Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, as a signatory to many of the amendments, particularly that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I am obviously happy that they will not need to be pressed, although personally I would have preferred the use of “woman” rather than “mother”. However, like everyone, I welcome the change. As I think I have said before, when I first looked at it, it seemed amazing that a Bill about maternity, which involves women and mothers who can have children, should not have included those words, so I very much welcome the change.

To add to all the blushes of the noble Lord, Lord True, my admiration for him has escalated even further. The way that he handled our sometimes difficult meetings with him, and the way that he has handled this Bill overall, has been an example of what a good, listening Minister—and, indeed, a listening Government—should do. But whether that helps his promotion prospects, I am not so sure.

There are so many people to thank. There is no point in going through all of them again but, without the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, we would not be here today. Her amendment expressing regret at Second Reading really opened everything up and, even if I had not come to the Chamber that day thinking that what was happening was a nonsense, I would have gone away thinking that it was a nonsense if I had listened to her.

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, for so diligently getting us all together over Zoom. I also learned an enormous lot from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Winston. I found it really fascinating. Today, we have seen Parliament at its best in dealing with the Committee stage of a Bill.

I want to make three points. First, we have to remember that drafting Bills should not be left just to civil servants. Clearly, government and we in Parliament decide on the wording of a Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said, the drafters have got it very wrong here and it needs to be looked at. I hope that the review, which I presume the noble Lord, Lord True, will talk about in his summing up, will look at some of that and at how we can get this right in the future.

Secondly, I genuinely hope that the Government will now use this as an opportunity to start challenging those who have been attacking women and will speak up for the protection of women’s rights based on sex. That is absolutely crucial. There has been too much silence from both the Government and the Opposition, and it is very important that that message goes out today.

Finally, we in Parliament and in your Lordships’ House have today sent out a very clear message to women in the country that we will defend their rights and speak out. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, said, we are in a special position and must speak out when sometimes others are afraid to do so.

For me, as a fairly new Member of your Lordships’ House, this has been a wonderful exercise in working together. The cross-party nature of that work has proved successful. I hope that we can continue that because, as has been said very clearly, this is only the beginning of this very important issue, and I hope that the Government will have learned from it. I thank the noble Lord, Lord True, and look forward to hearing from him about the review, because that is very important; it cannot just end here today.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, whose constituent I used to be when I lived in Vauxhall. As three previous speakers mentioned their Tottenham connection, I should mention that, rather than fight the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, I stood as the candidate in Tottenham. I fought Tottenham, and Tottenham fought back.

If I may, I will rattle through my congratulations. First, I congratulate the Attorney-General, whose forthcoming happy event has given rise to this debate. Secondly, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister, whose good sense, patience and quiet determination have brought about this change. Thirdly, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Noakes, whose brilliant leadership and eloquence have infused this whole debate and raised its tone.

Fourthly, I congratulate all the speakers at Second Reading, in which I did not take part. They showed what is best about this House—how it can be a revising Chamber where party allegiances are secondary to the determination to get things right, and thank heavens they did get things right. It would have been deplorable if we, as a revising Chamber, could not even revise a Bill whose original wording did not make sense.

Why does it matter? I was taught as a child “Sticks and stones may hurt your bones but words will never hurt you”, but this is not about insults. It is not even primarily about the rights of women and transgender people; it is about the control of language. Totalitarians of all stripes know that controlling language is a crucial step in gaining control of society. If you determine the vocabulary, you often determine how people think. Orwell spelled it out in Nineteen Eighty-Four. He said that

“the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

That, of course, is part of what is happening.

Incidentally, I do not think that the agenda being pursued by those seeking to control our vocabulary is driven by any sympathy for transgender people. On the contrary, it seeks to use trans people as shock troops in pursuit of an extreme form of egalitarianism which aims not to give equal rights to all of us, despite our manifest and manifold differences, but instead to deny the existence of those differences.

Happily, today that agenda has been rolled back. I hope that we have sent a message to those in the Cabinet Office and those who draft legislation in the future that will be as clear and robust as a message that was sent—as I discovered when I was responsible for Customs and Excise—by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise back in 1865 to a hapless clerk whose wording they did not like. They wrote:

“The Commission observe that you make use of many affected phrases and incongruous words ... all of which you use in a sense the words do not bear. I am ordered to acquaint you that if you hereafter continue in that ... way of writing and to murder the language in such a manner, you will be discharged for a fool.”


I hope that that message has hit home loud and clear today from this Chamber.