Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

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

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, my comments are going to follow those that have been made by the majority of Members before me. I am not sure that I have anything particularly new to add, but this is an important issue. I very much hope that the weight of numbers will have some sort of influence on the Minister and the Government.

I welcome the Bill and share the comments that others have made. It is late and, to be honest, we should be leading in this field, but we are very much lagging behind. I remember that, when I was first elected a Member of Parliament in 1992, and when I looked round at my fellow new MPs in the Labour group, it was amazing how disproportionately most of us did not have children. That is what it has been at every stage: we have always been late at making it easier for women to be involved in politics and to have a family as well. Nobody could have explained that more strongly than the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has done. Let us not stop here: it is with some humility that we should say that this is good legislation. It is something to be proud of because the Government have got themselves out of a bit of a difficulty with one person, but it cannot rest here. I welcome the comments that the Minister made about ensuring that we look at the other issues as well.

The main reason why I put my name down to speak in this debate was to offer support for the reasoned amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, very ably moved and that colleagues from across the House have spoken to as well. It might be argued that it does not matter: if you look at this Bill, what is going to change if we have the word “woman” rather than “person”? However, it matters and it matters a lot. My noble friend Lord Hunt really pressed this point and was right to do so.

More than anything, it is just common sense. We are not here to pass legislation that does not make sense to the public whom we represent. If we were to go out into the streets of our country and try to explain to the electorate—to our citizens—that we have got ourselves into a position where we are not permitted to use the word “woman” in a Bill that deals with maternity, they would not know where we were coming from. Yet that is the argument that the Minister in the House of Commons made, and it is the argument I thought that the Minister here made today. Common sense and clarity must mean that legislation that we pass makes sense in its language to the people whose lives it will affect.

Of course, this is even more important because of the wider cultural context in which this debate is taking place. There is a wider debate at the moment which risks denying that biological sex exists. I cannot sign up to that. It makes it far more difficult for women-only spaces and for the protection of women in certain circumstances, which has been hard fought for over the years, to actually be carried out. As my noble friend Lord Hunt said, you can see public bodies and areas of public policy where there is now a struggle with how much or how little gender-specific pronouns can be used. This must be sorted out. Equality of opportunity and gender-neutral language were never about making it difficult, embarrassing or awkward for us to use gender-specific pronouns when it is appropriate to do so. I accept and understand that this debate can be difficult as social mores change. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said, it is about finding a language where all feel comfortable—but it was never meant to be a situation where women were fearful of expressing a view they strongly held.

I think language does matter, and I welcome gender-neutral language where appropriate. I remember my first Bill in the House of Commons: I was involved in legislation about teachers and was told that the term “he” in it had to apply to female teachers as well, and “headmaster” applied to head teachers of any gender. That is what the legislation, in terms of gender-neutral language, was trying to overcome. We must be clear on that because we must defend it. We must not allow what was a good piece of legislation, or a good piece of advice, to muddy the waters on some of the key issues.

The last point I make—and this really is my plea to the Minister—is that I am not sure why the Government have used “person” rather than “woman”. I was not sure having read the debate in the House of Commons, and I am not sure having listened to the Minister today. I am pretty sure that the 2007 guidance did not require the Government to use “person”. Is he saying that if he presented legislation to the House today which talked about “women who get pregnant”, the Bill would not have the force of law? If he is saying that, I would challenge it merely on the grounds that legislation has been passed since the 2007 guidance—whether they were Bills related to maternity, pensions or equality of rights—that uses the term “woman”. If it would have been legal to use “woman” rather than “person” in the Bill, why did he not do so? If it was not compulsory, it had to be a matter of choice. If the Government chose to use “person” rather than “woman”, I hope that he will be able to explain that in his closing remarks.

Other than that, I think the Minister has been helpful, both in the meeting he had with some of us before this debate and with the open manner in which he introduced it. I hope he will continue to act in that way as we take the Bill through the House of Lords.