International Women’s Day: Progress on Global Gender Equality

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)]

My Lords, in this centenary year, when we celebrate the fact that some women in the UK got the right to vote in 1918, I would like to widen the lens to consider briefly the international scene as it is now—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, has referred to part of that already—and then I shall focus on one country in particular, Albania. This is not just because I visited it last month in the February Recess as a member of the UK’s IPU group, but because Albania provides an example of the challenges that must be overcome when seeking to achieve gender equality and the progress that can be made by determined efforts both within country and with the assistance of the UK and with UN Women.

The report published this month by the IPU Secretary-General shows that,

“progress made in women’s political involvement is slowing. With the exception of some countries that have made a headway because of political will, this has been, overall, a disappointing year”.

It is vital that women are part of decision-making institutions such as Parliament. It is fundamental, not just for gender equality but for democracy and the legitimacy of the process.

Last year we saw some positive developments in women’s participation in elections worldwide. A record number of women contested elections and more seats were won by women than in previous years, but this was largely due to measures such as electoral quotas for women. Whatever our views on gender quota systems, we cannot ignore the impact that they have. In the 20 countries where quotas were used, women won over 30% of the seats, while in the 16 countries where they were not used, they only won 17%. The trailblazers in the Americas were Argentina, Chile and Ecuador—all countries that have developed progressive legislation to promote women’s political leadership.

Elections across the Asia-Pacific region generally reflected the fact that gender norms continue to work against women’s entry into politics as societies lay stronger emphasis on women’s role in the unpaid, domestic sphere. New Zealand was the standout success where they elected the highest ever proportion of women MPs at 39% and Jacinda Ardern as their Prime Minister. Her pregnancy has given rise to a national debate on women’s ability to balance political leadership and motherhood.

Europe was the region making the greatest gains in the number of women MPs. The most prominent increase was in France, where President Macron’s party fielded gender-balanced lists.

Let me turn to Albania. Historically, it has had low numbers of women in elected office but it made significant progress last year. The proportion of women elected jumped from 18% to 28%. Why was this? It was because they benefited from a gender quota and from public fora organised by UN Women which enabled them to raise awareness of the importance of women playing a role in public life.

Our UK parliamentarians’ visit to Albania was timely. There is a significant focus on the western Balkans this year by the UK and the EU. We will host the EU western Balkans summit in London in May and I believe we hold our own summit on the western Balkans later in the summer. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in Munich last month:

“We have a long-standing and enduring commitment to the security, stability and prosperity of the region and this will never change”.


We are working with Governments from all six western Balkan countries to improve the rule of law, promote economic governance and attack the difficult issue of corruption across the region.

Albania is a middle-income democracy—a member of NATO, an EU candidate member state and a member of the Human Rights Council. It is a country that has emerged from the isolation of the Enver Hoxha years and is seeking a pathway to a secure Euro-Atlantic future. Our delegation was given a very warm welcome. I would like to put on record my thanks to the President, Prime Minister, Mayor of Tirana and all the MPs who gave so much of their time to have discussions with us. It was a pleasure to meet the All-Party Alliance of Women MPs to discuss the steps being taken to press for progress on gender equality.

In 2008, Albania passed a law on gender equality which, among other measures, established a minimum 30% quota for women and stipulated that one of the first three names on the political parties’ candidates list must be that of a female candidate. But it is not just a matter of numbers. It is vital that those who are elected are able to take up their places in safety and play their full part in politics.

The women MPs whom we met believed that the application of the gender quota has opened up many more opportunities for women and had some effect on countering prejudicial political attitudes generally. They believed that people are more convinced that women politicians are more stable, more responsible and more professional.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Hear, hear.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

Hear, hear, indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton says. I agree, and I am sure noble Lords would agree too.

In recent years, the Government of Albania have embarked on reforms to improve legal policy and institutional gender equality mechanisms—we use a rather convoluted vocabulary in these circumstances. The new national strategy has provided a strong gender equality vision in Albania. However, as will sound familiar, the financial and human resources to ensure proper implementation are currently insufficient.

Domestic violence prevention, protection, prosecution and referral mechanisms are weak. But they are a Government priority and they are improving for the first time. UN Women makes the point that women in Albania continue to face daunting challenges. Violence against women is common, with almost 60% of Albanian women aged 15 to 49 having experienced domestic violence. Forced and early marriage is still a problem in some, mainly rural, areas of the country. There is much more to do, but it is important to recognise that real progress has been made and for the UK to be a firm and constant ally in that progress.

The formidably able members of the Alliance of Women MPs are ready to meet these challenges, and I wish them well. Next week, when I am in New York at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, I will attend the Albania side event on the participation of women in politics in the western Balkans and hope to learn more.

After half a century of my life working to achieve gender equality, one big hope remains. I hope that one day we will no longer even have to try to defend the principle that equality for one half of the human race with the other half is, quite simply, right in itself. I always am the eternal optimist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had another great debate today. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on getting us off to a brilliant start. As usual, a range of challenges and celebrations characterised this International Women’s Day debate.

I want to mention two internal parliamentary things that we need to celebrate and which have not been mentioned so far. That, of course, is that we have our first woman Black Rod in 600 years here in our own House. We can also celebrate the fact that the chairman of the Press Gallery and the chairman of the Lobby are both women. They are Kate McCann and Emily Ashton. They issued a press release today—I shall not read it all out, but its headline reads:

“Top female lobby journalists say ‘we need to show it’s not an all-boys’ club’ on International Women’s Day”.


Well, hear, hear to that and congratulations to them.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, I shall not try to cover everything that has been said today, but there are a couple of things which I think are worth mentioning. I certainly support my noble friend Lord Young in his remarks about Malala and his saying that her addressing both Houses of Parliament would be a great thing to do. I do not think that it is the Government’s job to organise that; it is Parliament’s. I invite the Minister to support us in that ambition, but I would exonerate her from having to deliver it. We need to talk to the two Speakers and others to help us to do it.

I enjoyed in particular the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, about Albania, about which I did not know very much and have not thought very much. It was absolutely fascinating. I also enjoyed the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, about “Who would have thought?”—and quite right, too. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, was also quite right: our gains are fragile, and we have to fight to protect all of them all the way through. My noble friend Lady Donaghy’s appraisal was, as usual, devastating and quite correct. I enjoyed enormously the “Oscars speech” of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning—she was quite right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, was quite right to ask the question about CEDAW. However, the coalition Government abolished the Women’s National Commission, which was the main organisation that collected the views of British women to take to CEDAW. The noble Baroness is right—so what are we going to do about that? The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, was quite right and has my support in bringing forward the gender recognition Bill. As she said, it will be an important moment for a group which is small but has a very hard time. I have always thought that part of our job in the House of Lords is to champion those people and groups who may be quite small in number but who have the most difficult time and are discriminated against.

The noble Baroness, Lady Burt, was right to remind us that the World Economic Forum finds that the UK has a gender gap of 33% overall and is ranked 15th out of 144 countries. Against all the indices about economic empowerment and opportunity, we could probably say, “C-plus. Could do better”—that is the sort of grading that we are approaching; I think that most people would agree with that. One needs to ask why we do not do as well as we should on all those economic indices and I want to suggest something we might consider. I say this in tribute to the Women’s Budget Group of feminist economists, and it is about how we measure economic activity. We can see quite plainly the way in which GDP is measured: it takes into account the value produced through wage labour but not through unpaid domestic care work carried out predominantly by women in the home, even though all are essential to a well-functioning economy. Indeed, proponents of feminist economics argue that, in terms of methodology and focus, modern economics is too centred around men, with women’s contribution to the economy routinely ignored.

From a political perspective, feminist economics is an economics that focuses on what is needed to produce a gender-equal society. It argues that because modern economics is built around the idea of the “economic man”, it is ideologically weighted towards normalising men’s lives and consequently ignores the experience of women. This is important: we cannot expect models based on economic man to understand or even notice gender inequalities, let alone create policies to alleviate them. Would the Minister raise this issue with her right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and with the Prime Minister, and perhaps suggest that the Treasury take account of it in its economic policies?

This is important, because while there has been progress on some aspects of gender equality, women still experience structural inequality throughout their lives. For example, independent research carried out before Christmas revealed that women have borne 86% of the impact of austerity, largely through lost services and changes to the tax and benefits system. Were we measuring things differently, we would come to a different conclusion about that.

This morning I was privileged to attend an International Women’s Day conference organised by Unity Trust Bank and the Employee Ownership Association. We were addressing the empowerment of women across the world through employee ownership, social enterprise, co-operatives and profit-for-purpose businesses. By the way, women are eight times more likely to be the chair in a co-operative than in a FTSE 100 company. A recent British Council report that looked at social enterprise and women’s empowerment across the world found that 75% of women who start a social enterprise say that it had given them an increased sense of self-worth, while 64% reported enhanced self-confidence.

Such empowered women—social entrepreneurs—provide crucial role models for the next generation, so I congratulate the FCO and DfID on the support they have been giving to the British Council in the social enterprise programme, and I hope that will continue.

We have all been going to lots of celebrations of International Women’s Day. Yesterday I attended the launch of What Women Want 2.0. I remember—as I am sure will other noble Lords—the 1996 What Women Want survey, which was linked to the Beijing United Nations women’s conference. I took part in it. It had a great impact: 10,000 women took part in the survey. The same thing has happened again, and with social media it has generated a huge digital discourse. Fascinatingly, the results mirror almost exactly what women were asking for in 1996, which must make us pause to wonder why there is so much unfinished business: equal rights, equal pay, respect, a child and carer-friendly working world, an end to the culture of pornography and rape, more women in politics, more women running big organisations and companies, and a peaceful safe world for our children and the ones we love. It is very much the same as 1996, but the difference now is that this new wave of feminists—and in 1996 it was still unfashionable to call yourself a feminist—are not only saying that this is what women want but also that this is what women believe they deserve. I took great encouragement from the large and diverse group—hundreds of women—who came to Parliament yesterday.

As the health spokesperson, I finish by raising an issue about women’s health. It is to do with women and mental health. In 2003 we had an excellent women and mental health strategy. It was archived in 2011 by the coalition Government, which is a great shame. This is important: poor mental health among women has increased, with one in five experiencing common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, compared to one in eight among men. Young women are the group most at risk, experiencing alarmingly high rates of self-harm, eating disorders and PTSD. Women’s mental health is closely linked to their experiences of violence and abuse, which should not be surprising, and many women struggle to get the support they need from the mental health services. Agenda, a women’s organisation supporting women and girls at risk of abuse, poverty, poor mental health and homelessness, found that women and girls are regularly and repeatedly restrained in mental health settings, despite the risk of re-traumatising women who have already experienced violence and abuse.

Can the Minister tell us—if not now, perhaps she could ask her noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy to do so later—what steps are being taken to respond to women’s mental health needs and tackle the rise in mental ill-health among women? Is it not time for the new women’s mental health strategy that we need?

Role of Women in Public Life

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, may I say how much I welcome the debate in your Lordships’ House today, and compliment the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, and my noble friend and sister Lady Gale on their wonderful opening contributions? About the only partisan thing I intend to say is to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, and the other women on the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Benches—and it is not the first time I have said this in this House. It is possible that the Labour Party at the next general election will achieve a 50:50 gender balance in its representation. Frankly, if the women and sisters in your parties do not do something other than the encouragement that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, talked about, it will be a long time before we get gender balance overall in our Parliament. We in the Labour Party will not be able to do it all on our own.

It is said that history belongs to the victors, and that is true of who won the vote for women, as in everything else. As noble Lords have said, the smaller voices get drowned out. The history of how women won the vote tends to belong to the famous, the better educated, the most well-off families and leaders of the suffragette movement. Like my noble friends Lady Corston and Lady Massey, the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock, and Lady Byford, and others, I want to reflect on and pay tribute to the women who were less well known, less well off, and particularly those from Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield and other places in Yorkshire. It is said in my family that one of the women in our family was an active suffragette, and I would not be at all surprised. We are not known for our modesty and our quietness in my family, but I have no proof. In a way, that makes my point.

I am indebted to Jill Liddington, senior research fellow at Leeds University, to the women’s history project, and the contemporary articles from Bradford’s Telegraph and Argus. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, is quite right. In November 1881, St George’s Hall in Bradford was the location of a huge meeting—3,000 strong—at which Bradford’s provisional women’s suffrage committee was established. It presented the first petition to Parliament demanding the vote in 1882. As my noble friend Lady Kennedy put it, for almost 20 years, women and the men supporting them—I think of Keir Hardie, for example—more or less politely asked for the vote. In October 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst gathered a group of women in Manchester to form a new franchise campaign, the Women’s Social and Political Union, marking the end of what might be called the Victorian campaign. The next 10 years were to be very different, and sprinkled with the names of women whose part in the struggle gave them an indelible and honoured place in our history.

We all know that in 1913 the suffragette martyr, Emily Davison was killed beneath the King’s horse at the Derby. Less famous was Dora Thewlis, a 16 year-old Yorkshire mill worker who, in 1913, despite her impoverished upbringing, was moved to join a suffragette mission to break into the Houses of Parliament. She was thrown into prison and catapulted on to the front page of the Daily Mirror, which said, “Suffragettes storm the House”. The reporters and paparazzi christened her the “Baby Suffragette”. Indeed, in her clogs and mill dress she secured vital publicity for the cause. Again in February 1913, an elegant woman entered the Jewel House at the Tower of London. She removed an iron bar from her coat and threw it at the glass showcase containing insignia of the Order of Merit. Wrapped around the bar was a statement: “This is my protest against the Government’s treachery to the working women of Great Britain”. That was Leonora Cohen, a seamstress from Leeds.

It is only relatively recently that research has uncovered how Thewlis and other poor, often self-taught, Yorkshire women are among the forgotten heroines of the long struggle for the vote. They include Lilian Lenton; Edith Key, a mill worker born out of wedlock and given away by her mother; Lavena Saltonstall, a self-taught journalist; Elizabeth Pinnace, a rug weaver; and indeed, Leonora Cohen. Miss Newton—I do not know her Christian name—was distributing leaflets when a mob of boys picked her up, carried her round the town centre and dumped her on the town hall steps. It must have been terrifying. The local paper reports that she did not let go of her leaflets.

These women fought despite minimal schooling and the risk of censure and ridicule. During this time of the fight in Yorkshire, the organiser was none other than the youngest and least well known Pankhurst—Adela Pankhurst—who ended up in Australia in 1914, a casualty perhaps of the early splits in the suffragette movement. She was the Yorkshire organiser, known for being disruptive in public meetings. In Pudsey, she and fellow speakers were pelted with rotten oranges, eggs and peas. In 1908, as the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, she was the one who organised the Shipley Glen rally, attracting 100,000 people. Christabel Pankhurst’s contemporary account says:

“For weeks past all Bradford has been talking about the Yorkshire Suffrage Sunday held in Shipley Glen on May 31st … The vast audience of orderly and attentive persons prevented any effective disturbance, and at 5 o’clock a resolution calling upon the Government to enfranchise the women of this country … was carried with practical unanimity. The Prime Minister expects us to show a popular demand for votes for women. We offer to him the demand of the people of Bradford, which has already spoken officially through its City Council when it adopted some months ago a resolution similar to the one carried at the great open-air meeting on the Suffrage Sunday”.


Several other militant actions caught my attention. In 1910, when Winston Churchill came to a meeting at the same St George’s Hall, his visit ended in chaos, thanks to a handful of suffragettes, who secreted themselves under the platform and leapt out, apparently,

“thirsty, dishevelled and unwashed, but with hearts on fire for their cause”,

as the Telegraph and Argus said. The women waited until the hall filled up, then launched into their protest before being swiftly thrown out.

In 1913, the Bradford suffragettes dug up and scorched the second and 12th green at Bradford Moor golf club, replacing the flags with purple, green and white flags, and then went on to leave a trail of burning letter boxes across the district. Also in 1913, the reservoir at Chellow Dene turned a rich shade of purple, having been discoloured by wool dyes. It was believed to be the work of suffragettes, but it was never proved. Millions of gallons of water had to be drained. I am pleased to report that they had fun, too, turning up to see Ellen Terry at the Bradford Alhambra in full suffragette costume and getting a standing ovation. I pay tribute to these brave women. Indeed, we stand on their shoulders.

Creditworthiness Assessment Bill [HL]

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am aware that this Bill, conceived by the Big Issue and the noble Lord, Lord Bird, has been a long time in gestation, and I congratulate the noble Lord on bringing it to the House. As we all know, it is an important rite of passage for a noble Lord to introduce their own Private Member’s Bill, and I identify with the passion, ownership and protectiveness that come with it. In this case, I share them with the noble Lord and am very keen to offer my support to his timely and important piece of legislation.

I share the noble Lord’s motivation behind the Bill, which is to address the shoddy deal that people who rent, people on low incomes, those trying to turn their lives around and possibly the homeless get from our banks, credit agencies, loan sharks and businesses such as BrightHouse. As the noble Lord said, the ones who can least afford it are being ripped off.

It is no surprise to me that BrightHouse was ordered to repay £14.8 million to a quarter of a million of its customers after the Financial Conduct Authority found that it had not been a “responsible lender”. The regulator said that in many cases BrightHouse had not properly assessed its customers’ ability to repay and they would now be compensated. Indeed, I am very pleased that there are alternatives to BrightHouse, with fair and ethical lenders such as Fair for You, a not-for-profit credit provider. There are not enough of them and they are not as able as BrightHouse to market themselves.

I declare an interest as a senior fellow of the Young Foundation, which carried out research a year or so ago into the experience of those on low incomes with high-cost credit. Its report pointed out that access to credit is an important part of 21st-century living, as the noble Lord said, with many people relying on it to purchase everything from a new home to a mobile phone.

For some people, credit is also an important element in simply managing their day-to-day living. It can help people to deal with economic shocks, manage the consequences of an irregular income and spread the cost of high-price items. However, access to affordable credit can be a major challenge for many households, typically classified as “sub-prime”, who then turn to higher-cost options such as home credit, payday loans, rent-to-own, and pawnbrokers. Some lenders estimate that 12 million people in the UK are using the alternative, high-cost credit market because they lack access to mainstream credit. So the noble Lord is quite right to point out that there is a gross inequality in our society when it comes to access to the credit that everybody needs.

Following its research, the Young Foundation is next week launching an online campaign to raise awareness about making rent count—if anybody cares to look for it, it can be found on #rentcounts—and about how it costs more to be poor. It is doing this in partnership with the Big Issue and in support of the Bill.

The fact is that millions of people are excluded from affordable credit because they do not have a credit history. The financially excluded are in a Catch-22 situation. Without a credit score, applicants are declined by mainstream providers and considered riskier customers, but the only way to build a credit score is to have a form of credit, such as a mortgage or credit card, in the first place. Most people on low incomes manage their limited money very carefully, yet banks, utility companies and other retailers can discriminate against them, and indeed they do so. An estimated 2 million people, many of whom are social housing tenants, take out high-cost loans because they cannot access more affordable credit. That is unjust. As the noble Lord pointed out, it is a division in our society.

Individual credit providers—mortgage lenders, for example—are already able to use information such as rental history if it is available. The intention of the noble Lord’s Bill is to ensure that a customer’s rental and council tax payment histories are explicitly taken into account as part of this process, by giving the FCA the power to make a new rule to this effect. As the noble Lord said, the Big Issue has been working with the consumer credit reporting agency Experian to develop the Rental Exchange. That is an important project, which I accept has led to the Bill coming to this House. It has shown two things. The first is that the project is too complex and not well-known enough to be used as you would want it to be used. Secondly, it shows that market solutions are not necessarily the answer; it shows that one of the answers to the problems of credit rating and creditworthiness is a regulatory one.

I was pleased to receive a briefing from the RLA suggesting that, according to a survey of 3,000 of its members, 60% of landlords are in favour of the proposal. It says that the proposal is good both for landlords and for tenants. I agree and I thank the RLA for its briefing.

It seems to me that this is a good idea. The Government have indicated at certain times that they recognise that it is right to take account of the payment of rent to assess creditworthiness. As the noble Lord, Lord Bird, said, the Bill is about equity and fairness. Why should people who manage their money and pay their rent not have their diligence recognised in their credit rating? This is discrimination against renters and people on low income, so I hope that the Government will back the intention and the idea that is contained in this excellent proposal.

Nutrition: Women and Girls

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on bringing this important debate to the Floor of the House. I put my name down to speak in it because I wanted to identify myself and these Benches with this important issue—which my noble friend will also do—and at the end of my remarks I have a few questions for the Minister to consider.

It is inevitable that statistics will be bandied about during a debate like this, and some of them are startling and shaming. Malnutrition is partly responsible for 45% of childhood deaths. It destroys the most human potential on the planet. Children who are stunted are not just below their global peers in height but are behind them in cognitive development, and that will limit these children their whole lives. Nutrition is the biggest missed opportunity in global health, and were it solved, it would unleash waves of human potential. Yet overall, only 1% of foreign aid goes towards basic nutrition. Malnutrition is not starvation; malnourished children can be getting enough calories but not the right nutrients. That makes them more susceptible to conditions like pneumonia or diarrhoea—and more likely to die from them.

Over half of the world’s population lives in cities, a trend that will accelerate more quickly in the coming decades. In many cities, over half the population lives in informal settlements and slums, and rates of malnutrition are exceedingly high. Urban food systems in many countries are not developing rapidly enough to cope with the challenges of a fast-growing population, a factor which increases obesity levels as traditional diets are swapped for snacks and high-energy foods. So in many ways the global food system is broken.

Estimates seem to vary, but GAIN says that in total about 3.5 billion people—half the people on the planet today—are malnourished in one way or another. Each day, 795 million people go hungry. Each year, malnutrition undermines billions of people’s health. It kills probably 3.1 million children under five and leaves 161 million stunted. Rapid population growth and climate change pose new challenges to an already overburdened food system.

It is clearly obvious—I know that the British Government agree with this—that solving these problems can be done only as part of a collective global effort.

There are some simple and some not so simple solutions. Breast-feeding within the first hour and exclusively for the first six months is the first and simplest intervention and has long-term benefits for nutrition. However, of course it needs the mother to be healthy enough to breast-feed, and it requires the culture surrounding her to encourage her and requires her to understand that that is the best start she can give her child. Of course, the noble Baroness is quite right that this is a women’s issue in particular.

Experts are also figuring out how to breed crops with higher nutritional levels and how to get key nutrients in the food supply, in either salt or cooking oil. Those are promising approaches. However, nutrition is still one of the biggest mysteries in global health. Nutrition gets better as a country gets richer, but it does not seem to have any noticeable effects on positive outliers—there are poor countries with almost half their children undernourished.

In exploring some of the solutions put forward in this area, I came across the Nutrition Knowledge Bank—part of the GSMA mNutrition initiative to help tackle malnutrition in Africa and Asia—which is a collection of content on good nutritional practices and includes downloadable factsheets and mobile messages. This is not the complete answer, but it must be part of the solution, which is to do with knowledge and accessibility and using modern technology to improve nutritional practices, particularly for women and the vulnerable groups we have mentioned. I was struck by the work being undertaken by mNutrition in the various places in the world where it works.

The noble Baroness mentioned the targets that the World Health Organization put forward in this area. The Comprehensive Implementation Plan on Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition, which the WHO endorsed in Geneva in 2012, set some very high targets indeed for solving this problem. The plan proposes:

“40% reduction of the global number of children under five who are stunted … 50% reduction of anaemia in women of reproductive age … 30% reduction of low birth weight … no increase in childhood overweight … increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months … reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5%”.

Five action points flow from the World Health Organization’s proposals. I will not go through those in detail, but I ask the Minister whether the British Government are working to the action plan, to what effect and with what resources.

When the British Government were tackling tobacco as a public health issue, one of the biggest drivers of change in governmental practice were the strong rules about discussions with the tobacco industry. What discussions have been had, and what is the relationship, between the Government or DfID and the food industry? Some of the large companies providing food throughout the world that is not nutritious are based in the UK and Europe. Are the British Government thinking about how to deal with this fact? Indeed, is the Minister being lobbied by some of our large food manufacturers? When we were addressing the issue of tobacco, tobacco companies switched their attention from the first world to the third world because that was where they could make their money. That issue occurred to me and I genuinely do not know what the answer to the question is, but it is one that we need to ask. Does DfID have guidelines on this matter?

Has thought been given to how we will continue to be a leader in our aid programmes, particularly on this one, in a world in which we will not necessarily be able to join forces with our European colleagues in a coherent way, given that a lot of our aid work is currently done through our relationships with the European Union? Also, what consideration has the Minister given to the changing attitude of the new Administration in the United States of America to world aid and to the United Nations and its institutions? I accept that it might be too soon to say, but these are things that we need to think about.

Women: Public Life

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thornton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to increase the representation of women in public life.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, we are seeking to remove barriers that prevent women from progressing in public life. For example, the Government have established a centre for public appointments in the Cabinet Office to ensure that best practice is followed. As a result, the proportion of new female appointees to public boards has increased to nearly 40%. We have also supported political parties in increasing women’s representation through a combination of measures.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I invite the Minister to join me in celebrating the fact that the first four women were introduced into the House of Lords on this date in 1958. Since then, without doubt, great progress has been made in women’s representation in both Houses, from those few four. However, we seem to have got stuck at around 23% in both Houses. In the Commons, we in the Labour Party are doing our best to get equal representation, and a general election victory will increase our numbers further. What positive efforts are the two coalition parties each making to significantly increase the number of Liberal Democrat and Conservative women in the Commons? Does the Minister agree that, until and unless they do so, the mother of Parliaments will fall even further down the international table on equal representation?

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I would also celebrate 1958, when women were brought into this House. We have just seen one of my very able noble friends introduced, and I look forward to her contribution. Indeed, the Labour Party and the other parties have made all sorts of efforts to increase the number of women in Parliament. The Conservative Party now has 25% of women as general election candidates; the Labour Party is ahead with 42%, and 26% of the selected candidates for the Lib Dems are women—and 36% of candidates in our most winnable seats are women. Therefore, I look to the great British public to make sure that those seats indeed prove to be winnable.

Women: Wages

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thornton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to address any fall in wages of women in the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings shows that pay for women working both full-time and part-time is rising. To support these women, we are helping with the cost of childcare, introducing shared parental leave, extending flexible working to all and raising the income tax threshold, which means that 1.83 million women will be taken out of income tax by April 2015.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. Obviously we have a difference of opinion about the figures from the Office for National Statistics, because they tell us that between 2013 and 2014 women’s mean full-time earnings fell to what amounts to an average loss of £52 over the year. So, unlike men, women working full-time have seen their actual take-home pay fall. I ask the Minister to go back and look at those figures because that gender inequality is not acceptable. What steps will the Government take to remedy it?

[Baroness Northover]

I hope that the noble Baroness will be reassured that I have looked at the figures; I have them with me. She will know that the previous Government used the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, which is what I have just cited, and not the survey she cited. That is in part because of the difference between median and mean, which no doubt I do not have to go into in depth with her. Also, the survey she is looking at went up in the last quarter, while now there is a slight drop. However, it is self-reported, whereas the survey I am referring to is based on PAYE and HMRC information. That is the survey the Government use and which her Government used.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

We have no plans to put forward a candidate for the next round of elections in 2016. We look at all UN bodies very carefully and we do not rule out nominating a UK expert in the future, but as the previous Government also concluded, ensuring that such a UK expert is elected is resource intensive. As the noble Baroness knows, we liaise very closely with CEDAW, we put huge efforts into the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women and we put major funding and other support into UN Women, currently standing at £12.5 million a year.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, in the past the Women’s National Commission, which represented millions of women across the UK—and which was abolished by this Government in their first year in office—ensured that UK women’s voices were heard as part of the CEDAW process. Those were independent voices, not always comfortable for the UK Government because they were independent, which spoke about how the UK was progressing in its elimination of discrimination against women. Who represents UK women’s voices in this process, how are they being represented and how are we ensuring that women’s voices are being heard in this process—not just the Government’s voice on their progress on the elimination of discrimination?

[Baroness Northover]

There has been a huge amount of engagement. My honourable friends Jo Swinson and Jenny Willott, who is currently covering for Jo, have engaged with a number of NGOs. We have provided funding to the Women’s Resource Centre to enable it to launch its shadow report to the committee—that is, of course, an independent voice; we have provided the Equality and Human Rights Commission funding and other funding to enable people to feed into CEDAW and to report back on what CEDAW has said about the United Kingdom Government.

Women: Board Membership

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I thank my noble friend for her encouraging comments. I am sure that mentoring has indeed helped, and I think that transparency and pressure have helped as well.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, would the Minister care to tell the House how the Government are doing in increasing the number of women on public bodies? Those figures seem to be slightly more woeful than the ones for corporate bodies. Secondly, I am sure that the noble Baroness is aware that twice as many women as men leave the corporate sector once they reach mid-level management. Given that, does she agree that, alongside measures to increase the number of women at board level, we need to fix the leaks, as it were, in the talent pipeline and ensure that women are properly represented at every level of an organisation? How does she think this might be brought about?

[Baroness Northover]

We are aiming for women to account for 50% of new public appointments by 2015. They are currently averaging 45%, so we are moving in the right direction. The noble Baroness is quite right that we need to address this at every level. One of the beneficial things about the Davies approach to company boards is that it is also having an effect on the response of companies at other levels. This issue has to be addressed at every level.

Women: Contribution to Economic Life

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the speakers in today’s debate. I thank the Minister for landing us this debate and getting it extended to cover the whole world. We have benefited from her contribution about her brief and that of my noble friend Lady Royall, and indeed from the experience of women across the world. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, on his excellent maiden speech; we look forward to hearing more from him, as I am sure we will as time goes on. I also congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester on giving us, as it were, an update on the position of women bishops. I certainly look forward to sharing a glass of pink champagne with him—that is probably the best offer of this debate, actually. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, that I very much enjoyed his speech and was very inspired by it, and I do not think that I was alone in that.

I shall be concentrating on the contribution of women to our economy and the barriers that we face. I will be looking at what the Government could and should be doing to make the world a better place for women and make it easier for them to work. I come from a background where there was really never any question that women worked, as the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, mentioned. We had to go out to work in our family. When I grew up, it was only really middle-class women and those who lived in salaried families for whom the choice was available to stay at home and be homemakers and full-time mothers.

Although I agree with the Minister, who was quite right to say that our lives have been transformed and are quite different from those of our mothers, guess what—I do not think that that much has actually changed in the past 60 years regarding the economic imperatives for going out to work. Going out to work is not a choice for millions of women in the UK or indeed for millions of women across the world, working in factories and fields and from home. The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, rightly paid tribute to the work involved in childcare and caring, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin.

My grandma Edna had 11 children. During the Second World War she worked on the railways. She had to work, and was able to because of the provision of proper state-run nursery care. Her eldest daughter, Jean—my mother—had seven children. Leaving aside the contraception and family planning issues in my family, which have kept us all entertained over many years, she also worked. She ran two successful businesses. The option of being a full-time homemaker and mother was never open to her—and I am not sure she would have dreamt of taking it if it had. In this 2014 International Women’s Day debate, I pay my tribute to Jean and to Marie, Eileen and Alma, who are her sisters, for their contribution to our economy over the whole of their lives, and it is on their shoulders that I stand today—to use the image used by my noble friend Lady Royall. I do have a granddaughter. She is only six months old, but it is also for her future that I speak today.

Sometimes when we say from these Benches that the Government seem out of touch with the lives of women, it is because of this component. There is sometimes a lack of understanding of life as it is lived by millions of women for whom going out to work is not a choice and for whom childcare is essential. Today it is very expensive. Almost all women will have caring responsibilities at various times in their lives. We do not have to look very far to see the lives of ordinary women. I know that some of the women who clean our offices have other jobs. They go from here to work in supermarkets and other places to support their children through school and to pay increasing rent and travel costs. Their hard-working life is very typical and very common today, which is why, for example, the national minimum wage, which was fought against and opposed by the Conservative Party at the time, is so important. It is why trade unions have an important, vital role to play in supporting women in their fight for decent pay and conditions and in protecting their rights at work.

As the Minister said, there are more women in work today, which is indeed a cause for celebration. There are also more women who want to work who are not able to do so because jobs are not there, or they are too badly paid or, as my noble friend Lady Prosser said, training opportunities do not exist. Women Like Us is a brilliant organisation, and it is also a social enterprise—noble Lords may remember that I am very keen on social enterprises. More social enterprises than small businesses are headed by women, and they have a better survival rate than small businesses.

Women often have to look after their family and undertake other caring responsibilities. There are millions of women who give up their jobs to look after sick and ageing partners, parents and relatives and whose reward for their unpaid, loving care is not celebration or gratitude but to find it more difficult to re-enter the job market and often not at the level that they left it. I am glad that my noble friend Lady Bakewell celebrated our millions of carers.

The question I shall address today is what the Government are doing to make it easier, better and more equitable for women to work and how they match up to those challenges. It will be a bit of a report card. On Tuesday, we saw a headline story which asked the question: “What does childcare really cost?”. A report by the Family and Childcare Trust suggested that the cost of having two children looked after, even part-time, is more than the average mortgage. Over recent weeks, there has been mounting evidence of the impact that increasingly high childcare costs are having on family budgets and our economy, yet the Government seem to be in denial about this.

I dispute the rosy picture painted by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about the childcare situation. The cost of sending a child under two to nursery part-time—for 25 hours—is now more than £109 per week in Britain or £5,710 per year. The cost of a full-time—42 hours per week—nursery place for a child under two is almost £10,000. Over the past five years, childcare costs for under-twos have risen by 27%, meaning that parents are paying £1,214 more in 2014 than they did in 2009, and I remind noble Lords that wages have remained the same. This is a good example of the cost-of-living crisis facing ordinary families. Ironically, I heard yesterday of a nursery in south-west London which is putting up its fees and citing the cost-of-living crisis as the justification in the letter that it sent to parents. Perhaps it has missed the point there somewhere.

The average cost of an after-school club is now £48.19 a week, or £1,830 a year. Despite the legal obligation in the Childcare Act 2006 and Scotland’s early years framework to ensure enough childcare, only half—49%—of local authorities have enough childcare for working parents. Only a third—33%—of local authorities have enough childcare for children aged five to 11, and this has worsened in the past five years. Three-quarters—75%—of local authorities do not have enough childcare for disabled children; that was more than adequately amplified by my noble friend Lady Uddin.

Even Fraser Nelson of the Spectator, not someone I would normally quote, asked whether:

“Expensive child care is robbing Britain of its female talent”.

He says:

“In this way, the British economy loses out on the talents of a significant chunk of our high-skilled female population. It’s a form of economic self-harm. Making childcare tax-deductible would, in a great many cases, be a game-changer”.

Of course, it is above my pay grade and that of the Minister to comment on matters of tax and spending. However, it is interesting if even a right-wing commentator thinks that the inadequacies and costs of childcare are robbing the UK economy of female talent. My honourable friend Lucy Powell MP said recently:

“Early years places have fallen by 35,000 since 2009 and just half of local authorities report they have enough childcare for working parents”.

Last month, the IPPR highlighted that high childcare costs are stopping many mothers from working and that increasing maternal employment rates would benefit families and the economy to the tune of £1.5 billion a year. It is not cost-effective not to have effective childcare. There is also a question of flexibility of working practices which support working fathers. In Germany and Scandinavia we can see fathers changing the working culture so that they, for example, take the Friday off to undertake childcare responsibilities, even at a very senior level. Would the Minister care to tell us what the Government are doing to encourage working fathers to take their fair share of childcare among the Civil Service?

The Government are reducing work incentives for the lowest earners by cutting tax credit support and creating a two-tier system in universal credit. The Resolution Foundation has reported this will see the poorest families lose £1,000 a year to help pay for childcare. Unlike the current Government, on these Benches we completely understand how important it is that we address the issues with childcare and enable more parents, especially mums, to return to work or work longer hours.

Turning to older women, I think that there is much to celebrate about the labour market position of women over 50 in the UK. The employment rate for women in this age group is high compared with many other European countries, and it is increasing. The employment rate for women aged between 50 and 64 has increased by 14 percentage points over the past two decades, the greatest increase in any group. However, many older women will not recognise the rosy picture painted by these headline statistics. Half of the women aged 50 to 64 work in the delivery of public services, which means that they have been hit by the cuts disproportionately. Redundancies, pay freezes and increased contracting out of services feature prominently in the stories the TUC gathered from older women as part of the Age Immaterial project. Part-time work is prevalent among women over 50 and the majority of them earn less than £10,000 per year. The problems of low pay, lack of job security and weak employment rights are exacerbated for those in precarious forms of work such as zero-hours contracts, as has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lady Crawley.

I very much welcome the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, recognised that women are experiencing disproportionate effects of the austerity agenda. Indeed, the coalition Government have removed support for childcare, capped maternity pay and have chosen to give a tax break to married couples where one spouse does not work or works a few hours. I do not think that there is any evidence that less than £4 a week is a good or appropriate way to encourage people to marry. In five out of six cases the benefit will be paid to the husband. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, many families will face a £200 penalty if mum returns to work full-time. In December the official figures revealed that the gender pay gap had increased in 2012-13 for the first time in five years. Under Labour, the pay gap fell by 7.7%.

I will glance at our record. We introduced the national minimum wage, which has had such a disproportionately positive effect on low-paid women. We opened 3,500 Sure Start centres to support parents and young families. We increased maternity leave to nine months and extended total maternity leave to a full year. We doubled maternity pay, and from 2009 gave millions of parents with children under 16 the right to flexible working. We introduced working tax credit and child tax credit and legislated against maternity and sex discrimination in the workplace.

What will we do when we are elected next year? Under David Cameron, one in four women earn less than the living wage, but I am happy to tell noble Lords that we will make work pay for women by allowing firms to claim back a third of the cost of raising their staff’s wages to a living wage. We will strengthen the minimum wage and tackle the abuse of zero-hours contracts. We will give every working family 25 hours of free childcare for their three and four year-olds, 38 weeks a year—an increase of 10 hours on the current offer. We will deliver a primary childcare guarantee, which will ensure that the parents of primary school pupils are able to access breakfast and after-school clubs through their school between 8 am and 6 pm. We will back more women to start their own businesses, which my noble friend Lady Crawley mentioned. Private firms will be able to claim back a third of the cost of raising their staff’s wage to a living wage. This evidence shows that we still think that the Government are out of touch with the lives of many women.

We have had some magnificent and fabulous speeches today, from my noble friend Lord Haskel, the noble Baronesses, Lady Seccombe, Lady Howe and Lady Afshar, and my noble friend Lady Howells. On the issue of parliamentary selections I say to the noble Baronesses, Lady Fookes and Lady Jenkin, that we tried a woman on every shortlist in the 1980s and it did not work. It was tokenism. The only way to increase the number and representation of women—I say this to the Liberal Democrats, and I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, agrees with me on this—is to have all-women shortlists. That is the only way that you will persuade your parties to select women and increase the number of women. We would welcome that and would support noble Lords in doing it.

I struggle to give better than five out of 10 for the Government’s support for working women and their families. That five is because the Minister has great words to say and very good intentions, which I hope will be translated into the policies of her party. However, on this International Women’s Day 2014, the UK Government need to do better.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 (Consequential and Contrary Provisions and Scotland) Order 2014

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I do not want to detain your Lordships, but I was not part of your Lordships’ House when noble Lords agreed to pass equal marriage, so I am going to take my opportunity now.

I have to declare an interest. I am married to a man, and it is not the first time that I have been married. I remember going on an extended interview process to become one of the most senior police officers in the UK. One of the questions in the pre-interview questionnaire was, “What is the most difficult decision you have ever had to make, first, in your professional life and, secondly, in your private life?”. In the answer to the second, I put, “Having been married for five years, telling my wife that I was gay”. I never believed that I would be able to marry again.

In 2010 I took part in a debate at the Liberal Democrat Party conference where we were the first party to adopt equal marriage as party policy. I told the people at that conference about my marriage. Having fallen in love with a Norwegian, in January 2009—Norway having decided to abolish civil partnerships and allow everybody, whether they were opposite-sex or same-sex couples, to get married—I stood in the courthouse in Oslo in front of a judge. When she said, “We are here today to witness the marriage of Brian and Petter”, the difference between a civil partnership and a marriage really struck home.

I was not part of your Lordships’ House when the legislation on equal marriage was passed, but I have to tell noble Lords what a difference it makes to me, to my husband, and to people like me. It is important that your Lordships pass these statutory instruments today.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I think we would all agree—certainly those of us who joined forces last summer to ensure that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill reached the statute book—that today is a cause for celebration. I was reminded by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, about that happy day when I found myself outside on the pavement with the Minister holding a placard that said, “Girls marry girls—get over it”. I have the picture on my phone and I promise that I will publish it at some point. That was indeed a happy day and a happy event, and today we are taking another step nearer the first time that an actual marriage can take place between a same-sex couple.

I know that the Government have been determined to allow that happy event to happen as soon as possible and I congratulate them on doing that. This means that there are still some matters outstanding, and the fact that we want this to happen as soon as possible should not excuse us from the need to do some scrutiny.

I have given the Minister notice of a few questions, some of which have already been asked today. First, of course, how soon can the conversion of a civil partnership to a same-sex marriage take place and what timetable might achieve that? The Act provides for same-sex couples seeking to convert civil partnerships into marriages to do so, as well as for an opposite-sex married couple to remain married where one of the partners wishes to change gender—an important matter which we dealt with last summer. These are provisions which the update says should come into force by the end of the year. I would be grateful if the Minister could give some indication of when further necessary legislation will be brought forward, as well as providing an update on when we might expect to see these provisions come into force.

From the commencement of the Scottish Act, if a trans person living in England or Wales wishes to get married and wants to ensure that they could not later be subject to spousal veto when applying for gender recognition while in that marriage, they could well be able to circumvent this process by opting to get married in Scotland—but why should they? Can the Minister explain whether a couple whose marriage was registered in Scotland but who subsequently lived in England would be able to apply to the sheriff courts for their interim GRC, or will the Government review and revise this entire area so that they do not need to do so?

At present, of the 11 legal jurisdictions in Europe which have same-sex marriage, only those trans people in existing marriages registered in the legal jurisdiction of England and Wales are subject to a spousal veto on their access to gender recognition while married. The other 10 legal jurisdictions, including Scotland, allow gender recognition without requiring the consent of the trans person’s spouse. We discussed this issue during the passage of the Bill but it is not covered, obviously, by these orders. Does the Minister at least accept that this issue does not sit well with the drive for equality for all groups? Will she therefore seek to continue working on this to make the changes that trans people want to see?

Turning to the issue of pensions, which was debated at length and with some passion throughout the passage of the Bill, Section 16 places a duty on the Secretary of State to arrange a review, as we have recognised. I am very happy to hear that this seems to be on track and will be published within the year. However, is a consultation going to take place? As far as I am aware, as yet there is no public consultation being issued by the Department for Work and Pensions. Given that there are only 18 weeks left between now and when the review is supposed to be complete, what is going to happen and how might that consultation take place? Indeed, if it is to be launched, can the Minister offer an assurance that the Government will not simply be listening to the occupational pensions industry, which will quite clearly have strong and shared financial interests in this report saying one thing, and that there will be a consultation which listens to and consults independent experts?

If the Secretary of State decides in his report that the law on survivor benefits should be changed to fit in with the spirit of the Act, will the Minister ensure that the necessary orders are brought forward quickly to redress the inequality as soon as possible? As I am sure the noble Baroness will be aware, this issue has been in the news over the past week following the conclusion of a case under the Employment Appeal Tribunal, which found that it was legal under European law for employers and pension scheme trustees to discriminate against same-sex couples. If it becomes clear that companies are not going to do this voluntarily, the sooner the Government complete their deliberations the better for all the couples concerned—even if it is just that they will now know where they will stand financially in later life and be able to plan accordingly.