are to be engines of better nutrition for our children during the day, why should they not be employed as community kitchens at other times for dining clubs, meals on wheels and cookery clubs so as to fight loneliness and isolation alongside food poverty and obesity?
To tackle the invidious choice that too many have to make between food—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
I am going to interrupt the noble Baroness because we have a Division coming. I shall suspend proceedings for five minutes to allow voting to take place.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
The Grand Committee is back in session. I return us to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab) [V]
My Lords, to tackle the invidious choice that too many have to make between food, fuel and other essentials, the Secretary of State should be under a duty when setting minimum and living wages and any social security benefit on which people are expected to live to state how much has been notionally apportioned for food. This transparency will aid public and parliamentary scrutiny and ultimately legal accountability. There should be a duty on the Secretary of State and the devolved Administrations to ensure food security and to take it into account when setting competition, planning, transport, local government and all other policy. There should also be powers to issue compulsory directions in the context of anticipated food emergencies or deserts in food standards or supply, and there should be independent enforcement of these rights and duties. Noble Lords are by definition privileged people. We owe it to our fellow citizens to abolish hunger in these islands for good.