Budget Resolutions

Gill Furniss Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This Budget is, at its heart, deeply unfair. It is full of broken promises and missed opportunities. I am a Sheffield MP. I love Sheffield. I grew up in Sheffield. I am extremely proud to represent its people in this place and that means standing up for them. Sheffield City Council has faced cuts every year for seven years, now totalling £352 million, and it will have to find another £40 million next year to balance its budget. Sheffield is a fantastic city with a strong industrial base. It is where stainless steel was invented, and I must put it on the record that Sheffield definitely drove the industrial revolution, no matter what others have said today. However, wages have fallen dramatically. In fact, shamefully, it was recently found that Sheffield is the low-pay capital of the UK. There is little in this Budget to help that.

The self-employed are the engine drivers of entrepreneurship, with many working at the cutting edge of technology. Self-employment in Sheffield has increased by 10% in recent years, showing our city’s entrepreneurial character. However, real wages among the self-employed have fallen faster than those of employees. For my constituents, the Chancellor’s £2 billion broken promise on NICs will have a serious effect on their livelihood. As I said, unfairness is at the heart of the Budget, which hits low and middle earners hardest, hurting working people in Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough. While increasing taxes for the most vulnerable in our society, and simultaneously choosing to do nothing about working standards for the self-employed, the Chancellor decided to cut taxes for the richest. Policy measures introduced by this Government since 2010 will result in over £70 billion in tax giveaways to big businesses and the super-rich over the next five years. Much has already been said about the contentious business rates revaluation, and pubs in my constituency will feel the pain of increased rates despite the headline-grabbing one-year-only discount. The British Beer and Pub Association forecasts that increases on beer duty will result in 4,000 job losses and more pub closures.

We know what to expect from this Government by now—they kick the can down the road—so the Chancellor’s speech naturally contained no mention of the industrial strategy, nothing for the struggling steel sector, and no mention of climate change. Social care is in a state of emergency due to cuts to local council budgets, with over 1 million vulnerable elderly people not receiving the care they need. The extra £2 billion for adult social care does not make up for the £4.6 billion in cuts over the last Parliament and, believe me, councils in the north are not getting the same Surrey sweetheart deal on social care. The Chancellor had the opportunity last Wednesday to properly address the funding crisis, but he did not take it. He announced no money to deal with hospitals despite the £5 billion black hole in NHS maintenance. There are not enough GPs in the NHS, and cuts to nurses’ bursaries have led to a reduction in applications for nursing courses. A&Es are in crisis, and waiting lists are soaring. Mr Speaker, forgive me if I feel that this is all too little, too late.

Ensuring a decent education for our children should be an absolute priority, not an afterthought. This Government promised to protect pupil spending but it has fallen in real terms after inflation—another broken promise. According to the National Union of Teachers, Fox Hill primary school in my constituency will be £1,003 worse off per pupil than in 2013, and Wisewood Community primary school will be £1,586 worse off per pupil over the same period. By 2019, per pupil funding will have fallen by an average of 11% from 2013 levels.

There are 1.5 million fewer adult learners than there were under the previous Labour Government, and adult skills training has been cut by 54% since 2010. Furthermore, the beleaguered further education sector has fared little better. According to the IFS, by 2020 per student spending will be only just above the level seen 30 years ago at the end of the 1980s.

It is ironic that the Budget fell on International Women’s Day. Tory cuts have disproportionately affected women and, sadly, the Budget does nothing to change that. The Budget hurts the self-employed, low earners and those on benefits while letting the richest off the hook. It is a divisive and unfair Budget, and the Conservatives are clearly not the party of the working people of Britain.

This Budget is, at its heart, deeply unfair. It is also a Budget full of broken promises and missed opportunities, and it will hurt my constituents of Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) has subsequently advised me that it is her birthday, too. So again, on both sides of the House, we wish her a very happy birthday.

Workplace Dress Codes (High Heels)

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I am pleased to speak in this debate in support of women across the UK who have been subject to various kinds of discrimination with regard to workplace dress codes. I call on the Government to tighten the rules so that that is no longer prevalent in the workplace.

The debate is happening because of a petition signed by more than 150,000 people in the United Kingdom. That shows the real and serious concern that many people have about the fact that, in 2017, women are still subject to unreasonable footwear requirements at work. In the same week as International Women’s Day, when we are celebrating the success of women across the world, who during the past century have made huge strides in the attempt to secure economic, political and social parity, we must also pay great attention to the fact that there is still some way to go.

As recent studies have shown, women still lag behind men in pay. The median hourly rate of pay is £12.82 for female full-time employees, compared with £14.16 for males. However, as this debate highlights, parity in the workplace does not mean only economic parity. The petition rightly points out that, despite the introduction of equality laws, women continue to face discrimination in the workplace. That manifests itself in various ways, including through requirements to wear high heels in the workplace. I assure the House that in workplaces across the country, women are often instructed to wear a full face of make-up and even told which shade of red to wear on their lips.

In evidence provided to the Petitions Committee and the Women and Equalities Committee for their joint report, women admitted that they found the dress codes that require them to wear high heels “humiliating and degrading”. Some felt “sexualised” by their employer’s insistence on high heels. That effect on the psychological wellbeing of female workers is deeply worrying.

The evidence is clear. There is no real practical function to the wearing of high heels, and I challenge anyone in the House to provide evidence that wearing high heels in the workplace should be mandatory and forced on women employees. Evidence from the College of Podiatry reveals that there is a strong body of clinical evidence against wearing high heels for prolonged periods. However, in some professions, standing in high heels for the duration of an eight-hour shift is the norm. Wearing heels in that way often causes foot pain, bunions, skin lesions, lower limb pathologies and other related discomfort. In fact, my own daughter suffered a metatarsal fracture, which is more commonly associated with sports injuries, when she was forced to wear high heels in a former retail job. As she had not been on the payroll long enough, she was denied any compensation or sick pay— literally adding insult to injury. Needless to say, she did not return to that type of work, but not everyone has that choice.

In my view, all the evidence that we have heard disqualifies any practical argument for forcing women to wear high heels in the workplace. Dress codes in all workplaces should serve a practical purpose and be neutral, targeting men and women in the same way. That is compatible with what the law states. The Equality Act 2010 is clear in principle, in that it aims to harmonise discrimination law and strengthen the law to promote equality in the UK. Sections 39 and 41 prohibit direct discrimination. As the Government put it to the Petitions Committee and the Women and Equalities Committee:

“They…specifically state that employers must not discriminate as to the terms of employment, or indeed by subjecting an employee to any detriment at work.”

We are debating this topic today because the law is not working in practice and is particularly disadvantageous to women in the workforce, who often feel vulnerable in calling out these injustices. To be effective, the law must be understood by both employers and employees, and employers must take complaints of such discrimination seriously. If they do not, appropriate punishment should be set out clearly.

Today’s job market is fragile, with record numbers of people on zero-hours contracts. Often, those contracts are found in the retail and hospitality sectors, and there have been many cases of women in particular being sent home because they have not complied with a certain aspect of a dress code such as wearing high heels or putting on the “right” shade of lipstick.

I support the calls for the Government to take urgent action to improve the effectiveness of the Equality Act 2010, as well as to provide clearer guidelines on these issues so that the laws already in existence are properly functional and effective.