International Women's Day

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, it is an enormous honour to respond on behalf of the Government to what has been an absolutely magnificent debate—a treasure trove of priceless experience, commitment and vision. All noble Lords’ contributions have ensured that the marking of the centenary year of International Women’s Day has rightly highlighted and focused the continued need to mark this day with both celebration and a need to remain proactive for positive change. I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, for securing the debate, a responsibility she has taken for quite some time. Over the years, she has worked tirelessly to ensure that the cause of equality for women is enhanced at every opportunity. We pay tribute to her and to all men and women who share our common vision.

We are particularly privileged that several noble Lords chose this debate to make their maiden speeches: the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Heyhoe-Flint, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, Lady King of Bow, Lady Morgan of Ely and Lady Lister of Burtersett. Their contributions were moving and insightful and I have no doubt that this House will be enormously enriched by their experience and wisdom.

Like my noble friend Lady Brinton, I see myself as a bit of a rebel. Sometimes it is better to shake loose the shackles found among our cultures, more so in some cultures. DfID supports the excellent work that she mentioned in Tanzania. My noble friend Lady Heyhoe-Flint and I share the love of cricket, she as an excellent player and I as an avid spectator. It is crucial to raise the profile of women in sport—that is a must—and to see increased diversity on sporting bodies. My noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington said, absolutely rightly, that there must be more women in political life. I congratulate her on all the work that she has done through women2win. I completely agree that unless men are signed up to this, we will make slow progress.

I am sure that I share the frustration of the noble Baroness, Lady King of Bow, but I am not as pessimistic. We are making slow progress, but it is progress. Unless we persist with the equality agenda, nothing changes. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, that we have prioritised the NHS, schools and early years provision. I understand completely her concerns. We are extending free early years education and care for children from the age of two through to four. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, eloquently spoke of the need to tackle poverty at home. It was right to raise the need for a cultural shift. To make a difference in society we need to make those cultural shifts—particularly me, I am afraid; I see it so often in the BME community. Along with her, I am a true Midlander. I have come across some feisty women from the Midlands who have made some incredible societal changes.

We have heard so eloquently in many of the contributions today of the great progress women have made in this country over the past 100 years. However, as every noble Lord has acknowledged, even as we reflect on the hope of our history we must also face squarely the reality of our present, a reality still marked by unfairness and hardship for too many women in this country and across the world. Yet women’s strength, skills and wisdom are humankind’s most untapped resource. The challenge for us, and what this debate has addressed so effectively, is how we can overcome the barriers women continue to face to ensure that this rich resource can be effectively tapped in ways that benefit us all. I am proud to be part of a Government wholeheartedly committed to that cause. We are unwavering in our dedication to build a society where no one is held back because of who they are, or where they come from. I can say that with personal conviction. I will battle always to ensure that equal opportunity becomes a norm.

In December last year, we published the first ever cross-government equality strategy, setting out our new approach of how we will, right across government, take action to tackle inequality. It is an approach aimed at changing culture, attitudes and tackling the causes of inequality, because we recognise that this is the only change that lasts.

Although it will be impossible to articulate responses to all the contributions that we have heard today, I will try to cover many of the themes of this debate through this speech and the notes I have made as I listened carefully to all contributions. I pledge to write to noble Lords about any questions that I am unable to answer today.

I begin by focusing on the international perspective. Many noble Members have drawn attention to the plight and immense challenges that women face worldwide. Last week, I attended the 55th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. All the other Ministers I spoke to, from EU and Commonwealth partners and elsewhere, shared our conviction that promoting gender equality is vital for meeting all the millennium development goals. Indeed, experience tells us that when women have the power to make their own choices, the chains of poverty can be broken and families can grow stronger. Yet women remain, in many parts of the globe, deprived of the most basic of human rights.

I share in the joy of noble Lords that UN Women—the single, new and powerful agency working for gender equality and the empowerment of women—was launched last week. The new agency will play a fundamental role in eroding the vast inequalities of opportunity that women face across the world. I attended the launch and was able to set out the UK’s high ambitions and congratulate the executive director, Michelle Bachelet, who I think will provide excellent leadership.

I assure noble Lords that the Government will continue in our efforts to make certain that real action is delivered for women, and that the agency is managed in a way which will command the confidence of the financial contributors whose support it needs. To this end we will announce core funding for the agency once its strategic plan outlining key priorities, a clear results framework and strategy for delivering results is available in June. In the mean time, we are in close contact with UN Women and are offering transitional funding and any other support the agency may need to ensure that it gets off to the strongest possible start.

For our part, the UK Government have committed to reaching 0.7 per cent of GNI in aid from 2013—a pledge we will enshrine in law. We have pledged to put women and girls at the front and centre of our development work. On Tuesday this week, following a review of Britain’s aid programme, the Secretary of State for International Development announced plans to provide 50 million people, many of them girls and women, with the means to help them work their way out of poverty. For example, economic empowerment of girls and women will be our priority. By 2015, we will create 150,000 new jobs for women in South Africa and 83,000 new jobs for women in Zimbabwe. In Pakistan, we will provide 897,000 women with microfinance. Central to these plans is our commitment to give women greater choice and access to family planning and safer births. We have announced that the UK will save the lives of at least 50,000 women in pregnancy and childbirth by 2015 and enable at least 10 million more women to access modern family planning. We are further ensuring that efforts to retain girls through primary schools and into secondary school are integrated in all our education programmes in developing countries. By 2015, the UK will be supporting 11 million children, many of them girls, to go to school in the poorest countries. We will make sure that at least 700,000 girls are supported through lower primary school.

I feel it is important to touch on where I see the role of women in recent events in the Middle East, as we have heard in all the news reports very little on that. History tells us that the active participation of women in conflict resolution is indispensable to the struggle against dictatorship and tyranny. We are closely co-ordinating with the UN, EU and leading international NGOs in the Middle East to prepare for a possible humanitarian response. Our partners all have clear gender and equality policies which will ensure that the rights of women are protected, and that their participation is an integral part of conflict resolution processes.

However, as this debate has so effectively highlighted, while we focus on helping women and girls abroad, we must not take our eyes off the ball at home. Many noble Lords have also put forward their concerns about the degree to which we will be able to make genuine progress for women in these challenging financial times. I do not believe in sugar-coating the situation we are in. We inherited a financial and economic situation of great seriousness as a result of dangerous debts and a deficit that is simply not sustainable. Cleaning up this mess requires making incredibly tough decisions and we take no pleasure in doing so, but they are decisions that I believe any Government working in the national interest would have to take. However, we have been very clear that we must do it in a way that protects the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, as the Prime Minister has consistently said. This includes women and their families, who we know greatly depend on public services. That is why, for example, we are lifting 880,000 of the lowest-paid workers out of income tax, the majority of whom are women. It is why we are protecting the lowest-paid public sector workers—the majority of whom are women—from the public sector pay freeze and increasing child tax credits for the poorest families, protecting against rises in child poverty.

However, we are not just about giving our people a Government who are more affordable. We are in government to lay the foundations of a fairer and stronger society. At a time when women are on the verge of making up half the UK workforce, we are working hard to address the obstacles they continue to face at work. Within weeks of coming to power, we asked the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, to look into ways of improving female representation on the boards of listed companies. As many of you will know, his report, which the Government have welcomed, was published last month. We will engage with business when considering his recommendations. Likewise, we encourage regulators, investors and executive search firms to take forward those recommendations that fall to them.

We have committed to extending the right to request flexible working to all employees—our aim being to make flexible working practices a normal, everyday part of the modern workplace. We will also promote a system of flexible parental leave that will help both parents strike an appropriate balance between their childcare responsibilities and their careers. We want to give parents the option to choose what works best for them and we will launch a consultation on this shortly.

The Government are also of the firm belief that if you do the same work as a man, you ought to be paid the same wage as a man. So we are working to promote equal pay through using transparency. For example, through the Equality Act 2010, we have stopped pay secrecy clauses being used to hide unfair behaviour in paying men and women differently. We are also currently in the process of developing a voluntary approach to pay reporting, aimed at private and voluntary sector organisations that employ 150 people or more. We will be consulting shortly on whether stronger measures are necessary in cases where there has been shown to be gender pay discrimination.

Let me turn to an issue that has been a persistent cause of concern—violence against women. The Government’s ambition is no less than to end violence against women and girls in all its grotesque forms. Achieving this will be no easy task and will require more than the piecemeal initiatives that we have seen thus far, which is why we have pledged to implement across government a more integrated strategy on violence against women, which we will be publishing shortly. We have already taken considerable measures to provide women’s services with a more secure future for them to continue their vital work in this area. While we expect local areas to continue to provide the majority of funding to these services, we want to lead by example. Therefore, in January of this year, we announced that a total of up to £3.5 million per year for three years will be spent on supporting rape crisis services. We are further committing an extra £28 million of Home Office funding for specialist services over the next four years. For the first time, the strategy will bring together work to tackle violence against women in the UK with details of the international approach to tackle this global problem. This includes the appointment of Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone as the overseas champion to lead on the UK’s international work.

However, the truth is that we will not be able to make true progress on gender equality if we do not have more women in decision-making roles. The Home Secretary will be talking to the Deputy Prime Minister to ensure that the issue of women’s representation in the House of Commons is considered when we look at our constitutional reform agenda. In the mean time, we have set a new aspiration that by the end of the Parliament at least half of all new appointees made to the boards of public bodies will be women. Last month we also published our proposals for increasing access to elected office by disabled people. Disabled people, many of whom are women, are dismally under-represented in both Chambers. Under our plans, disabled people will have access to a fund to help them overcome the barriers they face, which is just one part of a planned £1 million package aimed at improving their access. We are currently consulting on our proposals, and we hope to launch the scheme later in the year.

However, it is not just on elected positions where we are focusing our work. We want to work more closely with women and women’s organisations to help inform government policy making, which is why we made the decision to bring the core functions of the Women’s National Commission within the Government Equalities Office and within government. I know that many noble Lords here today have been very closely involved with the WNC. I want to say to them that the work and commitment of its former chairs and commissioners have been invaluable and much appreciated. However, to achieve our goals, we must do so in partnership with men. I pay tribute to all of those men who have shared our common goals and who help and support women to fulfil their full potential, including noble Lords who have participated in this debate. We want advice to be closer to Ministers and to provide real influence on decisions that the Government take. More importantly, we want there to be real democratic accountability for that advice. That accountability can reside only with elected politicians. We will shortly be launching a consultation which will set out the details of our new approach.

I will now attempt to address some of the issues raised by noble Lords today. Noble Lords will have to forgive me as my own scribbles are usually very unreadable, so I am afraid I have some from the Box, but I will start off by responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde. I absolutely agree with her. It is crucial that we do all that we can through our work, here in the House and outside, to ensure that young girls and women today feel that they can fully participate in our decision-making processes. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and I share so many common areas. Both of us are desperate to ensure that the equality agenda is never let onto the backburner. The noble Baroness made a point about my mentioning the financial crisis. I had to do so because unfortunately it is what we have inherited. It is a backdrop that we do not particularly feel very comfortable with but we are having to deal with the crisis. I hope that noble Lords around the Chamber will agree that, unless we come to this together, this crisis will not be resolved quickly or easily.

I should like to say a word about the impressive record of my noble friend Lady Trumpington during World War II at Bletchley Park. When I entered this House, I was absolutely daunted to speak to my noble friend, but I have found, in the four and a half years I have been here, that my noble friend has provided me with great insight and skill on how to deal with difficult customers. My noble friends Lady Ritchie and Lord Bates, the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and others, spoke about rape in conflict areas, and about Resolution 1325. The UK has intensified its efforts to secure improvements for women affected by conflict. In December we worked closely with our partners at the Security Council to agree a strengthened accountability mechanism to combat sexual violence in armed conflict. The UK’s action plan, which was jointly delivered on Resolution 1325 by the FCO, MoD, and DfID, will be monitored jointly. As I said, I find it difficult to read my writing.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Gould of Potternewton and Lady Royall of Blaisdon, talked about the casualties of the cuts. I have dealt with that within my speech, but we have protected healthcare and have put in additional resources to give social care extra money to ensure that the beneficiaries predominantly will be women. On the question about progress and the remaining challenges and problems facing particular groups, particularly the poor and the disabled, in response to the noble Baronesses, Lady Gould, Lady Scotland, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, Lady Heyhoe-Flint, Lady Jenkin, Lady Gardner, Lady Morgan of Ely, and Lady Benjamin, an overarching theme has emerged from today’s debate, in particular that noble Lords have stipulated that, although progress has been made, there is an awful lot that we have to do to get better representation in business, public and political life. To that end, I hope to reassure noble Lords that this Government are fully committed to ensuring that we stay on course as best we can. I am sure that we will be held to account at this Dispatch Box if we do not.

The noble Lord, Lord Sugar, the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe of Idlicote, Lady Heyhoe-Flint, Lady Crawley, and my noble friend Lord Sheikh, raised the theme of women in business and on boards. I think that I mentioned and outlined it in my presentation. I have been told that I have two minutes so I shall skip.

On DfID spending, we are proud to say that we have supported what was an agreement in all three main political parties to make sure that 0.7 per cent is enshrined in law. We are determined to keep women and girls at the heart of all the work that we do internationally and at home. Some of the questions asked through the bilateral and multilateral reviews were because we genuinely want to focus on programmes that are working well and want to make sure that we strengthen those programmes. We hope to give other donor countries a blueprint to work from.

I have been told that I have to sit down, so I shall say this quickly. I have pledged to write to noble Lords whose questions I have not answered. In conclusion, it has been an extremely informative and well supported debate. This is one of the most enjoyable debates we have and it is one to which noble Lords always contribute so well.