Covid-19: Working Mothers
Debate between Baroness Deech and Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My noble friend is right; having already mentioned the call in the manifesto for greater flexibility in working practices, the Build Back Better Council is bringing together a broad range of business leaders who will work with the Government to boost job creation generally. Investing in skills is the single most effective way of driving productivity. Employers know that if they fail to support working mothers, they lose a talented and experienced workforce. To ensure that equality continues to be central to all policy-making, an integrated, joined-up equality hub is being is being created in the Cabinet Office, at the very heart of government.
Baroness Deech (CB) [V]
My Lords, the words “women”, “mothers” and “children” were not mentioned in the Budget. I suspect that the men making the decisions that affect women workers during lockdown have non-working wives at home and/or nannies. Will the Minister take steps to ensure fairness for self-employed women on maternity leave? If they take maternity leave, this cuts down the assessment of their average profits over three years, so that the 75,000 women who take maternity leave have lost a proportion. They have to be taken into account.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
The Government pay careful and due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination and advance equality of opportunity through our policies, including the Self-employment Income Support Scheme. We have made changes to that scheme, so that if a woman had a child in 2020 which meant that they did not return a 2020 tax return, they are now carved into, I believe, the fourth SEIS scheme. We continue to actively monitor the impact of the pandemic on all women and have taken action to avoid negative impacts. For example, we passed legislation ensuring that mothers are not financially disadvantaged when starting their maternity leave while on furlough.