Women (Government Policies)

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Baroness Morgan of Cotes

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Are those constituents equally delighted by the cuts to child tax credit, the cuts to the baby tax credit that is paid in the first year, the cuts to the Sure Start allowance, the cuts to their Sure Start centres, and the huge cuts that are hitting low-income women across the country? I bet they are not. I bet the hon. Lady did not ask them about those things when they came in and she started talking to them just about child benefit for higher earners.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

Those same women—we are talking about these abstract women—are also extremely unhappy about the massive deficit left behind by the previous Government. Whether someone is a mother or a father, their children are facing an enormous debt. This Government are tackling the debt that the right hon. Lady’s Government left behind.

[Yvette Cooper]

If we had not had the increase in the deficit during the global financial crisis, we would have seen recession turn into slump. We would have seen huge numbers of women lose their jobs and be stuck in long-term unemployment. We would have seen women and their families lose their homes and savings, so it was right to support the economy during the recession. As a result of our decisions, the economy grew and the deficit came down. Unfortunately, the Minister’s Government have decided to put a political timetable for deficit reduction into place far ahead of the interests of the economy. They are hitting public services far faster than they needed to, but they are also hitting jobs and pushing far more women out of work and on to benefits and the dole, so that they cannot support their families.

Even if the Minister for Women and Equalities believes that the Government should cut the deficit this far and this fast, how can she possibly think it is fair for women to be paying £11 billion of the £16 billion reduction that is coming from tax and benefits, while men pay £5 billion? How can it be fair for women to pay twice as much as men, despite the fact that they still earn less and own less?

Sometimes I think that the Prime Minister has a blind spot about women, but most of the time I think the truth is probably far worse. This is an ideological problem for the Tories and Liberal Democrats. Despite the fact that there are many women in both parties who strongly want to see greater progress for women, the overall ideology of both parties at the moment is that the public sector should not worry about supporting families, about who gets the money within families or about what happens to families, because that is a private matter that the public sector should not engage in. They believe that such things as tax credits are bad, because they breed dependency. The truth is that for millions of women, pension payments or tax credits create not dependence but independence. They give women greater choice about how to balance work and family life, and about whether they can afford to stay at home while the kids are young or cover their child care payments so that they can go out to work.

I know that this is not easy for the Minister, because she does not control what happens in other Departments. She did the right thing at the very beginning of the Government’s time in office when she warned Ministers of their obligations to consider equality and the impact of policies on women. Unfortunately, few of those Ministers seem to have been listening. Several may indeed have told her to calm down.

Even if the right hon. Lady is not fully aware of what is happening across the Government, she does have responsibility in her own Department, the Home Office, and there are serious grounds for concern there. The committee on women in policing, for example, did not meet for more than a year. It would be helpful if she told the House whether it has yet met, and whether it is now doing any work to support more women to get into the police.

The right hon. Lady has followed the previous Government’s example of announcing a cross-Government strategy to tackle violence against women, which we welcome. We also welcome her support for rape crisis centres, but she does not seem to be reflecting what is actually happening on the ground, with one in five domestic violence courts closing; specialist domestic violence officers in police forces up and down the country being cut as a result of her 20% cuts to the police; refuges having to close their doors; DNA not being held in rape cases in which charges are not brought; and sentences for rapists potentially being halved if they plead guilty. We have seen her refusal and reluctance to sign the trafficking directive until pressure mounted in the House, a U-turn on anonymity for rape defendants only after pressure from the House, and her resistance, still, of the Council of Europe’s convention on violence against women.

Those matters have deep consequences in practice. The POPPY project has told me of the story of Lucy, who was heavily pregnant and being treated for a life-threatening disease, and who had been severely beaten by her father. Lucy’s doctor was trying to find accommodation for her. Due to the squeeze on local government budgets, the homeless persons unit said that it could not treat Lucy as being in priority need, and social services wrongly said that they did not need to help her because the baby had not yet been born.

Lucy was getting ready to sleep on the street for the weekend. The doctor could find only one refuge space, but it was too far away. The worker explained to the doctor that Lucy needed a legal letter telling social services and the homeless persons unit that they had a duty of care to her. Experience showed that only that legal threat would make the services act. Unfortunately, as hon. Members know, legal aid cuts are now biting, and solicitors were scarce and none had the space to take Lucy’s case. In the end, her doctor persuaded the hospital contract doctor to write a letter. It was not his responsibility, but he did so, and Lucy was given temporary accommodation. It came in the nick of time, because the refuge workers said that on that day, five other women fleeing domestic violence came in and asked for help, and were not as lucky as Lucy. They tell me that some ended up sleeping on the street. That is the reality of what is happening to vulnerable women at the sharp end of the cuts.