Women and the Vote
Debate between Alison McGovern and Baroness Keeley(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
And in 1997, when we had all-women shortlists.
Alison McGovern
I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for that intervention. I know how hard she has worked in her own party to bring forward advances for women. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) has also just mentioned the advances made in 1997.
Women did not just have to fight for the right to vote; they had to fight for the right truly to be themselves, whatever that means. They had to fight, as we have to fight, for the right to exist as others do, and to make choices about how to realise our ambition and serve our country. So what holds us back? Well, for a start, let us look at this EU referendum. It is a decision that will affect us all, but the debate has too often been dominated by male voices. It has been a debate in which the ever-changing opinion of one male Tory Back Bencher seems to take precedence over the views of a whole host of women in the Cabinet and shadow Cabinet. I am not going to make many friends among Tory Back Benchers this evening—at least not on the male side.
On representation, we may have parity of votes, but we certainly do not have parity of voice. Public debate too often excludes women or shouts them down. The point is that we may have made huge progress over the last few decades on the number of women MPs, on women in the Cabinet and on all sorts measures, but there is so much still to do, because not everyone is able to realise their true value and—even worse—there is still violence.
Living Standards
Debate between Alison McGovern and Baroness Keeley(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Alison McGovern
Quite right! Jam tomorrow, but never jam today. People in the Wirral will certainly not put up with that, and I doubt that anyone in the rest of the country will either.
I have spent much of the summer talking to people about zero-hours contracts. They are a growing issue for my constituents and others. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) and I have conducted a survey in order to listen to people with experience of such contracts. Given the stories that we heard from people who simply did not know what their wage packet was going to contain at the end of each week or month, I simply cannot accept the argument that any job is better than no job. That is like saying that it is better to work for £1 an hour than to have no job at all. I cannot accept that argument. I cannot accept an economy that is devoid of standards.
This is not a proper recovery. Unless it reaches those on low and middle incomes, we shall not see the kind of economic recovery that we need. Instead, we shall see the kind of hysteresis and waste of talent that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan has described. Zero-hours contracts affect young people; they are a blight on their prospects. Those people need a chance to build their skills so that they have the potential to have a good career. Will the Minister answer these questions? What will he do if the number of hours worked per person in the economy does not increase? What will he do if people are still underemployed in a year’s time? How will he address their need to increase their pay packet so that they can afford the prices in the shops?
On inflation, I repeat that I still cannot quite believe the Prime Minister’s response at Prime Minister’s questions today to the question about school uniforms. I remember only too well the situation in my own family. There were three of us, and September was an expensive time. My mum used to worry that we had grown. If the Prime Minister has not experienced that, or heard about it from families in his own constituency, let me tell him that it was extremely stressful. Unfortunately, the previous Governor of the Bank of England was forced to write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer citing the VAT increase as part of the cause of the inflation that we have experienced. So, although I accept the points that have been made about the global situation, the Government’s policy has not exactly helped to bring down prices.
Barbara Keeley
I thank my hon. Friend for re-raising the point about school uniforms. The point that seemed to escape the Prime Minister, and possibly also the Secretary of State for Education, who was sitting next to him at Prime Minister’s questions, is that the problem is due entirely to the Government’s policy of creating new free schools and academies that insist on a branded uniform. That has raised the cost of the uniforms to £300. It is not possible to buy those uniforms from a supermarket. The increased cost is directly due to the policy of creating lots of new free schools and academies. The Government have to take responsibility for that.
Accountability and Transparency in the NHS
Debate between Alison McGovern and Baroness Keeley(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I was appalled to read in the Francis report on the Mid Staffs inquiry the stories of the unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people and, indeed, to hear the examples given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) in this debate. Those Mid Staffs patients were let down and there was a lack of care, compassion, humanity and leadership. The most basic standards of care were not observed and fundamental rights to dignity were not respected.
Our Health Committee has taken evidence from Robert Francis, who has said that there was a failure of the NHS system
“at every level to detect and take the action patients and the public were entitled to expect.”
He has summarised his own recommendations as: fundamental and easily understood standards; openness, transparency and candour; accountability to patients and the public; enhanced training for nurses and leaders; and ever-improving measures of performance.
In the short time available, I want to focus on two areas: first, accountability or, indeed, the lack of it in our NHS structures, and secondly—this has already been touched on—the question of what is good practice on patient safety.
The Health Committee is increasingly seeing examples of a gap in accountability in the restructured NHS and I will touch on one small example that we heard this week. We had a session with senior Department of Health staff—the director of mental health, the national clinical director of mental health and the deputy director of secure mental health services—who are responsible for advising Ministers on mental health strategy, for devising mental health legislation and for clinical leadership on mental health. They did not know that patient groups were reporting cuts to community mental health services or that they lacked access to therapeutic services, with very long waits.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that scrutiny to make sure that the dignity of mental health patients is protected is of utmost importance?