Gender Pay Gap

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness brings up a good point on the gender road map, which we are talking about, affecting women as they reach pensionable age because they have fewer years of working service. The new state pension was introduced for people reaching state pension age from 6 April 2016 onwards to provide a clearer, sustainable system for their future. More than 3 million women now stand to receive an average of £550 more a year by 2030 as a result of recent reforms.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Crawley is absolutely right: women’s pension wealth is on average one-third of men’s when they reach retirement age. The Minister mentioned the new state pension system, but many women who are now in their 50s often took time out of the labour market earlier to raise their children only to find that they are carers again, often for elderly parents or sometimes for grandchildren. Under the old pension system, if you took time out for caring responsibilities you could get a credit for not just the basic state pension but SERPS, the earnings-related pension, but under auto-enrolment, if you cannot qualify because you have taken time out of the labour market, you get nothing. What are the Government doing about that?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, I agree regarding the problems that women face, and, as I acknowledged to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, particularly when they take time out of work for caring and other responsibilities. However, I must tell her that, in 2012, 40% of women in the private sector were participating in a workplace pension. As of 2018, that has increased to 85%, which is now equalling the participation rate of men.

Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments and National Insurance Funds Payments) Regulations 2019

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his introduction to the orders. The freezing of working age benefits means that tax credits increase benefits only for workers and children who are disabled. This excludes a whole range of benefits which are crucial to many of the poorest people and families. The Resolution Foundation states that the four-year freeze on working age benefits has been,

“one of the most vivid examples of austerity in recent years as it represents a … real-terms cash loss for millions of low-income families”.

Among the poorest families, the average single parent will be £710 worse off, which amounts to between 3% and 7% of their income. The freeze looks set to cost working-age families £4.4 billion in 2019-20.

I noticed from the Explanatory Memorandum that no consultation was thought to be needed. Last year when these orders went through, the Minister was asked about an impact assessment on child poverty but he said that there was no need as this was done when the freeze was announced. However, we are now entering the fourth year of the benefits freeze. Is it not time an impact assessment was made in relation to the most vulnerable and poorest groups? This is particularly important, first, because the circumstances of these groups need to be taken into account when the migration to universal credit takes place and, secondly, in the light of the evidence of so many reports—for example, by the Resolution Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Trussell Trust and many others—which draw attention to the poverty and suffering being caused to people and working families at the lower end of incomes.

Does the Minister consider that disabled workers who benefit under the second statutory instrument will be at risk when the Government migrate them to universal credit? Will the Government look at the risk of that process to this vulnerable group? Will they use the forthcoming test-and-learn pilot of managed migration to trial a system where benefit claimants are moved automatically to universal credit so that their income is protected?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for that introduction. As we have heard, the purpose of the first set of regulations is to make changes to the rates, limits and thresholds for national insurance contributions and provide for a Treasury grant to be paid if necessary. Given the impact of inflation on household incomes, coupled with the poor wage growth over the last decade, we are of course supportive of measures that will ensure that NICs thresholds increase in line with inflation.

But I want to spend a bit longer on the second of these measures, whose purpose, as we have heard, is to uprate the guardian’s allowance and the few elements of tax credits fortunate enough to have escaped the brutal benefit freeze which has been applied across the board—that is, the disability elements for families with disabled children who get child tax credit and disabled workers in receipt of working tax credit. These are to be uprated by CPI, the 12-month measure which was 2.4% to last September. Obviously, that increase is welcome but, as we have heard, it does not cover all the major elements of child tax credit or working tax credit. It does not cover the single parent, couple or 30-hour elements of working tax credit or the child or family element of child tax credit, which is the bulk of the money—all these are frozen. Many of the people who get the tax credits that are being uprated are also in receipt of other benefits such as child benefit, JSA, ESA or housing support, which are frozen as well. This is really quite damaging.

We should not allow an occasion like this to pass without establishing for the record that this is not the way that Parliament traditionally goes about doing this business. The reason that social security benefits and tax credits are indexed to inflation is so that they keep their value. Before 2011, they were linked to the RPI or Rossi, a variant on RPI. When the Government decided to shift that and link them to CPI, it saved the Treasury a lot of money; of course, it cost the same amount to those who were on the benefits. That shift was strongly contested, but at least it retained the aim of ensuring that the value of the benefits stayed at the level determined by Parliament. When the Government made the switch, they claimed it was because CPI was a better measure. But the report published last month by the Economic Affairs Committee of this House pointed out that the Government are not above inflation-measure shopping. For example, when the Treasury is paying out benefits and tax credits, it uses CPI; when consumers are paying student loan repayments or facing increased rail fares, it uses RPI. The coalition Government ditched even CPI, limiting most working age tax credits and benefits to a 1% annual increase from 2013-14. The current Government went further still and froze those tax credits and benefits at their 2015-16 levels until 2020.

Benefits: Two-Child Limit

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The Office for National Statistics says that the average family size in the UK is 85% with two or fewer children and 87% for lone parents. Those are the statistics that we are currently working to.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate’s Question asked how the policy will improve family stability, mentioned in the Government’s impact assessment, which stated:

“Encouraging parents to reflect carefully on their readiness to support an additional child”,


could help family stability. The Government argued strongly when the Bill was going through that in the case of tax credits, it would not apply the two-child limit to children who had been born before last April, because parents did not know that the policy was coming in when they had those children. However, they are applying it precisely that way to universal credit. From next February, when universal credit opens out to big families, if you make a new claim and have children born before this policy was ever dreamed of, you will not get support for the third and subsequent children. Can the Minister explain how that is fair?

Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may add a word from someone who was brought up in the Catholic Church and to whom, therefore, the ordination of women was very foreign. However, one word sums up much of what I have heard, particularly from the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler, and that word is love. Recently, my wife was buried by a lady vicar, who also christened our grandchild. In the course of that, I came to realise that the semantics are not important; what is important is the degree of love. This lady bestowed a quite extraordinary gift on me, and I feel that we have come to a stage in our history where this is not only acceptable and desirable but extremely important. I have seen myself do a complete volte-face over the last decade, to a point where I enormously welcome women bishops, and I know that people such as the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler, will do so as well. It is correct that we should also show great love to those who find this difficult. Having seen both perspectives, I can see that “love” may sound corny but it is in fact the answer.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate for his introduction to this Measure and all noble Lords who have contributed to this historic and extraordinary debate. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for the graciousness of being willing to stand up and explicitly commend this Measure to the House, given the pain that it clearly has caused him. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for having shared with us the context and the excellent report from the committee under his chairmanship. I thank all committee members who contributed.

I probably should declare an interest, in that I, too, am an active member of the Church of England. The nearest that I have come to high office is that I was briefly the secretary of my PCC. The downside of being brought into your Lordships’ House was that, tragically, I was unable to be present in Durham on the evening that the PCC met and was forced to relinquish that role—I can tell noble Lords now that they will never get me back to do it again. None the less, because of that, it is an enormous privilege for me to be even a small part of this debate. I am so pleased to be able to do it.

Of course it was so different in November 2012, when the last attempt to resolve this issue was rejected by Synod. I was among those who were dismayed by the result as well as slightly baffled. As the most reverend Primate pointed out, for any Chief Whip in this House a 64% majority would be a result, and we did not think that he could have done much better. At a meeting with a bunch of parliamentarians from both Houses attended by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop, people were concerned. He explained that he would address the matter with urgency. People were very impressed—as were, I am sure, other noble Lords who were there—but a Member of another place said, “That is all very well, but the same people will be in Synod until the next election, so how can anything possibly change?”. I shall paraphrase what the most reverend Primate said, but he said, “I do not know, but I have worked in situations where very unlikely people have been reconciled and I believe in a God who is capable of doing miracles”. He may have had a point.

I pay tribute to the most reverend Primate for the commitment that he has brought to this process, the urgency that he has taken and the care and love that he has lavished on it. Working with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester and all members of the steering group of the General Synod from a range of persuasions has enabled him to help Synod come to the place where it felt able to support the Measure before us today.

English Cathedrals

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I am delighted to take this opportunity to speak today about Britain’s best building. I agree with a great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, with the exception of his very touching, if ultimately misguided, conviction that Lincoln Cathedral is the fairest in the country. You need not take my word for it—in a survey by the Guardian last year, Durham Cathedral came out with a ringing success, with 62% of people voting it the best building in Britain. That capitalised on its success a decade earlier, when the BBC had a similar poll and again Durham Cathedral was Britain’s favourite building. It is not hard to see why. One of the cathedral canons described one of the joys of her ministry as watching one of the many parties of schoolchildren who arrive. They come in a long crocodile, with two children hand in hand at the front. As the first children walk in, they gasp at the sheer scale and stop dead, so that the crocodile piles like dominoes as the rest keep coming in behind them. They struggle to make sense of the sheer splendour of the space. It had a very similar effect on me the first time I walked in. Strangely, the nave of the cathedral is not just enormous, it is somehow intimate. The current and rather wonderful Dean of Durham described the nave as being,

“large enough to lift our vision but intimate enough to hold us and affirm our humanity”.

In some ways, that is what cathedrals do in general, not simply architecturally.

As many noble Lords will know, Durham Cathedral was built on the site where monks bearing the body of the great northern saint, St Cuthbert, came and finally settled after travelling to escape Vikings. They had been moving around with Cuthbert’s relics and the Lindisfarne Gospels—which we look forward to welcoming home soon, at least briefly—and finally stopped after coming to a bend in the River Wear and getting stuck behind a milkmaid and a dun cow. When Cuthbert’s body refused to go any further at that point, they took this as a sign that they had chosen the right place. I am delighted that they chose such a beautiful spot, although I am sure the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester would be with me in saying that every now and again one might wish they had chosen a flatter spot. I was delighted to hear his maiden speech. It was eloquent and articulate, and I can only conclude that his undergraduate studies must have served him well. He is most welcome.

Durham Cathedral is more than an architectural marvel; it is a sacred space with a wonderful choir, which sings at eight services a week. However, that tradition is not just for a privileged minority. Durham Cathedral set up a wonderful music outreach programme, in which choristers went out to local primary schools across the county and sang for the children and then with the children. Over a period of weeks, the children would learn the music and then come together with other schools in a wonderful concert in the cathedral, which would be full of proud mums and dads who had never expected to hear their children sing music of this quality in a space such as that. It has been a wonderful developmental experience. In fact, one child who came to the cathedral with his school in exactly that fashion saw this, went back and told his mum and dad that this was what he wanted to do and some time later—two years ago—he became BBC Young Chorister of the Year. Since then, he has sung in Downing Street, at the Albert Hall and with Katherine Jenkins, and all because the school visited Durham Cathedral.

The cathedral draws people to itself from all over the world but it is also a centre for Durham itself. I went to Durham in 2006 to take a course at the university for just a year and I am still there—it has that effect on people. When I came to the end of the course, I graduated in the cathedral—an experience that many people have. During the Lumiere festival—a festival of light—the cathedral was completely filled with sculptures of light and flame, so anyone who thinks that our cathedrals are overly risk-averse or in any way scared by health and safety issues should visit Durham.

Some 120,000 people came to the Lumiere festival but 600,000 go through Durham Cathedral every year. For me, one of the great highlights of the year is the annual Durham Miners’ Gala—or the “Big Meeting”, as it is known locally—every July, when thousands of people descend on the city from across the county. This is where the traditional mining culture and trade union heritage of the county are celebrated. Even though the pits have closed, people come from every village and march through with their own brass band and banner. These are still markers of identity for the communities and the people in them. There is a service in the cathedral, the bands are marched in and the banners are paraded. When there is a new banner, the community brings it in for the bishop to bless. Last year, regrettably, we saw the 60th anniversary of the colliery disaster at Easington, in which 83 men and boys lost their lives. The Easington banner was trimmed with black and it was brought in so that the cathedral could mark that aspect of the community experience as well.

As the right reverend Prelates have said, people also bring their individual and private troubles to the cathedral. Every day, many people come in to light candles, write prayers or just sit in the quiet space. The volunteer chaplains at Durham, as elsewhere, hear all kinds of stories. There might be a soldier coming in to pray before being sent to Afghanistan, or perhaps bereaved people who do not have a faith but do not know where else to take their grief coming to the cathedral, trusting that they can somehow be held in that space. That is what a cathedral can be and what Durham certainly is—at the heart of a community to celebrate its joys, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, and to hold people in times of sorrow, to be with them and to provide a way for them to express that sorrow and be held as a community.

However, none of this is easy. It takes hundreds of staff and hundreds of volunteers. All kinds of people come through the cathedral. I am a tutor at St Chad’s College at Durham University. We, like every other college, have our annual St Chad’s Day service in the cathedral. During the service, students bring to the altar to be blessed emblems of their everyday student life, including sporting equipment, musical instruments, even the odd book, and this year, for no obviously discernible reason, a life-size cut-out of President Obama. All aspects of life are taken up and can be blessed and celebrated.

It seems to me that that role of community-gathering by institutions at the heart of our communities is one that the state has a responsibility to support in some way. Despite the fact that this is Britain’s best-loved building, was founded more than 900 years ago and is, as my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport said, on a UN World Heritage Site, it does not have any regular government funding. The £60,000 a week that it costs to maintain the cathedral and its associated buildings and ministries has to be found by the incredibly enterprising but, surely by now, tiring dean and chapter. I applaud them for being able to do this without charging the public to come into the cathedral. It is an incredibly difficult struggle every single week. However, if people had to pay to get in, it would be hard to see either how the individuals would feel able to use it in the way that I have described or how it could fulfil that role at the heart of the community which is so powerful for our city.

When the Minister considers her response to the debate, can she give us any comfort at all regarding how the state can recognise its responsibilities? I thought that the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was excellent and I would encourage her to reflect on it. Perhaps she could start an endowment to which others could be encouraged to contribute. Durham is a very poor county, yet people find the money to celebrate the cathedral. However, the cathedral is not just for us; it is for the entire nation and it is one of Europe’s architectural treasures.

Finally, I know that the Minister has an interest in Durham, and that might encourage her to visit the city at some point and to look around the cathedral. However, I urge any noble Lord or anyone reading this debate who has an interest in this matter to step into their cathedral, if they have not done so previously, to see what it can provide in an era when the gathering institutions in our communities are under threat. These can be spaces that welcome everybody, raise our vision and, at the same time, affirm and hold us in our humanity.

Equality: Pay and Opportunities

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I could not agree more with my noble friend. That was emphasised in the debate on women last week. I note that 24 per cent of all appointments to FTSE 100 boards are now women, up from 13 per cent the previous year. That is one area where it is extremely important to carry through the points that my noble friend made.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords—

[Lord Dannatt]

My Lords, on this day when we focus on women and are mindful of the loss of six soldiers in Afghanistan, bringing the number who have lost their lives in that campaign to 404, will the Minister and the whole House join in paying tribute to women— mothers, daughters, girlfriends and wives—who are at home while their men are on the front line? We must also bear in mind that some of those on the front line are women. We pay tribute to women who serve at home by supporting those who are on the front line on this day when we focus on women in particular.

Children: Parenting for Success in School

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to follow the thoughtful and reflective maiden speech of the right reverent Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. I serve with Bishop John on the council of St John’s College, Durham University, of which he is president, so I am particularly pleased to be able to introduce him to the House. Bishop John started his ministry as a curate in St Martin’s in the Bullring in Birmingham. He has also served in Bath and Wells, in Taunton, and for five years as Archdeacon of Canterbury. I understand that being an archdeacon is rather like being a Whip. It is a nice mix of the pastor and the guidance, so that may stand him in very good stead in this House.

I live in Durham and the first I ever heard of Bishop John was when I had just arrived and was crossing one of its many bridges—its highest one which has an enormous flight of stairs down to the river. I asked the person who was with me whether anyone had ever walked down them and she said, “The Bishop of Jarrow ran up and down them 20 times a day preparing to climb a mountain in the Himalayas”. I encourage noble Lords that if you want to speak to him about something in the corridor move quickly as you may find that he is out of your reach in no time. Bishop John, for anyone who knows him, has a lot of learning which he wears very lightly. He has wisdom, is articulate and everyone I spoke to talked of his good humour and bad jokes. Somebody offered me a photograph—I think a pantomime was mentioned—but I decided to leave it to them. They may be prepared to give it up in return for a decent dinner in the Peers’ Dining Room some time. I will pass on the name later.

As he said, he now chairs the board of education for the Church of England and will speak on education from the Bishops’ Benches, so I know that we will hear a lot more of him and I look forward very much to that. His skills, knowledge and talent will enrich the House, and he is most welcome.

Turning to today’s subject, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for introducing the debate, and I pay tribute to his long-standing commitment to children and families. I shall not rehearse the evidence, as others have done, about the importance of early childhood in brain development and in ensuring that children can attain their full potential, as well as educational attainment in later years. I am concerned about the degree to which we pay careful attention to the research because, as we heard earlier, it is complex. A large number of factors are at play. Social class interplays with parenting style, income, parental status and family structure, and it is hard to separate out causality from correlation, so we need to be careful in using evidence. However, it has been demonstrated that parenting is in itself a significant causal factor, even when one controls everything else. I am pleased that the debate has begun to separate out the idea that this is not about parents’ involvement in education, important though that is, but it is about parenting in the home and parenting itself, and how much difference that can make to children in later years.

I want to draw attention to two things. First, I shall pick up where the right reverend Prelate left off about the importance of couple-relationships. I have worked for some years with single parents, but I also know that most of them did not start out as single parents and never intended to be. Most children were born with both parents either married or resident at the same address, and then life had a way of intervening. One thing that tends to intervene is the arrival of children. There is a lot of established evidence that the arrival of children can place enormous pressure on the relationship between the parents, and conflict within the home can in turn have a significant effect on the child. A wonderful charity, One Plus One, uses a lot of research evidence to develop programmes to support families. Penny Mansfield, who runs it, said:

“This is where there’s a paradox. While a strong relationship between their mum and dad is good for babies, it seems that their arrival can disrupt or even weaken the relationship that should cradle their early life”.

So, support for couples is just as important as supporting children directly. I should be grateful if the Minister will say what steps the Government will be taking to support this important area of work.

Secondly, I welcome the growing acceptance that parenting skills can be learnt. So often, one talks to parents who assume that they should be able to do this naturally but when they get there, they struggle and are embarrassed to admit it and ask for help. It is as though asking for help is acknowledgement of failure as a parent, whereas if you were good you would somehow know how to do it. It is no accident that for a long time one charity had a strap line saying, “Because children come without instructions”. How best can the Government support people in getting that information across? One Plus One developed a brilliantly simple online tool called Baby Clues that parents can use to help them understand better how babies communicate and how they communicate with each other. Babies cannot talk, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, pointed out, but they can communicate. Being able to read the cues that babies offer can be crucial. If a father picks up his baby daughter and she pulls or turns away from him, he may interpret that as her not wanting him to hold her. In fact, she may be signalling that she is overstimulated. Knowing that one piece of information can make a difference to how he interprets the cues coming from the baby and how he in turn feels and reciprocates.

The online nature of that service is sometimes very important. One Plus One provided that along with the Couple Connection. They found that almost half a million parents used it. One quarter of them were men, but half of them said that they would not have used a face-to-face service.

Sometimes the state is not best placed to do that. I strongly urge the Government to think about how they can support the voluntary sector—organisations such as Home Start, One Plus One, Family Lives and a range of other voluntary organisations, many of which are now struggling considerably with their finances. How will the Government support voluntary organisations in supporting parents to do the things that they can do best?