Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP) [V]]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister’s announcement today and I want to pay tribute to him for his constructive and helpful approach during the week. He is a man who is not afraid to meet and to listen—the hallmark of a good Minister. Much that was going to be said undoubtedly will now not be, and I am aware that that applies throughout the House. However, I do want to make a few brief remarks.

It is difficult to understand why a Bill that relates to maternity leave does not once use the word “woman”. That, as we would say here in Ulster, is quite bizarre. While I support all the amendments, I am down to speak to just one. I have stated that my colleagues and I fully support the legislation; indeed, everyone who has spoken, irrespective of their views about the wording, supports the Bill itself. It is just regrettable that the wording did not come up to the standard that some of us felt we could have supported.

A Bill being fast-tracked always raises my suspicions, and I do wonder why this Bill is being fast-tracked. I know that sometimes there are very good reasons, and I think we all accept that this Bill has to be got through. However, unfortunately, this Bill, which is about ensuring the rights of pregnant women, was quite disrespectful to women in its original wording, in that it referred to them as “persons”. In all good conscience, I could not have supported the language used throughout, which made no mention of “women” anywhere.

The terminology stands in sharp contrast to all other UK legislation affording maternity rights and protection. I refer to the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Equality Act 2010. Some advocates of inclusion and diversity in Parliament, with whom I would not always agree, have rightly opposed the move towards gender-neutral language, on the basis that you cannot grant new rights to certain groups by taking away the rights enjoyed by others. The Bill would, regrettably, have anonymised and dehumanised the status and life experience of women. But we know that has now been changed, thanks to the Minister’s constructive approach. I believe listening is the sign and hallmark of a good Minister, and the noble Lord, Lord True, has certainly done that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this Bill will now pass unamended and I welcome that. But we recognise that our debate has touched on wider issues and that we are likely to return to them, in spite of our agreement on the government concession, on other Bills.

When I first joined this House a quarter of a century ago, it was dominated by men, most of them hereditary Peers. A Conservative woman Peer told me the hereditary Peers in her group treated the women Peers as if they were “day boys”. Having been at a boarding school myself, I knew exactly what this meant. In my first Session, I objected to some sections of that year’s defence review, which included women in the section on “equalities”, but gays in the section on “disciplinary problems”. When I dared to refer to great commanders of the past whose sexuality might have been called into question if aggressive efforts had been made to investigate them, I was attacked from both the Labour and the Conservative Benches and thought it wise to apologise before the debate wound up. Happily, this House and the country as a whole have moved on a great deal since then. We have all become more inclusive and openly diverse. None of us, I hope, wishes to return to the attitudes or the language of that earlier generation.

It is not only in Britain where we have moved towards gender-neutral language in political discourse. In Germany and France, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned, similar changes have been debated and carried into effect. There have been similar protests over attempts at political correctness—although I am not aware that people in France or Germany have taken over the term “woke” from its American origins. The general direction of change has been towards gender neutrality in language, where possible, to remove the implicit biases against women and LGBT people that were often embedded in language.

We all appreciate that this is a sensitive area where passions can easily be aroused. The last thing we want in this country is to slip towards the aggressive culture wars that have been stoked up in the United States, with partisans of opposing viewpoints more interested in the battle itself than in finding common ground, with well-funded organisations feeding the fire. We have all seen American battles spill over into British debate, from the student rebellions and protests that the Vietnam war provoked, to those over Black Lives Matter and opposing interpretations of each country’s history, glorious or inglorious. I hope all of us wish to resist sliding down the road that has led to such bitter divisions in American society, stoked by rival lobbies and highly partisan media. I hope we are all committed to an inclusive society and inclusive language. I also hope we are united in wanting to avoid moves to secure equality for women and moves to provide equal rights to LGBT people being pitched against each other.