Women in the House of Commons

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Mr Sharma. I am not quite sure that that time limit will work for what I have here, but I will do the best that I can. I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for her speech and for her Committee’s work on its excellent report, and I thank all those who gave evidence to that Committee.

I share the disappointment of everybody who has spoken about the Government not taking on the recommendations. I hope that, now that we have a new Government, they may wish to revisit this and take another look at the recommendations, because they are good recommendations. I add to those who have talked about quotas, and I share their concerns: I suppose that quotas are not perfect or what we would want in an ideal world. However, we do not have an ideal world. Women are not equal to men in society—or in this building—so there has to be a disruptor to the selection process that starts to make the rules work a little bit more in women’s favour. If we leave it how it is, it will be a very long time before we actually see any change. Action on this is long overdue.

The right hon. Member for Basingstoke was right to talk about cultural factors and this building, the way it works and some of the behaviour that happens here. This is not new. My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) referred to Winnie Ewing, who I will also refer to. Hers was one of the first political biographies that I read, and she reported that, in her time in this place, as the single female Scottish National party representative, she was

“interrupted whenever I spoke, I was regularly insulted and I was even defamed once or twice...I was even stalked by a Labour MP”.

She describes that stalking in some detail, although she does not name her stalker. That behaviour continued when she became a representative in the European Parliament as well. It took the chair of the European Parliament to write to the Speaker here to tell off those Members who continued to harass and upset her when she was in the European Parliament, which is completely unacceptable.

We know that that behaviour has not changed in recent years. My former colleague, Dr Eilidh Whiteford, was threatened with “a doing” in 2011 by a then Select Committee Chair, which is absolutely inappropriate. She felt that she had to withdraw from that Committee as a result of that. As we have seen from recent news of harassments, that is still a problem. It is still an issue, and we cannot be blind to it—we need to act.

Other Members have talked about their own experiences. My experience is that I have been well supported by men and women both in the SNP and not in the SNP. Like the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), I started as a local councillor, on Glasgow City Council. When I was first elected in 2007, the council was very male, pale and stale, and there was some very inappropriate behaviour by some of the older male councillors.

I had only been there for, I think, a matter of weeks before one of the male councillors thought it was appropriate to come up to my colleague and pat her on the stomach because he thought she was pregnant. She was not, but he should not have been doing that anyway; there is no need for that kind of behaviour. Some years later, when I was pregnant, a Labour councillor thought it would be appropriate, during meetings with other people present, to offer to deliver my baby. I made it perfectly clear how I felt about that kind of comment, but he persisted in making them because he knew I did not like it. There needs to be more challenging of those types of behaviours, because they are not funny; it is not a joke and it makes women feel uncomfortable.

I am glad to see that there has been progress in women’s representation in this place. In my own seat of Glasgow Central, none of the nine candidates were women in 2010, but three out of nine were women in 2015, and in 2017 it was the only seat in the country with an all-female candidate list. Progress has been made, but it is not enough. We need to think about how we support women when they get to this place. We need to look at maternity leave and support during pregnancy and we need to look at family-friendly hours. We also need to look at even more radical things. I have suggested before that we should have a version of the French suppléant system, in which Members could have somebody to job-share with or fill in for them when they are not here.

We also need to look at the impact of the boundary review and whether we can do more about safe seats and incumbency. To help to address those issues, the SNP has taken the approach that if a male MSP stands down, there will be an all-women shortlist in that seat to fill that gap. The former Member for Ochil and South Perthshire, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, is our national women and equalities officer. She has done a huge amount of work to encourage women to stand; she runs a women’s academy and is working to get women’s confidence up. That confidence is so important. Men will often put themselves forward for things after looking at the job description and thinking, “Of course I can do that,” when they can only do half of the things in the description. Women will look at the job description and think, “I couldn’t possibly do that.”

We need to encourage women to stand. We need to identify good women who have potential and ideas and things that they want to do to change the world. We need to get them to stand up and participate. We have seen a lot more female candidates coming forward in the SNP for council, which is a very important starting ground for people who want to get into politics and a very important part of politics. We need to support women in that. We cannot just encourage them and then take away any sense of structure. We need to keep that going over time and make sure that they continue to be supported.

We have some exceptional women in the SNP who I am very proud of. My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston mentioned her mum, Lis Bardell, who is one of the most wonderful and exceptional encouragers in the party, and fearsome with it. We have a responsibility and a duty to make change and to make sure that, as the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn said, women get here and then get into positions of power where they can help to make change. Select Committee Chairs have huge power to influence, change and set the agenda. Without women in those positions, nothing will change in so many different areas, particularly those where policy hugely affects women. I thank Members for their contributions to the debate.