Points of Order

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

That is extraordinarily eloquent and generous. I do not want to comment on anything the right hon. Gentleman has said about me but I want instead to endorse in triplicate what he has just said about the Right Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, a great servant to Parliament, in her place in the Under Gallery now, a source of comfort and inspiration to me for the last nine years. There has not been a single day when I have not felt delighted and reinforced in my insistence, and it was my insistence, that Rose should be appointed to that role. There is always scope for legitimate difference of opinion, but there were people—part of what I have to say outside of this place I will call the bigot faction—who volunteered their views as to what an inapposite appointment I had made with all the force and insistence at their disposal, which sadly from their point of view were in inverse proportion to their knowledge of the subject matter under discussion. They had not met Rose, they did not know her, they could not form a view; they had a stupid, dim-witted, atavistic, racist and rancid opposition to the Rev. Rose. I was right, they were wrong: the House loves her. [Applause.]

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to say a huge thank you for all that you have done for Back Benchers and for democracy, especially throughout this time as we discuss Brexit. I also want to thank you for all the firsts you have done in the House. In the Stonewall list of LGBT+ employers, Parliament has moved up now to 23rd; I think we were down in the 70s and 80s before. Parliament has been ranked as one of the best 100 employers at the race equality awards; that is because of your guidance and leadership, Mr Speaker. And thank you for appointing Rev. Rose; I think she is in the corner crying, with the rest of us. Thank you so much, Mr Speaker; she has been amazing, as have you.

We have also had the first Muslim Serjeant at Arms and the first female Clerk Assistant of the House, and young people being allowed to debate in this Chamber has come under you, Mr Speaker. There are also all the charity events that you have held in Speaker’s House—such as for British sign language and the Windrush—and being able to raise the flag for International Women’s Day outside Parliament for the first time, and Black History Month. I could go on about all that you have done to modernise this place, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Mr Speaker.

I hope you can just bear with me, Mr Speaker, because equality is a theme that you have championed. Following last week’s resignation, I am deeply concerned that the position that I shadow, Minister for Women and Equalities, remains vacant, and that, with more than half of the current Cabinet opposed to equal marriage, this brief has been undermined deliberately to roll back the hard fought-for rights and protections. Mr Speaker, being a bit of a “girly swot”, I have calculated that when the next person is appointed they will be the 10th to be appointed to the brief since 2010. The post has moved Departments four times, and a new Minister would be the fifth I will have shadowed in just two years. [Interruption.] Government Members may groan, but they do not feel even half the pain that we feel on this side of the House.

Trump recently described Boris Johnson as Britain’s Trump and he was grinning like a Cheshire cat. In the United States we have seen what can happen when a racist and sexist is placed in charge of a country: implementing a Muslim ban on people arriving and leaving the country, banning trans people from serving in the military, pushing to allow businesses to turn LGBT customers away and making it easier for LGBT people to be sacked, or telling “the squad”, a group of four elected Congresswomen of colour, to go back to their countries. Our Prime Minister is modelling his campaign on his mate Trump. This is proven by the fact that No. 10 recently carried out a so-called culture war on polling on trans people. It is a disgrace to equalities, and it is so obvious that the Tories do not care about this brief. Women have suffered 87% of the cuts, and we have seen a 375% rise in hate crime. We cannot allow this kind of hateful and divisive politics to continue to infect the UK. If any Government is in need of a Minister to fight against racism, sexism and homophobia, it is this one.

Mr Speaker, with your commitment to equality, I wonder if you can shed some light on this. Do you know when the Prime Minister will stop passing this vitally important brief around like an inconvenience, and when he will start treating the Women and Equalities brief with the respect that it deserves and appoint a full-time Secretary of State to the brief, and a Department, just as Labour has pledged to do?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady has said what she thought; it is on the record and people can make their own assessment of it. Let me just say that I do regard the portfolio as a matter of the utmost importance, and one of the encouraging phenomena of recent years has been the emergence of an apparent consensus across the House as to the importance of this set of issues. That is precious, and it should be cherished. It would be perilous if it were lost or put at risk. I very much hope that in the very difficult circumstances that we now face, there will be a replacement Minister soon. This is not a matter for me, but I feel very confident that an appointment will be made before very long.

These issues have to be focused on with a relentless tenacity. You cannot just take them for granted or think, “Job done.” Sadly, all too often, we observe people in very, very, very senior positions around the world who do not appear to be adequately conscious—if conscious at all—of the scale of their responsibilities. With power comes responsibility. For example, we do not want to hear and we utterly deprecate the use of language such as “Go back” as a political tool. The Government rightly criticised this; it is unacceptable and it should not be ignored. It has to be called out. We need a focus for these issues, and the existence of a Minister is a part of that focus, mirrored by the Select Committee that scrutinises the Minister’s work. We have an excellent Women and Equalities Committee—it is to the great credit of the Government that they established it—and it is important that it should have a Minister to scrutinise.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Women (Victoria Atkins)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her unrelenting campaign to ensure that this issue is brought before the House. Forced marriage is a terrible form of abuse, and this Government and this Prime Minister have made protecting women and girls from violence and supporting victims of forced marriage a key priority. We have introduced a range of measures to tackle this crime, including creating a specific forced marriage offence and criminalising the breach of forced marriage protection orders.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Earlier, one of the Ministers said that they were unfamiliar with some of the comments made by the Conservative candidates for the leadership, so I would like to do my public duty. The right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) has refused to lift non-disclosure agreements that he has entered into with some women, and he wants to abolish the Government Equalities Office. The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) referred to black people as “piccaninnies” and Muslim women who wear the niqab as “letter boxes” or “bank robbers”. The right hon. Member for Tatton (Ms McVey) says that there is a problem with kids learning about LGBT+ issues. The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) said that having children would make her a better Prime Minister. The right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) said that he did not condemn all paedophiles. Finally, the Minister for Women and Equalities’ preferred candidate, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), is going to halve the abortion limit to 12 weeks. In the light of all that, will the Minister confirm whether equalities will progress or regress under the new Prime Minister?

[Penny Mordaunt]

On the accusations that the hon. Lady makes against my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, may I gently point out that it was under his tenure that the scheme for Northern Ireland was introduced, funded from England’s NHS budget? I also gently say that the hon. Lady may like to concentrate on her own side’s performance on equalities. The Conservative party has had two female Prime Ministers, and we may have our third in a few weeks, so I encourage the Opposition to get their own act together before casting aspersions on ours.

Equal Franchise Act 1928

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Buck. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) on securing this important debate. It has been great to listen to all these names, which are now in Hansard in perpetuity, and know that we have done our bit to recognise working-class women who have been, and are still, often ignored.

In history, working-class women, the poorer suffragettes, were referred to as “women quite unknown”. My hon. Friend mentioned how few opportunities there were for working-class women. She talked about inequality and the gender pay gap, and the way that they are still poorer female citizens. She also mentioned 50:50 Parliament, which we campaign on with Frances Scott, who is here today. We need to ensure that upskirting and revenge porn become sexual offences so that women who suffer do not have to make themselves publicly known.

How can we achieve all that in this day and age? We can all play our part. We can use inclusion riders, like actors who say, “I will not star in a film if it does not involve diversity in its pipeline and creation.” We have also talked about various sections of the Equality Act 2010. I hope that when the Minister responds, she might be tempted to announce that the Government will enact section 1 of the Act, which would force public bodies to take into account socioeconomic disadvantage when making policy decisions. If we had more consideration of that when policies were being developed, we would see fewer policies like the third-child policy, and fewer policies like those under which 86% of cuts fall on the shoulders of women and black, Asian and minority ethnic women suffer more than any other group.

My hon. Friend also mentioned my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), who is recovering. The proxy vote debate, which was supposed to be today, has been postponed. I had hoped that all the women MPs who were ready and poised to speak would come to this debate to at least listen or even make their speeches, because then they would not have been wasted.

There were many great contributions to the debate, and I will touch on a few. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) flew the flag for working-class women, the different types of women and the strength of east London women, which I can obviously attest to. She gave a voice to the match women and talked about the leaders of those times, who were buried in paupers’ graves after all their struggles.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) talked about Nancy Astor and how we have to talk about the journeys of women, even those we disagree with. Of course, I often talk about women I disagree with and the policies they make. Their story deserves to be told, just like everybody else’s. It is important that we stand up for other people’s rights. Let us imagine how quickly we would move towards equality if all men spoke about the rights of women, all white people spoke about the equality of black people, and all straight people spoke about LGBT+ people. We must all play our part in speaking up for equality, because we all play a part in each other’s journey. As Martin Luther King said:

“I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) spoke about Margaret Bondfield, the first female Minister under Labour, which made me think about all the firsts that Labour has achieved. I would like to read them out, but there are so many that it would take at least an hour, and I do not have that much time. Some of them are to be celebrated: we have had the first black female MP, the first lesbian Minister and the first black female Minister—that is me. There are also some sad firsts, such as Maureen Colquhoun, a Labour MP who was born in 1928, who was gay and outed by the Daily Mail, which still happens today. Newspapers still think that that is okay, which shows how far we have to go.

We also heard some great interventions about 1950s women. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), who is no longer in his place, for wearing the colours of the suffragettes in his turban. He talked about Princess Sophia Duleep Singh and the hidden histories that have been ignored or forgotten, which this debate has shined a light on.

Poorer women were treated worse than middle-class women. They were treated more brutally by the police, prison wardens and magistrates. As I said, I am pleased that we are recognising them. To remember them and their struggle is to remember our own struggle and to adopt their struggle as our own.

As has been said, alongside the growing women’s suffrage movement was the women’s labour movement, which included groups such as the Women’s Protective and Provident League, the Co-operative Women’s Guild, the Women’s Trade Union Association and women in the young Independent Labour party, which would probably be known as Momentum today. Those women were referred to as “radical suffragists”. I cannot see what was radical about them, apart from wanting equality. However, those “radical suffragists” included people such as Sarah Reddish, Ada Nield Chew, Helen Silcock and Selina Cooper. Those women mobilised other women in the trade union movement—in fact, they mobilised almost 30,000 people to sign a suffrage petition, and that was without the internet, Twitter, Facebook, mobile phones and WhatsApp.

Ada Nield Chew said that if the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ request had been granted in 1884,

“the entire class of wealthy women would be enfranchised” ,

but, as she added,

“the great body of working women, married or single, would be voteless still”.

That message rings true with me. The radical suffragists, as they were known, began to move away from the NUWSS, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham spoke about. That reminded me of something that I did recently. I was a member of a women’s WhatsApp group, but I became so frustrated with trying to get members of that group to understand and consider the intersectionality of women that in the end I left the group, and I was not the only one to do so. It did not feel radical to leave that group; it obviously just entailed the click of a button. However, it reminded me of those powerful working-class women and it made me realise that the fight for recognition of, and equality for, all women is a constant struggle. We have to talk about it and fight for it constantly, otherwise we will be dragged backwards. That is really a stark realisation, because I would have hoped that we would have progressed.

I cannot confirm or deny whether I joined a new radical women’s WhatsApp group, but those working-class women broke away and formed “Womanhood Suffrage”, or the Women’s Social and Political Union. The WSPU’s strapline and objective was:

“A vote for every adult woman, regardless of whether she owned property.”

When working-class women fight, they fight for everybody; they do not just fight for a select group. That is a lesson that truly still needs to be learned in some feminist circles. What those women were fighting for sounds really simple now; it does not sound radical to me at all. As my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury asked, if all women had received the vote earlier, how far towards equality would we be now? We might not even be having this debate.

As we have heard, the first march was from east London, and it included trade unionists such as Minnie Baldock, Sylvia Pankhurst and Dora Montefiore, who were working-class women using their non-working day to march. They worked six days a week and on the one day that they were not working they marched to Westminster and back. In a way, it can be said that working-class women committed more, in that they sacrificed more. They had the daily struggles of life. They had no home help; when they left to march on that one day off, they had to go back home afterwards and do everything else that they needed to. They had less time, less money and less formal education than many others, yet still they fought, and fought for everybody. They fought for food, they fought for their rights, they fought for dignity and respect, and they fought for every woman’s rights. And they were known as radical—I really do not get it.

Later, the WSPU was taken over by wealthy women, and it moved away from its roots in the labour movement and the trade union movement. It became ineffective and it was too far removed from its roots; some people would say that has been repeated in some circles. However, Sylvia Pankhurst reclaimed the movement, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury that we should perhaps see a statue of Sylvia Pankhurst. Not all women were up for the fight. Some women described the working-class women’s movement in this way:

“A working women’s movement was of no value—working women were the weakest portion of the sex...their lives were too hard, their education too meagre to equip them for the contest.”

That was an insult, but let us hope that we are moving forward.

The fact is that the Representation of the People Act 1918 enabled the representation of less than half the adult women in the UK. However, the Equal Franchise Act 1928 was literally equal. Women fought not only for the right to vote but for economic and social rights, through the labour movement and the trade union movement. We are still fighting for those rights today, as we have heard from many hon. Members.

To forget the place of working-class women, disabled women and black women in history is to be complicit in the misogynistic class war, and to forget the interconnectivity of the Labour party and the labour movement in that is to do a disservice to the truth. In this day and age of fake news, the truth has never been so important, so it is vital that we correct the record and put on the record the names of these working-class women at each and every opportunity that we get.

This year saw the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square, and I am thankful to the Mayor of London for making that happen. There are about 58 or so names of women, mainly those of working-class women, around the plinth. However, I would like to see a statue of Sarah Parker Remond, the only black woman known to have signed the Representation of the People Act 1918. I am pleased to say that the Mayor of London and his team are meeting me to discuss that proposal. While I am there, I might even put in a plug for a little statue of Sylvia Pankhurst, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) suggested.

Our job here in Parliament is to give a voice to the voiceless.

[Luke Pollard]

When I first got into Parliament, I tabled a question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, asking what the official figures were for the number of men and the number of women represented in statues and other public art. However, the UK Government do not keep those statistics. I think we should. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should encourage Ministers to start recording equality in our public art, so that we understand the scale of the challenge ahead of us?

[Dawn Butler]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I absolutely agree, because only then will we be able to measure how far we have come and what still needs to be done.

[Lyn Brown]

While my hon. Friend is advocating on behalf of the statues that we could build, maybe we could have a statue that had some of the working-class women around it, such as Minnie Baldock and Annie Kenney; maybe they could stand shoulder to shoulder with the other women she wants on the plinth. Maybe we could have a really big platform with lots of women from the suffrage movement standing tall.

[Dawn Butler]

How amazing would it be to walk around different parts of London and the country, and see statues of women, and learn about their history, and know that we have made that happen? People always bang on about Britain having had two female Prime Ministers. Well, we have a female Prime Minister—I am not saying that I want statues of the female Prime Minister going up all around the place, but I am saying that the female Prime Minister can make the decision. She can say, “Right, I will give the money for this to happen, so that we can embrace our rich and colourful and socialist history”, because our job is to give a voice to the voiceless and to uncover the hidden stories. Should I have missed out the word “socialist” there? [Laughter.] Our job is to put a name to “A.N. Other” and to “Anonymous”, to ensure that history becomes herstory, and that herstory paints a true picture of a moment in time.

Working-class women fought for all women, so when women of today fight for the select, privileged few, I find it hard to refer to them as feminists, and when they use their voice to amplify their privilege and ignore the cries of the less fortunate, I find it hard to support the cause wholeheartedly. I hope that in time people will use their power and privilege for progress. People often talk about the legacy that they will leave behind; I think that we need to talk about the foundation that we will leave behind. Women who are on the ladder of success should leave behind them the foundation for an escalator, and the women who are on the escalator of success should leave behind them the foundation for a lift, so that those women who come behind us get to that destination, quicker and more smoothly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Lady will need to wait for another 90 minutes in another Westminster Hall debate for the full discussion on that.

I thank the hon. Member for Canterbury for her commitment to equality for all members of our society. I am aware of the work she does with the 50:50 Parliament campaign, and I pay tribute to it. I am glad she shares my view and the Government’s view that no one in our society is more important than anyone else. Every individual, no matter their gender or background, has an equal role and, in relation to my particular brief, an equal right to vote.

As a fellow female parliamentarian, it is important to acknowledge the efforts of the brilliant women who paved the way for us to be here today. I thank the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) for beginning the Back-Bench contributions with an exposition of the history that is at play here. It is important to think about the past as we consider our present and our future. Without the tireless efforts of those women and the men who championed their cause, perhaps most of us in this room would not have a voice in society, let alone in this place. I am proud to be part of the present, when we have the most diverse Parliament in British history, but there is a lot more to do.

We all welcome such initiatives as the 50:50 campaign, the #AskHerToStand campaign and Parliament’s own Vote 100 project, which make the goal of gender balance a long-needed reality. I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) for reminding us that progress needs to be encouraged and supported internationally.

This week is National Democracy Week, which has been timed to coincide with Monday’s important anniversary. Many of the events happening up and down the country will be highlighting the role played by those who fought for equal voting rights, which included women from a diverse range of backgrounds. Our goal in running National Democracy Week has been to reach out to citizens from all backgrounds, especially those from groups less likely to be registered to vote. I am very passionate about that.

I understand, respect and acknowledge the arguments that have been made today about the difference between 1918 and 1928. In this year of suffrage, which encompasses both those anniversaries, it is valid and important that we test those concepts and have that debate. I would like to acknowledge that in my remarks.

The Equal Franchise Act 1928, which is what we are here to discuss, is as significant today as it was then. It cemented in law that no matter whether someone was a woman or a man, they had the right to vote on equal terms. We are celebrating that 90th anniversary in a number of ways, including the National Democracy Week awards, which were held in Manchester on Monday. They kicked off the week and were a fantastic way of recognising the exceptional work of individuals and organisations helping others to be involved in democracy. Just today, a “Women in Politics Hackathon”, supported by the Leader of the House and run by Shout Out UK, brought girls and young women to Parliament to work on creative ideas to get more women into politics.

This year the Government Equalities Office has provided £1.5 million for the women’s vote centenary grant scheme, which has already provided funds to 140 projects across the country. As a Minister at the Cabinet Office, I am delivering projects under the “Educate” theme of the suffrage centenary programme. The projects are being developed to increase knowledge of UK democracy and its importance among young people in particular, but not exclusively. It includes those from ethnic minorities and under-registered groups, so as to widen democratic participation.

Increasing participation has been facilitated by the Government’s commitment to making registering to vote more straightforward than ever before. In 2014 we introduced individual electoral registration alongside a digital service, and as a result we have seen record numbers on our electoral register, which reached 46.8 million people before the 2017 general election. I wonder what that might have looked like to someone looking ahead from 1928.

We are committed to making the service more accessible. For example, I am pleased to say that we are working with Mencap on an easy-read guide. Historically—I say this as a passing point of interest—figures suggest that women have been more likely to be registered to vote than men, with recent research on completeness of registers suggesting a 2% difference in the rates for women and men.

Last December, the Government published their democratic engagement plan, which sets out the ways in which we will tackle further barriers to democratic inclusion. I was pleased that the hon. Member for Canterbury widened her argument at the start and set the tone for the debate, because in many ways the issue goes beyond just gender. That gives me the chance to note that we have set up an accessibility of elections working group along with Mencap, Scope, the Royal National Institute of Blind People and many others, through which we are working on how we can make our registration and electoral systems and processes as smooth and secure as possible for people with specific conditions or disabilities.

The hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), who is no longer in his place, was right to reassure people that our recent changes to the anonymous registration system have made it easier for victims of domestic abuse to register to vote while protecting their right to remain anonymous. Those changes, which of course were welcomed by Women’s Aid and many others, will make it easier for an estimated 12,000 survivors of domestic abuse to register to vote without their name or address appearing on the roll and without the fear of former partners finding their address. I would like the message to go out loud and clear that that has been done, and I hope it is already making victims’ lives easier.

I was struck by some of the words the hon. Member for Canterbury used about the grotesque abuse that may follow her introducing the debate. She was right to draw that point out. I will shortly launch a consultation on intimidation in public life, which, as the Committee on Standards in Public Life noted, is directed disproportionately at female candidates for public service. I hope we can work together to improve the way our electoral law protects debate and welcomes everyone into democracy.

The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) reminded us in his helpful remarks outlining the life and times of Nancy Astor that we should respect difference. I am delighted that hon. Members spoke so well about their political traditions, and I shall take the licence the hon. Gentleman offered me to speak about mine. I remind hon. Members that the first woman to sit in the House of Commons was indeed that Conservative, Nancy Astor, and we were the first party in the western world to elect a female Prime Minister. Here we are on our second, while the party in opposition is yet to have a female leader.

[Dawn Butler]

rose—

[Chloe Smith]

Is the hon. Lady the next leader of the Labour party? I hope so.

[Dawn Butler]

I am not, but let me correct the Minister. We have not had a female Prime Minister, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) was a female leader of the Labour party.

[Chloe Smith]

I am happy to stand corrected, but I still raise the hon. Lady two Prime Ministers to one Leader of the Opposition. I also raise her the Prime Minister who passed the Equal Franchise Act 1928—the Conservative Stanley Baldwin—and pay credit to Emmeline Pankhurst, who, had she not passed away before the election, would have contested a parliamentary seat for the Conservative party.

Turning to other matters in women’s lives, under this Conservative Government there are more women in work than ever before. The female employment rate is at a record high of 70.9%. Under the last Labour Government, female unemployment rose by 25%. Let us not forget that that represents nearly 1 million women. We are encouraging all companies to do more to eliminate the gender pay gap by publishing their data, improving their pipeline to ensure progress on female representation at senior levels, and making flexible working a reality for all employees. We introduced shared parental leave—my husband and I took it ourselves, and we agree that it is extremely important. I would love to see others taking it up as well.

Other political points were made that neglected to give the entire picture, so let me make a few more economic points before concluding. In Government, we have introduced tax-free childcare, providing working families with up to £2,000 per child per year. We have introduced universal credit, and increased support to 85% of childcare costs, 15 hours of free childcare a week for families with disadvantaged two-year-olds, and an additional 15 hours of free childcare every week to working parents of three and four-year-olds. We will be investing around £6 billion in childcare every year by 2020—more than ever before. That is the Conservative reality.

Furthermore, the increase in the national living wage in April from £7.50 to £7.83, with more to come, represents an increase in a full-time minimum wage worker’s annual earnings of more than £600. We all know that a higher proportion of women than men are expected to benefit from that increase, so there is no glass ceiling in the Government’s approach to improving the lives of all women in society. We practise what we preach—improving female representation and creating equal opportunities in the workplace.

I will leave time for the hon. Member for Canterbury to wind up. I thank her again for securing the debate on this important anniversary. We should use such opportunities to promote participation and work together, combining our traditions and interests and coming together to use our powerful positions in this place to deliver a democracy that is more accessible, inclusive and representative.

[Rosie Duffield]

Thank you, Ms Buck, for allowing me to lead today’s debate and for chairing it so brilliantly. I thank all hon. Members who stayed here on a horrible hot Thursday afternoon instead of going back to their constituencies. It is great to hear the Minister pledge to do so much for democracy, and to hear about the Government’s plans. Obviously Opposition Members will keep a close eye on those things.

I thank all Members who made contributions. I have learned a lot about the east end women. I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) that the Jack the Ripper museum is abhorrent. I cannot wait for us to find a space where we can celebrate the lives of the east end women permanently, rather than having to shift about all the time. It would be nice to have the money behind that that this horrible other place seems to have.

[Dawn Butler]

Does my hon. Friend have any comments about women who are on zero-hours contracts, the gig economy and the rise in women among the working poor?

[Rosie Duffield]

Absolutely. Under the last Labour Government I was able to work and bring up my children as a single mum. Without tax credits, I would have had no hope. I would have been living with my parents, with my children in one room, unable to feed them easily. The last Labour Government made the lives of women a lot easier and a lot better, and introduced childcare and all sorts of things that get forgotten and overlooked. Yes, a lot more people are in work, but a lot of them are working for companies such as Deliveroo and McDonald’s on a very low wage. The childcare issue is a huge and growing problem, and nurseries are having to close.

It is worth saying that there is not equality. Working women are still the working poor, as the shadow Minister just mentioned. Zero-hours contracts do not help anybody, so there is still much to do to get equality. As some Members have said, we also must not forget our sisters around the world. Although we think we have done equality and feminism, we have not. We need to keep going, look around us, and do as much as we can for everyone.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the 90th anniversary of the Equal Franchise Act 1928.

Women in the House of Commons

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and to contribute to the debate.

As I have previously stated, 51% of the population are women, and the other 49% would not be here if it was not for the women, so arguing for 50:50 representation in Parliament is really quite reasonable. I am quite disappointed that the Government have not accepted any of the recommendations in the Women and Equalities Committee report. That is the problem with politics—people see that we say one thing and do something else, and it puts people off politics or politicians. If we truly believe in equality of representation, we must accept at least one of the recommendations, and that will make the Committee feel that it is doing a great job.

The report states:

“We are concerned that Parliament is failing to be a world leader on women’s representation.”

That is really important to consider as we debate Brexit and our standing in the world. It is important that we do not fall back. That alone should get people to sit up and listen to the debate we are having on representation in Parliament.

The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) is an excellent Chair, and her Committee’s report makes reference to the “inflexibility” of Parliament’s working practices. How we vote in this place has been mentioned a number of times. I accept that there is value in us mingling in the Lobby when we vote, but once could be enough, and we could then vote electronically for the remaining 10 votes. There are ways we can improve the current system without losing some of its benefits.

We must also look at gerrymandering and the boundary changes. We will see a substantial loss of women representatives if the Boundary Commission’s recommendations go ahead. The Fawcett Society found that 37% of those at risk are women. If that goes ahead, the loss to this place will be substantial.

[Mrs Miller]

I do not want to add a discordant note, but if there were an issue of gerrymandering, surely it is the fact that at the moment constituencies such as mine have 85,000 people in them, while constituencies in other parts of the country have only 50,000. Surely that is the gerrymandering that we are trying to get rid of with the boundary changes, which I fear will not go through because of a lack of cross-party support.

[Mr Laurence Robertson in the Chair]

[Dawn Butler]

The whole system is substantially flawed in how it counts the number of constituents, because it takes into consideration only people who are registered to vote, and not everybody who actually lives in the constituency. The right hon. Lady will find that constituencies such as mine—a London constituency—have a substantial number of constituents who are not registered. The whole system is flawed in terms of how the number is calculated, but it is not only that. The Labour party is set to lose more seats under the boundary changes than any other party, and we would therefore lose more women. That is where some of the gerrymandering comes into effect.

The report states:

“Our focus on women in this report should not be taken as a lack of interest in diversity more generally”.

I accept that. When we look at achieving gender equality, we need to look at all kinds of women. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) referred to intersectionality in women of colour, who often get ignored or brushed out of the feminist argument. Even though we are looking at women, we need to look at the diversity of women. This is not confined to women of colour; it is also working-class women, disabled women, LGBT+ women, single women, single mums and so on. It is important that when we talk about women, we are not focusing on one particular group of women who are then the acceptable face of women generally.

On the theme of thanking women, I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who replaced an awful misogynistic male. She was fundamental in my journey to get here.

The hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), who is no longer in his place, made quite a powerful speech, some of which I agreed with. I am sorry that he is a little bit scared of me, but I am also quite pleased. I hope that his time on the Committee has brought him on a journey to understand that it is not that women are not capable of doing certain jobs or being in certain positions. It is often that barriers are put in women’s way that are not put in men’s way. It could be the old boys’ club, the secret handshake or what you drink down the pub. Certain barriers are put in women’s way, and that stops them more than their ability to do a job, which is often not the case. I said this at the Committee, but I will repeat it for those who were not there: I will know when we have reached real equality, especially in this place, when we have as many rubbish women as rubbish men. Then I will know that equality has really hit its peak.

The hon. Gentleman also spoke about conditioning people, and especially males, from a young age. That is all well and good, but the process of conditioning takes time—decades—and therefore we sometimes have to force that thought process. The way to force it is to have quotas or all-women shortlists or to make the decision makers more accountable. That is how we force conditioning or undo the conditioning that has happened.

More than 57% of women who have ever sat in the House of Commons have been Labour Members. All-women shortlists played a fundamental role in making sure we took that step forwards. To ignore the importance of all-women shortlists or the difference they make is to ignore the progress we often talk about in Parliament. It should not be ignored.

There has been a lot of talk about women in power. It is not just about women being in power; it is about women in power empowering other women. That is vital. We talk about the ladder of success. I like to think that when women are on that ladder, we lay the foundations for an escalator. If we are on that escalator of success, we lay the foundations for a lift, so that we make the journey of the woman coming behind us faster, smoother and easier, and we celebrate that fact. The fact that 86% of the cuts that our Prime Minister has presided over have affected women is a real disappointment for a woman in power.

Labour is seeking gender equality by 2020 or whenever the next general election is. It might be next year—who knows? The last general election was called quite quickly, so we did not have time to enforce all-women shortlists, but even then, the Labour party still achieved 45% of its Members being women. Of the 262 MPs, 119 are female. Labour has more female MPs than all the other political parties added together. That is something to celebrate and talk about. We cannot have this debate without acknowledging how far the Labour party has come.

In regard to black, Asian and minority ethnic representation, 32 out of the 52 are Labour MPs. Again, the fact that that journey has come about is fundamental to who we are as a party in regard to equality, but there is also a thought process and the measures that we have put in place.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady says that this is fundamental to what her party is about. It has had all-women shortlists for 20 years, yet her hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) advocates—as my report advocates—that we should perhaps look at extending all-women shortlists, because, as her hon. Friend tells me, the Labour party is still finding it difficult to get women elected to mayoralties and as police and crime commissioners. Why has that not caused a culture change in the hon. Lady’s party if she says that it is part of its culture in the first place?

[Dawn Butler]

It is a fact that we have two police and crime commissioners who are women in the Labour party. We could do better in regard to elected Mayors, but the need to do better does not negate the fact that we are doing better than the Conservative party, the Lib Dems or any other party. I concede that we need to do better, can do better and must do better, but that does not in any way negate what we have done or mean that we should not celebrate the fact that the Labour party has done so well. As much as that might grate, it is a fact.

The game changer was all-women shortlists. What I often hear, especially from the Conservative party, is, “We want the best person for the job,” or, “We want the best man for the job.” Sometimes the best man for the job is a woman. The best person could be a woman. I find quite irritating the assumption that a woman getting the job is not the best person for the role.

On the whole, I commend the report. It insists that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority conduct an equality impact assessment, which I think is fundamentally important. I hope the Minister will talk about equality impact assessments and how important they are for analysing what happens and who is affected. I hope that the Government will take equality impact assessments on board in all their policies because, at the end of the day, all the women who are in this place stand on the shoulders of other women who fought really hard, who died and who shed blood, sweat and tears—literally. It is important that we ensure that whatever we produce from this House emboldens and empowers society as a whole, but in particular women.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, it is absolutely right—[Hon. Members: “Hooray!]

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Sit down now!

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I have said before to the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) that, as an aspiring stateswomen, she must conduct herself with due decorum. Calm—perhaps she is another Member who should take up yoga.

Race Disparity Audit

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

I thank the First Secretary of State for early sight of his statement.

There is value in putting all the data together in one portal, but what matters most is what the Government are going to do about the problems that have been identified. For some years, the Women’s Budget Group and the Runnymede Trust have been looking at some of the burning issues, including the impact of austerity on black and minority ethnic women in the United Kingdom.

The real uncomfortable truth is that the Prime Minister cannot pretend she did not know that there were in-built structural injustices before 2010, because she wrote to the then Prime Minister about “real risks” that

“women, ethnic minorities, disabled people and older people will be disproportionately hit by cuts”.

Our Prime Minister, knowing full well the damage that would be caused by Conservative cuts, has done nothing but exacerbate the problems. Far from tackling burning injustices, she has added fuel to the fire. We need solutions and a sustained effort to tackle those burning injustices, because talking shops just will not cut it. Mentoring schemes are good, but they are not nearly ambitious enough. The closure of Sure Start centres has contributed to the poor start of many young children, and the closure of Connexions, which was a valuable tool for young people, was also a mistake.

The Prime Minister has said that if these disparities cannot be explained they must be changed, so let me ask the Minister some questions. Will he explain or change the Government’s policy of rolling out universal credit, which has caused some people to lose their homes and has caused vulnerable people to plummet into debt? Will he explain or change their policy on the public sector workers’ pay cap, which has disproportionately affected women and people from diverse communities? Will he explain or change their policies on personal independence payments, which have resulted in the statement by a United Nations panel that the UK has failed to uphold disabled people’s rights? [Interruption.] Conservative Members may not like to hear this, but it is important if we are to tackle the burning injustices that exist in our country.

Will the Minister explain or change the Government’s policies on tuition fees, which have crippled the life chances of young people? Will he explain or change the delay in the increase in the minimum wage, which the Government have renamed the living wage? Will he explain or change the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the house-building programme, the Access to Work policy, or the Trade Union Act 2016? There are so many policies that the Government need to explain or change.

We cannot ignore the fact that the actions of this Government have contributed to the burning injustices in our country. They have failed to understand the value of equality impact assessments, which the last Prime Minister described as “red tape”. Britain is at its best when everyone has the opportunity to succeed—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) says, “What are you going to do about it?” Let me tell him. Labour issued a manifesto to tackle problems of discrimination. Its policy proposals included the introduction of equal pay requirements for large employers; the launching of an inquiry into name-based discrimination; the implementation of the Parker review recommendations; the enhancement of the powers and functions of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has been subject to Government cuts; and the boosting of income through the introduction of a real living wage—to name just a few.

There are other possible solutions to the problem, some of which must come from the Minister’s own side. The Government should reintroduce race equality audits and impact assessments, independently assess the Treasury, introduce “blind” sentencing in the criminal justice system, and implement their responsibilities under the public sector equalities duty.

What we need is a Government who are not afraid to act on uncomfortable truths, and Labour is that Government in waiting. History has shown that positive change only happens under a Labour Government, and we are ready once again to deliver a fair and more equal society for the many and not the few.

[Damian Green]

I am puzzled by the disparity between the Labour party’s response to the audit and that of the stakeholders who actually work in the sector. I came to the House today from a roundtable at No. 10 that was chaired by the Prime Minister and attended by about 12 of the principal non-governmental organisations that have worked for many years to improve the lives of ethnic minority people in this country. They are universally positive about this, unlike the Labour party—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) says that was not what they told her, but I have quotations from them here. Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote has said:

“The findings from the Race Disparity Audit present us with a real opportunity to make transformative change in tackling persistent race inequality”—

[Hon. Members: “What are the Government going to do?”] He actually went on to say:

“Yes, some findings make uncomfortable reading, but unless these things are laid bare we can’t begin to resolve them.”

After 13 years of a Labour Government trying to hide the facts, we now have a Government who are ready to expose them and to do something about them.

Jeremy Crook of the Black Training and Enterprise Group—apparently it has also been ignored by the Labour party—says:

“The data can support local communities to have conversations with local public bodies about ensuring that no ethnic group gets left behind in education or health or any other area of public life.”

The people who actually know what they are talking about welcome the audit, and welcome what the Government are doing. The people who do not are members of the Labour party who live in their own world.

The hon. Member for Brent Central appeared to take the general view that in all areas problems for people from ethnic minorities were getting worse. I appreciate that the website has been live for only about an hour, so she will not yet have had time to investigate all 130 datasets, but when she does, she will find a point that is much more nuanced than those that she has made. There are some problems, and some things are getting worse, but some things are getting better. The difference between the general employment rate and the rate among all ethnic minorities decreased from 15 to 10 percentage points between 2004 and 2016. Since 2004, employment rates have increased among all ethnic groups. The inactivity rate among Pakistani and Bangladeshi people, who have often had the worst unemployment rates, has fallen by 10%—[Interruption.]

I would hope that Labour Members, rather than laughing from the Front Bench, might welcome the fact that some of our most disadvantaged communities are doing better than they ever have before in this country. The Labour party seems to think that that is something to laugh about.

The hon. Lady referred to universities and tuition fees. I remind her that more disadvantaged people are applying for university places and going to university than ever before, and more people from black and minority ethnic communities are applying than ever before. Labour Members have a view of the world in which people are permanent victims, but that is not what this audit shows. Their lack of transparency, and their lack of ability to welcome a step by the Government that is welcomed by all experts in the field, reflects very badly on their party.