Women in Society

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords, I start by welcoming the Minister’s speech and her obvious commitment to equality and fairness for women throughout their lives. I have had the pleasure of speaking with her and learning from her important experience in the care sector, which I would think is in fact an industry peopled exclusively by women, so that was very relevant to the debate we are having. My brief comments will be made in the light of my role as a member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The noble Baroness emphasised the very difficult times that we are living through and the necessity of spending cuts, which I do not dispute at all. In practice, however, it means that decision-makers at all levels, national and local, should look closely at the effects their financial decisions might have on women and, indeed, on other vulnerable groups before going ahead with reorganising or reducing services. Doing that should help public authorities to achieve the Government’s own commitment to,

“limit as far as possible the impact of reductions in spending on the most vulnerable in society”.

Yet a recent House of Commons Library research report assessed the distribution between women and men of the £8 billion raised by the Budget’s changes in direct taxes and benefits. It found that £5.8 billion will be paid by women and only £2.2 billion by men. I do not know whether that could be said to be fair. Also, a report from the UK Women’s Budget Group, published this June, states that low-income mothers are the managers and shock absorbers of poverty and will be the most negatively affected by the recently announced budget cuts. Women from black and minority ethnic groups, it said, will be particularly hard hit as 40 per cent of them live in poor households.

The commission has concerns that women may be harder hit by spending cuts because they use public services more intensively than men to meet their own needs and the needs associated with their caring responsibilities. We have heard today about the differential in pay and we know that women are, on average, paid 20.2 per cent less per hour than men. That gap is higher in the private sector than the public and in certain sectors of employment such as the financial services industry. Going further along the life course, female pensioners currently have lower incomes than male pensioners, so they are at greater risk of poverty and therefore more reliant on means-tested benefits.

The commission’s work on older women in particular is really limited to the workplace. Higher rates of poverty are experienced by many older women, as we know, because of a lifetime of lower pay—what the Hills report called “cumulative disadvantage”. Because of their greater longevity, there is also a greater need to access care, for while women live longer than men they experience more disability and chronic illness or disease in later life, and have a greater need to call on services such as dementia treatment or those for other chronic, and sometimes terminal, diseases. Overall, women have a greater dependence on public services, so they will be more affected by the current cuts. We need, perhaps, to take account of and drive home the message about the human rights obligations of public authorities, which can help care homes and hospitals to treat older women with dignity and respect, and to put into practice the age discrimination provisions in the Equality Act, ensuring that institutions understand how to meet their obligations and that individuals know how to enforce their rights.

I am very pleased that the Minister representing Her Majesty’s Government gave such full support to the Equality Act. It is important that when public authorities make financial decisions, they are equality-impact assessed and that the impact assessment is carried out when the policy is initiated as a central part of the policy development process. Only by doing that can we be sure that women are treated fairly and in a way that conforms to the Government’s own commitment, as stated by the Minister. I hope that she can make it clear to us that she will abide by that.