(1 year, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for that comment. Again, he is a colleague who has been raising these issues on a regular basis. It is important to recognise that this is an opportunity for people to respond accordingly. He referred to the opportunity for the unions to agree a new rest-day working contract. What is disappointing is the cynical way in which they behaved. ASLEF agreed that rest-day working contract and then immediately said it would take action short of a strike and withdrew any co-operation at all. I hope that they will respond to the decision in the right way. It is an opportunity to reset those relationships and do what we are all supposed to do, which is to deliver a better railway for the passengers who use it. I hope that they take that opportunity. If they do, they will find a willing partner in me.
Rail companies across the country are failing rail customers with fare hikes, cancellations and delays. Great Western Railway, whose line I use between Bath and London, is no better. Between July and October 2022, it saw an increase of 179% in delay compensation claims compared with the previous year. The Government have promised to fix the system and create Great British Railways in law. When will they?
I am familiar with the GWR service as I use it frequently. There have been a number of problems on the western route, which, to be fair, are often caused not by GWR but by Network Rail. However, I accept that that inconveniences passengers just the same. That is partly why we are bringing track and train together under GBR. I will continue having that focus on performance. In fact, I am seeing Network Rail’s leadership team this afternoon, and one thing we will be talking about is its performance on the western route. I will raise the hon. Lady’s specific concerns with it.
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI will certainly look at that. Of the 300 extra driving instructors we have recruited, 87 are in London and the south-east. We have made hundreds of thousands of new slots available in the region over the last couple of years, but we continue to take great ideas from both sides of the House to see what more we can do to ensure people can take their test at the appropriate time.
HS2 is a transformational project, and the Government remain fully committed to building the line from Euston to Manchester. HS2 is being delivered in stages, with cost estimates published for each phase of the programme. We remain transparent on the emerging cost position of HS2, and we publish six-monthly reports to Parliament. The recent announcement will clearly require us to work through adjustments for certain phases, and we will provide updated estimates in due course, including through those six-monthly reports.
Tens of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds in economic growth depend on building HS2. The National Audit Office has noted that the decision to delay HS2 by another two years will increase the costs of the project yet again. The Institution of Civil Engineers says that delaying HS2 could make the building process
“more difficult as construction firms shift their focus to other countries.”
Is it not time that the Government came clean with the public that HS2 is happening, and stopped the dither and delay that will only cost the taxpayer more money?
(1 year, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe good news for the hon. Gentleman is that we have made progress on that, and we are hoping to set out what will happen on that publicly in the very near future. He does not have too long to wait and I hope he will have news that he will welcome.
Network Rail has said that 278 miles of track must be electrified every year to reach net zero. Last year, the Government added only 1.4 miles of newly electrified track, including Bath, and we are still waiting for electrification. To meet our net zero targets, will the Secretary of State commit to electrifying all new railway lines?
The hon. Lady will know that we have electrified 1,200 miles of the rail network in Great Britain since 2010, and that work continues. We clearly think that electrifying the rail network is important for our net zero commitments, and we will continue to make progress. I hope she will welcome that.
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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I agree with that point. I would expect the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) to raise van production for obvious reasons. The mandate is a fine idea, but we need the response to the consultation on the mandate. I suspect the companies that the hon. Lady talks to in her constituency want to know the rules of the game before they can work with those rules. I am sure she is looking forward to that point being raised.
The transition to electric vehicles brings into question fuel and excise duty. It is well known that the Treasury is set to lose a lot of money and a new source of revenue will be required. Fuel duty revenues pre-pandemic were about £28 billion per year, and vehicle excise revenues were approximately £6 billion. I cannot believe this has not been discussed in the hallowed halls of the Treasury, but does that mean that road pricing is a serious possibility? There has been no mention of that as a solution from the Government. Does the Minister concur?
It is interesting to hear the hon. Member talk about road pricing. Does he actually support something like “pay as you drive”, in order to charge people for the miles that they drive rather than anything else?
No, and before the Liberal Democrats try to produce another attack leaflet to say that is what I was saying, the hon. Lady can strike that from the record. That is certainly not what I was saying, but I am asking the Minister whether the Government are considering it. Surely the Treasury are considering that loss of revenue. From his previous role as Chair of the Transport Committee, the Minister will know that that was laid down as a challenge to the Government. I know that the Committee is still waiting for a response to that. I am rather cheekily asking the Minister whether he has yet to respond to himself. Could he do so today?
I will raise some more concerns about the availability of electric vehicles. Certainly in my constituency, consumers are embracing the change to electric vehicles as people are understandably more and more concerned about the environment. However, we have already heard about the supply available to buyers. The current average waiting time for an EV is seven months, according to the Library. Companies such as Volkswagen have at least a 10-month wait from the time the car is bought to its delivery. I would suggest that that is a barrier to purchase. It is concerning, because forcing people to make the change to EVs will once again increase the waiting times as demand increases. People cannot be expected to bear a cost that is due to factors out of their control.
There is a current fall in demand for EVs because of the dip in the economy and the spike in inflation. I asked a previous Minister in the Department about this. What conversations are the Government having with industry to try to help them meet demand? I realise that the pandemic has hugely got in the way of that, but what conversations are the Government having with industry to try to stimulate demand?
Tesla has recently smashed the cost of EVs by a reported £7,000. There has been an expansion of EVs, but only 24 models are priced under £32,000 due to the cost of the battery technology. Even the UK boss at Kia, Paul Philpott, has said that car makers are finding it “economically difficult” to bring affordable smaller vehicles to market due to the high cost of batteries, despite the ban on the sale of all new petrol and diesel cars looming in 2035.
I will gently remind the Minister about the up-front cost and a serious lack of a second-hand market for electric vehicles. That is a whole other subject, with only 3% of used car transactions involving EVs in 2021. I hope that that market will start to emerge as we make the transition, so that many lower-income families will not be priced out of even having a conversation about switching to an EV. It is hugely unfair that they want to do the right thing, but they know they cannot.
In closing, I support the move to electric vehicles, and I know that my constituents do. I see more and more EVs on the streets of my constituency. The phasing-out of all new petrol and diesel cars by 2035 has my support, but it is clear that the infrastructure is far from fully developed, with many complaining about teething problems. It is obvious that to meet the target, and seriously increase the rate at which the infrastructure is being implemented, especially the distribution of charging points, we need to see a step change to meet the current ambition.
Owning a car is a lifeline for many people. We need to encourage people to use their cars less and public transport more, but I am not blind to the need for cars. Car journeys are here to stay, but they need to become net zero. The transition from petrol and diesel to electric vehicles is at the heart of this effort, and it is an important step towards decarbonising the transport system and getting to net zero.
The Government’s pledge to end the sale of all petrol and diesel cars by 2030, and hybrids by 2035, has acted as a powerful signal to the car industry and the markets, but the failure to prepare the ground for the transition to EV charging infrastructure is now threatening that target and, indeed, our net zero targets. Like the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), I am absolutely in favour of the transition to EVs, but we need to prepare the ground. We cannot say, “The target cannot be achieved, so let’s just throw it out altogether.”
Until now, drivers have charged at home around three quarters of the time. However, as we shift from early adopters to the mass market, policy needs to support people who do not have the space for their own charge points. We have already heard about the regional disparities: there are many more charging points in London compared with the rest of the country, and yet two thirds of the new infrastructure is proposed for London. The lack of EV chargers is a concern for more than half of motorists. Volkswagen has noticed that, apart from the cost, the key concern for buyers today remains charging anxiety.
The lack of charging infrastructure is leading people towards do-it-yourself charging, and I want to throw that in. Electrical Safety First has found that 90% of EV owners have used domestic multi-socket extension leads and three quarters have daisy-chained extension leads. That is highly dangerous, because daisy-chaining, whereby multiple extension leads are used together, can increase the risk of socket overload and electric shock, so we are putting people at risk. Don’t do it, guys! It is really dangerous, and we need to make sure that this is not happening.
In last year’s EV infrastructure strategy, the Government made no firm commitment to ensure that EV infrastructure roll-out is in line with EV market uptake. The main problem is grid capacity. The Liberal Democrat council in Bath has worked hard to build more charging infrastructure, but it is constrained by the weak grid in the region. National Grid wants to upgrade the grid in the west of England, but Ofgem has not accepted the funding proposals. The Government need to encourage Ofgem to be part of the solution and not the problem. We need a reform of Ofgem’s remit to allow for pre-emptive investment in grid infrastructure.
A publicly funded network needs to prioritise fairly priced and equitable access. If we simply prioritise capacity over the number of locations and usefulness, we risk locking lower-income drivers, who rely on public chargers, into the most expensive rapid charging options. The Government must stop penalising people who are not able to charge their EVs at home. These people currently have to pay 20% VAT to charge their vehicles at a public charge point, compared with the 5% VAT for people charging at home. The Government must end this unjustifiable discrepancy and equalise the VAT rate at 5% for all electric vehicle charging.
Transport is responsible for nearly a third of the UK’s carbon emissions, with more than half of emissions from domestic transport coming from private cars and taxis. The quicker we get people using EVs, the closer we get to meeting our net zero targets. The benefits of owning an electric vehicle must outweigh the costs. From infrastructure to incentives, the Government need to meet words with actions and drive the electric vehicle revolution forward.
I am very grateful to Members; you have been very good. I will now call Gavin Newlands, the SNP spokesman, who will also be very good.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) for securing this important debate, and I thank every participant for their words. It may not be possible to answer all their questions, but I hope we can cover the bulk of them.
The Government are committed to decarbonising transport and to phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030, becoming the first G7 country to do so. The benefits of zero-emission motoring are there to be won: improved air quality in our towns and cities, economic growth through our automotive industry, and ultimately cheaper and cleaner driving for all. Getting to that point will require Government and industry to furnish this country with an accessible, affordable and secure charging infrastructure network.
Perhaps I can give you some reasons to be cheerful, Mr Bone; I fear the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) also needs cheering up. Industry data shows that in December 2022, 32.9% of new cars sold were fully electric. That was the best ever month for new battery electric car registrations, with more sales than in all of 2019 combined. The UK had the second highest battery electric car sales in Europe in 2022, with Germany being first and France third. A survey by Zap-Map found that only 1% of EV drivers want to switch back to a petrol or diesel vehicle. One in five public charge points in the UK are rapid or ultra-rapid, and under our plans, new homes and non-residential premises undergoing renovation will have to install charging infrastructure at the point of construction. That should lead to 145,000 further charge points across England every year. Those are some reasons to be cheerful.
Last March, we published our strategy and set out our plans to accelerate the roll-out of the network. To answer one of the questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester, the Government expect at least 300,000 public charge points to be installed across the UK by 2030. We do not regard that with the same cynicism as my good friend from the SNP, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands). A recent industry report by New AutoMotive, “On the Road to 2030”, found that the charge point roll-out is
“progressing at an adequate pace, growing by a third every 12 months, and the UK is on track”
to meet the expected 300,000 public chargers by the end of 2030. So do not just take my word for it.
That will all be achieved thanks to billions of pounds of investment by industry. There are more than 37,000 open access public chargers already on UK roads, hundreds of thousands of charge points in homes and workplaces, and more than 600,000 new chargers added to our road network each month on average. In fact, public charging devices have more than tripled in the last four years. We are on track to meet expectations.
On electric vehicle uptake, Government grants have supported drivers to buy plug-in vehicles for over a decade, with more than £1.4 billion already having been invested in the early market. Colleagues at the Treasury are committed to ensuring that motoring tax revenues keep pace with the changes brought about by the switch to electric vehicles, while keeping the transition affordable to consumers.
I will touch on local charging infrastructure, which has been raised. This debate is a timely one. Lack of access to off-street parking should not be a barrier to owning a plug-in electric vehicle. We are working with local authorities to ensure local provision meets local needs. Just yesterday, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester mentioned, we announced that drivers across the UK will benefit from a further £56 million of public and industry funding to support the roll-out of electric vehicle charge points across the country.
(2 years ago)
Commons ChamberI am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her question and for her work when she was Home Secretary to strengthen the law to enable us to deal with those who cause disruption on our transport network. I would be delighted to meet her and the leader of Essex County Council to talk about those important road projects.
Research from the Campaign for Better Transport suggests that the Government are so far behind on their electrification plans that rolling stock leasing companies are being forced to destroy electric units that they cannot use. At the same time, the Government continue to introduce new diesel trains—more not zero than net zero. Will the Government ensure that they order no more diesel trains and get on with electrification?
The Government are committed to phasing out all diesel trains by 2040. That remains our aim and our ambition. There is electrification going on at the moment along the west midlands line, and we are certainly committed to ensuring that we can roll out more electrification, and indeed use hydrogen and battery power where appropriate, in the years to come.
(2 years ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my neighbour, the hon. Member for Richmond Park, for securing this debate. The overflying flights into Heathrow go over her constituency before mine. Does she not agree that we need to be concerned not just about Heathrow expansion meaning a third runway, but the possibility that the airport will try to get more flights on the existing two runways in breach of the 480,000 cap? It could of course do that if it did away with alternation, which provides respite to our residents, and had more flights during the night-time period.
The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) makes an excellent point, and she and I share views on this issue.
I apologise to my hon. Friend.
Many of my Bath constituents have expressed concerns about the increasing number of flights taking off from Bristol airport late at night. Does she not also agree that the climate emergency compels us to look at an overall reduction in flights, particularly internal short flights where rail is available as an alternative?
I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. She is precisely right. Our concern relates not only to night flights, but very much to the fact that Heathrow expansion would lead to increased noise levels and around 6 million additional tonnes of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere each year. The UK cannot properly tackle the climate crisis if we continue to expand our airports, especially when we should be promoting greener transport.
(2 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Again, it is common sense. That is already happening, which is why I am not calling for it. It needs to continue, and a solution needs to be found to provide an effective rail service—that is absolute common sense.
Is it not absurd that the Government are pouring billions of pounds into companies owned by other countries’ Governments? Whatever the ownership of the companies, they are failing to deliver services but have been awarded multi-million-pound contracts by the Government. Avanti is supposed to run HS2. Should that really happen in the light of the catastrophic delivery failures, and will the Government look at a new operator for HS2?
I repeat that all options are on the table. The decisions on HS2 are a bit further away. As HS2 Minister, I can say that we are having those conversations. I am certainly speaking with Avanti and visiting all phases of HS2, both in development and in construction. Those conversations are live.
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy rail commuting friend makes an excellent point. Every person in this country will want to know and understand how MPs have voted in this place tonight. It matters to them and their families, and it matters for their jobs.
Is it not the reality that the person who most wants this strike to go ahead is the Prime Minister?
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberDecisions on road charging are of course for the Mayor of London alone to take, but I agree with my hon. Friend that the Mayor must not punish people who need to use their cars, especially at a time when people are struggling with the cost of living.
The national bus strategy, published in March last year, sets out the Government’s vision for delivering better bus services for passengers across England. In April, we announced over £1 billion of new funding for the bus service improvement plans, as part of a £3 billion investment in buses during this Parliament.
Well, we are back to buses. My local bus company is really struggling. Numbers 1, 2, 3, 3A, 19, 22, 39, U1, U2, U5 and D2 have all been cut, at a time when we must offer people proper alternatives to car travel. When can my constituents expect bus services to get back to at least pre-pandemic levels?
We have provided huge support for bus services across the country during the pandemic. I would like to remind the hon. Lady that since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 annual support for buses has been 15% higher in real terms than it was under Labour, and that bus fares rose far faster under the last Labour Government. This Government support buses and bus users and we will continue to invest in bus services across the country.
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberI congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on initiating this important debate. As ever, it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) and the many hon. Members who have spoken so movingly about the women in Ukraine and women facing the most severe violence in this country.
In the spirit of this year’s theme “Break the Bias”, I want to focus my remarks on girls and women in science, maths and tech careers. I want to start by telling two stories. Born in 1815, Ada Lovelace was the child of poet Lord Byron and mathematician Lady Byron, and had a passion for mathematics from an early age. Despite childhood illness, Ada let nothing hold her back. Aged 12, she decided she wanted to fly. She examined the anatomy of birds and explored the best materials to create herself a set of wings. As a teenager—at just 18—she was working with mathematician Charles Babbage on one of the very first computers, almost 200 years ago. Despite later marrying and becoming a countess, Ada did not give up her passion for a life of leisure, and her work on the analytical engine means that she is widely recognised as one of the world’s first computer programmers.
Half a century after Ada was born, Agnes Pockels was born in Germany. She could not study at university like her brother because women were not allowed to at the time, and she had sick parents at home and therefore a lot of caring responsibilities. Stuck at home carrying out all the household chores, which I am sure we will all recognise, Agnes noticed soap building on the surface of her washing water. Aged 18, she began conducting experiments at home to understand more, and although she was locked out of accessing scientific literature, this did not stop Agnes. In 1891 she published her first scientific paper “Surface Tension” and she is now recognised as a pioneer in the field of surface science.
If we ask ourselves why we are here today, it is because women have historically been disenfranchised, disempowered and devoiced.
The hon. Lady is bringing to our attention a very interesting woman who made a lot of scientific progress. Does she know about Caroline Herschel? Together with her brother, she was an astronomer. She did more work than him, but her work was not recognised. Does she agree that we need to sing the praises of women from the past as much as possible?
I agree. There are so many we could mention today—including Rosalind Franklin—whose work was not properly recognised at the time and whom we should recognise now.
Women have been shut out of the room where decisions are made and locked out of the jobs with the highest returns. I am glad that today we can celebrate much progress since the time of Ada and Agnes, but the fact is that women are still playing catch-up after centuries and centuries of inequality. PhD computer and data scientists are powering the economy, creating new billion-dollar companies in life sciences, artificial intelligence, fintech, health tech and beyond. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg—three of the richest people on the planet—were all STEM students and they now lead companies that are shaping the world around us, with arguably more power and certainly more wealth than our political leaders. In the years ahead the new Wall Street is going to be a wet lab.
We know that STEM subjects are some of the highest value added courses for future earnings. We also know that demand is surging for people to fill new high-quality tech and data science jobs. This field is now where the decisions are being taken and where the high-return jobs are being created. I want women to get their fair slice of the economic pie so that we are not playing catch- up in the decades to come.
Since 2010, under successive Conservative Governments, the number of women accepted on full-time STEM undergraduate courses in the UK has increased by almost 50%, but women still remain deeply under-represented in STEM subjects. Girls are only half as likely as boys to say that their strongest subject is science or maths, despite the fact that we know that they now regularly outperform boys in these subjects. A Girlguiding survey last year showed that over half of 11 to 21-year-old girls and women said that they felt that STEM subjects were more for the boys. Only 14.5% of engineers are women, and only 13% of STEM workers at management level are women. This is bias at work, and for the future of equality in this country we need to break it. There could not be a better time.
The success of the covid vaccine roll-out is an inspiration to so many young women in this country, who want to be the next Kate Bingham, Professor Sarah Gilbert or Dr Emily Lawson—or perhaps the next Ada Lovelace or Agnes Pockels. Luckily, today we live in an open society where women can access the world of academia, science and enterprise. However, we are still fighting centuries of bias. That is why I am delighted to be working with our fantastic Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza to encourage more women into advanced mathematical courses in particular. We will be hosting a roundtable later this month, so if any fellow Members are interested, please do get in touch. It is of the utmost importance to ensure that in the centuries ahead women are not playing catch-up once again.
I thank the hon. and learned Lady for that intervention, and I note what she says.
The SNP Minister Shona Robison said when she was introducing the Bill:
“There is no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 3 March 2022; c. 65.]
That comment really misses the point. The point is that the Bill does create new opportunities for predatory men and I am afraid that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) has to accept that there are plenty of instances where biological men have taken advantage of this new freedom being granted them, to the detriment of the safety of women.
I just want to clarify this point. Because there are some predatory men who will always find loopholes for violence, is that a reason for not protecting the most vulnerable people that we have—that is, the transgender community?
I do not follow what the hon. Lady is saying. I am in favour of protecting the trans community in this country. What I am not in favour of is allowing biological men into women’s spaces where they can threaten women as a matter of right, however risk-assessed they might be. I do not know how you risk-assess somebody going into a public toilet or into other women-only safe spaces. The fact is that women are taking flight from the political parties that are supporting this kind of agenda. At least the Conservative party can be a safe haven for them if we stand up and speak for women.
I want to echo the opening remarks of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). She is absolutely right: today we stand in solidarity with the women of Ukraine. Our hearts go out to them in their suffering, and we stand in awe of their bravery and resilience. Women are all too often the most vulnerable, and they are the real victims of war and conflict. The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) has just made a passionate speech about that. Globally, an estimated 736 million women have experienced sexual violence—that is one in three of us. More than 80,000 women were murdered in 2020, most at the hands of a close relation. Violence extends to children, too; 60 million girls are being sexually assaulted on their way to school every year. Those are not just numbers—they are human beings who feel pain and fear, and are being traumatised throughout their lives.
UN Women notes that violence disproportionately affects low-income countries, but our country is no beacon when it comes to women’s safety. Last week was the very sad first anniversary of Sarah Everard’s horrific murder by a Metropolitan police officer. The police response to the Clapham Common vigil was violent, too. Today, we are still waiting to hear of serious steps to stamp out misogyny in the Met once and for all, but it is not just about police forces. Misogyny is deeply ingrained in our culture, being present everywhere from schools to nightclubs to the courts.
Drink spiking has received a lot of public attention recently. It is a particularly vile form of violence against women and girls. One third of women have been spiked or know someone who has been.
The Government’s end-to-end rape review laid bare the failures of the criminal justice system. Last year, less than 2% of rape cases ended in conviction, adding insult to injury for survivors who find the strength to come forward and report rape—which only one in six women actually do, because they mistrust the system. No wonder they do.
What has been done in the past year to break the bias and to ensure that nobody is disadvantaged by their gender? Well, not enough. While racism and homophobia are considered hate crimes, misogyny is not, despite nearly every woman having experienced gender-based harassment. We have discussed it in the House, but I am still convinced that misogyny must become a hate crime. Although such a measure would not be a silver bullet, there are many reasons why it would mean progress: it would allow for the more accurate collection of data on harassment and make the collection of such data mandatory; it would set a precedent that such behaviour is unacceptable; it would curb the street harassment that 68% of all women experience on a near daily basis; and it would stamp out low-level behaviour based on misogyny so that it would not lead to much more serious offences based on misogyny.
Misogyny needs to be tackled in all settings. I have previously talked about the provision of age-appropriate education on consent in schools. The delivery of age-appropriate relationship education by experts in every school would be a very good start. It cannot be left to a postcode lottery. Some schools do it very well but, as I have said before, it cannot be for maths or language teachers to do such important work. It has to be delivered by experts.
As the crisis in Ukraine continues to unfold, many women will become displaced and especially vulnerable. We cannot allow refugees from Ukraine or elsewhere to fall into the arms of traffickers or abusers.
Finally, the Government must listen to and champion women’s voices. They are the agents of change. We women have made progress—often painful and slow—and we still have a long way to go, but I wish to echo the words of the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) in saying that it is fun to be a woman. It is important to be here. To everybody who listens to today’s debate I say: come forward. We need you.