UK Aid: Nutrition-sensitive Programmes

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, malnutrition affects women and girls more seriously, and I will be delighted to reaffirm the commitment to ensuring that we are able to give women and girls across the world access to voluntary family planning when and how they need it.

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, we on these Benches of course welcome the commitment made in the Queen’s Speech for 12 years of education for girls. We know that malnutrition hits girls and women rather more than men, to the extent that girls are sometimes so malnourished that they are unable to attend education. What plans do the Government have to deal with that?

[Baroness Sugg]

As the noble Baroness highlights, we are committed to helping poor countries provide 12 years of good-quality education, particularly for girls. She is also right to point out that, to learn, children need the right nutrients. Malnutrition prevents many girls attending school and hinders the potential of those who do. We are committed to ensuring that we deliver early education and nutrition interventions together, and our DfID 2018 education policy states that. When children get the basic nutrition they need in the first 1,000 days of life, they do better at school and earn more as adults.

Equal Pay

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Prosser]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to amend the Equality Act 2010 in relation to equal pay.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government remain fully committed to the equal pay protections in the Equality Act 2010 and to the fundamental principle of equal pay for equal work.

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. It is disappointing, but not surprising. We were all pleased with the measures taken by the Government last year to require employers of more than 250 people to make public their gender pay gaps. We welcomed that information because it gave us a picture of where the problems lay, but will we simply receive it as though there is nothing more that can be done?

Change will not come about by osmosis. Action will have to be taken. For a start, the law could require companies to break down the data to give us a better picture by age, ethnicity and so forth. Plus, the Government could legislate to require employers to develop positive action programmes—maybe establishing women-only training schemes, for example—or to provide more decent-quality part-time jobs. Will the Minister consider such initiatives as those, which would help to close the gender pay gap and bring the Equal Pay Act into the 21st century?

Gender Pay Gap

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Prosser]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to require organisations to produce action plans to respond to their gender pay gap reports.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted that over 10,000 employers reported gender pay gap data in the first year, but reporting is just the first step. We believe that the transparency created by reporting will motivate employers to take action. However, to close the gap we need wider cultural change, which cannot be imposed from above. That is why the Government are working with employers to tackle the drivers of the gap, and we have introduced a range of initiatives to support that work.

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

Well, sometimes I am a bit speechless over all this. It goes on year in, year out, and nothing really happens. I welcome the initiative to publicise the gender pay gap, of course, and I welcome the work that is being done to encourage more women on to public boards. However, the pay gap is actually at its most pronounced among slightly older women who have given up more productive or lucrative careers to have children, and who then cannot afford paid childcare and so move into part-time employment.

There are a number of tried and tested initiatives which have proved very helpful to this cohort of women, and which have been run in the past through the Government Equalities Office: for example, women-only skills programme initiatives to break down full-time jobs into part-time jobs. Do the Government have any intention of introducing any programmes to enable women to work to their capacity and at the same time help them to contribute more to business and the economy?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for asking that follow-up question. I am slightly disappointed that she was speechless at my initial Answer—maybe she was speechless with joy. One of the things on which I was speaking to the Women’s Business Council this morning was precisely the cohort she talked about—older women who have perhaps left work for certain reasons and then gone back later—and how it can help. The Women’s Business Council is focused very much on the cohort of women from 50 to 64 in particular, on what support it can give, and on what the Government can support in this endeavour. So we are doing things around the gender pay gap from which that cohort in particular should benefit.

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Disability Commissioner

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for tabling this Question for Short debate. I hope it will provide an opportunity to alleviate some of the noble Lord’s concerns regarding the way the debate on disabilities and equality is held. I have been involved in the equalities debate for a long number of years. As the national secretary for women in the very male-dominated Transport and General Workers’ Union, I learned pretty early on that issues of importance to women should be mainstreamed and must not be sidelined into a women-only debate. The same principle applies to questions of disability and equality.

As we know, the Equality and Human Rights Commission was established by the Equality Act 2006, starting its work in October 2007. At that point I was proud to be appointed as deputy chair of the commission, a position that I held until December 2013. The Act brought under one umbrella the responsibility for dealing with all the protected characteristics while at the same time terminating the remits of the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Rights Commission.

Because the DRC had not been in operation for very long and it was believed that the disability lobby had not had the opportunity to set out its stall, it was agreed that the new commission should have a separate statutory committee to highlight disability issues. This, by the way, did not mean that questions of disability and agreement for special campaigns were not discussed at the main board. They were, because they were and are the responsibility of the whole board. It was never the intention that disability questions should be dealt with as a separate issue. Apart from anything else, people with disabilities often have more than one protected characteristic; they may be from an ethnic minority background, for example, or they may be female or gay. How could the EHRC consider the rights of a disabled person absent any consideration of other characteristics?

In March 2017, the sunset clause contained in the 2006 Act came into play, and the disability committee was abolished. In recognition of the fact that all other issues under the commission’s remit were dealt with in the mainstream debate, the board of the commission took the view that disability would best be dealt with in the same way and therefore it would no longer seek a commissioner with that narrow remit. Since taking that decision, a disability advisory committee has been established. Our own noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, is a member, together with a number of people with wide experience of a variety of disability issues. Of course members of the main board of the EHRC have a duty and a responsibility to deal with all equality issues. No member can nor should consider themselves as representing one strand or one subject. If a candidate is not interested in questions of, among others, race, sexuality or religious discrimination then that person should not consider themselves suitable to be a commissioner.

A brief look at the work of the commission on disability issues will show that it is not an area which is neglected. Reports and campaigns on legal rights, housing, health and accessibility at football clubs are but some of the areas covered. I hope the noble Lord feels more confident that the work of the EHRC is both comprehensive and inclusive. He should know, and I am sure he does, that the commission papers are all available to the public and to Ministers—there is no secrecy.

Developing World: Women

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reminder. I am the first to thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for putting down today’s debate because we are all aware that the plight of so many women and girls in so many parts of the world is absolutely a blot on humanity. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Collins of Highbury and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby for taking part in the debate, because we need more men in this House and elsewhere to play a part in understanding this issue and to be determined to join in the fight for women’s empowerment.

This week I have been exchanging emails with the tireless campaigner on behalf of widows worldwide, the indefatigable Margaret Owen. She is currently touring the Middle East lecturing, listening and persuading the powers that be to address the poverty and disrespect currently suffered by so many widows in so many countries. Margaret has over the past two weeks been in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, countries where many of us fear to tread. For those who have never met Margaret Owen, my understanding is that she is in her early 80s, so for a woman of that age, never mind any other person, that is a major achievement.

Margaret emailed me details of comments made by a lecturer in Beirut regarding some of the current practices of ISIS. She reported being told of ISIS price lists for women and girls, including pre-puberty girls deemed ready for intercourse. She went on to report the practice of holding kidnapped girls, 100 at a time, described as child virgins, ready to lure jihadi recruits. From the safety of this Chamber all we can do is to make sure as many people as possible are aware of these gross violations and bring this knowledge to the attention of those in a position to change matters. We want to ensure that those in positions of influence understand that the issues discussed here, relating to women as they do, do not run alongside issues of a more general nature—or even a more male one—but are integral to our work, approaches, decisions on funding and rebuilding of countries in conflict. In other words, the Government need to address the whole question of gender mainstreaming within and across their departments.

Some good things are of course happening. I applaud the preventing sexual violence initiative taken two years ago by the then Foreign Secretary, William Hague. The PSVI and the consequent conference held last summer sent a powerful message to the world that the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war should be declared a war crime. What actions are in play to follow up on this initiative? I recognise that the initiative was from the FCO, but I hope that there is a measure of cross-departmental approach to the work.

Also, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women was invited to the UK last year to see for herself the work being done and the determination of government to eliminate this horrific crime. While she was able to meet with many senior government officials and of course Ministers, can the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, tell the House why she was not allowed to visit the women detainees in Yarl’s Wood detention centre? This did not send out a positive message to the rest of the world.

I turn to what gives us the real solution to this terrible problem. In February last year I initiated a debate in your Lordships’ House on the National Action Plan on Women, Peace & Security. I said then and say again that the top and bottom of the issue is about power. While women remain powerless they will not be able to extricate themselves from positions of danger or deprivation. Power must mean voice—it must mean access to decision-making, education, paid employment and influence. Government initiatives must start at a local level, must include women in rebuilding societies, and must expect that women will want to and are capable of moving on and up so that they become just as much a part of the fabric of their society as are the men. Without power, all else is lost.

Some 15 years ago our Government, along with others, signed up to the United Nations Resolution 1325. There was unanimous agreement. We must put more effort into ensuring that that resolution is translated into action in a very vigorous and positive way.

Finally, I will say a couple of words about an entirely different but linked matter. The women of Afghanistan have a tradition of writing poetry, sending two-line verses to each other by a variety of sometimes quite ingenious means. These are women who live in outlying villages. I had the pleasure last week of meeting with a woman from an organisation called Poet in the City. It engages in all sorts of ways to bring the City of London and its history alive through poetry and verse. It is promoting the Afghani women’s work and bringing it to a wider audience. That is a minuscule step in the journey which will bring confidence to women in just one part of the world where so many of them have no voice or independent rights—very soft power as part of our armoury, but still very important and much needed.

Women: Contribution to Economic Life

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

I, in turn, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for tabling this debate today and join her in wishing others a very happy and progressive International Women’s Day.

When the noble Baroness opened the debate, she talked, among many other things, about the work currently being done which helps women who are rather towards the top of the employment field: getting more women on boards, et cetera. All that is very welcome and I am extremely pleased about it, but I want to concentrate my remarks on the situation for women who are rather further down. A woman who used to work in the Transport and General Workers’ Union used to say, “Stop talking about the glass ceiling. My women have not got past the skirting board”. An awful lot of women are in that position.

Back in 2004, I was asked by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to chair a commission of inquiry into the continuing gender, pay and opportunities gap—opportunities is an important word there. Eighteen months later, in February 2006, we produced our report, entitled Shaping a Fairer Future. We made 40 recommendations, many to government, many to employers and others; 98% of those recommendations were accepted. Our work took us across all four nations—we took evidence in Scotland, Ireland and Wales as well as in many places in England. Many people came to us. I felt as though I spent my life in the basement of the old DTI building, with no windows; it was quite a trying time. We took evidence from academics, from those involved in women’s organisations and from women themselves—younger women, older women and girls who were still at school. We came out with four main areas of concern, which plays to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, who has just spoken. We said that education choices and careers advice was one of the first areas where it all starts to go wrong. Job segregation, lack of skills and training opportunities and poor quality part-time work were the others.

I will say a little about what we found, what we suggested and where I think we are now. The pay gap for full-time women as against full-time men, when we finished our work in 2006, was approximately 22%. Nowadays, it is 19.7% so it is going in the right direction but ever so slowly. If we compare the earnings of women in part-time employment as against men in full-time employment, the pay gap rises to over 40%. Some people would say that that is an unfair comparison but it shows us that the value of part-time jobs is generally pretty low. We decided at that stage that this was not a discussion about the legalities of equal pay, although those obviously can be talked about. We wanted to look at what the whole opportunity was for some kind of social change: for social programmes and a cultural shift in the workplace, which would enable more women to move forward.

Let me go back now to education choices and careers advice. We know that girls are doing better than boys overall. Nevertheless, many girls are still in the category of aiming low to avoid disappointment. That is something which needs to be addressed. There is a massive shortage of girls going into the engineering trades, and of course in order to go into those trades they need the sciences and good mathematics. First, we suggested that girls and boys should be in separate classes for those lessons. The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, just mentioned that point. That was because girls get a bit overwhelmed by boys who, all the evidence tells us, talk far more than girls in classrooms, and because the teaching of those areas concentrates almost entirely on the ways in which boys look at these things.

Secondly, we discovered an organisation called Computer Clubs for Girls, which teaches girls about the ins and outs of a computer in a way that they appreciate. It talks about the different kind of programmes that girls would find interesting—and girls engage with that. They do not want to do computer programmes that are all about wars and fighting, which do not suit them, so special attention being paid to the different ways in which girls and boys think is important.

Thirdly on this area, we found that very few young women were ever advised when they were girls at school about the financial implications of the choices that they were making. Yes, we need beauty therapists and hairdressers but they will not earn quite as much money doing that as in many of the areas of employment where you find young men.

This brings me on to careers advice. At that time, the careers service was run by Connexions, which has gone now. We found Connexions to be a very mixed bag and that careers advice was just an add-on to the role of teachers. However, over the last year or so I have chaired a number of conferences on careers advice and, to a man and woman, everybody is really fed up and anxious about the standard and the system that we currently have. It has been devolved down to all schools, so that 4,000-odd senior schools are all doing their own thing and engaging with private companies to help them. There is no teacher interaction taking place. The Department for Education spends 0.04% of its budget on careers advice, so we are the only country in the developed world that spends more on careers advice for adults than for children, which is not terribly helpful.

All those points move us into the job segregation area. Women are vastly contained within administration, retail and caring services, et cetera. Even if young women leave school and get into half-way decent jobs, if they then have children where do they go? They go completely down the career path. There are many women in that position who can afford childcare for one child but do not earn enough to afford childcare for more than one. They end up working in the retail sector in the main where, because of the long hours which the retailers have to be open, those women have to accommodate a whole variety of shift patterns. However, those jobs are poorly paid and often have few progression opportunities and poor job satisfaction.

We end up where everyone is really a loser because the woman herself has gone down the pay scales and the job opportunities ladder, while the employer which she was originally with has lost somebody who they had trained up, even if only at a pretty small level. The Government also lose because the woman is paying less tax; she may not even be paying tax at all. Even in 2006, we calculated with the assistance of economists from what was then the DTI that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was losing between £15 billion and £23 billion a year in spending power from those women who had gone down that financial ladder.

One of the things we recommended, as I think I said at the beginning, was that there should be much better quality part-time job opportunities available. There is a really good organisation called Women like Us, which was started by two women at the playground gates who said to each other, and to their friends who were waiting for the children to come out of school, “There must be something better out there”. They went round to employers and persuaded them of ways in which they could provide decent quality jobs with part-time hours, which would enable women to move forward. That organisation has gone from strength to strength. It has been working with KPMG and others and engaging with a large number of companies. However, we need a government initiative to put pressure on employers by saying, “Let’s up the game here. We have all these women who have a much greater capacity to work”. Yet those women are stuck there doing the kind of retail jobs which are poorly paid, as I have said.

There is the whole question of retraining and reskilling. We find these women who have fallen out of their traditional path into jobs which are not giving them job satisfaction and then there is no opportunity for them to go anywhere because there are no retraining or reskilling chances. At the Budget a month after we launched the report in 2006 Gordon Brown, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, allocated £40 million to be spent on women-only training. That money has largely been allocated via the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and through the sector skills councils. In the five years of its running, it trained up and upskilled more than 25,000 women. It was academically researched three times by Leeds Metropolitan University and was found to be an excellent service, partly because the money which came from employers far outweighed the money which the Government put into it.

We then had all these women who were able to move on and expand their opportunities. It covered the textiles area; we also had women trained up as bus drivers and food workers; there were women in law, in the power sector and, interestingly, in the sector which includes engineering and manufacturing. That programme came to an end in March 2013, I am sad to say. I am not exactly sure how much of a chance women are going to get now, if that funding is not directly allocated to women only.

Finally, there is no silver bullet answer to any of this. There are a multitude of approaches to be made but government must have the political will to take the lead in encouraging employers and others to make better use of their female employees—not just those at the top on boards or those in the pipeline leading to boards. All that is important, as I have said, but those at the bottom may well have good ability too and a good opportunity to do rather more.

Children: Affordable Childcare

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for providing us with the opportunity to debate this important issue. It is important to children, to parents and to the economy of the country. However, this discussion gives me a very gloomy sense of déjà vu. The question of good quality affordable childcare for those parents who want or need it has been a rallying cry from women’s groups and individual women for at least the past 40 years. Back in the 1970s we had childcare campaigns organised and working in different parts of the country. I became the secretary of the Southwark childcare campaign. There were London and national umbrella campaigns. In Southwark, we had virtually reached agreement with the then GLC for the provision of a childcare centre in Bermondsey when the GLC was abolished. That was very disappointing at the time.

A number of these campaigns, including ours in Southwark, grew out of the trade union movement. My old union, the Transport and General Workers’ Union, put resolutions to the TUC women’s conference. One such resolution in the early 1980s called for a parents’ charter which itself called for not only good quality affordable childcare but for parental leave for mothers and fathers. Yes, there were and are examples of the trade union movement being in the vanguard of debate.

In the 1990s, I went to Sweden and Denmark looking at their childcare policies. The provision of affordable childcare was something of a given. Interestingly, leave for fathers was available, but was not being well used at that time. Acceptance of such provision requires a cultural shift, which takes time and effort to bring about. Hopefully, in this country, we will continue both to encourage fathers to take leave but also, crucially, to campaign for better financial compensation to enable the person who earns the most within the household to be able to afford to take advantage of the leave offer.

Also in the 1990s, the Equal Opportunities Commission produced a research report on the value to society of affordable childcare. One of the possibilities proposed was to embrace the then French system which spread the cost between parents, local government and central government, the burden therefore not falling too heavily on any one partner. Needless to say, this was not embraced by the UK Government.

Then came the debate on nursery provision in the workplace. While I accept the case for a contribution from employers, I can also see that this can hardly be described as core business. Also, of course, it does nothing to ensure that there is an overall strategy towards working parents, so some will be lucky enough to have this benefit provided by the employer and many others will not.

Finally, on the workplace nursery front, it is not always easy or even possible for parents to cart their children to the workplace, plus it takes children away from their local environment, meaning that when they start at primary school they are unlikely to know the other children because they have not been associating in that area.

The Labour Government of 1997 to 2010 introduced the Sure Start programme, providing care and support for thousands of children and families. In the run-up to the 2010 election, David Cameron accused Labour of scaremongering about the Conservative Party’s negative intentions. “Sure Start will stay”, he said. Well, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Massey, as of today there are 576 fewer Sure Start centres. So much for the validity of that statement of commitment.

In 2010, the Equality and Human Rights Commission produced a report entitled Working Better: Childcare Matters. The report found strong evidence of the importance of quality, flexible and affordable childcare for improving life chances and social mobility for parents, children and families. Yes, the economic case for investment in childcare has been well made.

The Women and Work Commission report, Shaping a Fairer Future, which I chaired, sat for 18 months inquiring into the reasons for the gender pay and opportunities gap. We reported in March 2006 and noted in our conclusions that:

“Women are crowded into a narrow range of … occupations, mainly those available part time, that do not make the best use of their skills”.

This crowding or job segregation is most prevalent among women who have children. These are generally the women who have started off in decent jobs with career options and reasonable pay. The main reason they leave the jobs for which they have been trained—many, for example, from the health service—is that unless the woman is earning a considerably good wage she will not be able to afford to stay in that job and pay for childcare. Some women manage with the first child but, for certain, once two children have to be paid for then it is financially impossible to balance the books.

According to the Family and Childcare Trust, the average cost of care for a child under two years old is now £4.26 per hour. For a parent working full time, this adds up to £11,000 a year. In London, that bill scoots up to £14,000. Since the general election in 2010, the cost of childcare has risen by 30% and the number of available places has gone down by 35,000. We therefore have the situation where business and/or the taxpayer has paid good money to train a female employee. The woman herself has put effort into her career and is mentally satisfied and financially sound. Then down the ladder she goes. The shameful fact of the matter is that, in almost all cases, that is where she stays. Once a worker is out of the mainstream, how does she get back in?

The Women and Work Commission estimated that enabling women to participate in the Labour market at their full capacity could be worth between £15 billion and £23 billion a year to the Exchequer. Partly in recognition of this, the then Chancellor provided funding for retraining and upskilling of women to help them get back out of the rut into which so many of them had fallen. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills ran the scheme from 2006 until 2011, when it was cancelled by the current Government. During that five-year period, the scheme improved the chances of more than 25,000 women, but how much better would it have been not to have lost those trained and capable women in the first place?

Not only have we not moved forward in recent years, we are going backwards. Lack of opportunities for women to get back into better paid jobs coupled with the reduction in available childcare places makes matters worse for mothers and puts pressure on the whole family. We could do so much better. Investment in our people and of course in our children—the very future of our society—should be a major priority for Governments. We need a simple and fair system of financial support towards childcare costs. We need more places to be made available and more employers to be encouraged or persuaded to provide genuinely flexible options so that parents of young children can continue to contribute both to the business within which they are engaged and to society more generally.

Good quality childcare is good for children’s development and good for families, enabling them to participate in society and the world of work in the way that is most suitable to them, and it is good for the economy, bringing, as it would, greater contributions in tax and national insurance and of course in spending power. Please tell me that this debate is not to be based on the same old arguments for the next 40 years.

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Funding

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Prosser]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government which of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s proposed programme bids will be funded; and, for those that will not be funded, why not.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, the process for the commission to access additional programme funding is set out in its framework document. The Government have now approved, in whole or in part, more than half of the bids submitted by the EHRC under this facility. The main reason that the remaining bids were not approved was concern over their value for money.

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. In light of the Government’s recent successful application for membership of the UN Human Rights Council, could she explain how she hopes the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is recognised by the UN as the independent watchdog for human rights in Britain, will work with civil society to monitor our compliance with the human rights treaties to which the Government are a signatory? Will the Government, as they indicated in their application to the UN, actively support the commission in this work and thereby reconsider the decision not to allocate funds for capacity-building in NGOs around UN treaty monitoring?

[Baroness Northover]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for the work that she has done in this area. As she knows, the EHRC has its core funding for its core responsibilities and, obviously, in relation to the UN Human Rights Council, that is part of what it is doing. The grants that were rejected were rejected because they either duplicated what others were doing or were regarded as poor value for money. On building capacity for NGOs to contribute to UN treaty monitoring, there was a concern about duplication because many of the bid’s constituent parts may already be provided by others, including the voluntary sector.

Ethical and Sustainable Fashion

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prosser]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, for securing this debate. As has been mentioned, the all-party group has a very wide agenda. Included under the heading of ethics is, of course, the treatment of people engaged in the production, transportation and sale of textiles and clothing. Shortage of time requires me to concentrate my remarks on just one of those areas, and I will focus on those engaged in production.

Let me start with raw materials, in particular, cotton. One of the most disturbing and difficult examples is that of cotton picking in Uzbekistan, which has already been flagged up by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. Uzbek cotton accounts for 10% of the world’s harvest, ranking third in the world. It is, of course, a very important product for the country, making up 20% of its GDP and approximately 40% of its hard currency export earnings. The legacy of Uzbek’s history with the old USSR, with its continued command economy, does not provide a happy situation either for the farmers or the cotton pickers.

A production quota system is forced upon farmers and that, together with the government-set price, means that farmers cannot cover their expenses. Lack of profit leaves no money for investment in machinery, which leads to a continuing heavy reliance on cheap labour. Incidences of minimal payment or no pay at all means that many adults go elsewhere to find work, often to neighbouring countries. The Uzbek Government then step in with a system of forced labour, mostly, but not entirely, made up of children. Some schools in the cotton-growing areas are forced to close between September and November for the picking season so that children, some as young as 10 years old, can be sent to the fields to pick cotton for seven days a week. Children in rural areas are required to carry out weeding of the cotton fields during May and June. The children who pick the cotton have a quota to reach which varies, depending on the local circumstances, between 60 pounds and 110 pounds of raw cotton per day.

This is by any other name slave labour and it is not confined to children. The Government of Uzbekistan also forcibly mobilise teachers, public servants and employees of private businesses to harvest the annual crop manually. Failure to comply can mean the loss of employment and/or pension rights. The Cotton Campaign has a list of demands for Governments and companies, and, of course, cotton traders, calling on them to use due diligence in their supply chains, to demand respect for human rights and to require Uzbekistan to abide by the employment conventions of the ILO, to which it is a signatory. In 2008, the country ratified the ILO convention on the minimum working age and the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour.

I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that the UK Government will use their best endeavours at the ILO annual conference to bring this issue to the attention of the global community. Uzbekistan cotton is, of course, not the only area of concern to those campaigning for better rights for workers in the textile and clothing supply chain. Labour Behind the Label, an NGO which campaigns for better terms and conditions for those employed in making our textiles and clothing, calls for improvements in wages and in health and safety. It has joined forces with Asia Floor Wage in calling for a living wage across the region and has now widened its embrace to include work with activists in the USA, North America and Europe, but western companies must be more vigilant of the supply chain and take personal responsibility for checking the veracity of locally made claims that all is well.

Equality: Pay and Opportunities

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Prosser]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to reduce the gender pay and opportunities gap.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, the Government are committed to making full use of the skills and experience that women bring to our economy. We are increasing flexibility in the workplace and extending help with childcare. We are supporting women’s enterprise through identifying and training 5,000 business mentors. We are encouraging greater transparency on gender equality in the workplace and, with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, we are helping more women reach the boardrooms of our leading companies.

[Baroness Prosser]

I thank the noble Baroness for that reply. Does she agree that as the reasons for the continuing gender pay and opportunities gap are many and various, the solutions must be multilayered as well? Can she tell the House about any proposals the Government may have to address the unaffordability of childcare, the paucity of good quality part-time employment and the training needs of women working below their capacity?

[Baroness Northover]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for her work in this area and for chairing the Women and Work Commission and its later update, which is an impressive piece of work. She will be aware that the trend is in the right direction. It is very marked. If you look at 1970, there was a 38.2 per cent gender pay gap and in 2011 it was 9.2 per cent. But we cannot be complacent and the issues that she has flagged up rightly identify some of the challenges that face women in work.

Under the universal credit, we will be extending the amount of support to childcare for those working less than 16 hours a week—so those working part-time—and that should assist 80,000 families. We are extending the right to request flexible working to employees. It is also extremely important to note that there are many more apprenticeships, often being taken up by women in later life so that they can more easily get back into work if they have taken time out.