Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Maria Miller

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). I thank her for the evidence that she gave the Joint Committee, as it helped our deliberations. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), who had enormous strength to come to the Chamber to share such a personal story. I am sure that she will take strength from the fact that those who have heard her will feel more empowered to act to put themselves into a safe position. She and I have campaigned a great deal for a number of years to get more women into the House, and I count myself lucky to have worked alongside her, given the strength and courage that she has shown today.

I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), because without her I am not sure that we would be here today. She had the vision to pull the Bill together and, along with Ministers on the Front Bench, to create an opportunity for a step change in the national response to this issue. I was privileged to chair the Joint Committee on the draft Bill, and I thank Members both here and in the other place who gave so much of their time, those who gave evidence and related their personal experiences and, above all, the staff of the House, who gave us the most extraordinary professional service.

This is an incredibly important Bill, but I would like to make a couple of points. First, the Government need to make clear what the Bill deals with. They have tabled some amendments and promised others, but I am not sure that the Bill is in its final format regarding what the Government want to do. The Minister might want to make sure that Members of both Houses are thoroughly briefed on the final Bill, including all amendments, before Report. This is an important Bill, but the Government introduced amendments midway through our deliberations with regard to the statutory duty on local authorities to provide refuge places. The consultation still needs to report, so perhaps the Minister will confirm that she will ensure that the House is fully briefed before Report.

Secondly, I make a plea not to Ministers but to colleagues. Members need to resist the temptation to use the Bill to remedy all the issues, concerns, and campaigns in recent years to do with domestic abuse. Some of them have been quite open about their wish to include abortion reform in the Bill, and while there is clearly a strong case for reform, with which I would agree, this is not the place to do it. I do not believe that we have the time in this Parliament to give that issue the attention that it demands. My plea is for a separate Bill, sponsored by a Back-Bench MP in the usual way, to deal with that, and to deal with it swiftly.

[Hannah Bardell]

I take the point that the right hon. Lady makes about time, but we should look at making the Bill as broad and detailed as possible. We should also look at the issue of data sharing. I have a constituent whose data was shared by the Department for Work and Pensions. She was being protected by the police from her violent partner. Her data was shared, and she had to be moved again. Those kinds of issues need to be addressed in the legislation.

[Mrs Miller]

I have a huge amount of respect for the hon. Lady, but we run the risk of derailing a Bill that is long overdue. I urge people to have some sense of restraint on what we might do to amend it.

Parliament as a Workplace

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Maria Miller

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on this excellent debate. It is sad that it is not more broadly attended because it is an important topic. As a Member of Parliament who has to spend anywhere between 10 and 15 hours a week travelling to and from my constituency, I was grateful to hear of the great experiences that others have who travel shorter distances.

Members have made important contributions. The late and much-missed Jo Cox said that we in Westminster

“are behind the curve compared with working practice in much of industry, and the charitable and public sectors, and that is a problem… if we act differently and change the culture and working practices here, we can change how others operate. We should do that, because we are here to change and improve the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, 10 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 46WH.]

I could not agree more. If we are to make laws and policies that are forward thinking and progressive, we must get our own house in order.

When I came to this place, I could not help thinking it was a cross between Downton Abbey and Hogwarts. I know people have great affection for the Houses of Parliament, but there is no doubt it is stuck in the past. It is steeped in great history, but it is not forward looking enough. It has a rich history of failing to be a workplace that is anywhere near as functional or inclusive as it should be. The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) spoke of his shock and surprise when he arrived here to see how many pubs there were. I shared that experience.

Of the many places I have ever worked—the corporate industry, the energy sector, other MPs’ offices, foreign Governments—the only place I have seen something similar is the media. I started at Good Morning Television the year after the last pub in the building had been closed, and it was closed for a very good reason. People often visit us here in our workplace—for example, we bring constituents into this place—and it is still a mystery to me that there are so many pubs and places to buy alcohol and that alcohol is served during the day at receptions.

None the less, progress has been made. When we introduced proxy voting, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief. It has been interesting to hear from male colleagues whose partners have recently had babies or are about to have them and who have missed out on proxy voting but who will now benefit from it. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) has just introduced a proposal for extended parental leave for those who have premature babies. That is a sensible proposal that I hope the Minister will consider.

Dame Laura Cox’s report last October concluded that a

“culture of deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence”

was enabling abuses of power and the mistreatment of colleagues to go unchecked. It should not have taken one of our colleagues having to come here in a wheelchair on the day she was due to give birth to force proxy voting through. She was incredibly brave in what she did—she stood by her principles—and it is because of her that we have finally taken that step forward.

We have heard many stories about an endemic culture that normalises bullying and harassment, which continue to permeate our politics. That is the sad reality of decades and centuries of ancient tradition in this place. We have plans to refurbish this place. It is predicted to cost between £4 billion and £6 billion of taxpayers’ money just to bring this place and the other place up to standard. The Scottish Parliament, which will shortly celebrate its 20th anniversary, cost a little under half a billion pounds. We could build between eight and 10 Scottish Parliaments for the cost of the refurbishment. Some argue that this place would be better turned into a museum and that we could build a new Parliament in another part of the UK.

[Mrs Miller]

I did not want to stop the hon. Lady’s flow, but she referred earlier to the Cox report and the grievance procedures. I hope that she will have noted that we have secured a short debate on the Floor of the House next Tuesday to press for progress in those areas. I hope that she will be able to support that debate.

[Hannah Bardell]

The right hon. Lady has read my mind, because I was coming to that. I am glad to see that among the threadbare business for next week there will be an update on that important piece of work. It is very important that we move that forward. I commend her on the important work that she and the Women and Equalities Committee, which she chairs, have done on this. She said that the Brexit process had challenged people’s trust in politics and in this place. I agree with that and would go further: it has exposed the crumbling relic of a democratic institution that this place is. We face the prospect of having a candidate for Prime Minister who wants to prorogue Parliament and have a no-deal Brexit, which will have a devastating impact. How will we get public trust if we cannot even have proper business and legislation in this place?

The right hon. Lady talked about the built environment and the paintings around this place. I have had the good fortune to sit on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, and it has been a privilege to do so and particularly to see the work that has been done on the 209 Women project. I commend all those involved in that project, but during that period, I learned that 25 times more money had been spent over the past 20 years on buying pictures of men for this place than had been spent on buying pictures of women. Let us not forget that the photographs of the female parliamentarians who took part in the 209 Women project were taken by female photographers, who were not paid, which is a really important point. When we are trying to support women and their work, we must remember that they should be properly recognised. Without radical changes to this place to make it more inclusive, we will not properly reflect society.

We have made significant strides. We are the gayest Parliament in the world, or one of the gayest, and I am proud to be a woman who is gay in this place. When I stood for election and for selection, I stood against four men. I looked at the line-up and thought, “Why do I want to do this? Why do I want to go up against four men to go to a place that is very male dominated?” I did it because I wanted to be part of the change that I know many young women cannot see.

In Scotland, we have also made significant strides. We have a gender-balanced Cabinet. When Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister, she was one of only a handful of leaders in the world to do that. It is really important that we have politicians who are hard-working, relatable and can bring their personal experiences to this place. We saw that in the most recent election. There are Members across this House with a vast array of life experiences, but we have to make sure that we have that not just in Parliament and its elected representatives, but in our media. I often look up at the Press Gallery, at the press who are looking down at us, and I do not see many female faces or people of colour. It is really important that we have people reporting on our politics who are as diverse as possible.

We have had contributions from Members who have spoken about access to this place. If this building was being built from scratch today, there is absolutely no way in which it would meet health and safety standards. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge talked about the voting system. We have proxy voting, but electronic voting would save us a huge amount of time. On the last count that I did, which was in March, I calculated that we had spent 205 hours—five and a half working weeks—just voting. Given that Parliament sits for only 35 or 36 weeks a year, a huge amount of time is being wasted just on voting. Nobody is arguing that we should not be here debating and voting. That is extremely important, but, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said, perhaps we could have an allotted time for urgent questions and have predictability in our business, particularly when we have people travelling from our constituencies, businesses and other organisations to come to see us in Parliament. Having to cancel meetings at the last minute and not being able to get back for children’s events and caring responsibilities is a ridiculous situation. There is no other such employment anywhere. We do our constituents an injustice, and in my view we cannot properly represent them and their issues when there is such a lack of predictability, progress and activity from a legislative perspective. Brexit has dominated so much of the legislative timetable that it has created and exposed the inadequacies of the system.

I understand that people like the banter and to have a wee chat in the voting Lobbies, but for goodness’ sake, we live in a modern world. We should be able to have those meetings and engage with one another. It just exposes the inaccessibility of the Government and the inability to get answers from them that people feel the need to use the time in the voting Lobbies just to corner other people, because they cannot get the proper responses, meetings and time that they feel they need.

International Women’s Day

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Maria Miller

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point. I think that the biggest amount of progress has been in the Government making companies publish their gender pay gap; for the first time ever, the pay gap has become an issue that is on the agenda of businesses throughout the country. However, in answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, there has not been nearly enough progress. Although the gender pay gap has all but evaporated for women under 30, for older women it is alive and well, and we need to resolve it. I will come to that issue later in my speech.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), I believe in equality of opportunity. We need to continue to look for ways of ensuring equality of opportunity for women in our communities. As women we are resilient, but we are so resilient that we sometimes need to stop and appreciate the blatant discrimination that still pervades our lives every single day, and which still denies some women the level playing field of opportunity. Too many women’s confidence is sapped—their career even destroyed—by bullying and sexual harassment at work. Forty per cent. of women in this country, and millions more around the world, suffer sexual harassment.

That issue was well highlighted this week by the day of action that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and I hosted, when women from across the country, supported by CARE International, came into Parliament to lobby Members of Parliament to support the new International Labour Organisation global convention, which will outlaw sexual harassment and abuse at work in every country in the world, if it gets the support of their Governments.

Discrimination is still blatant because so much of the enforcement of the laws that we have passed in the UK is not working as we would want it to. In the Government’s new good workplace report, they set out the importance of enforcement of workplace rights, and they are right to do so. However, I urge the Minister for Women also to look at the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and the laws that pertain to health and safety, as well as others that are being looked at as part of the good workplace report. Legislation puts enforcement powers for those anti-discrimination laws into the hands of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but if it is not exercising those powers, we should give them to somebody who does. No one should be prepared to stand by and watch more than 50,000 women a year leave their jobs simply because they are pregnant, even though we already have laws in place to prohibit that.

One in eight women in this country want to start their own business, often as a way to create their own business culture, yet they find that just 9% of funding for start-ups goes to women, despite women-led businesses delivering double the returns on investment for financial backers. When a woman looks to Parliament to fix the problem, she might see a very strong Prime Minister admired for her resilience, but on these green Benches—well, perhaps not today, but usually—she will see that just one in three MPs are women. As I have said, the most important way to build in a resilient equality between men and women is through women’s economic empowerment—women’s full participation in work, including here.

The truth is that many of the barriers in women’s workplaces, including those that remain here, are in need of reform. With regard to the laws that we are so proud of having passed in this place, the reality is that a lack of enforcement on the ground often makes them worse than useless for many women. Most women do not work in the City of London, in large accountancy or law firms or in City institutions that may have modernised their approaches. Our constituents face a very different workplace, often still stuck in the ’70s, with presenteeism, a long hours culture, a lack of flexible working, employers who routinely use non-disclosure agreements to cover up discrimination, and management who look down on dads who want to take parental leave to share in the care of the newest members of their family.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I know that the right hon. Lady’s Committee has been doing a lot of work on non-disclosure agreements and she has very much led the charge on that. It is a very complex legal issue, but does she agree that a starting point could well be to compel companies legislatively to publish the number of NDAs that they use, the reason that they use them, and how many they use each year?

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady brings up a very important possible solution, which our Committee will certainly look at. We have been struck by how many companies and organisations do not use NDAs at all, particularly the Government. Some people have said that the reason the Government—or the civil service—do not use them any more is the oversight of Ministers and the media, so, as she says, transparency may well be a way forward.

We have to shake free from the notion that a modern workplace will cost too much to deliver and be too much of a burden on business, because the fact that millennial dads tell us that they would rather downgrade their jobs than take a promotion or a pay rise because they cannot balance their family and work commitments indicates that productivity is really under threat. With more than 1 million economically inactive mums not working because there are not the jobs that allow them to look after their kids and work as well, we have a real problem to tackle. As labour becomes in shorter supply after we leave the EU, it is a problem that we cannot afford to continue to sweep under the carpet. We need modernisation and reform.

That message of modernisation is for this place, too. One of the very first reports by the Women and Equalities Committee was on women in the House of Commons. I was struck by the plans that all political parties have in place to address the under- representation of women in Parliament. The proof of the pudding will obviously be at the next election as to how many get elected. There is no way of disguising the real appetite for change among the parties, but can we identify the same appetite for change with regard to Parliament itself? Can we be so sure, when the political parties are recruiting a new generation of female MPs, that they will be arriving in a place that they want to stay in, or will it still look as though it is in a time warp?

Very good work has been done by Professor Sarah Childs, thanks to Mr Speaker’s significant commitment to modernising this place. He put his money where his mouth is and commissioned her to produce a report in which she painted a picture of what a good Parliament looks like. Some of those measures have been taken up—in particular, proxy voting for parents with new children. I note that Madam Deputy Speaker was in the Chair when that change to Standing Orders went through; we thank her for her support. We do not now routinely sit through the night, and there are some rudimentary family facilities in Parliament. The crèche is important. However, what someone whose children are beyond crèche age needs as a parent is certainty about what they are doing day by day, so that they can plan what they might be doing on a particular day. That certainty is wholly lacking in this place, as evidenced by this debate, which should have started about two hours ago. We need to do more to make sure that parents, whether they are commuters or need to get back to their constituencies to look after their children, have certainty as to when we will be sitting here. I can see one or two hon. Members nodding vigorously at these comments.

[Hannah Bardell]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that implementing a process such as the Scottish Parliament’s set decision time, together with electronic voting, which would seriously reduce the amount of time that we waste in this place, would be two very positive steps forward?

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady is probably pressing me a bit too far on electronic voting, but I definitely think that the Scottish Parliament has a very sensible way of organising its day. People know that voting will take place at a particular time, so they do not lose that opportunity to get together, to see each other and to have all the important conversations that they need to have as a body of people, but they do it at a regular time during the day. We can stay here until 1 o’clock in the morning debating all we like, but it should not be at the expense of people’s family life. One colleague has told me about the real problems of not being able to get home at night for her teenage children. We are neglecting this at our peril, because such good women will vote with their feet and not necessarily stand for re-election at the next election.

This is partly why the Women and Equalities Committee has decided to set up a Sub-Committee to scrutinise the implementation of a recent report, “UK Gender-Sensitive Parliament Audit 2018”, published by a group of MPs including my hon. Friends the Members for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) and for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), the hon. Member for Luton South (Mr Shuker) and the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), as well as Members in the other place. The report looks at how we could make the House of Commons a better place to be a female MP.

Women in the House of Commons

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Maria Miller

Thursday 7th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Fifth Report of the Women and Equalities Committee, Women in the House of Commons after the 2020 election, Session 2016-17, HC 630, and the Government Response, Cm 9492.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I thank the Liaison Committee for the opportunity to debate this important report, published by the Women and Equalities Committee in the last Session. I also thank my incredible Committee staff and all the witnesses who gave written and oral evidence. In particular, Professor Rosie Campbell, professor of politics at Birkbeck College, Professor Sarah Childs and Lord Hayward all gave a great deal of their time. I also thank the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Leader of the Opposition, and those other individuals who gave oral evidence.

In the 100 years since women were given the right to vote and stand for election, just 489 women have been elected to this place—I was the 265th, elected in 2005. Record numbers of women are in work and women are achieving record highs when it comes to education, but just a handful have had the opportunity to use their skills and expertise to represent their communities in this place. We have to ask ourselves whether that is a sign of a healthy democracy. Nothing can be more important than making sure that the institutions that are vital to our system of democracy are fit for purpose. They should function in a way that gives the electorate confidence that Parliament can make the laws that we need for a free and fair society.

Society changes, so Parliament has to change too. It is not an institution that can afford to place itself in aspic. It has to evolve to ensure that it truly represents the people we speak for and serve. That must involve recognising the changing role of women in society. Almost 100 years since legislation was passed to give some women the vote, it is timely to be debating this important report, considering what progress has been made, and ensuring that there is a clear pathway forward on the matter of women being elected to the House of Commons.

One point that emerged from the evidence session with senior representatives from the major parties in Westminster was that Parliament would be a better place if 50% of MPs were women. There is a growing understanding that although MPs represent all people in our communities, regardless of their sex or gender, women view the world through a different lens—the lens of having experienced life as a woman, and the associated differences that that involves. This place was established at a time when only men were allowed to dictate our laws and shape the future of our country. Our political parties were shaped then too. The Women and Equalities Committee’s inquiry has set out a number of recommendations that members of the Committee felt would do more than simply try to retrofit women into Parliament, instead allowing them to play a truly equal role—something that we are still very far away from achieving and can only really achieve through a step change.

The 2016 inquiry focused on what the Government, political parties, the House of Commons and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority could do to ensure better female representation in the House of Commons in 2020 and beyond. It was launched in the context of the Boundary Commission review and the proposed reduction in the number of House of Commons seats. When the inquiry was launched, women held 30% of seats in the Commons, and the UK was ranked 48th globally for representation of women in legislatures. A lot has changed since then, but a great deal of the report remains extremely pertinent.

We found that Parliament should actively encourage women to participate in democracy, and should continue to look at ways to ensure that there are no unnecessary barriers to women coming here to represent the people who voted for them. We found that political parties had the primary responsibility to ensure that women come forward to represent them. Although the political parties have measures in place to help to achieve equality in gender representation, we felt that there was insufficient analysis of how effective those measures actually were, and that in all the parties there was a lack of clear strategy and leadership to achieve gender equality and representation.

The Committee made some quite radical recommendations. We recommended that the Government set a domestic target of 45% representation by women in Parliament by 2030. We recommended that they introduce a statutory minimum proportion of female parliamentary candidates in general elections—that target should be at least 45%, given the current deficit—with sanctions for political parties if it was not achieved. We also recommended bringing into force section 106 of the Equality Act 2010, requiring political parties to publish the data on diversity for general elections, and continuing the measures that allow things like all-women shortlists.

The Committee suggested that political parties take greater ownership of this issue, make gender balance in candidate selection a real priority, and accept that they have primary responsibility for making sure that the House of Commons is a more diverse place. We suggested that they publicly set out the measures that they plan to take to increase the proportion and number of female parliamentary candidates at the next election, and that they adopt, fund and promote training so that women can achieve those goals. We suggested that the parties should provide support for younger women and women entering politics for the first time, and that there should be a clear sense of direction towards increasing female representation in parliamentary parties, ensuring that their leaders work more closely with national decision-making bodies and local associations to deliver that.

The Government’s response was quite startling. They rejected all six of our recommendations. I do not mind if people reject one or two of them, but not all six at a time when we are still nowhere near equality. I am really pleased to have secured today’s debate, and that my colleague from Hampshire—my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes)—is the Minister responding on behalf of the Government. In Hampshire, we have actually done an amazing thing: about 40% of our Members of Parliament are women. We know how to do it there; we just need to do it nationally.

The Government did not support the use of legislative quotas or sanctions on parties to achieve gender balance in the Commons. I know that that is a philosophical approach. They emphasised that political parties had the primary responsibility for improving representation in the Commons. Although the Government stated that they were ready to support parties on approaches to improve diversity, they did not detail how. I was struck that they rejected the idea of enacting section 106 of the Equality Act, which would make the number of women from political parties standing for election transparent, at the same time as they were asking businesses to implement gender pay gap reporting mechanisms, which were intended to create transparency about the role of women in business and their ability to progress. I realise that gender pay gap reporting is something done by larger businesses, so perhaps the Minister could explain why we could not just ask the larger parties to report in line with section 106 of the Equality Act. That would be a way of getting started.

Unfortunately, a general election then happened, which meant that our report, which was carefully crafted around the prospect of a 2020 general election, was slightly thrown up into the air. It is good, however, that at the election earlier this year we saw the highest number and proportion of female MPs ever recorded in the UK— 208 out of 650 MPs, making up about 32% of seats.

We need to put this in context. Membership of the House of Commons is not infinite. It is actually quite small—it is just 650 people—so a big change in the proportion of women requires quite a small change in numerical terms. Specifically, to achieve a 50:50 Parliament, we need only 117 more women to be elected at the next general election. Nobody would argue that there are not 117 incredibly capable women in this country who would be able to take over from some of the men who are here at the moment—with the greatest respect to all of my male colleagues. To achieve that, all political parties need a plan, and transparency needs to be at the heart of those plans. It is the responsibility of Parliament as an organisation to evolve into a place that everybody can thrive in. I pay tribute to Mr Speaker’s work in establishing the House of Commons reference group, which I and a number of other Members sit on, to look at the workings of the House and to make it easier for a more diverse group of people—not just women—to come here to work.

We also have to be realistic about the external factors that can dissuade women from seeking public office, including becoming an MP. To that end, the Women and Equalities Committee took some further oral evidence from the political parties on 15 November 2017 as a result of the inquiry. I want to draw out a couple of themes from that additional evidence. Do the parties have a plan? Based on that evidence session, I would still say that the situation is mixed. I cannot put my finger on an exact plan that any of the parties talked about, so there is more work to do there.

I am still looking for more encouragement from the Minister that the Government will press forward on transparency and the collection and publication of diversity data. The Conservative party said it hopes to publish more data. The Liberal Democrats, the Labour party and the Scottish National party agreed that it would be helpful for the Government to bring into force section 106 of the Equality Act 2010, although the Labour party raised a number of issues about how the data would be gathered. Again, they said that it was the smaller parties’ fault that it was not being brought into force, so we thought we would write to the smaller parties and ask them whether it would be an enormous burden to enforce section 106 of the 2010 Act. So far, we have not been overwhelmed with negative responses. We will be looking at that issue further, and if the so-called smaller parties that are represented here today want to voice any opinions on that, that would be incredibly helpful. We will analyse how we can overcome some of those apparent problems through the drafting of secondary legislation. It is not beyond the wit or man—or indeed woman—to do that.

The second issue that came out of our further oral evidence was the culture, which still causes many women concerns about coming to work in this place. The witnesses talked about cultural factors blocking women’s aspirations to take on leadership roles and become Members of Parliament. The Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party agreed that late-night voting in Westminster—a topical thing to talk about, given that we were voting at midnight this week for no apparent reason—is a barrier to women’s coming forward. They said that voting could perhaps be organised in a different way. We often call it a family-friendly way, but I call it a human-friendly way, because I am not sure there are many individuals who think it is possible to work in the way we do without it having some impact on their capacity.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I thank the right hon. Lady for bringing this timely and hugely important debate to the Chamber. On the matter of voting, does she agree that there are models in the devolved nations? In the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Parliaments, there is a seat for every Member and electronic voting. It takes two seconds to press a button in Holyrood in Scotland, yet it takes us 15 minutes to walk through the Lobby. A huge amount of time and public money is being wasted.

[Mrs Miller]

I am not sure I totally agree with the hon. Lady on that issue. Like in many corporate organisations, we benefit from talking to and interacting with each other, and votes are often the only way we can do that because we are spread out doing many different things. I do not think the mechanism of voting is a bad thing. I just do not understand why we cannot do it on a more regularised basis.

The issues that prevent women from thriving in business—I was at a conference this morning held by the Trades Union Congress talking about that very issue—include irregularity and the lack of certainty about what a business might ask of them. That is not just a problem for women; people generally want more certainty. Everybody would say that there is some latitude when we are debating incredibly important things such as the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. On those matters we need to ensure we are all there when we are needed to vote, but that is not necessary on every single piece of legislation and on things that are not so time-specific. I hope the Government and their Whips Office are considering how they can make the way we operate in this place appear as if we are at least in the 20th century, if not the 21st century. Holding late-night votes on just any business should have gone out with the ark.

The other cultural issue that came up is the representation of women on party decision-making bodies. The Labour party, which gave evidence to us in November, aims to have a gender-balanced party conference and National Executive Committee—I am sure Labour Members understand what that means more than I do—but other parties were more uncertain about that. They all offered to write to us, and we will look carefully at their submissions, but if there is not gender-balanced representation on parties’ decision-making bodies, it is likely that having more women in Parliament will not be seen as such a pressing issue. I hope all parties will write to my Committee with their views on that.

The next issue that was raised—it is important to set this out in my opening speech—is the working environment here in Parliament. Clearly, impropriety in behaviour is still in the headlines this week. All parties have a code of conduct for Members of Parliament. Labour and the Conservative party have recently strengthened theirs, and all parties have been asked to write to the Committee outlining their procedures for reporting inappropriate behaviour. I look very positively at the way the parties reacted to earlier issues that were raised.

The final point, which is very important, is the abuse and harassment of parliamentary candidates. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) is not a candidate, I was shocked at what she experienced this week. A coffin was put outside the parliamentary office in her constituency as part of a “family-friendly” event. People have to think very carefully about the abuse and harassment that parliamentary candidates experience. That sort of behaviour towards elected representatives has to be rejected. We asked the parliamentary parties to write to us to tell us how many party members have been expelled or suspended for abusing or harassing parliamentary candidates. We need a zero-tolerance approach. I applaud Members of all parties who stand up for their colleagues here, regardless of party.

In conclusion, the Select Committee is already working to follow up on the report, which we see as a continuing part of our work. This Parliament does not look like our country, in particular when it comes to women. Ninety-nine years ago this month, the first woman sat as a Member of Parliament. I am incredibly proud that next year we will be celebrating Nancy Astor, a Conservative Member of Parliament, as the first woman here.

It fills me with great pride that my party has given this country the first two female Prime Ministers, both extraordinary women. Margaret Thatcher made me interested in politics at a time when few other people could do so; and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) has not shirked from taking our country through the most politically challenging period of modern history—our exit from the European Union. Everyone knows her tenacity as this country’s longest-serving Home Secretary and her commitment to get more women elected to this place by establishing Women2Win. In my parliamentary career, my right hon. Friend has been a friend, a mentor and a champion for thousands of women in the Conservative party, and we all owe her a debt of gratitude.

My point is that each party has a story to tell about women in the party—and we should tell it—but no party has found the holy grail. No party in this place can claim to have equality for women, and each has a different set of problems. This debate needs to be honest about that. Each party needs to explain better how it will ensure equality for women in the future.