Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, because that was a brilliant speech. I have found the speeches today humbling, articulate and wonderful, and noble Lords will know that I do not often start my speeches in this manner. I think we have captured that this is not just a matter of words. There is something else going on and I hope that message comes through.

When I was a teenager, my working mother excitedly told me about the Employment Protection Act 1975, which introduced the first maternity leave legislation. She was thrilled that this would give me and my two sisters choices about work and change everything for future generations of women. In school, my radical English teacher enthusiastically showed me trade union and campaigning leaflets. She proclaimed that maternity leave was a key step for women’s equal employment rights. Her enthusiasm for political change was infectious and I have to confess that I caught the bug. We have to remember that, until then, every woman knew she could get sacked for getting pregnant and faced open discrimination, often related to maternity. I suspect that my mother and teacher would be delighted to know that things have improved so much for women that we can now focus on ensuring that women at the top of government will not be expected to resign because of pregnancy and will have six months’ leave on full pay.

As other noble Lords have noted, the Bill is rather narrowly focused on the women in Westminster. I rather wish that Parliament would show such speed and a sense of urgency in tackling the ludicrously low statutory maternity pay and weak employment protections for ordinary working women on maternity leave. Despite this, I see the Bill as a step forward for women’s rights.

But wait—as we have heard from so many today in the brilliant speeches, can we or the Government claim that it is a gain for women’s rights when the words “women”, “she” or “her” do not appear even once in the Bill? We are assured that this is merely a technical drafting matter. If so, can the Minister organise an urgent review of official drafting guidance so that we can explain that gender-neutral language is not appropriate for sex-specific issues?

The noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, said that he did not see a problem with the language used. He implied that it was a bit like saying “chairperson”, but giving birth is not like chairing a meeting. Erasing women from public discourse on maternity is not ahead of the curve; it is regressive and demeaning. It is not people who get pregnant; it is women. It is women who give birth. It is women who benefit from maternity leave and it is women’s rights at work that we want to protect. If we erase the word “women”, the danger is that we erase the struggle for women’s rights that got us here.

I stress that, of course, not all women want to be mothers. Not all women can be mothers or are even good mothers. In my opinion, child rearing is well and truly not a mother’s natural job, but the words “woman” and “mother” have specific meaning. It horrifies me that it has become so contentious to say so. I have been gratified in this debate by how supportive people have been of the amendment. If anything shows that this House is far removed from the rest of society, it is that most of us would be cancelled if we said these things anywhere else but in this House. There is a toxic, nasty thrust to political life today. I would like to acknowledge the courage of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and others for speaking out. This is because, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, explained, people here will be labelled TERFs and transphobes and will go on hate lists for speaking out. That is the reality.

I say to the Government, please do not be either naive or disingenuous. These language rows are not technical. As many noble Lords have articulated so passionately, we have to consider the political context. The day after the debate on the Bill in the other place, I watched a male Labour MP on BBC “Politics Live” repeatedly refuse to say whether maternity law should refer to the pregnant “person” or “woman”. Why was it so hard for him to say that? I am not making a party-political point; we see this across the political spectrum.

These new language codes and norms are mandating us to adopt doublespeak. Why do I need to describe myself as “cis woman”? I am a woman; that is it—enough. I am not a uterus holder, nor a person with a vagina nor a chestfeeder. These are linguistic abominations, but they are not harmless. Ultimately, these body part descriptions demean women and are a linguistic assault on the notion that biological sex exists at all. There are consequences of this. For example, in medical challenges specific to biological females, how can healthcare workers discuss the risks of mastitis infection if they have to replace “breast” with “chest”?

We can see how language is being weaponised in other areas deemed technical. You cannot get more technical than the census. As the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, noted, there is now a huge furore about the politicised wording of the questions. The census is a hugely important inquiry to gather factual data and accurate statistics. Dr Debbie Hayton, a transgender woman, teacher and trade union officer, rightly points out that

“the gender-identity lobby has been working hard to obfuscate the issue by mangling sex with gender identity”.

This place is not a students’ union. On too many campuses, mangling and obfuscating language and linguistic policing are often used to undermine academic freedom and to smear and damage the reputation of feminist academics. Noble Lords should check out the new website, GC Academia Network, to read some horrifying tales. In some ways, we might expect this to go on in a students’ union, but this Parliament should not be like student politics or, much worse, even consider removing the word “woman” from this maternity Bill. We in this House—and even more so in the other place—are answerable to millions of women, men and transgender people—that is, transgender people as distinct from transactivist lobbyists. Those millions would expect, in plain language, that legislation expanding maternity leave would benefit women’s equality. I suspect that those millions of citizens would be horrified to think that any part of our legislative body was in thrall to the small—if loud—lobbying organisations which, make no mistake, are using language as a battering ram to march through the institutions and to eradicate the crucial distinction between biological sex and subjectively-defined gender identity, and which bully and intimidate anyone who refuses to repeat the mandated correct terminology.

I urge the Minister not to let the absence of one key word betray the embryonic gains of the 1975 maternity leave legislation and the hopes of my mother, my teacher and my teenage self. It would mean something for women’s freedom. Do not betray us now.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I voted for the agreement reluctantly. I would have preferred a clean break and the time to scrutinise the small print for the myriad traps it contains. However, to give credit to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, this agreement does deliver sovereignty, and that matters. While many in this place sneeringly traduce sovereignty as xenophobic nationalism embraced only by knuckle-dragging gammon, it is historically and now the only basis for democratic accountability. The demos voted to remove the unelected legislature in Brussels, unanswerable to UK voters. Now that is a reality, they may look at unelected lawmakers closer to home—good.

Good also that the Government have nowhere to hide and will need to look the electorate in the eye and own each and every decision they make, including the egregious parts of this agreement. Voters matter. Listening to the hours of contributions last week—I was culled from the speakers’ list—I noted a rather self-congratulatory, back-slapping tone from the Government Benches. It rang rather hollow. In truth, it was the perseverance and steely courage of millions of voters, who used the ballot box and electoral vehicles such as the pivotal Brexit Party time and again to pile on the pressure, that forced the Conservative Party finally to honour the referendum. Let us acknowledge that it is the voters who got Brexit done, against all the odds, against the machinations deployed by the highest echelons of the technocratic establishment and against many in this place who really believed that they had the right to overturn 17.4 million votes and shared with Donald Trump a refusal to give loser’s consent and who even now, today, lack the imagination to see life beyond Brussels or Erasmus or to see Brexit beyond the narrow prism of GDP.

Yes, this agreement has flaws, but its existence is proof that a democratic movement can change the course of history. In the context of lockdown Britain, when we will need every ounce of that democratic spirit, bravery and sovereign freedom to rebuild society, it will do for starters.

UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, on the details of the mechanism proposed under the protocol, as well as the protocol statement that has been made, my noble friend will find that a number of draft decisions are also being laid before Parliament setting out in greater detail the arrangements agreed, which include provision for the settlement of disputes.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we are assured in the Statement that the primacy of sovereignty is now beyond doubt. This sounds very positive to me, but I am not convinced that there are not worrying cracks in the Statement that sovereignty can seep through. I echo noble Lords who asked for more detail on EU intervention, but my main point is that, in debates here and in the other place, it has been suggested that that this agreement was pushed through in order to make a deal possible from the EU’s point of view. Can the noble Lord reassure us that he understands that those “red wall” voters who loaned their votes to the Government did not do so for a trade deal? 2016 was not about a trade deal. If it happens, fine, but it is about sovereignty, and sovereignty is not in trade or in technicalities, as discussed here. Does the noble Lord understand it, as some of us do, to be about democratic control at home and not just about trade? Maybe it is time to walk away in order to retain that democratic, sovereign control.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I find myself between a rock and a hard place, because many of those who have asked questions today have been critical of the Prime Minister for stating what he has said about sovereignty and the need to protect our right to control our borders, to make our own laws and to control our fish. That is a statement that he and the Government have repeatedly made: we ask the EU to recognise and negotiate with us in good faith as an independent sovereign nation, which is what we wish to be. On the other hand, the protocol recognises that we are seeking to be pragmatic, and there are many benefits that your Lordships have not brought out: export declarations have been put in the bin; we have protected supermarkets; and businesses will be able to use VAT returns as they do today, without any burdensome process for splitting some of the issues. So there are pragmatic positives. However, I must tell the noble Baroness that the Prime Minister should be taken at his word on what he is saying.