Oral Answers to Questions

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We don’t want to fall out again, do we? We have got Anne McLaughlin in Glasgow waiting.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP) [V]]

One of the biggest global growth markets for local companies until Brexit was the EU. A1 Kilt Hire in my constituency was doing a roaring trade hiring out kilts to wedding parties across Europe, but nobody in the UK Government has been able to tell it if and how it can continue trading because its products are for hire and not for sale. HMRC could not even tell it if it would have to pay tax when the kilts were returned. Where on earth can hire companies that have survived this double whammy so far go to for advice on continuing to trade in Europe? Given the Minister’s two previous answers, I am guessing that it is not him.

[Mr Speaker]

With the Minister’s family background, we might get a good answer.

Gender Recognition Act Consultation

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that there are not enough services. That is why we are introducing new clinics. There is also an issue with support for the under-18s, which is why the NHS launched the Cass review yesterday. We are taking this issue seriously. I welcome the reduction in waiting lists, but of course there is more to be done and we need to work closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to achieve that.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Sometimes people are opposed to the human rights of others in case they encroach on their own; it is an almost instinctive human reaction. When we as politicians want to ensure those human rights, it is about not just actions but language and education, so that we all understand each other and we are all in a place where we are happy for others with whom we do not necessarily identify to have equal access to human rights and opportunities. That said, action is crucial, and I am sorry to say that the Minister has failed on that front this week.

I am sorry to say that because the Minister’s language in the past has indicated better, and her failure to take action will have an impact on the many very distressed trans people who have written to me from across the UK. The fact remains that trans people continue to suffer poorer outcomes relative to the wider population, and that needs to change. We are now at a stage, in terms of equality, where the language we use around race, gender and disability, while not perfect, is getting there. Actions have been taken and laws have been written. We need more compliance and enforcement, but at least the laws exist.

This is a devolved matter and, yes, it is complex, but it is not too complex for the Scottish Government, who continue to have a strong commitment to reforming the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland before next May’s elections in 2021. There are many reasons for that. One reason is that everyone surely has the right to be who they are, but we also recognise that we must comply with international human rights law, and the way to do that is to have a system for obtaining legal gender recognition. Do the Minister and her Government recognise the need to comply with international human rights law? Do they care about that? The gender recognition panel takes applications from across the UK, and the Scottish Government will carefully consider what she has said and what it means for Scotland, so will she commit to co-operating with the Scottish Government?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am very interested in what the hon. Lady has said, because my understanding is that the Scottish Government’s draft Bill to reform the GRA has been paused. I would be very happy to take this up with her at a later opportunity. In terms of human rights law, of course we are committed to that and we continue to lead the world in LGBT rights and human rights. We will shortly be hosting an international LGBT conference.

Women in the Commonwealth: Trade and Investment

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) on securing this debate. She is clearly very experienced and committed to the issues she has raised, and it is a pleasure to speak in the debate. I also enjoyed listening to the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain). There is interesting work going on around the world. There are lots of challenges and lots of ideas, and it is good to know that so many of us are so committed.

Fundamental to all this is education. Unless the UK Government seriously address inequalities in work and education in their role as Commonwealth chair-in-office, little progress will be made on business and investment. There is little time to make the impact we should be making. The UK has been Commonwealth chair-in-office for a year and a half; it has only six months left. The UK Government have been fairly slow in pushing for positive social change in the Commonwealth, and I hope we do not waste those precious final months. That is not to say that there are not positives or that the UK does not play any part in that positive progress—it would be wrong to claim that—but are we doing enough?

Let me start with the positives. From 2017, when I lost my seat, to 2019, I spent quite a bit of time working overseas. I did a lot of work in the Gambia, which is a Commonwealth member, on behalf of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DFID. I therefore know from first-hand experience that there is truly meaningful work going on that is funded by the UK. I would love to say more about my experience, particularly in the Gambia, but that is perhaps for another day.

Let me also acknowledge some of the progress that women have made in the Commonwealth. First, a girl is as likely as a boy—in some countries more likely—to attend primary school. That is an improvement. Secondly, in the Parliaments of 13 Commonwealth countries, 30% or more of members are women. Thirdly, in most countries, women can now expect to outlive men.

However, it remains the case—I do not put this at the door of the UK Government; it is for all of us across the world to resolve—that only one in five Commonwealth parliamentarians is a woman. That means four in five are men. Only seven of every 10 girls attend secondary school. Thirty-two countries do not mandate equal pay for work of equal value, 19 do not have laws prohibiting early marriage, and 89% of Commonwealth countries have at least one piece of legislation on the books that holds women back economically in terms of starting or growing a business. That is unacceptable, and it must be addressed before any real economic progress can be made.

On early marriage, as it is the week of International Women’s Day, I want to pay tribute to a truly inspirational woman, who is a tribal chief in Malawi. Since being appointed a few years ago, Chief Theresa Kachindamoto has annulled more than 1,000 child marriages and sent all the girls back to school. She is in charge of 551 village head men—they are all men. If one of them allows a child to be married, she dismisses him immediately—zero tolerance. That is why she is known in Malawi as the marriage terminator.

I spent some time in Malawi during recess. I went with Oxfam to two villages, where we met girls who had been married and had babies as children, and had dropped out of school. When they were encouraged to return, they said they could not because they had to breastfeed their babies and school was too far away. Oxfam gave them bicycles so they could go to school, cycle home at lunch time to feed their babies, and return to school. They no longer have to choose between their children and the education they need to create better lives for themselves.

Even if every country sorted out the inequality in education, the well-documented relationship between trade and gender would remain. Women are disproportionately affected by trade policy decisions, particularly in developing countries, as we have heard. As the UK leaves the European Union and forms its own independent trade policy, the Government have an opportunity to show leadership and develop a truly gender-responsive approach to trade policy. I hope they make the most of that opportunity.

International Women’s Day

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Amuna anga andig wiririria usiku watha. I know it is unlikely anyone here understands what I said—if they do, I hope they will not tell everybody I pronounced it incorrectly —but I will come back to it at the end and explain why I said it.

The 8th of March is International Women’s Day. I hope you will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is also my birthday.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is an international woman.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I am an international woman.

For many years, I had my niece and nephew believing that the day was named in honour of me. They were wide-eyed at the celebrations the world over—all for me. At the same time, I regularly adjusted my age for them, so it was a bit of a running joke that I could not face up to reaching the upper stages of my youth. It all came unstuck for me in 2011, when the world marked 100 years of International Women’s Day. They found it amusing to discover that I was around more than 100 years ago.

There are some lessons in there somewhere, and one of them is about age. As we celebrate women, let us celebrate all women and note those who often face barriers in addition to those presented by their gender. That might be for any number of reasons: race, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, income and, yes, age. Age International reports that nearly a quarter of the world’s women are over the age of 50, yet they are routinely excluded from policy and practice that aims to address gender inequality and violence against women, including sexual violence.

We, and I include myself in this, also need to stop talking about age as if it were a bad thing—it is clearly better than any other alternative. We talk as if women, in particular, are past it once they reach a certain age—a certain age I have yet to reach, obviously. While we are talking about age, let us not forget the regular exclusion of young women from the policy-making process.

International Women’s Day is not just about looking at barriers and inequality. As we have heard, it is also about celebrating successes and the barriers that have been overcome. However, until we have true equality in every walk of life and in every sense of the word, we have to keep talking about why we do not have equal opportunities in this life. So today I want to do three things. I want to read out a roll-call of just some of the women who inspire me. I also want to talk about some fundamental barriers facing women and how our male allies can help break them down, and I will end by asking two things of the Government. That will allow me to explain why I started off speaking in a different language.

On the roll-call, I sometimes think we have our famous women we pay tribute to, and then we have our so-called ordinary women. I am just going to mix them up and read a list of women who inspire me. Some are constituents, but they are by no means the only woman in my constituency who inspire me—I would need the entire debate to mention them all. The women are Mary Seacole, Helen Carroll, Marie Curie, Winnie Ewing, Mags Watson, Gemma Coyle, Rosa Parks, Mary Hunter, Marie Stopes, Janet Connor, Harriet Tubman, Laura Clark, Bessie Watson, Josephine McCusker, Catherine Yuill, Tracy Pender, Donna Henderson and, finally—I am going to say something about the last one—Chief Theresa Kachindamoto, also known in Malawi as the marriage terminator. She became the chief of over 900,000 people and immediately dissolved the child marriages of 3,000 girls. I like the name “the marriage terminator”. I want those on the list who are still with us to know that they inspire me. If they do not know why, I will tell them when I see them.

The second thing I want to talk about is the fundamental barriers facing women. I want to say a bit about how I came rather late in life to understand the barriers that I face because of my gender, in the hope that it will help others who want to understand. I am not going to talk about children and childcare. It is an obvious, although necessary, matter to refer to, but it sometimes allows people to simplify the issue. It allows those who regularly ask, “When’s International Men’s Day?” to argue that women who have full childcare or who have no children are barrier-free, and that is just not the case. I do not have children, so I cannot say that childcare duties prevent me from doing some of the things I want to do, but for my entire life I have experienced the fundamental barriers that almost all women experience—I just did not know that that is what it was.

Many of my peers were elected long before I ever was. I thought that that was because they were better, that I would not be that good anyway and that politics was not for the likes of me. I also did not like the combative and competitive nature of party politics, so if there was an internal battle for selection, I just refused to put myself forward. I remember my friend Shona Robison, who went on to be the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport in the Scottish Government, phoning me and saying, “It’s the first Scottish Parliament, Anne. We need more women. Why don’t you stand?” I just point-blank refused. No matter how much she encouraged me, and no matter how she tried to persuade me, I told her it was not for me.

I believed that the thing holding me back was me and my lack of ability, but I was not lacking in ability, and it was Nicola Sturgeon who opened my eyes to that. We were talking about gender balance mechanisms, and I said what I have heard many women say: “I would only ever want to get somewhere on merit.” She said, “Well, that’s fine—if all the men you see elected are there on merit alone too. Until they are, we need these gender balance mechanisms.” That got me thinking, and it set me on a path where I ended up spending the last two years working in different countries, mainly trying to get more women into politics. I made that argument about merit, and I could see other women’s eyes opening.

I also used something else Nicola pointed out to me that day: ask a man to tell you three things he is really good at, and he will. He is quite right to do that, because you have asked him to do it, but if we ask a woman to do the same, most women—of course, I am generalising, but I think we can use general points here—will start by telling us what they are not good at, and I could list many more than three.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The hon. Lady is making a very powerful argument. One thing we should be doing is giving women the licence to try, fail and come back to something. So many of us will not put our names forward; we are afraid of failing. We are told that if we fail once, that is it. All of us need to be fairer on ourselves and fairer on each other to encourage people to come forward.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I absolutely agree. I was just going on to say that even when we cajole some women and say, “Come on, just tell me something you’re good at,” they will say things like, “Well, my friends think I am quite good at—” It is very difficult to get things out of them.

It is all to do with conditioning. Boys are brought up, on the whole, to be ambitious, bold and confident and to expect to be important in life. Girls are brought up to look after everyone else, including those important men, to be the peacemakers and to look pretty. How many times, when we meet a little girl, is the first thing we say to her that she looks really pretty? How many times do we say to a little boy how clever he is? Clearly that girl will grow up judging herself on how she looks or how she does not look, and the boy will focus on being clever and running the world.

I am not talking just about parents, although they obviously have an influence. I was brought up by two parents who regularly drummed into me that I was as good as anyone else—no better, no worse, but as good as. I was encouraged by them to conquer the world, but not by the society I grew up in. The influences around us, such as the media, teachers and other people involved in a child’s life, can be really powerful, so I was really impressed to read that the Scottish Government last month held the first meeting of a taskforce to tackle gender stereotyping in the classroom. We need a lot more of that.

The other thing we women need is our male allies. I am happy to say that there are many in here. There are many on the SNP Benches, and many in my own life. I want to make one suggestion about how men in politics can be our allies on a practical level, but before I do, I want to go back to the issue of conditioning and to acknowledge that not all the conditioning that boys receive is positive. One area where girls and women fare better is talking about emotions. We are allowed to do that, but boys and men are not. When I talk about conditioning, it is not to suggest that we get it right with boys either.

What can our male allies do to support women in politics? I did quite a bit of work last year in the Gambia to support political parties to get more women, among other groups, involved in politics. Almost every female political activist told me she needed training in public speaking, but I spotted something far more fundamental, which I have spotted in other countries, including our own. Many of the women were not even speaking in the small roundtable party meetings; those who did regularly had their sentences finished for them, and they accepted that. I am not singling out the Gambia, because mansplaining is a worldwide phenomenon, as we all know. I realised that I had work to do with the women on how to make their voices heard on a more fundamental level. I also recognised that I had work to do with the men. It is like all forms of unconscious bias: most people do not intend to practise bias. Most men would likely be horrified if they discovered that they were creating barriers.

The one thing that men can do is to look at their behaviour in meetings. They need to recognise that just because a woman says nothing or little in a meeting does not mean that she has nothing or little to say. It is simply that we often communicate differently. We are also often surrounded by very confident men who have a lot to say, and that is absolutely acceptable, but our voice inside starts to tell us to doubt the validity of what we were going to say. Women MPs may hide it well, but we are not immune to this behaviour. For example, right now, my pages are covered with notes saying, “Cut, if they are bored.” “Cut, if they are bored.” And, “Cut, if they are bored.” I had assumed that people would be bored and that I would have been talking for too long. Perhaps I am, but I am going to force myself not to cut my speech, if that is alright with you, Madam Deputy Speaker—yes, it looks like it is okay.

I am not just talking about women MPs; I am talking about people who come into Parliament for meetings with us. I am talking about our party members. I am talking about support staff. I have lost count of the number of times that I have left a meeting and been approached by a woman who did not speak a single word and who starts talking to me on a one-to-one basis and giving me some really important and interesting information. Therefore, one thing that our male allies, and also other women, can do is invite individuals to speak and not allow their sentences to be finished for them.

I did some training with women MPs—they were, in fact, Deputy Speakers—in Nepal this time last year. I was there to help them get media coverage, because the male MPs were getting it all. I turned up at the conference hall and it was half full of men. They had heard about the training—this is the male MPs—and they felt put out that they had been excluded. The women felt sorry for them and invited them to join the session, but it changed the entire dynamic and had I not found ways to work around it, it would have defeated the purpose of my being there at all.

I think it would be helpful to say how it changed the dynamic. When I was trying to establish what holds women MPs back from engaging with the media, I asked a number of questions. One was, “Hands up if you ever feel that what you have to say to a journalist is probably not that important after all.” Not one woman put her hand up, but I knew from speaking to them privately that most of them did experience that self-doubt; they just did not want to talk about it in a roomful of confident men. Some men put their hands up, but it was to tell me how vitally important their stories were to the media. Therefore, they gave me the opposite of what I was asking. As I have said, I found ways around that and one was to say, “May I take the first three responses from women, please?” That works in a larger setting. It is something that I have seen male allies do. In the more intimate setting of a round-table meeting, I ask men to please just remember that a woman who is saying nothing is not doing so because she has nothing to say.

Finally, I conclude with two asks of the Government. I spent recess in Malawi. As an aside, just because so many women have mentioned this, let me say that I went on a constituency visit with an MP, and her MP colleague gave the most passionate speech to hundreds of people about why they should retain her—there is a campaign called “Retain Her Malawi”. I thought that it was really nice that these two women in the same party were supporting each other. But they were not in the same party at all—it was the equivalent of my going along to a constituency in Scotland with a Conservative or a Labour MP, saying that they must vote for her next time. It was really interesting to watch the way that the women in that caucus supported each other.

Members will see that I have a piece of cloth wrapped around me. It was given to me by Linga, Oxfam’s Malawi director. I was in Malawi, as I have said, for the women’s caucus conference for all 44 women MPs in Malawi—23% of its Parliament is now made up by women. The conference was organised by Oxfam and supported by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. The cloth is printed with the words, “Take action, say no to violence against women.” A lot of good work is going on in Malawi, much of it funded by both the Scottish and the UK Governments, so that is fantastic.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. She is speaking passionately about Malawi. I have also visited Malawi and spent time with women’s organisations doing fantastic work. If she has been in Malawi, she will know the impact that HIV/AIDS has had. AIDS is still the leading cause of death for women between 15 and 49 worldwide. UNAIDS has released a report today highlighting the gendered nature of HIV/AIDS for women. Does she agree that we need to do all we can through our aid budget to tackle that?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I could not possibly disagree with that. Yes, I absolutely do agree with that. There was a lot of talk about how the country will tackle HIV/AIDS.

There is a big focus, funded largely by ourselves, on ending violence against women and girls. My ask of the Government is: what has happened to the Istanbul convention? Many will remember former SNP MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford, who served in this House for many years. Her private Member’s Bill was passed by this House, yet here we are almost three years later and nothing has been done. This week the Domestic Abuse Bill was reintroduced, but, I think I am right in saying, without provisions for ratification. Why is that? What is the delay?

I started my speech with these words: Amuna anga andig wiririria usiku watha. I was attempting to speak in Chichewa, one of the official languages of Malawi. The point that I am making is that I have a lot of constituents, mainly women, who cannot speak English, or if they can, it is limited, and when people are in distress, it becomes even more limited. If I were a Member of the Scottish Parliament, I could pick up the phone to the Scottish Parliament interpretation service, put my constituent on the phone and someone would establish what language they were speaking and an interpreter would be made available. Westminster offers no such service that I know of. Often, the issues are Home Office-related. That is further complicated by the fact that the Home Office point-blank refuses to communicate with Members of the Scottish Parliament. If anyone needs that service, it is MPs. Right now, if I need interpretation, I fall back on the fantastic national organisation, Saheliya, led by another inspirational woman, Alison Davis, but that service is by appointment only. May I appeal to the Minister and the Government, to look at setting up that initial telephone service so that people—mainly women, often women in danger—can access support from their Member of Parliament in the same way that any other women can expect to?

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton]

That is not my understanding of what the Home Secretary said, but let me be absolutely clear that this Government have regard to eliminating discrimination and advancing equality of opportunity in all our work. This approach informs regular engagement between Cabinet Ministers in relation to the justice system. This is something we take incredibly seriously.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I pay tribute to the work of my predecessor in this role and a good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley).

It is not just the Home Secretary who is in denial about racism. The racism to which it is easiest for us all to turn a blind eye is the insidious type, where often even the perpetrator does not realise what lies behind it. Is the Minister open to working with people like me and, more particularly, with black, Asian and minority ethnic MPs to raise awareness of unconscious racial bias and the devastating impact it has on the day-to-day lives of many of our citizens?

[Wendy Morton]

I think it is deeply unfair to lecture the Home Secretary on discrimination. Let us be absolutely clear that this Government are committed to closing the opportunity gap in our society. We are determined to implement the policies needed for the UK to succeed as a nation. I work very closely with the right hon. Member for Tottenham, and the Ministry of Justice takes the issue of racial disparity very seriously.