Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

10. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Government’s revenge porn helpline.

[The Minister for Women and Equalities (Nicky Morgan)]

Let me be clear that revenge porn is an abhorrent crime. The pilot of the revenge porn helpline has received approximately 4,000 calls, relating to 785 cases since its launch in February 2015, sadly indicating a clear need for the important practical and emotional support it provides. The helpline has been successful in removing over 1,000 illegal images online.

[Mrs Miller]

That demand for the revenge porn helpline reflects the fact that there were more than 1,000 police reports of online revenge porn last year, yet two thirds of those cases saw no action taken because of problems with the evidence or victims withdrawing. When will the helpline and this new law be matched with police training and the option of anonymity for victims?

[Nicky Morgan]

The Chairman of the Women and Equalities Committee raises an important issue. We criminalised revenge porn in early 2015. Last year, there were 82 prosecutions and 74 cautions. Thousands of police officers are trained in digital crime, and revenge porn is used as a specific case study in the College of Policing mainstreaming cybercrime training programme. We must ensure that victims report the crime. I will certainly raise this matter with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary when I next see her.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

This matter was raised in the Women and Equalities Committee’s report. Evidence was taken on it and it is something that we are considering, along with all the other issues in that report.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The Secretary of State very kindly referred to the Select Committee earlier. We have produced two reports so far in our short existence: one on the gender pay gap and one on transgender people. One of those reports is now five months old, and we have yet to receive a response to either of them. When can we expect those responses?

[Nicky Morgan]

I always say that if you want something done, ask a busy woman, and they certainly make up the majority on the Women and Equalities Committee. I am delighted to see that it has been so busy. My right hon. Friend mentions two reports: one on transgender issues and one on the gender pay gap. They make recommendations for cross-government co-operation. I want to ensure that we get the best possible responses, but I expect to publish them shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Thursday 14th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, we gave just over £48,000 to the Albert Kennedy Trust in 2014-15 to develop national online mentoring services. We have also protected homelessness prevention funding for local authorities, totalling £315 million by the end of this Parliament.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Trans young people experience unacceptable and unlawful discrimination. Three months ago, the Women and Equalities Committee published a groundbreaking report outlining more than 30 recommendations to improve the lives of trans people. When can we expect a response from the Government?

[Nicky Morgan]

I had the pleasure last week of visiting the Young Transgender Centre of Excellence, which has just been opened by the LGBT Centre in Leicester, funded by BBC Children in Need. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to mention the groundbreaking report published by the Committee that she chairs. She also mentioned the 30 recommendations, which we are working through. I am sure that, like me, she wants us to make sure that when we respond, we do so in a full and open way. The report calls for significant changes to the law, complex changes to the NHS and changes to the policies and practices of more than a dozen public bodies, and I want to make sure that we get the response right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the question, but I am not interested in tokenistic gestures. He can give up his salary if he feels so strongly about it and wants to make a statement. The important thing is that this Government are taking action on the issue, which his party did not do in 13 years of government. He is right to say that the matter now needs to be tackled by legislation, and the Government will publish regulations shortly to make that happen.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Women over 40 endure the biggest gender pay gap. What specific policies does the Minister have to address that problem?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for her question, and I know her Committee will be considering this area. She may be interested to know that figures published earlier this month show a 1.6 percentage point drop in the gender pay gap for women aged between 40 and 49, and that is repeated in the over-50s and the over-60s. She is absolutely right to say that this matter needs to be tackled. I have mentioned the regulations, which will provide the necessary transparency. We are also doing a lot of work on how we can help women to juggle caring responsibilities, which come when they are older. Of course they can also request flexible working as introduced by this Government.

Childcare Bill [Lords]

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am delighted to open this Second Reading debate. At the general election, the Prime Minister promised that a Conservative Government would

“give working parents of three and four-year-olds 30 hours of free childcare a week”.

We put the early years at the heart of our manifesto because we know how important those years are for children’s school readiness and future educational success. We also know that working families struggle to find flexible, affordable and high-quality childcare. For many parents, this challenge is the biggest barrier to work. So I am determined—and this Government are determined—to deliver these measures that will give children the best start in life, support parents to work and allow our economy and our society to prosper as a result.

We brought forward this Bill so that we can give working parents an extra 15 hours of free childcare—in addition to the current 15 hours of free early education for all three and four-year-olds. The 30-hours offer will give hard-working parents a real choice to earn more by going out to work or working more hours, if they want to do so. We have not wasted any time in delivering on this commitment. Just one month after the election, we introduced this legislation to the other place and launched a review of the cost of providing childcare—something that providers had long called for to inform a fair and sustainable funding rate.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend rightly says that she wants to make sure that her measures are delivering for all children. How is she going to make sure that this Bill delivers for disabled children and their access to childcare, which can be so important for helping parents who want to get back into work?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my right hon. Friend very much indeed for that question. She raises an important point. We want local authorities—in fact, they are under a duty—to ensure that they provide places for all children, including those with disabilities.

This Childcare Bill and the 15 additional free hours it provides is, of course, part of an overall package of childcare measures being introduced by this Government. My right hon. Friend has already talked today about the fact that we are spending over the course of this Parliament £1 billion more on childcare every year. I shall come on to talk about this in more detail.

We will conduct an early years funding formula review, as we want to understand how providers cater for children with disabilities and special educational needs. I should also point out for the sake of completeness that our tax-free childcare proposals mean that the maximum amount parents of these children could pay into their childcare accounts is double the amount that could be paid for children without disabilities. Parents can use that money for children with disabilities until they are 18, and for children who are not disabled until they are 12. I hope my right hon. Friend will agree that we are offering a comprehensive package of childcare support for all children and all families.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Thursday 15th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is why transparency is so important and why the regulations that we propose will cover the private sector. He is right in what he says. Women form 47% of the workforce, but make up only 34% of managers, directors and senior officials. This must be the time to make the change.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I applaud the Minister and the Government for their commitment to eliminate the gender pay gap. This generation of women over 50 working full time earn just two thirds of what men of the same age earn. What specific policies do this Government have to address that particular enduring pay gap?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the Chairman of the Women and Equalities Committee for her question. She will know from her time in government that one of the Women’s Business Council’s key strands of work involves helping older workers to stay in work. This is, of course, also about helping women to stay in work for a longer period and to get as high up in their careers as possible before they take time out for caring responsibilities. I have also mentioned the carers pilots because, sadly, even in the 21st century, the burden of caring for older relatives still often falls on women. We have to change that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We need to inspire young people about career options and subject choices when they are at school, regardless of their gender or ethnicity. Often, women end up in careers in the five c’s—cleaning, catering, clerical, cashiering and caring—for which salaries tend to be lower. As we discussed yesterday, there are many complex reasons for the gender pay gap, and we will do all we can to tackle them.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

28. As my right hon. Friend has said, the group of women who endure the largest gap in pay by comparison with their male peers is those over the age of 40. What is she doing specifically to address that? Many of those women are highly talented and highly skilled, but we as a country are not getting the best out of them.

[Nicky Morgan]

We are going to take forward Baroness Altmann’s recommendations on older workers, including workplace training irrespective of age, and stamping out age discrimination in the recruitment process. My right hon. Friend will be aware, as she was the Minister when it was set up, that the Women’s Business Council has a specific strand of work on older workers staying on in work. There are also the pilots for carers that I mentioned yesterday.

Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

The point of the review is to take account of questions of exactly that kind. It is being conducted by the Ministry of Justice, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice, who is also a Minister in the MOJ, has heard what the hon. Lady has said.

Girls often do better than boys at school overall, but evidence shows that their subject choices have a direct impact on their future careers and earnings, and that that imbalance can feed directly into our labour market. A proportion of the gap is also due to differences in years of experience of full-time work, or the negative effect on wages of having previously worked part time or—as was mentioned earlier—having taken time out to look after a family. That highlights the important role that employers can play in supporting women in the middle phases of their working lives by providing effective talent management, facilitating access to affordable childcare, and championing flexible working.

We also know that the gender pay gap is higher for older women. For many of them one of the major challenges is keeping their skills updated, but for others the main challenge is the need to reduce their hours to accommodate increased responsibilities to care for children, grandchildren and ageing parents. Again, employers have a key role, namely to provide a supportive working environment that will enable them to get the best out of all their staff. That will include flexible working.

[Mrs Miller]

The Secretary of State has mentioned older women. I recently looked at some statistics relating to women graduates. For more than 25 years more than 40% of university graduates have been women, and today there are female undergraduates in 53% of the Russell Group universities, which are the best in the country. Given those figures, is the Secretary of State as surprised as I am that fewer than 10% of executive positions in FTSE 100 firms are taken by women?

[Nicky Morgan]

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend is to be the first Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. Yes, I am surprised, but I suspect that we all have friends who, although they were just as capable as us at university, did not decide to pursue a career for some reason, or are not as far up the career ladder as we might have expected them to be. I also suspect that that does not apply to all the men whom we may have known at university.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. As a working parent, I sympathise with all working parents about the availability and affordability of child care. This Government take that extremely seriously. I have mentioned tax-free child care, but we have also introduced shared parental leave and we are increasing child care support under universal credit. It should also be noted that the latest figures show that there are about 100,000 more child care places than there were in 2009.

[Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to her post. As a fellow working mum, she will know that school holidays can be a particularly challenging time for families when it comes to child care. I am particularly interested in her views on how the Government are supporting families with older children, as they can find it especially difficult to find the right sort of support during the summer holidays.

[Nicky Morgan]

May I thank my right hon. Friend very much for her warm welcome? She is absolutely right to say that child care, which can be challenging at all times, can be particularly challenging during the holidays and especially when the six-week holiday period stretches out in front of families. The Government’s tax-free child care policy will extend to children up to the age of 12—it will extend up to the age of 17 for disabled children. That is why it is so very welcome and progress must be made on it—I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is doing that.

Specialist Disability Employment

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement and, in particular, the emphasis on Access to Work, especially for those with mental health disabilities, in which I am specifically interested. Will she say a little more about how Access to Work is helping those with mental health problems to have fulfilling jobs?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend takes a great interest in the area and will be pleased to know that we are doing more to market Access to Work to people who have learning disabilities or mental health problems. Access to Work is an excellent scheme, but even more people with mental health problems need to participate in it, and we have an active marketing programme behind achieving that.

Employment Support

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman might not have heard me say earlier that, in the last major round of redundancies, which took place under the Labour Government in 2008, no process was put in place to track the progress of individuals who were offered support. Indeed, we found that some 40% of the individuals involved took retirement or early retirement. I want to ensure that people have the right support, and that they can see that there is an opportunity to move forward. Now, more than ever, it is important that we get this right. The last Government ducked these decisions; they did not take the difficult decisions and they did nothing to ensure that disabled people could get the job opportunities that they needed.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

The Minister rightly recognises the success of residential training colleges such as the Royal National Institute of Blind People college in my constituency. Will she reassure me and other Members who have such colleges in their constituencies that departmental officials will make themselves fully available to the colleges as they explore alternative ways of working and being funded?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend and I have had many conversations about the importance of the college in her constituency. The simple fact is that residential training colleges up and down the country provide important specialist support for disabled people to get into employment. I have already given a clear undertaking that we are going to provide funding for those residential training colleges through to the end of the 2012-13 academic year. Indeed, my officials are already meeting the heads of those colleges to ensure that we have a clear plan for retaining that expertise in the new funding environment.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady and I know that it is very difficult for us to sit in judgment over parents. Family breakdown can be caused by many different things and we need to make sure that the support is there for parents to come together and work together. All our evidence suggests that 50% of people in the CSA system would rather not be there and would rather be working in the way I have described.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

The Minister is absolutely right about the need for collaboration-based arrangements. To respond to the previous intervention, is not the inflexibility of the system one reason why non-resident parents often do not like paying? The constant barrage of letters, telephone calls and everything else means that they feel more and more reluctant but more and more pressured to pay. My constituency cases suggest that collaborative arrangements are sustainable and have worked.

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is right that the inflexibility in the system does not reflect true family life. Every single family is different. It is difficult to reflect that in a statutory system, which is why encouraging more people to work on those arrangements together, whether the issue is finance or access, is the way for children to get the best results after family breakdown.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

That was an important and useful debate to ensure that the work that we are doing in government is made clear. I have asked officials to look at the situation that he raised regarding Wythenshawe to make sure that the appropriate sales teams are in place. He asked when we are going to talk about our long-term decisions, and I can assure him that we will respond on that as soon as is practicable. We are in year four of a five-year plan, and it is important that we have those new plans in place.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I was pleased that the Minister affirmed her commitment to residential training colleges, including the college of the Royal National Institute of Blind People in my constituency. She may be aware of recently published figures from the Select Committee on Work and Pensions showing that 1,000 people who have suffered sight loss are still looking for opportunities to be helped back into work. Does she agree that those colleges provide a valuable opportunity to help those people find employment?

[Maria Miller]

I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend does to support her local residential training college. I absolutely agree that colleges such as the one in her constituency have a valuable role to play, particularly to offer specialist advice and support. I hope that the commitment that I have given the colleges to ensure provision through to the summer of 2013 will help them to plan for a future in which we focus more on individuals than on institutions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will take this opportunity to ensure that his constituents are not terrified about the future of DLA, and indeed the personal independence payment, because we are making sure that it will be a fair and transparent assessment. We will not be, as a rule, saying that individuals would be exempt from assessment, because we want to make sure that they are getting the right support, and we can do that only by looking at their needs.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

22. What steps he is taking to improve the ICT systems operated by the Child Support Agency and its successor.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

The CSA currently uses two IT systems. It was the intention of the previous Government to transfer all 1993 cases to the 2003 scheme, but this proved impossible because of deficiencies with the IT they commissioned. This situation is unacceptable, which is why the Government have decided to bring in a new single system to replace the current ones. We plan to introduce this from 2012.

[Nicky Morgan]

I have previously written to the Secretary of State about my constituent, Mr Jonathon Little, who had arrears added to his current child support bill that were impossible for him to pay. The CSA told Mr Little that the payment period would be extended to 2014, but he then received a letter stating that the payments on account would be reviewed every six months. When I queried this, the CSA told me, “That’s just a computer-generated letter; we’ve had problems with those.” Will the Minister assure me that he will look into the matter as part of the wider improvements being made to the IT system operated by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission?

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for that example. She has just underlined the need for change, because the current system is not working as it should for all constituents. Indeed, there are now 100,000 cases that cannot even be dealt with on the current IT system—costing the taxpayer a great deal of money and, as she points out, the patience of a great many of our constituents.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Maria Miller

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I welcome the earlier remarks of the Under-Secretary on achieving equality for disabled people by helping them back into work. Does she recognise the excellent work done by the RNIB college in my constituency to help those who are blind or visually impaired back into work? Will she visit the college with me at some point?

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. We have many different strategies for supporting disabled people back into work, and I know that the college in her constituency has done a great deal of work in that respect. I believe that there are plans to meet officials from her college in the not-too-distant future.